Kim (1901)

I had a hard time with this Rudyard Kipling novel, considered by many to be his best work. The fact is I came to it already with problems about Kipling. He’s a colonialist by reputation and pretty much in fact. I’ve read a few of his ghost stories, which mostly strike me as stiff and ineffective. And his penchant for inserting poetry, his own and that of others, does not impress me. I’ve seen collections by him that pair stories with poems—an interesting idea in the abstract, perhaps, but generally it does not work for me. I was hoping at least for an engaging adventure story in Kim but alas not even that was working for me. I needed more context, which I might have sought ahead of time from Wikipedia or something. I recommend that for anyone approaching this novel. You can thank me later. It might have helped, for example, knowing what “the Great Game” means, a rivalry between the 19th-century British and Russian empires over influence in Central Asia, particularly Afghanistan. Another problem is the impression I got that Kipling did not understand the region well—roughly India, Pakistan (not yet a state in 1901), and Afghanistan. Nor did he (or very many Westerners, to be fair) seem to understand at all the array of religions and sects in the region, which included broad branches of Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. It reminded me of Paul Bowles’s ignorance of Arabs in The Sheltering Sky, which at least is a much better novel. I admit my biases against Kipling, author of the poem “The White Man’s Burden.” But I was still open to the adventure story possibilities. But apparently not open enough because it turned out to be pretty much a forced-march hate read. Fortunately for me it’s a short novel. Our main guy, Kim, is an orphan loose in this part of the world. His impoverished Irish parents are dead. I read him as a mixed offspring, Irish soldier father and native mother, but no, per Wikipedia. He’s all white. He hooks up with a holy man—Buddhist, I think—in search of a holy river. Various adventures ensue. My bad attitude may have partially blinded me to the novel’s better qualities, but I never felt involved with the story or cared about anything going on. As I say, it probably would have helped if I had brushed up ahead of time on this “Great Game,” but I will also say it would have helped if Kipling knew more about what he was writing about in the region—the cultures, the religions, the conflicts. It’s surprising to me that this is considered a classic, let alone one appropriate for kids. I don’t think so!

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.