“The young have aspirations that never come to pass,
the old have reminiscences of what never happened.” —British (Burman-born)
short story author Hector Hugh Munro, aka Saki (1870-1916), “Reginald at the
Carlton,” from Reginald (1904)
A century ago yesterday, the British author Hector Hugh Munro lost his life, as did so many other soldiers of a literary bent, in
the killing fields of France during WWI. (“Put that bloody cigarette out!”, he warned one of his men, afraid that it might catch the attention of a German sniper. Unfortunately, those last words of his proved all too correct.)
At 45, however, unlike poets Wilfred
Owen and Rupert Brooke, he was able to leave a relatively sizable literary
output because he wrote prolifically. His heavily anthologized short stories
range from the mischievous (“Tobermory,” on the surprising things a cat comes
out with once taught how to speak) to the macabre.
In the British paper The Guardian, Stephen Moss offers a fine assessment of why Saki may
be due for a revival due to his “brutal dismantling of human stupidities.”
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