Rudyard Kipling Quote
What's the trouble? I said, knowing well what that trouble was.I've a notion in my head that would make the most splendid story that was ever written. Do let me write it out here. It's such a notion!There was no resisting the appeal. I set him a table; he hardly thanked me, but plunged into the work at once. For half an hour the pen scratched without stopping. Then Charlie sighed and tugged his hair. The scratching grew slower, there were more erasures, and at last ceased. The finest story in the world would not come forth.It looks such awful rot now, he said, mournfully. And yet it seemed so good when I was thinking about it. What's wrong?I could not dishearten him by saying the truth. So I answered: Perhaps you don't feel in the mood for writing.Yes I do--except when I look at this stuff. Ugh!Read me what you've done, I said.He read, and it was wondrous bad, and he paused at all the specially turgid sentences, expecting a little approval; for he was proud of those sentences, as I knew he would be.It needs compression, I suggested, cautiously.I hate cutting my things down. I don't think you could alter a word here without spoiling the sense. It reads better aloud than when I was writing it.Charlie, you're suffering from an alarming disease afflicting a numerous class. Put the thing by, and tackle it again in a week.I want to do it at once. What do you think of it?
What's the trouble? I said, knowing well what that trouble was.I've a notion in my head that would make the most splendid story that was ever written. Do let me write it out here. It's such a notion!There was no resisting the appeal. I set him a table; he hardly thanked me, but plunged into the work at once. For half an hour the pen scratched without stopping. Then Charlie sighed and tugged his hair. The scratching grew slower, there were more erasures, and at last ceased. The finest story in the world would not come forth.It looks such awful rot now, he said, mournfully. And yet it seemed so good when I was thinking about it. What's wrong?I could not dishearten him by saying the truth. So I answered: Perhaps you don't feel in the mood for writing.Yes I do--except when I look at this stuff. Ugh!Read me what you've done, I said.He read, and it was wondrous bad, and he paused at all the specially turgid sentences, expecting a little approval; for he was proud of those sentences, as I knew he would be.It needs compression, I suggested, cautiously.I hate cutting my things down. I don't think you could alter a word here without spoiling the sense. It reads better aloud than when I was writing it.Charlie, you're suffering from an alarming disease afflicting a numerous class. Put the thing by, and tackle it again in a week.I want to do it at once. What do you think of it?
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About Rudyard Kipling
Kipling's works of fiction include the Jungle Book duology (The Jungle Book, 1894; The Second Jungle Book, 1895), Kim (1901), the Just So Stories (1902) 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 seen as an innovator in the art of the short story. His children's books are classics; one critic noted "a versatile and luminous narrative gift".
Kipling in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was among the United Kingdom's most popular writers. 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, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, as the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and at 41, its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and several times for a knighthood, but declined both. Following his death in 1936, his ashes were interred at Poets' Corner, part of the South Transept of Westminster Abbey.
Kipling's subsequent reputation has changed with the political and social climate of the age. The contrasting views of him continued for much of the 20th century. Literary critic Douglas Kerr wrote: "[Kipling] is still an author who can inspire passionate disagreement and his place in literary and cultural history is far from settled. But as the age of the European empires recedes, he is recognised as an incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how empire was experienced. That, and an increasing recognition of his extraordinary narrative gifts, make him a force to be reckoned with."