Different Choices

I'm laying out an anthology of stories about forgiveness. My friend and peaceCENTER colleague Rosalyn Collier is the editor. I found many, many stories for her and she selected 27 of them, but not "The Penance," by Saki.

I thought it was the best of the bunch. If it were MY anthology, why, I would have started off the whole book with that wonderful tale. I might have ended the book with it, too. It's that good: it deserves to be read twice. I would have printed it in gold type and featured it on the cover.

She didn't like it.

Anthologies are a deeply personal reflection of the anthologist's sensibilities. In The Tug of War: 40 Classic Stories About War & Peace, I couldn't bring myself to include a story by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling has earned a place in any anthology of war stories but I just couldn't do it. I tried justifying his absence by complaining that his soldiers' heavy dialect is all but incomprehensible. Here's an example, from The Madness Of Private Ortheris: "'No! 'Tisn't the beer," said Mulvaney. "I know fwhat's comin'. He's tuk this way now an' agin, an' it's bad--it's bad--for I'm fond av the bhoy." Honestly!

But let's face it: I dislike Kipling. He squeaked into a footnote with a verse from The Commisariat Camel  that was referenced in a story by Stephen Crane, but that's as much as I could stomach. If I do penance, perhaps the Kipling lovers will "unbeast" me, to use Saki's phrase. Did I mention that that is a darn good story?