Book Review (OT): If: The Untold Story of Kipling's American Years (VT, history)

If: The Untold Story of Kipling’s American Years, by Christopher Benfey (Penguin Press, 2019, 242 pages, $28)

I was so excited to start If: The Untold Story of Kipling’s American Years. I hadn’t known that Rudyard Kipling spent a decade in the US, much less in Brattleboro, Vermont, where I have visited.

Give it a Chance

If starts out slooooowly. It might appeal to you if you are an English major, a grad student in English, or an English professor or teacher (or History). I am not, so, many names mentioned were lost on me, like Henry James. Others, not so much: Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Teddy Roosevelt, Bram Stoker and Andrew Carnegie: all friends of Kipling.

Names

As a matter of fact, If reminded me of someone who talks only about others – a name-dropper – in order to appear more important than they really are. Many unnecessary and long-winded diversions abound by author Christopher Benfey, an English professor (what else?), perhaps in an attempt to make this quasi-history book a quasi-analysis of many of Kipling’s works.

However, Kipling is important. Did you know he won the Nobel Prize back in 1907? A member of the upper crust of expatriate British society, he lived on three continents and lost all his money in a Japanese bank (but recovered, thanks to his writings). Kipling is also known as the soldier’s poet, which is expounded upon extensively in the epilogue where author Benfey brings us up to date on Iraq and Afghanistan but spends considerable time comparing Kipling’s work with the Vietnam* Conflict.

Everyday Kipling

If you have never read Kipling, you are, at least, aware of his stories and poems from Kim to The Jungle Book to Captains Courageous to Gunga Din to Mandalay to The White Man’s Burden to The Man Who Would Be King to If.

Style

I once told myself I would read any book by an English professor. Then I read If. Benfey’s style is tedious: although his sentence structure, paragraphs, and organization are good, If sounds like a book report written to impress the teacher with one quote after another. The sheer number of quotes (and diversions) interferes with reading about Kipling.

Which brings us to:

            “And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,

            “And the epitaph drear: ’A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.’”

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*"If any question why we died,

"Tell them, because our fathers lied."