# Kipling, is he over-rated? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 21, 2016, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kipling-is-he-over-rated/749789 "2016-03-21T18:40:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Ignotus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecc23a/32.png) [@Ignotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignotus)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2016, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kipling-is-he-over-rated/749789/61 "2016-03-31T20:19:04Z")
> [@Waltzes\_with\_Cacti](#): > > **Hogarth** , were you startled by the homoerotic subtext of _The Light That Failed_? I know I was. > [@hogarth](#): > > Not really. To me, it seemed more like slobbering over the bonds that soldiers make. Was _that_ the supposed homoerotic subtext? I thought it was about Maisie and that red-haired girl! ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kipling-is-he-over-rated/749789/62 "2016-04-01T00:10:03Z")
Chesterton engages in broad and blunt and coarse anti-semitism, far too often and too regularly. He accused “The Jews” of being the cause of World War One. It’s a failing of his times. I’ll actually forgive him for it, because he didn’t have any way to know better. American Robert W. Chambers suffered from the same ailment: in one of his stories, he argued that the Jews needed to be expelled from the U.S.A. for reasons of national survival. That’s harsher than anything Chesterton ever said. And Chambers is (in all other ways) such a delight to read! I love reading Chesterton…but every so often I have to pause and hold my nose, because the poor dear emits foul flatulent farts (of a literary nature) and I need to put the book down until the air clears again. ETA: people interested in literature of the era might find some joy in A.E.W. Mason. You might do well to try “The Four Feathers,” which has been made into movies a few times. ---
**Author:** ![john\_b\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9a28c/32.png) [@john\_b\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/john_b_2)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kipling-is-he-over-rated/749789/63 "2016-04-01T07:18:06Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Chesterton engages in broad and blunt and coarse anti-semitism, far too often and too regularly. He accused “The Jews” of being the cause of World War One. > > It’s a failing of his times. I’ll actually forgive him for it, because he didn’t have any way to know better. American Robert W. Chambers suffered from the same ailment: in one of his stories, he argued that the Jews needed to be expelled from the U.S.A. for reasons of national survival. That’s harsher than anything Chesterton ever said. And Chambers is (in all other ways) such a delight to read! > > I love reading Chesterton…but every so often I have to pause and hold my nose, because the poor dear emits foul flatulent farts (of a literary nature) and I need to put the book down until the air clears again. > > ETA: people interested in literature of the era might find some joy in A.E.W. Mason. You might do well to try “The Four Feathers,” which has been made into movies a few times. I know, Trinopus, and it always saddens me to read something by Chesterton when he takes potshots at any nationality. His more sympathetic admirers and biographers often attributed GKC’s dislike of Jews as the result of his brother having been swindled by a Jewish stock trader of some kind (I might have the occupation wrong,–someone in the financial services sector) over some stocks in the Marconi (i.e. radio) company. Gilbert and Cecil were close, and the latter became much more the anti-Semite than the former, who underwent a major change of heart when Hitler came to power, spoke out vigorously against the Nazis and all they stood for. Very much a product of his time, Chesterton was. He was very like Kipling in this regard. If these two weren’t so gifted they’d be half-forgotten and, when remembered at all, they’d be despised today. T.S. Eliot once wrote perceptively of Chesterton that while he had no doubt the man possessed genius he was uncertain as to precisely what it was he was a genius about (I paraphrase). In other words, massively talented and yet somewhat wanting. In modern parlance: he had the chops, didn’t know what to do with them. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kipling-is-he-over-rated/749789/64 "2016-04-01T14:16:18Z")
“The Man Who Was Thursday” was one of my favorites, back in the day. The whole thing was so goddamned weird! 😃 I loved it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kipling-is-he-over-rated/749789/65 "2016-04-01T16:21:15Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > American Robert W. Chambers suffered from the same ailment: in one of his stories, he argued that the Jews needed to be expelled from the U.S.A. for reasons of national survival. [“The Repairer of Reputations” (1895):](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8492/8492-h/8492-h.htm#THE_REPAIRER_OF_REPUTATIONS) > [@](#): > > Toward the end of the year 1920 the Government of the United States had practically completed the programme, adopted during the last months of President Winthrop’s administration. The country was apparently tranquil. Everybody knows how the Tariff and Labour questions were settled. The war with Germany, incident on that country’s seizure of the Samoan Islands, had left no visible scars upon the republic, and the temporary occupation of Norfolk by the invading army had been forgotten in the joy over repeated naval victories, and the subsequent ridiculous plight of General Von Gartenlaube’s forces in the State of New Jersey. The Cuban and Hawaiian investments had paid one hundred per cent and the territory of Samoa was well worth its cost as a coaling station. The country was in a superb state of defence. Every coast city had been well supplied with land fortifications; the army under the parental eye of the General Staff, organized according to the Prussian system, had been increased to 300,000 men, with a territorial reserve of a million; and six magnificent squadrons of cruisers and battle-ships patrolled the six stations of the navigable seas, leaving a steam reserve amply fitted to control home waters. The gentlemen from the West had at last been constrained to acknowledge that a college for the training of diplomats was as necessary as law schools are for the training of barristers; consequently we were no longer represented abroad by incompetent patriots. The nation was prosperous; Chicago, for a moment paralyzed after a second great fire, had risen from its ruins, white and imperial, and more beautiful than the white city which had been built for its plaything in 1893. Everywhere good architecture was replacing bad, and even in New York, a sudden craving for decency had swept away a great portion of the existing horrors. Streets had been widened, properly paved and lighted, trees had been planted, squares laid out, elevated structures demolished and underground roads built to replace them. The new government buildings and barracks were fine bits of architecture, and the long system of stone quays which completely surrounded the island had been turned into parks which proved a god-send to the population. The subsidizing of the state theatre and state opera brought its own reward. The United States National Academy of Design was much like European institutions of the same kind. Nobody envied the Secretary of Fine Arts, either his cabinet position or his portfolio. The Secretary of Forestry and Game Preservation had a much easier time, thanks to the new system of National Mounted Police. We had profited well by the latest treaties with France and England; **the exclusion of foreign-born Jews as a measure of self-preservation,** the settlement of the new independent negro state of Suanee, the checking of immigration, the new laws concerning naturalization, and the gradual centralization of power in the executive all contributed to national calm and prosperity. When the Government solved the Indian problem and squadrons of Indian cavalry scouts in native costume were substituted for the pitiable organizations tacked on to the tail of skeletonized regiments by a former Secretary of War, the nation drew a long sigh of relief. **When, after the colossal Congress of Religions, bigotry and intolerance were laid in their graves and kindness and charity began to draw warring sects together,** many thought the millennium had arrived, at least in the new world which after all is a world by itself. > > But self-preservation is the first law, and the United States had to look on in helpless sorrow as Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium writhed in the throes of Anarchy, while Russia, watching from the Caucasus, stooped and bound them one by one. Bit of dissonance there . . . ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2016, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kipling-is-he-over-rated/749789/66 "2016-04-01T19:00:31Z")
\*\* Searches web page for “kipple” \*\* > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I don’t know, I’ve never kippled. OK someone already went there 😃 My work here is done. By someone else, to be sure, but done. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2016, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kipling-is-he-over-rated/749789/67 "2016-04-02T10:29:37Z")
Although Orwell has been quoted in volume above, I think another relevant part of his essay hasn’t been mentioned…, > [@Orwell](#): > > The phrase ‘lesser breeds’ refers almost certainly to the Germans, and especially the pan-German writers, who are ‘without the Law’ in the sense of being lawless, To charges that Kipling was proto-fascist, I say “of course”: everyone except the communists was proto-fascist then, and as Orwell also observed > [@Orwell](#): > > “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” Regarding the value of Kipling, Orwell uses the word “vulgar”, but I’m afraid that says more about Orwell than it does about Kipling. To the classically traned English upper classes, the insulting word “vulgar”, [“from Latin vulgaris, volgaris of or pertaining to the common people, common, vulgar, low, mean,”] meant something very close to “popular” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kipling-is-he-over-rated/749789.md?page=3)