book of books - The Best Short Stories

A friend of mine pointed out that if you want to read some really good short stories then those by Rudyard Kipling are worth further investigation. Unfortunately because of the timing of his writing it has become deeply unfashionable because it is associated with the empire and has slight connotations of something bordering on the embarrassing and even slightly racist.

It is of its time but there is little in these stories that glamorises the past and most of the Empire tales are charactised by sun, sand and madness rather than a jolly good time.

As well as enjoying some cracking stories this collection inspires creative writers because of a real sense of adventure with different styles and for those contemplating some of their own writing there are some real lessons to learn here:

Lesson one – the narrative voice
In most stories it is not only human beings that talk but the quote marks only get handed out to the major characters. There is a great deal of inventiveness here with polo horses discussing tactics for a cup game in The Maltese Cat and the rivet, steam and various parts of the engine moaning about an Atlantic crossing in The Ship that Found Herself.

Lesson two – the twist
Getting a twist across in a story that might only be twenty pages long is quite an achievement but it is on display here with the slow twist of the children being ghosts in ‘They’ and the short sharp ending that the narrator has also suffered a loss of a child. Then there is the magical moment in ‘Wireless’ when it is not the messages coming across the Marconi machine that matter but the inspired words of poetry that come to a consumptive chemist in a trance.

Lesson three – paint it black
There are some brutal stories here that show life in all its darkness and as a result have a tension and sadness. The Record of Badalia Herodsfoot tells the story of a charitable worker who is kicked to death by her husband for not sharing the church monies. The Limitations of Pambe Serang recounts a tale of revenge that leads to both men dying – one from a stab wound and the other from the hangman’s noose. But At the End of the Passage shows that it is possible to mix the misery of loneliness and heat exhaustion with the supernatural to produce quite a disturbing result.

Kipling might have dated but his writing is fluid, inventive and deserves to be read. Just because a writer is unfashionable does not detract from the lessons they can give readers and there is enough in this volume to keep you thinking for quite a while.

Version read – Wordsworth Classics paperback

Lunchtime read: The Best Short Stories

The final story in this collection ends again showing just how clever Kipling is at laying down a twist, which catches you out at the end. The thing is with this tale you think that you know what is coming but then there is a kink in the final couple of pages that leaves you with a different ending from what you might have predicted.

‘They’
A man driving his motorcar drives into the grounds of a large house and sees children waving from the house and playing in the grounds but when he gets close no one is there except for a blind woman. She explains that the children are allowed to roam in her house and she loves them. The man comes a couple more times until a final encounter when he understands that the children are dead and because he has lost a child he cannot come back to visit again. The blind woman, realising that he understands, asks him if she thinks he is selfish, something he says she is not but he seems bitterly disappointed that he can never come back again.

You start to realise that the children are ghosts quite early on and it seems amazing that no one in the village tells the motorist or he doesn’t get it himself. But you never know that what is coming is that he has himself lost a child and that is why he has loved and lost and because his child might also walk among the others he has to leave.

This entire collection might be dated not just in terms of the Empire but also in the innocence of an earlier time. But there are several great ideas that a creative writer could take from the collection and throughout each story there is high quality writing from start to finish.

Full review to come shortly…

Lunchtime read: The Best Short Stories

Again the voices you hear are those of a collection of inanimate objects and animals. This is a clever story not just about mans fight with nature but the price of progress as a traditional mill is forced to embrace modern technology.

Below the Mill Dam
The water is gushing down and putting strain on the old Mill wheels and the cat and the rat watch the Mill struggle to cope with the pressure. At the same time the Mill owner is rigging up electricity using the power of the water. After initially pouring scorn on the whole idea of turbines and electricity the Mill changes its tunes and accepts that it will have to change and embrace the technology. The cat turns to talk to her old friend the rat about how things have changed but the rat has been stuffed by the engineer who labelled it as a Black Rat.

The fate of the rat brings a rye smile because of cause keeping the past stuffed and kept in jars is exactly one sort of fate that would have been left for the Mill had it not embraced change.

Last story to come tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: The Best Short Stories

This collection of stories is almost completed and again there is a tale that has a hint of the dark night of the soul about it as an obsession leads to death

Mrs Bathurst
Some old sailors and a railway man are talking over drinks about different places they have travelled when one of them starts to talk about a woman, Mrs Bathurst, who ran a bar and was a remarkable woman who was never forgotten by anyone who met her. One of the party recalls how he was dragged by another sailor to the films night after night because there was some footage of Mrs Bathurst coming out of a train in Paddington and he says that she was looking for him. He then deserts and disappears.

But at this point the man from the railway talks about a recent trip he had to make to help with a derailed train and how two tramps had been seen near the line. It appears to be the man and Mrs Bathurst both dead and resembling charcoal.

Another tale that leaves you with a haunting twist. Last story tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: The Best Short Stories

There is a clever shift in focus here away from what you expect to be the centre of attention. It is an interesting idea to take the theme of one event and overplay it on another with the question of transmitting electricity and thoughts not just being confined to the Marconi wireless machine.

Wireless
The location is a chemist’s shop in a south coast seaside town and there are three characters waiting for a call from a transmitter in Poole. Mr Shaynor is dying of consumption and spends his time manning the shop, except for a brief outing with his girlfriend, while the narrator and Mr Cashell wait for the message. Mr Cashell is explaining to the narrator about how electricity works and messages comes through the ether and then the narrator goes back into the shop and sees Shaynor in a consumptive slump/trance quote some Keat’s poetry and write some magical verses down. He is called to the back room but tells Cashell that something is coming through in the shop. What heightens the tension is the knowledge that Cashell shares with the narrator while Shaynor is out that is man, capable of loving poetry, is going to be dead within the year.

So far, reading these stories over a week and a half, there have been different styles, ambitious use of voice and twists that are an unexpected surprise in a short story. There is a lot for writers and literary lovers to learn by reading and enjoying these stories. More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: The Best Short Stories

Although Kipling comes for some stick for writing a great deal about the old Empire days you could hardly accuse him of glamming it up with tales of heat, sun and delirium. There is also a slight tinge of Conan Doyle here at the end as the doctor tries to photograph his eyes to see what was reflected in them the moment his friend died.

At The End of the Passage
Four men get together each Sunday to play cards and keep each other sane. In the stifling heat of 101 degrees they meet up as usual and discuss one of their acquaintances who has ‘gone out’ after blowing his brains out. Then their worries start to mount over one of their own number and sure enough as the doctor stays with him that night he discovers that only morphine can help him sleep. He refuses to be sent home and the doctor leaves him and then gets bogged down dealing with a wave of illness sweeping through the plantation. When the friends meet up again for their game of cards they discover their friend dead with a look of terror on his face and when the doctor photographs his eyes it seems that something really did scare him to death.

Again a different style from Kipling that has a hint of the supernatural about it. It’s just a shame that the doctor was not able to share with us all a bit more about what was on the photograph.

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: The Best Short Stories

The blurb on the back cover says that this story is Kipling’s most well known and in a way it reminds you in style of The Ship that Found Herself with the voices in the narrative belonging not to men but to polo ponies in the case of this tale and the ships component parts in the case of the other example.

The Maltese Cat
This starts with a discussion about a forthcoming cup polo match and you assume it’s the players talking to each other but it turns out to be the horses and the leader of the team the Maltese Cat masterminds a victory that involves an injury to both horse and master. There is a great pace about the story with the inevitable victory coming at quite a cost.

The decision to let the horses do most of the talking is a brave one that really works although you sense that animals might not always conform to behaviour patterns of male rugby players.

The Kipling will keep coming tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: The Best Short Stories

If Kipling is not writing about soldiers then he seems to pick up on a nautical theme and so both of the next stories are based on or around ships. There continues to be an inventiveness about space and the senses are challenged with the uses of shapes and lights in the second of these stories. From that perspective there is plenty of stuff here for a creative writing student to pick up on.

The Limitations of Pambe Serang
In this story of revenge a man discovers that a stoker on board the ship he is also serving on has eaten his food and he vows to exact revenge and waits years but finally tracks him down and as he lies ill asks the enemy to come closer and stabs him through the ribs. The murderer is kept alive so the law can hang is to make sure justice is done.

A revenge story that shows that it is not only possible to find someone in you wait long enough but that in the end taking revenge creates two losers not just one.

The Disturber of Traffic
From violence to madness with an old sailor telling another of a story of an acquaintance who went mad manning a passage that got clogged up with sea faring traffic. The streaks of the waves start to torment him so as a result he builds and plants wreck buoys and blocks the channel and is finally caught and stopped but appears in the nude making odd comments. He recovers but is never quite able to get over the incidents in the passage.

A great example of how easy it is to pass the narrative over from one voice to another and allow someone not even present to talk via reminiscences.

Lunchtime read: The Best Short Stories

What you start to appreciate after reading a few of these stories is that Kipling is as capable as Kafka and Pushkin of using a few pages to create a quite disturbing story.

The Record of Badalia Herodsfoot
The record in question is a diary of how the money handed out by the Church to be spent for the poor is administered by Badalia. She is a woman who lives mong the poor and knows the abuses they suffer and endeavours to make sure that the right people get the support they need. She has been abandoned by her husband who treats women as puch bags and sources of money. He returns after two years and asks for the church money and when she refuses to hand it over kicks her into a state nearing death. She lies on her bed and gives instructions until the end but dies and as the funeral mtakes place those who hope to abuse the system come out of the cracks like slime.

This reminds you of a Russian story because of the tragedy that even after all of her hard work she is reduced to just a book and some memories. Kipling still insists onb trying to use local dialect and although it is obvious I'm not totally convinced it improves an already good story.

More tomorrow...

Lunchtime read: The Best Short Stories

Away from soliders patroling remote areas of the Empire the stories take a different tone and in the case of the one consumed today become slightly more inventive. It is possible to appreciate what Kipling was doing when you read things that are genuinely different.

The Ship That Found Herself
The story starts conventionally ebnough with the skipper and the ship builder’s daughter discussing a new ship, which the skipper argues needs to find itself. Then Kipling makes the comment that if you ever listen to a boat made of steel and iron you can hear it talking and from that point the voices are those of the steam, rivets and other parts of the ship. The ship makes it to New York and then all of a sudden a new voice emerges and it is the voice of the ship, rather than of the component parts, and the ship has finally found itself.

It is hard not to appreciate the clever way the different parts of the ship make different sounds and the steam is acting as the most experienced voice of all. His use of language and sound is something special.

Lunchtime read: The Best Short Stories

The voice in the story moves from Irish to Yorkshire and again a solider on duty trawls though his memories to produce a tale that is used to entertain his colleagues as well as make a wider point about society and life as a solider.

On Greenhow Hill
The troops are based in the Himalayas and as one of them looks out on the landscape he tells his colleagues that it reminds him of the hills in Yorkshire. He tells a story of how he fell for a woman who came under the spell of the church and in a bid to win her heart he was converted and attended the religious meetings. But he grew suspicious of the preacher, who he believed was also courting the girl, and had a showdown with hi m but the preacher tells him that she is not for either of them because she only has six months left to live. Following that he joins up and bids her farewell and heads off to forget her by joining the army.

More tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: The Best Short Stories

Rudyard Kipling’s problem is that he is associated with The Empire and a period of British history that is now seen as one of imperial racism and something usually deliberately forgotten. But, and this is a point well made in the introduction, in terms of style and ability Kipling deserves to be read. That was a point also made to me by a friend who advised me to read them.

The Courting of Dinah Shadd
The first story is a struggle mainly because Kipling insists on writing out the Irish dialect as one solider recounts how he came to be with his wife. You grasp that the essence of the story is that no sooner has the solider made a commitment to Dinah Shadd than he is drunk getting involved with another girl. He then ends up getting cursed by the mother of the rejected girl and over the camp fire reveals that every part of the curse came true. The narrator does not know what to say and is luckily saved from having to comment by the arrival of other soldiers.

Too early to give a verdict but that was not quite what I was expecting and the dialect made it more difficult than it needed to be. Still got to give it a second chance so more tomorrow..