The late Ralph Wiley is one of my favorite authors. I found his writing to be crisp, engaging and thought provoking. Plus, I enjoyed his world view. When confronted with Saul Bellow’s infamous quote “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Paupuans? I’d be happy to read them.” Mr. Wiley rejoindered Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus- unless you find profit in fencing off universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership. I wish I had thought that when exposed to Bellow’s quote.
Instead I was like many others who howled at the top of my breath about how the Zulus do not need a Tolstoy and besides they probably have their own. This seemed to be the consensus amongst the smart set but I prefer Mr. Wiley’s summation. After reading what he said I no longer felt the need to defend the Zulus or the Paupuans. After all, why can’t they enjoy Tolstoy or Proust?
I’ll paraphrase from memory his thinking on Jack London, a known racist. In one of his books he said I’d fight Jack if I saw him coming down the street, but I want everyone to enjoy his works. He may be a racist, but when I read To Build a Fire it made me cold. I agree. I read To Build a Fire and it made me cold. I wish the progressive chattering classes could accept the idea of separating the art from the artist. But then what would they have to shout about.
A young lady once said to me she loved Sister Souljah’s discourse on New York during the crack era The Coldest Winter Ever. She said it made her cold. I read it on her advice and it like to To Build a Fire made me cold. Many would disparage a book written by Sister Souljah simply because she wrote it, but I thought it was a great book and even if the conservative chattering classes didn’t warm to Sister Souljah her novel touched me and more importantly it touched a generation of young Black women. The story of Winter Santiago contained universal properties and the young women who loved it showed no desire to fence it off for tribal ownership.
Anyway gentle reader here we go.
Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book is a fond childhood memory. I loved the story of Mowgli and Shere Khan. The boy raised by wolves echoed the story of Romulus and Remus, the twins suckled by a she wolf who would eventually found Rome. Their story mirrors the biblical chronicle of the birth of Moses because they too wound up in a river after a demand for their life by a ruler who correctly feared their rise. I guess Mr. Wiley was right about universal properties.
I never read Kim although it has many admirers and Gunga Din left me cold. But I found his poem If to be amazing. It is fashionable amongst young British scholars (?) to disparage Kipling. Something about his colonial leanings. Like Mr. Wiley I don’t care about his leanings when it comes to his writing. I know the positive impact this poem had on the young women I taught in a class devoted to preparing them for what they faced in college.
The Brits will tell you the poem was about stiff upper lip manhood during the colonial era. I would tell you it is about stiff upper lip Black manhood during the Civil Rights era in America. My young ladies told me again and again it spoke to them about strength, humility, and perseverance. We bonded over it and I don’t care what a group of miseducated Brits think about one of their great writers.
I would give my classes a choice between Edgar Allen Poe’s Annabel Lee and Kipling’s If. The guys would inevitably feel the pull of my favorite poem and the ladies would be drawn to the Englishman. Funny they never said anything about Poe or Kipling not looking like them. What they said was how they admired these works of art.
For me If is a poem about Muhammed Ali, about Jim Brown, and my dad and an entire generation of Black men who I was lucky enough to grow up under. Ali loved that poem because he saw himself in. I love that poem because I saw my dad in it. And yesterday I saw Jim Brown in it. They are all men in the best way possible. No matter the cost they stood for what they believe(d) in. They fought the good fight never wavering no matter how hard the struggle.
If the British want to give away Kipling the Sister Souljah generation will gladly take him off their hands. They found him inspiring even if he was a colonizer. I understand he loved India. You can feel it in stories like Red Dog and Riki Tiki Tavi. Great art is universal. It illuminates as it entertains.
Art imitates life and must therefore be imperfect. Jim Brown’s life was a work of art. That was Jim Brown. Imperfect but inspiring.
Lebron James eulogized him as a football god and he was. I can’t imagine death doing anything other than creeping up on Mr. Jim while he was asleep. I’ll always believe Jim Brown would have whipped death if he was awake and saw The Grim Reaper approach. I struggle to say something to describe this man’s greatness, his humanity. So I’ll Kipling complete my work:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
RIP 32
Truth!
The generation of Strength and Sacrifice is gone!