To Read Is to Fly

“To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.” 
― Alberto Manguel

 

You can also find me on Goodreads and LibraryThing.

The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories - Saki image
H.H. Munro, aka Saki

Hector Hugh Munro, who wrote under the pen-name Saki, was born in Akyab, Burma in 1870, the son of a military police officer. At the age of 24, Munro moved to London with the intention of becoming a writer -- and he soon made his name as a brilliant satirist of late Victorian and Edwardian societies. Perhaps his role as an outsider helped him to develop his satirical eye. He mercilessly -- and efficiently -- lampooned the British upper classes for their shallow concerns over social status, their adherence to outmoded forms of etiquette, and their focus on appearances rather than substance. A master of the short story, Saki wrote funny, sometimes macabre short pieces in which, often in as few as three or four pages, he struck at the heart of snobby social conventions. He also showed a predilection for pitting diabolical children against somewhat dim-witted adults, who were hopelessly outmatched.

In this reissued collection of some of Saki's finest short stories, NYRB offers an unbeatable combination: Saki's writings paired with Edward Gorey's illustrations. In the title story, "The Unrest-Cure," J.P. Huddle complains to a friend during a ride in a railway carriage of his descent into a "deep groove of elderly middle-age" in which he and his sister "like everything to be exactly in its accustomed place; we like things to happen exactly at their appointed times; we like everything to be usual, orderly, punctual, methodical, to a hair's breadth, to a minute." His friend suggests that perhaps Huddle would benefit from an unrest-cure, as he is "suffering from overmuch repose and placidity, and you need the opposite kind of treatment" from the traditional rest-cure. "The Unrest-Cure" is a fitting title for this collection, as these stories, short, bracing, devilish, and very, very funny, provide an excellent remedy for our own placid, boring, conventional moments.

image

Many thanks to NYRB for letting me read this ARC through Netgalley in return for an unbiased review.

Currently reading

The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan
Rafia Zakaria
About Women: Conversations Between a Writer and a Painter
Lisa Alther
The Relic Master: A Novel
Christopher Buckley
Limonov
John Lambert, Emmanuel Carrère
Tourists with Typewriters: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing
Patrick Holland, Graham Huggan
Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe's Early Modern World (Material Texts)
Benjamin Schmidt
Among the Ruins: Syria Past and Present
Christian Sahner
Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul
Charles King
In Light of Another's Word: European Ethnography in the Middle Ages
Shirin A. Khanmohamadi
Intimate Outsiders: The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature
Mary Roberts