Stalky and Co. by Rudyard Kipling, is a collection of stories set at a public school, preparing boys for either British military officer training, or imperial public service. Based on Kipling’s school days at Devon’s United Services College, the stories first appeared in magazines between 1897 and 1899, before publication as a book in 1899. A trio of pupils, Stalky, McTurk and Beetle, feature as the central characters.

This book, and Kipling in general, is somewhat controversial today. But it is interesting that Stalky and Co. was equally controversial when it was first published. Robert Buchanan in The Contemporary Review considered the book vulgar, brutal and savage. Henry James thought it deplorable, Somerset Maugham, odious. Harsh criticism also came from such luminaries as A.C. Benson, Edmund Wilson, and George Sampson, author of the Concise History of English Literature. These reactions do not reflect a once respectable, now outmoded book. It has never been respectable.

I would suggest that Stalky and Co. might offend now, and when it was published, because it is actually an unflinching portrayal of the contradictions that lurk beneath proper facades.

A ‘good’ pupil at the Stalky school would play cricket, follow the rules, respect authority. There is more than a suggestion that this attitude simply puts boys on a production line, carrying them to a likely death on a foreign field. One master objects to an old boy of the school describing to current pupils the violent end of another old boy during battle. That sort of thing is undermining of morality and good order. You can’t have boys realising what they are signing up for. It might stop them working towards the goals their teachers set for them.

And then there’s all the contradictions involved in a school aiming to produce leaders, while thrashing its students into respectful obedience. One story focuses on a group of boys who are always late for breakfast. Their punishment is to do military drill with an old army veteran. Ironically, this is the only example of actual military activity that goes on here. When a visiting general suggests that the school should have a cadet corp, it is these naughty drill boys who are the only pupils ready to form such a group. And the corp leader is the naughtiest boy of all, Stalky himself. It is Stalky who eventually translates his years of sneaky, frequently vile, school pranks into an highly respectable army career, where tactics of deception and deflection win the day with minimum risk to life, especially his own.

And these ironies around respectability extend to the book’s language – my favourite aspect of Stalky and Co. The dialogue is a complete mishmash of highfalutin Latin, French, quotes from classic authors, and low-brow, local Devon dialect. Stalky and his followers mix all of this language indiscriminately together in an exuberant teenage slang. It’s like the approach the headmaster takes in supporting Beetle’s obvious literary talents, giving him the run of his library, recommending nothing and prohibiting nothing. This is a good training in not being too ready to classify writing into easy categories of respectable or unworthy. Yes, Henry James, Somerset Maugham and people who write fancy histories of English Literature are all correct in their judgements of Stalky and Co. And yet… good writing is often not proper at its heart. It does tend to challenge assumptions in an uncomfortable way. That’s what Stalky and Co. does. I admired it.

Darkness at Noon, published in 1940, is Arthur Koestler’s famous novel based on the events of Stalin’s 1930s purge of supposed enemies of the Soviet state. Millions of ordinary people suffered in this terrible episode, as did important figures in the Soviet government. For the famous there were show trials prosecuting trumped up charges, seeking someone to blame for the fact that socialist utopia had yet to arrive. Darkness at Noon describes the fate of a fictional government official following his arrest.

Do novels change the world? Not often. But maybe this one did.

Koestler wrote the book in France during difficult circumstances at the outbreak of World War Two. An upbringing in Austria, and a history as a Communist sympathising journalist, caused the French to imprison him in an internment camp for undesirable aliens. Koestler’s girlfriend at the time, the young artist Daphne Hardy, managed to get the Darkness at Noon manuscript, written in German, back to London, where Jonathan Cape published her English translation. After the war, the book became a massive bestseller. The Nobel Prize-winning writer Francois Mauriac claimed that record breaking French sales led to the Communist Party losing the French general election of 1946. In the UK, it appears that the Information Research Department, a branch of the British Foreign Office responsible for covert propaganda, purchased thousands of copies to boost the book’s profile, and distributed foreign language editions through embassies.

This is quite a revelation for me. I had always assumed that good novels tend to be unsuitable for propaganda purposes, characteristically dealing with shades of grey rather than the black and white of political slogans. And yet here we have a classic novel which the British government used in covert propaganda campaigns. So, what is this book like?

Nikolai Rubashov, one of the original architects of his country’s communist revolution decades previously, reflects on his life following arrest. Rubashov’s thoughts deal with all kinds of political and moral complications, but his basic insight is clear – he considers too much clarity of purpose in politics as potentially dangerous. Problems arise when people seek, or are promised, a final outcome so wonderful that any means become acceptable in achieving it. Now, this isn’t a spoiler, but if someone is arrested by secret police, charged with plotting the overthrow of a ruthless political regime, and interrogated by fanatics looking to find a scapegoat for social problems, then it’s pretty clear how things are going to end. But by the time you finish Darkness at Noon you’re thinking that happy endings are positively unhealthy anyway, since they encourage ruthless means to reach them. Reassurance comes from the fact that Rubashov finally sees the advantages of not living life in terms of fairytale happy ever-afters.

Darkness at Noon is an enthralling and powerful novel. The fact that it has nothing of the simple-minded political slogan about it, makes its case all the more persuasive – the case for viewing politics as the Greek philosopher Plutarch once described it:

They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or a military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view, something which leaves off as soon as that end is reached. It is not a public chore, to be got over with. It is a way of life. It is the life of a domesticated political and social creature who is born with a love for public life, with a desire for honour, with a feeling for his fellows; and it lasts as long as need be.

Another story on the 2023 Locus short story prize short list

The Goldfish Man is a short story by Maureen Mchugh which appeared in the March 2022 edition of Uncanny Magazine. The story is on the 2023 Locus Award short list for best short story.

Sima, a Los Angeles ceramicist, has fallen on hard times during the pandemic. Living in her car, Sima still manages to produce some pieces of work for sale, using the facilities at a local pottery business called Great Earth. Sima also receives help from a homeless man called Lane. He looks after her when she becomes ill, taking no notice of warnings to stay away and avoid infection. It seems that Lane is not worried about Earth diseases because he is not from Earth at all.

Sima assumes he’s delusional.

Once Sima recovers, Lane says he is leaving, with the suggestion that his destination is another planet or dimension, rather than, say, Las Vegas.

So, is Lane delusional or is he an alien?

The story is good at combining down-to-Earth and other worldly. Sima is a ceramicist, someone who uses Earth in her work. She designs complex, fret-worked double vases, so that a candle placed inside throws complex light patterns around a room. Yet these other-worldly light effects come from good solid Earth.

As well as a ceramicist, Sina is also in a sense an alien. All she had to do to become an alien is to lose her house. Lane could be an alien in the sense of being from another planet, but when you’re homeless you are a long way away from home, in your space ship Subaru hatchback.

A thoughtful story, nicely done

A couple of reviews of short stories nominated for the 2023 Locus short story prize.

The Monster in the Shape of a Boy is a short story by Hannah Yang. It appeared in the May 2022 edition of Apex Magazine, and reached the short list for the Locus 2023 short story prize.

The story is set in a village which has to deal with aggressive shape-shifting creatures. Sometimes people might find themselves having to kill monsters who look exactly like themselves. Young Peng finds this difficult, despite training from his father, Baba, a monster-slayer for hire. One day Peng meets a monster in the shape of himself but is unable to kill him. Baba has to step in.

Baba is not pleased. Peng is twelve now and should be doing his own slaying.

Intensive training follows, with Peng undertaking various gruesome tasks to toughen him up.

Then one day Peng faces another monster Peng. He is a different boy now. You get the feeling that Peng will fight. He is no longer the scaredy-cat he once was. But you also get the feeling that the anti-Peng has won, because the former, gentle Peng no longer exists. He has been consumed by the aggressive version of himself. It’s a bit like a political party in opposition making themselves more like the party in power to win votes – but then wondering if it’s worth it.

A nicely written story with an interesting circularity