Life's Handicap: Being Stories of My Own People

by Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English author and poet. In 1917 he was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Kipling was born in Bombay, British India. Many of his works have an Indian flavor and setting. His best known works are The Jungle Book (1894), The Second Jungle Book (1895), and Just So Stories (1902). The stories in this collection include The Lang Men O' Larut, Reingelder and the German Flag, The Wandering Jew, Through the Fire, The Finances of the Gods, The Amir's Homily, Jews in Shushan, The Limitations of Pambe Serang, Little Tobrah, Bubbling Well Road, 'The City of Dreadful Night', Georgie Porgie, Naboth, The Dream of Duncan, Parrenness, The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney, The Courting of Dinah Shadd, On Greenhow Hill, The Man Who Was, The Head of the District, Without Benefit of Clergy, At the End of the Passage, The Mutiny of the Mavericks, The Mark of the Beast, The Return of Imray. Namgay Doola, Bertran and Bimi, and Moti Guj-Mutineer.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Poetry, 19th Century, Literature

Paperback

Published June 2, 1987

About the author

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was a journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist.

Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and many short stories, including The Man Who Would Be King (1888). His poems include Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), The Gods of the Copybook Headings (1919), The White Man's Burden (1899), and If— (1910). He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story; his children's books are classics of children's literature; and one critic described his work as exhibiting "a versatile and luminous narrative gift".

Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James said: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius (as distinct from fine intelligence) that I have ever known." In 1907, at the age of 41, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, both of which he declined.

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907 "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author."

Kipling kept writing until the early 1930s, but at a slower pace and with much less success than before. On the night of 12 January 1936, Kipling suffered a haemorrhage in his small intestine. He underwent surgery, but died less than a week later on 18 January 1936 at the age of 70 of a perforated duodenal ulcer. Kipling's death had in fact previously been incorrectly announced in a magazine, to which he wrote, "I've just read that I am dead. Don't forget to delete me from your list of subscribers."

Reviews

[Guillermo]

Creo que aquí están algunos de los cuentos breves y directos que Borges postuló como lacónicas obras maestras.
Además está uno de los cuentos más feliz de todos los tiempos: El motín de Moti Guj

[Cindy]

This book is a collection of short stories written by Rudyard Kipling. They include one story written when he was only 19, and vary in size from 2 1/2 pages to much longer stories.

All of the stories are set in colonial India, and share some basic themes: the conflict between the races, the doubt over the value of civilization, the frustration over fighting a losing battle, and yet the joy in comradeship, even if the war is a pointless one.

I didn't read the preface until I was at least halfway through the book, and then I spotted the warning that the best stories are placed at the beginning of the book. As I read more, I had to agree with that. The later stories are too brief to be more than mildly interesting and the ideas are not solid enough to be worth a longer story.

I enjoyed this book more than I expected at first. I had a couple of problems. One is that the book makes extensive use of dialect, which can be hard to read. And this edition also included endnotes for each story, which made it feel more like I was reading a textbook and less like I was reading a story.

But I did enjoy some of the stories very much. My favorite ones in this collection were 'The Man Who Was' and 'Without Benefit of Clergy'.

If you are a fan of Kipling, or if you want to read more about colonial India and the British Empire, I really recommend this collection.

[Karl]

Kipling is a huge name in English literature and I grew up on many of his children’s stories like THE JUNGLE BOOK and RIKKI-TIKKI-TAVI etc - there is some fabulous prose in this collection of short stories, almost exclusively set in exotic locations from India and thru South East Asia. Sadly, there are some horribly racist passages in many of them too. I know it was a different time when these were written, but let’s just say many of these have not aged well.

[Lisa of Troy]

Part of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s personal library according to Scott Fitzgerald: Romantic and Realist by John Richard Kuehl 1958
*These were books NOT given to Princeton. They were returned to Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald’s daughter, France Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan

[• Domeniko •]

3.15

[Simon Mcleish]

Originally published on my blog here in October 2000.

Rudyard Kipling produced a large number of short stories, including some of his best known writing (The Jungle Book, for example, being a collection of connected tales). They are quite varied, even when dealing with a specific theme, as here: Life's Handicap contains twenty seven stories about the experience of the British in India. Some have dated more than others, but they all have the marvellous sense of atmosphere which is the hallmark of Kipling's writing.

It is often said against Kipling that he was an imperialist, and it is hardly possible to deny it - there are moments when his now uncomfortable assumptions about the superiority of the white man become apparent. Kipling fits into the time and place of his background as well as most people do, and it is rather unfair to expect him to have the attitudes of someone born a century later. The chosen theme of most of his writing makes these background ideas particularly obvious, so that he is something of a sitting target. He is a greater writer than the two others who have survived and who also can be accused of the same kind of unconscious racism (I'm thinking of Buchan and Haggard), and he is much less one sided. He writes about unpleasant Europeans, of British officers who fail, as well as of ones who are as infallible gods to their native servants. His characters, even in the short stories, are more than the stereotypes of cheap imperialist fiction.

In the case of Life's Handicap, I remain slightly uneasy despite the excellence of many of the stories. This is because of the title of the collection, for which the only interpretation I can think of is slightly racist (though possibly just reflective of the social situation in nineteenth century India): that some people have a superior position or an inferior one from the start of their lives, dependent on whether they are Indian or European. It may be a racist idea, but Kipling didn't originate the system, and it was certainly true.

[marki jones]

My copy of this book was published in 1931. I found it at the Boston Public Library and considered stealing it, but avoided the risk and found the same copy on ebay a day later. I was shocked to see a swastika on the front. It goes counterclockwise, this direction usually associated a picture of the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesha. Apparently as the symbol became a staple of the Nazi party Kipling began to demand the printing block eliminate it from copies his books. Anyway I am halfway through this book and I have a feeling it contains many literary references I am not familiar with so I need to do more research. I wanted to start reading Kipling when I saw a display on his work and found the title of one of his books to be "The Beginning of the Armadillos."

I like:

"The most remarkable stories are, of course those which do not appear - for obvious reasons."

"the poor are the best of tale-tellers for they must lay their ear to the ground every night."

"He wrapped himself up in his patched quilt made of every color and material in the world, sat down in a sunny corner of the very quiet Chub and, resting his arm on his shoe handled crutch, waited for death."

and this, I think written by his mother, Alice:

Her hand within his rosy fingers lay,
A chilling weight. She would not turn or hear;
But with averted face went on her way.
But when pale Death, all featureless and grim,
Lifted his bony hand, and beckoning
Held out his cypress wreath, she followed him,
And Love was left forlorn and wondering,
That she who for his bidding would not stay,
At Death's first whisper rose and went away.
Rivals.

---------
So read this if you are in a contemplative mood. I wouldn't recommend reading too much at a time.

----------
and then go smoke a joint, drink a beer, eat some pizza, and sit under a tree


- Marki

[Cade]

I really enjoyed this book. This is a book of short stories about tales from travelers that Rudyard met or of experiences he had or at least stories he wrote as having experienced. A lot of humor. A lot of sorrow. Some terrifying things. Some supernatural.

Quite interesting and an interesting perspective into the people in and around India in the late 1800's. I'm always amazed to learn about how connected the world was, even then, when travel was so much more restricted.

[Le Maistre Chat]

This is subtitled "Being Stories of My Own People", which is ironic, because I've mentioned in a bunch of my Kipling reviews that his pre-Jungle Book prose set in India is bunch of short stories about English people that could almost be set in England instead due to how insular the white cast is. Life's Handicap is different, showcasing a wide variety of people.
The stories tend to be very short, and sometimes weren't much fun to read because they engage in negative stereotyping and/or jingoism. In "The Mutiny of the Mavericks", for example, an American subversive embedded in an Irish regiment in India dies and no harm comes to the Empire because Irishmen's drunkenness overcomes any hatred of England, hooray!
A mixed bag. Some are good, some show Kipling as the cultural chauvinist of the British Empire and therefore racist (even if not in a biological sense) he's so often called, and even the good ones aren't the great Kipling of the Jungle Books or Kim.

[Trounin]

Роман о чопорных англичанах — «Свет погас» — не нашёл должного отклика. Одно дело — описывать их в окружении экзотических обстоятельств, другое — среди себе подобных. Вероятно поэтому Киплинг в 1891 году согласился на публикацию сборника рассказов «Жизнь даёт фору», которые пользовались спросом у американцев, причём вне согласия на их публикацию самого автора. В сборник вошли рассказы, начиная с 1884 года. То есть читатель мог заново проследить становление слога Редьярда Киплинга — от первых его творений и вплоть до современных на тот момент. Внутренняя хронология не имела привязки к годам написания, но для лучшего понимания следует рассмотреть именно в порядке работы над ними.

(c) Trounin

[Plio Cas]

Shocked that this is by the same writer who gave us the delights of The Jungle Book. Instead you are given despair, meanness, theft, murder, anti-Semitism and racism. A collection of short stories, some written in incomprehensible dialect, with many that I couldn’t finish.

“The Russian is a delightful person till he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only when he insists on being treated as the most easterly of western people….he becomes a racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle”.

I can see why this book is rare, cropping up mainly in complete collections.

[Red Fox]

Many of Kipling's stories here are based in India given his time spent there. I liked his description of Mulvaney, the Irishman in the Brit army: "When I woke I saw Mulvaney, the night dew gemming his mustache, leaning on his rifle at picket, lonely as Prometheus on his rock, with I know not what vultures tearing at his liver."

[Ryan Wilson]

Not what I expected, despite his problematic ideals I found the book tame at times considering what I have been told of Kipling. Not my favorite of the limited works of his that I have read, but certainly different from "White Man's Burden."

[Jay Daze]

This was a tough slog. Story after story of the colonial experience in India told by an insider who very much thought that Indians were inferior, irrational children that needed to be ruled by their betters (the English!) Kipling takes time to be xenophobic to the Irish, Germans and various other non-English folk. Disturbingly it is the odd genre story that really works, it allows the racism to go down smooth. He is a great writer, but it was super hard to go through story after story where he uses that power to express ideas that should be left in the dust bin.

Part of my 1901 project, where I'm reading books from 1890-1910 around my grandfather's birth in 1901. In that sense this book was perfect for me and I don't regret it. That said, I don't think I'll read more of his short story collections set in colonial India.... except for the Jungle Book works (see my comment on genre writing earlier!)

[Edoardo Albert]

These early stories display Kipling's extraordinary mastery of the art of immersing the reader in a place and situation, primarily through his ear for the rhythms of speech but also via the very structures of what he wrote. Almost all of these stories are set in the Indian subcontinent, with protagonists ranging from the high Imperial servants to ragged Indian beggars. Is Kipling's portrayal of 19th-century India accurate? I cannot say, but it has the internal consistency and imaginative force of Dickens's London or Tolstoy's Russia and thus Kipling's India and the real place have become embedded in each other. Books, great books, can create a place as well as describe it. Kipling does this here.

[James]

Overall, this book by Kipling is a real gem. There are some stories contained here which were quite poor, which is reflected in a four star rating. If you have read a lot of Kiplings works by the tim3 you read this book, do check, as, some of the stories will be repeated in this set.

Overall though, besides the odd poor book, this book I found quite phenomenal. It feels like this book was perhaps written later, or, a different time in Kiplings life. Some works can easily be described as ‘horror’ others ‘mystery’. The works were beautifully written, some dark, some scary. Overall, this book far supersedes a lot of his other works. I finally feel that I have found and read works that show Kipling in, true, full and great form.

[Raúl]

Que son los cuentos de la gente de mi tierra, nos advierte Kipling en esta recopilación de cuentos que nos recuerda sus Plain Tales of the Hill en mucho, aunque con una variedad de cuentos que van desde casi la nouvelle a la historia corta. No tiene el grado de compacidad de esa, su primera colección e cuentos, pero no deja de ser una muestra del genio como narrador de Kipling, en la que siempre está presente la idea de frontera, de mestizaje, de encuentro frente a una otra realidad misteriosa y al mismo tiempo, cotidiana.

[Robert Hepple]

This 1891 collection of Kipling's short stories contains several collected before together with some new at the time. In either case, the quality in my opinion is superb. Many of the stories are extremely short, making this the ideal for occasional reading spread over different times. Very enjoyable, and a great addition for fans of Kipling's works.

[Pablo Rojas]

Internarse en un tiempo y en la palabra que trata de describir lo propio desde el lenguaje ajeno. Kipling es concisión; es un explorador que sabe lo que ve, pero que se obliga a verlo desde otra mirada. Cuentos que son travesías y recuento de la violencia entre todos los opuestos. Fascinante.

[Sarah]

My copy is the 1927 pocket (printed on thin paper) edition.

[Annette]

Impresionante algunos de las historias como la del elefante y la marca de la bestia, curioso leer la cultura tan diferente a la occidental.

[Patricio Cornejo]

Gran colección de distintos cuentos de todo tipo ambientados en países asiáticos durante el imperio británico.

[rosie]

Without the Benefit of Clergy, The Mutiny of the Mavericks, At the End of the Passage, The Mark of the Beast