Officials in Mumbai plan to turn the birthplace of Rudyard Kipling into a museum honoring the author of The Jungle Book and other tales of colonial life. While India has long had a problematic relationship with the writer--who penned the poem The White Man's Burden--the museum hopes to credit Kipling as a literary ambassador of Indian life, with the caveat that his pro-colonial stance was a product of his turn-of-the-century ideals.
Times of India columnist Swapan Dasgupta says the museum is perfect for Mumbai:
[Kipling was] probably the greatest chronicler of India at the turn of the 20th century, who captured the flavour of India to a point where it became folklore.
If you can't get to Mumbai to see the museum, two other Kipling homes are popular with visitors. The writer lived at 43 Villiers Street in London from 1889 to 1891, between the Charing Cross and Embankment tube stations. In Brattleboro, Vermont, you can even spend the night in Kipling's Naulakha estate and try to draft your own tales of distant lands.
You don't have to stay at home just because the leaves are changing. Follow along on our Fall Culture Map to discover what's happening this autumn.
November in the Northern Hemisphere tends to signal the beginning of the season for "inside sports", foremost among these being things that involve drinking and wordplay. How appropriate, then, that this week finds us smack dab in the middle of a tribute to poet/drunk Dylan Thomas in his native city of Swansea, Wales.
The Dylan Thomas Festival runs from October 27th to November 9th, the days of the poet's birth and death, respectively. The festivities include film screenings, readings, concerts and a general excuse for celebrities of a literary bent to gather in a really Welsh city. Exercise your liver and pack a sweater as that November in Wales tends to be rather wet, damp and gray. Inside sports, folks.
And before you remind us it's a little late for a trip to Wales, fear not. Thomas' memory can still be appropriately toasted at the site of his death, Manhattan's White Horse Tavern in the West Village. Legend has it that Thomas lost a drinking contest to the jealous husband of his lover at the White Horse and later died from the experience. Be sure to enjoy your poetic nostalgia in moderation.
Flyers for literary festivals, book readings and writing conferences clogged our in-box this fall. Rather than enduring the 1,000th reading of Mending Wall, we'd rather travel the New England countryside that inspired Robert Frost's poetry.
After that, we might satisfy more wanderlust by visiting other historic sites of great literary achievement and the places that inspired the same. Some are near, some far and all are surprisingly more fun than sitting in a university library with the types of self-important brainiacs we avoided in college.
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by pbb
