We all have unfashionable things that we love. The work of Rudyard Kipling is one of my guilty pleasures. I deplore his bigotry and jingoistic colonialism but celebrate his prose and poetry.
Kipling’s work also made for some great movies back in the day. Calvin Trillin wrote a great piece in 1994 about his fanatical devotion to the 1939 film version of Gunga Din. It’s time to let go of the white cat’s burden and move on to our favorite tuxedo cat.
Della Street, of course, doesn’t know anything about literature or classic films, but she *is* curious about things that land on *her* floor:
Holy circuitous introduction, Batman. I might as well throw in the movie poster while I’m at it:
“Smells are surer than sounds or sights
To make your heart-strings crack–”
I too like Kipling’s words.
It’s easy to misunderstand Kipling. I think George Orwell pointed out two problems:
1) Kipling was a conservative, and by the 1930s, there weren’t any actual conservatives left in England. They had all been replaced by fascists and the like.
2) Kipling was a good bad poet. I believe Orwell compared Kipling to Harriet Beecher Stowe who was a good bad novelist.