- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks; New edition edition (11 Feb 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0192838598
- ISBN-13: 978-0192838599
- Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 13 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 682,479 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
"Completely delighted that you've brought out a whole bundle of Kipling titles."--William N. Rogers, San Diego State University
Product Description
Kipling portrays school as the first stage of a much larger game, a pattern-maker for the experiences of life. Implied throughout the stories is the question 'What happened to these fifteen-year-old boys, and how did the lessons they learned at school apply to the world of warfare and imperial government?' The stories are based on Kipling's own school, the United Services College at Westward Ho! in Devon, which prepared boys destined for the army or for colonial service; Kipling himself appears as the subordinate character, Beetle. This edition includes five Stalky stories which did not appear in the original volume, and thus constitutes a Complete Stalky & Co.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Kipling has, justifiably on the whole, a reputation for being the Poet Laureate of the British Empire, from which his work has suffered, particularly in these postcolonial times. Stalky & Co is no exception - it was written with the view of encouraging more 'stalky' (a bending-the-rules-type cunning) boys to join up to the British Army after the humiliating defeat of the Boer War.
Don't let this put you off however. Kipling is far more ambivalent concerning the Empire than most people think, and this comes across in the book's darker passages. Aimed at teenage boys (not little kids), the three main characters of Stalky, M'Turk and Beetle (an autobiographical incarnation) get up to traditional public school 'high jinks' and larks, but also some rather morally questionable activities too. The reader gets swept up in the irresistable sense of fun, camaraderie and not a little schadenfreude, then gets stranded, asking themselves whether the pranks they've enjoyed are strictly acceptable. But the feeling you're left with is a deeply satisfying one of watching the geeky, unpopular underdogs getting one over on the arrogant big boys.
Enjoy it and savour the nastiness of public school as well as its idyllic side!
Don't let this put you off however. Kipling is far more ambivalent concerning the Empire than most people think, and this comes across in the book's darker passages. Aimed at teenage boys (not little kids), the three main characters of Stalky, M'Turk and Beetle (an autobiographical incarnation) get up to traditional public school 'high jinks' and larks, but also some rather morally questionable activities too. The reader gets swept up in the irresistable sense of fun, camaraderie and not a little schadenfreude, then gets stranded, asking themselves whether the pranks they've enjoyed are strictly acceptable. But the feeling you're left with is a deeply satisfying one of watching the geeky, unpopular underdogs getting one over on the arrogant big boys.
Enjoy it and savour the nastiness of public school as well as its idyllic side!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Stalky & Co. is not an easy book to get into as just about everything in it seems alien to the modern reader: the language, the classical references and the "Coll." itself with its archaic practices and rituals as a training ground for young men to run the British Empire. But there comes a point where you suddenly get snatched in to the main theme: three incredibly bright but "outsider"-type adolescents fighting it out against the system and having bags of fun - not innocent fun, more Schadenfreude - in the process. And you're brought back to your own days, albeit in a very different school, where you were also "passed over" to be a prefect because you didn't quite fit in some undefined way, and were determined to show "them."
Of course, "Stalky & Co." is totally un-P.C, not just in the nature of the activities described (from illicit smoking to shooting cats to some serious bullying violence)but also in the underlying theme of Machievellian one-upmanship and "survival of the fittest" that runs through the stories.
What is perhaps most remarkable is the absolute self-confidence of Stalky and his chums themselves. And although many aspects of the book are morally questionable and politically dodgy, this supreme belief in their own worth from the main characters is refreshing in today's bleating victim society.
Of course, "Stalky & Co." is totally un-P.C, not just in the nature of the activities described (from illicit smoking to shooting cats to some serious bullying violence)but also in the underlying theme of Machievellian one-upmanship and "survival of the fittest" that runs through the stories.
What is perhaps most remarkable is the absolute self-confidence of Stalky and his chums themselves. And although many aspects of the book are morally questionable and politically dodgy, this supreme belief in their own worth from the main characters is refreshing in today's bleating victim society.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Forget everything you know about boarding-school stories. Initially off-putting with its rush of slang, but perserverance pays handsomely: quickly learnt, the code locks the reader into the grim, claustrophobic world of the United Services College, Kipling's own school.
There are precisely no jolly hockey sticks or midnight feasts here. The early stories introduce us to Stalky and his henchmen (among whom `Beetle' represents the young Kipling himself), a rebel guerilla cell surviving between the school establishment and the local farming community. Kipling writes action like nobody else, and his grasp of guerilla tactics is vice-like.
As the book progresses, amid a barrage of corporal punishment - the boys discuss and rate the various masters' thrashing techniques like connoisseurs - the wild and optimistic spirits of the early stories are brutally channeled into the service of the British Empire, in which many of these boys will die young, as Kipling calmly tells us. Imagine IF with the visceral impact of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. In a good way, I think.
There are precisely no jolly hockey sticks or midnight feasts here. The early stories introduce us to Stalky and his henchmen (among whom `Beetle' represents the young Kipling himself), a rebel guerilla cell surviving between the school establishment and the local farming community. Kipling writes action like nobody else, and his grasp of guerilla tactics is vice-like.
As the book progresses, amid a barrage of corporal punishment - the boys discuss and rate the various masters' thrashing techniques like connoisseurs - the wild and optimistic spirits of the early stories are brutally channeled into the service of the British Empire, in which many of these boys will die young, as Kipling calmly tells us. Imagine IF with the visceral impact of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. In a good way, I think.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Read this as a child and bought it for my son
so he could enjoy it too. I have to say, I enjoyed it even more now as an adult than I did as a child. Read more
Published 12 months ago by G Star
Probably the best primer for management ever written
This book was amongst my late fathers collection, and I read it first as a teenager: I still have it. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Mr. E. J. Leoni-smith
Hogwarts - the Original
Don't get me wrong. I am not recommending that all the millions of fans still suffering withdrawal symptoms after the conclusion of the Harry Potter series should attempt to find... Read more
Published on 15 Oct 2008 by S. A. Hawksworth
Stalky for people with too few bookshelves
When I was young I had a serious Kipling period, but not so serious that I bought all his stuff. To get all the Stalky stories you had to buy various books that I did not want to... Read more
Published on 11 Mar 2008 by Jens Guld
I did not like it!
Quite horrible! I am a Kipling enthusiast and own most of his published work. I find that, in general, the Kipling audio-books are enjoyable but not this one. Read more
Published on 25 Oct 2007 by Dr. Roderick Deeming
Hilarious
With Stalky, McTurk and Beetle around, you know that school will never be boring. They are a terror to the house-masters, the prefects, and just about everyone else. Read more
Published on 8 Sep 2004 by Kurt A. Johnson
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