“his socks compelled one’s attention without losing one’s respect.”
― ‘Ministers of Grace’
Author Archives: Bruce Gaston
A Handful of Dust and The Unbearable Bassington
In an article for Evelyn Waugh Studies (the newsletter for the Evelyn Waugh Society), Martin Stead suggests that Saki was one influence on Evelyn Waugh’s novel A Handful of Dust:
One other likely influence is the novel The Unbearable Bassington (1912) by Saki (H. H. Munro). The bulk of this work takes place in London, and, like Waugh’s novel, shows up the shallowness of the characters in the fashionable world. Then, at the end, the action shifts abruptly to the jungle, to where the hero, Comus Bassington, has been exiled, and where he dies, hopelessly mourning his former life. Waugh admired Saki, and wrote the 1947 introduction for a reprint of Bassington, although he felt the novel to be less successful than the short stories. Waugh and Saki certainly share a number of points, such as a clipped, pared-down style, some extremely dark humour, and the habit of telling much of their stories in dialogue.
If you haven’t read A Handful of Dust, you should! (I am assuming my readers have read The Unbearable Bassington.)
Source: Evelyn Waugh Studies Vol. 54, No. 2
“The Identity of the Narrator in Saki’s first Reginald Story”
Prompted by the thought of translating the first Reginald story into Russian, Lora Sirufova has written a short but fascinating article about the identity of the narrator, that unknown “I” who introduced Reginald to the world thus:
I did it—I who should have known better. I persuaded Reginald to go to the McKillops’ garden–party against his will.
https://www.academia.edu/112374550/The_Identity_of_the_Narrator_in_Sakis_first_Reginald_Story
New book! Saki (H.H. Munro): Original and Uncollected Stories
This is just a quick post to say that my new book has been published and is now available in both electronic and paper form. Titled Saki (H.H. Munro): Original and Uncollected Stories, it reprints the original versions of tales that were later changed when collected together in The Chronicles of Clovis (see here for some information on that), and also includes three other stories that haven’t appeared in any collections up to now: ‘Mrs. Pendercoet’s Lost Identity’, ‘The Romance of Business’ and ‘The Optimist’. I have blogged here already about the rediscovery of a couple of these.
The book is published under an Open Access license, which means that you can read it online or download a PDF version for free. I would urge you though, if you can afford it, to buy either the EPUB, the paperback, or the hardback version, and help to support the publishers.
You can find it here: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0365
Writer Eley Williams recommends Saki in The Guardian newspaper
My comfort read
Anything by Saki. You have time to read one of his short stories right now. Some are nasty little acts of mischief, some lugubriously camp fancies. There’s satire, folklore, sass and starch. Put this thing aside; go find some Saki.
The Carlton Hotel
As featured in ‘Reginald at the Carlton’ (which I ought to post here some time…)
Forthcoming: ‘Saki (H.H. Munro): Original and Uncollected Stories’
I’m delighted to announce that my edited collection of Saki’s stories will be appearing soon as a real book and in a number of electronic formats, thanks to Open Book Publishers.The book is a follow up to my article on the genesis of The Chronicles of Clovis and contains the original periodical versions of the following stories:- Esmé
- Tobermory
- Mrs Packletide’s Tiger
- The Background
- The Jesting of Arlington Stringham
- Adrian
- The Chaplet
- Wratislav
- Filboid Studge
- Ministers of Grace
- Mrs Pendercoet’s Lost Identity
- The Optimist
- The Romance of Business (only recently rediscovered, as revealed on this blog)
Saki in Japanese
I’ve been looking into the topic of Saki in translation and recently I got hold of a copy of a selection of the stories in Japanese: サキの思い出: 評伝と短篇. (“The Memories of Saki with his Short Stories”).
- Rothsay Reynold’s memoir of Munro (originally the introduction to The Toys of Peace)
- Sredni Vashtar
- The Saint And The Goblin
- The Old Town of Pskoff
- Karl-Ludwig’s Window
- A Jungle Story
- Clovis on the Alleged Romance of Business
- A Young Turkish Catastrophe
- The Sex That Doesn’t Shop
- The Soul of Laploshka
- Judkin Of The Parcels
- The Mappined Life
- The Image of the Lost Soul
Which I think most Saki aficionados will admit contains some rather strange choices.
For me, there’s only one 24-carat classic there: ‘Sredni Vashtar’. ‘The Mappined Life’ and ‘Clovis on the Alleged Romance of Business’ are both good too, but there are (in my opinion) better Clovis stories (for example, ‘The Stampeding of Lady Bastable’, or ‘The Unrest-Cure’, or ‘The Secret Sin Of Septimus Brope’, or…). The others are definitely minor Saki: for example, ‘Judkin Of The Parcels’ and ‘The Image of the Lost Soul’ are both apprentice work, written before Munro really found his vein. Some of them don’t even fit the description of them as “stories”: most noticeably ‘Karl-Ludwig’s Window’, which is a one-act play, but also ‘The Old Town of Pskoff’ and ‘The Sex That Doesn’t Shop’, which are probably best described as pieces of journalism.
And as far as I can see, there’s not a unifying theme (e.g animals) which might have justified putting these tales together in one volume. Perhaps the publishers were aiming at showing as wide a range of Munro’s invention as possible?
Nor is Ethel Munro’s selective biography of her brother essential reading, though I suppose it does the job of a kind of introduction to his work.
All in all, I can’t help feeling that a Japanese reader who bought this would go away at the end with a fairly poor opinion of Munro as a writer.
Bibliography:
Munro, Ethel M., et al. サキの思い出: 評伝と短篇. (“The Memories of Saki with his Short Stories”.) Translated by 花輪涼子, 彩流社, published 2017)
‘La Ventana Abierta’: an Argentinian filming of Saki’s ‘The Open Window’
“By insisting on having your bottle pointing to the north…”
“By insisting on having your bottle pointing to the north when the cork is being drawn, and calling the waiter Max, you may induce an impression on your guests which hours of laboured boasting might be powerless to achieve. For this purpose, however, the guests must be chosen as carefully as the wine.”
― ‘The Chaplet’