 | Saki is a breath of fresh air. His short-stories offer a balm to anyone who treasures outstanding wit, colourful imagination and whip-smart plots – that is to say, by anyone truly alive.
Imagine if PJ O’Rourke had turned his lens on Edwardian England ; or if Oscar Wilde had written hundreds of biting, acerbic stories disdaining cant, hypocrisy and the politically correct : such is the genius of the wonderful Saki.
Saki’s stories, available in many, many different editions, are undeservedly little known. Perhaps he suffers from the sin of having a pioneering wit. “Never,” wrote Saki in one early story, “be a pioneer. It’s the Early Christian that gets the fattest lion.”
HIs epigrammatic one-liners, which appear like glints of gold in a mine-drift, give you a taste:
- We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart...
- When Madame lost her temper you usually found it afterwards in the bill...
- You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return...
- 'Then depend on it he was gambling,' said Eleanor, with the assured air of one who had few ideas and makes the most of them...
- The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened. It's only the middle-aged who are really conscious of their limitations--that is why one should be so patient with them...
- The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as good cooks go, she went...
- You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed...
To paraphrase what he says of one of his own characters, romance at short length is his speciality. Put a copy on your bedside table (and another in your WC -and both, of course, beside your latest copy of The Free Radical) ) and leave each day with the thoughts of Saki in your head. His delightfully malicious stories are a great antidote in this present Age of Crap.
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The Complete Saki by Saki (aka H.H. Munro)
