“Saki: Where the Wild
Things Are”
Hitchens’ review of The
Unbearable Saki, by Sandie Byrne.
H.H. Munro (nom de plume “Saki”) was a Victorian writer whose “great gift was being able to write about children and animals.” Hitchens goes on to write “H. H. Munro— or ‘Saki,’ the author of [Beasts and Super-Beasts] — is among those few writers, inspirational when read at an early age, who definitely retain their magic when revisited decades later.”
The stories sound good – Kipling-esque. Saki puts these words in the mouth of his protagonist in the story “The East Wing.” He asserts that after his death, those left behind, “…would no more exist than a vanished puff of cigarette smoke…” Hitchens points out the irony in his close to the essay, “On the verge of a crater [in WW1], during an interval of combat, he was heard to shout ‘Put that bloody cigarette out!’ before succumbing to the bullet of a German sniper who had been trained to look for such tell-tale signals.”
H.H. Munro (nom de plume “Saki”) was a Victorian writer whose “great gift was being able to write about children and animals.” Hitchens goes on to write “H. H. Munro— or ‘Saki,’ the author of [Beasts and Super-Beasts] — is among those few writers, inspirational when read at an early age, who definitely retain their magic when revisited decades later.”
The stories sound good – Kipling-esque. Saki puts these words in the mouth of his protagonist in the story “The East Wing.” He asserts that after his death, those left behind, “…would no more exist than a vanished puff of cigarette smoke…” Hitchens points out the irony in his close to the essay, “On the verge of a crater [in WW1], during an interval of combat, he was heard to shout ‘Put that bloody cigarette out!’ before succumbing to the bullet of a German sniper who had been trained to look for such tell-tale signals.”
Saki's story "Tobermory"...about a cat that can talk...waas made into a twitter play.
New Learning: Saki took his name from the cupbearer in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
“And fear not lest Existence closing your Account, and mine,
should know the like no more; The Eternal Sáki from that Bowl has pour’d
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.”
New word: ephebes = young man undergoing military training
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