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Nuovo Documento Di Testo
In addition to his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was
the custom of the time, and then collected into several volumes) he also wrote a
full-length play, The Watched Pot, in collaboration with Charles Maude; two one-
act plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire, the only book
published under his own name; a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; the
episodic The Westminster Alice (a Parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland),
and When William Came, subtitled A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns, an
early alternate history. He was influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, and
Kipling, and himself influenced A. A. Milne, No�l Coward, and P. G. Wodehouse.[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Name
2 Biography
3 Controversy
4 Short stories
4.1 "The Interlopers"
4.2 "The Schartz-Metterklume Method"
4.3 "The Toys of Peace"
4.4 "The Storyteller"
4.5 "The Unrest-Cure"
4.6 "Esm�"
4.7 "The Open Window"
4.8 "Sredni Vashtar"
4.9 "Tobermory"
4.10 "The East Wing"
5 Books
6 Television
7 Theatre
8 References
9 External links
10 Literary criticism and biography
[edit] Name
The name Saki is often thought to be a reference to the cupbearer in the Rub�iy�t
of Omar Khayyam, a poem mentioned disparagingly by the eponymous character in
"Reginald on Christmas Presents" and alluded to in a few other stories. (This is
stated as fact by Emlyn Williams in his 1978 introduction to a Saki anthology [2]
It may, however, be a reference to the South American primate of the same name, "a
small, long-tailed monkey from the Western Hemisphere" that is a central character
in "The Remoulding of Groby Lington".[original research?]
[edit] Biography
Hector Hugh Munro was born in Akyab, Burma (now known as Sittwe, Myanmar), the son
of Charles Augustus Munro and Mary Frances Mercer. His father was an inspector-
general for the Burmese police when that country was still part of the British
Empire. His mother (the aunt of fellow-author Dornford Yates), died in 1872. A
runaway cow charged her, and the shock caused her to miscarry. She never recovered
and soon died[3]. He was brought up in England with his brother and sister by his
grandmother and aunts in a straitlaced household.
Munro was educated at Pencarwick School in Exmouth and at Bedford Grammar School.
When his father retired to England, he travelled on a few occasions with his
sister and father, between fashionable European spas and tourist resorts. In 1893
he followed in his father's footsteps by joining the Indian Imperial Police, where
he was posted to Burma (as was another acerbic and pseudonymous writer a
generation later: George Orwell). Two years later, failing health forced his
resignation and return to England, where he started his career as a journalist,
writing for newspapers such as the Westminster Gazette, Daily Express, Bystander,
Morning Post, and Outlook.
In 1900 Munro's first book appeared: The Rise of the Russian Empire, a historical
study modelled upon Edward Gibbon's magnum opus The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire.
From 1902 to 1908 Munro worked as a foreign correspondent for The Morning Post in
the Balkans, Warsaw, Russia (where he witnessed Bloody Sunday), and Paris; he then
gave that up and settled in London. Many of the stories from this period feature
the elegant and effete Reginald and Clovis, young men-about-town who take
heartlessly cruel delight in the discomfort or downfall of their conventional,
pretentious elders. In addition to his well-known short stories, Saki also turned
his talents for fiction into novels. Shortly before the Great War, with the genre
of invasion literature selling well, he published a "what-if" novel, When William
Came, subtitled "A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns", imagining the
eponymous German emperor conquering Britain.
At the start of World War I, although 43 and officially over age, Munro joined the
Royal Fusiliers regiment of the British Army as an ordinary soldier, refusing a
commission. More than once he returned to the battlefield when officially still
too sick or injured to fight. He was sheltering in a shell crater near Beaumont-
Hamel, France in November 1916 when he was killed by a German sniper. His last
words, according to several sources, were "Put that bloody cigarette out!"[4]
After his death, his sister Ethel destroyed most of his papers and wrote her own
account of their childhood.
Munro never married. His biographer A. J. Langguth cites evidence for the
hypothesis that Munro was homosexual. At that time in the UK sexual activity
between men was a crime, and the Cleveland Street scandal in 1889, followed by the
downfall and disgrace of Oscar Wilde (who was convicted in 1895 after cause
celebre trials) meant that "that side of [Munro's] life had to be secret"[5].
[edit] Controversy
Sandie Byrne in "The Unbearable Saki"[7] accused Munro of "unbearable anti-
semitism" for his story "The Unrest-Cure", in which Clovis perpetrates a hoax to
the effect that the local bishop is going to massacre every Jew in the
neighbourhood. But as Telegraph reviewer Peter Parker argues[8], "the joke is at
the expense of the bore, not the Jews, who are represented as respected pillars of
the community". Another story, "A Touch of Realism", shows a "good-natured" and
"deservedly popular" Jewish couple stranded on an open moor in winter as part of a
country house party game for which they provided the prizes. One character gives
warnings of the potential problems of the game, but it is noteworthy that Saki
should choose just that event as the story's climax.
On the other hand, in his dispatches from Eastern Europe when he was a foreign
correspondent, Munro showed sympathy with the Jewish victims of pogroms. Perhaps
the best summary of his attitude is to be found in the alternative history novel
When William Came, where a sympathetically portrayed character says in a German-
ruled Britain:
I am to a great extent a disliker of Jews myself, but I will be fair to them, and
admit that those of them who were in any genuine sense British have remained
British and have stuck by us loyally in our misfortune; all honour to them. But of
the others, the men who by temperament and everything else were far more Teuton or
Polish or Latin than they were British, it was not to be expected that they would
be heartbroken because London had suddenly lost its place among the political
capitals of the world, and became a cosmopolitan city. They had appreciated the
free and easy liberty of the old days, under British rule, but there was a stiff
insularity in the ruling race that they chafed against. Now, putting aside some
petty Government restrictions that Teutonic bureaucracy has brought in, there is
really, in their eyes, more licence and social adaptability in London than before.
It has taken on some of the aspects of a No-Man's-Land, and the Jew, if he likes,
may almost consider himself as of the dominant race; at any rate he is ubiquitous.
Pleasure, of the cafe and cabaret and boulevard kind, the sort of thing that gave
Berlin the aspect of the gayest capital in Europe within the last decade, that is
the insidious leaven that will help to denationalise London. Berlin will probably
climb back to some of its old austerity and simplicity, a world-ruling city with a
great sense of its position and its responsibilities, while London will become
more and more the centre of what these people understand by life.
Saki certainly does seem to have it in for a certain kind of woman, though. Rather
than the blanket term misogyny, it might be more correct to say that he disliked
and disapproved of childless women, probably from his own negative experience of
growing up in the care of his strict aunts. Some stories give voice to his
irritation with aspects of female psychology, such as the middle-class
conventionality epitomised by the ceremony of afternoon tea, or the inability to
shop efficiently. He was persistently and derisively anti-suffragette.
Despite his lampooning of suffragettes and aunts, several of his stories feature
sympathetic portrayals of admirably cool and self-possessed schoolgirls. Others
feature strong-willed, independent women in a positive manner. One of his best
childhood friends was his sister Ethel, who also never married, and they remained
close until his death -- a sign of Munro's personal forbearance, as she had a
powerful and difficult personality.
Saki's work is now in the public domain, and all or most of these stories are on
the Internet.
[edit] "Esm�"
In a hunting story with a difference, the Baroness tells Clovis of a hyena she and
her friend Constance encountered alone in the countryside, who cannot resist the
urge to stop for a snack. The story is a perfect example of Saki's delight in
setting societal convention against uncompromising nature.
The wailing accompaniment was explained. The gypsy child was firmly, and I expect
painfully, held in his jaws.
The child is shortly devoured.
Constance shuddered. "Do you think the poor little thing suffered much?" came
another of her futile questions.
"The indications were all that way,' I said; 'on the other hand, of course, it may
have been crying from sheer temper. Children sometimes do."
[edit] "Tobermory"
At a country house party a visiting professor announces to the guests that he has
perfected a procedure to teach animals human speech. He demonstrates this on his
host's cat. Soon it is clear that he omitted to teach the animal to be silent
about certain facts...
[edit] "The East Wing"
A 're-discovered' short story, previously cited as a play and therefore less well
known. A house party with its typical social mix of bumbling Major Boventry, the
precious Lucien Wattleskeat, the wordy Canon Clore and a breathless hostess, Mrs
Gramplain, is beset by a fire in the middle of the night in the east wing of the
house. Begged by their hostess to save "my poor darling Eva � Eva of the golden
hair," Lucien demurs on the grounds that he has never even met her. It is only on
discovering that Eva is not a flesh and blood daughter, but Mrs Gramplain's
painting of the daughter that she wished that she had had and which she has
faithfully updated with the passing years, that Lucien declares a willingness to
forfeit his life to rescue her, since "death in this case is more beautiful," a
sentiment endorsed by the Major. As the two men disappear into the blaze, Mrs
Gramplain recollects that she "sent Eva to Exeter to be cleaned." Thus the two men
have lost their lives for nothing. (Compare with Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture
of Dorian Gray.)
This page in a nutshell: Avoid using phrases such as "some people say" without
providing sources.
For example, "Houston is the nicest city in the world," is a biased or normative
statement. Application of a weasel word can give the illusion of neutral point of
view: "Some people say Houston is the nicest city in the world."
Contents [hide]
1 Examples
2 Other problems
3 Improving weasel-worded statements
4 Exceptions
5 See also
6 Notes
[edit] Examples
"Some people say..."
"Some argue..."
"Contrary to many..."
"As opposed to most..."
"Research has shown..."
"...is widely regarded as..."
"...is widely considered to be..."
"...is claimed to be..."
"...is thought to be..."
"It is believed that..."
"It is rumored that..."
"It has been said/suggested/noticed/decided/stated..."
"There are rumors that..."
"Some people believe..."
"Some feel that..."
"They say that..."
"Many people say..."
"It may be that..."
"Could it be that..."
"It could be argued that..."
"Critics/experts say that..."
"Some historians argue..."
"Considered by many..."
"Critics contend..."
"Observers say..."
"Fans say..."
"Accusations..."
"Apparently..."
"Supposedly..."
"Presumably..."
"Allegedly..."
"Arguably..."
"Actually..."
"(x) out of (y) [vague group of professionals]...."
"Obviously..."
"Serious scholars/scientists/researchers..."
"Mainstream scholars/scientists/researchers..."
"The (mainstream) scientific community"
"It is claimed..."
"It has been revealed that..."
"Correctly (justly, properly, ...) or not, ..."
Anthropomorphisms like "Science says ..." or "Medicine believes ..."
"...is only one side of the story"
"Experts suggest..."
"Modern studies have claimed..."
"Studies show..."
"It is generally considered that..."
"It is notable"
"In some people's thoughts/opinions/minds..."
"It turns out that..."
Wordiness. Weasel words are generally sentence stuffing; they make sentences
longer without carrying any information.
Passive voice. Many weasel words require a sentence to be in the passive voice,
e.g., "It has been said that ...".
Though the passive voice is syntactically correct, Strunk and White recommend
against its overuse in their Elements of Style, calling it "less direct, less
bold, and less concise" than the active voice, though AP Stylebook and the Chicago
Manual of Style contradict Strunk & White on this point.
it fails to identify who stands behind the opinions or actions it describes. In
sentences such as "it has been said he has had a shady past", or "[noun] is
thought to be [noun/adjective]", the writer uses the passive voice to construct a
convincing-sounding appeal to authority without naming the authority in question.
Use of "clearly" or "obviously". If it does not need saying, do not say it. If it
does, do not apologize for it by using words like "clearly".
Some/many/most/all/few. Sentences like Some people think... lead to arguments
about how many people actually think that. Is it some people or most people? How
many is many people? As a rule, ad populum arguments should be avoided as a
general means of providing support for a position.
Repetition. Overuse of weasel words can lead to very monotonous-sounding articles
due to the constraints they impose on sentence structure. For example: "Some
argue... [..] Others respond... [..] Still others point out that [..]" This is
poor writing.
The key to improving weasel words in articles is either a) to name a source for
the opinion (attribution) or b) to change opinionated language to concrete facts
(substantiate it).[1]
Peacock terms are especially hard to deal with without using weasel words.
Consider the sentence "The Yankees are the greatest baseball team in history." It
is tempting to rephrase this in a weaselly way, for example, "Some people think
that the Yankees are the greatest baseball team in history." But how can this
opinion be qualified with an opinion holder? There are millions of Yankees fans
and hundreds of baseball experts who would pick the Yankees as the best team in
history. Instead, it would be better to eliminate the middleman of mentioning this
opinion entirely, in favour of the facts that support the assertion:
"The New York Yankees have won 26 World Series championships�about three times as
many as any other team."[2]
This fact suggests that the Yankees are a superlative baseball franchise, rather
than simply the winningest baseball team in history. The idea is to let the
readers draw their own conclusions about the Yankees' based on the number of World
Series the Yankees have won. Objectivity over subjectivity. Dispassion, not bias.
[edit] Exceptions
As with any rule of thumb, this guideline should be balanced against other needs
for the text, especially the need for brevity and clarity. Some specific
exceptions that may need calling out:
When the belief or opinion is actually the topic of discussion. For example, "In
the Middle Ages, most people believed that the Sun orbited the Earth."
When the holders of the opinion are too diverse or numerous to qualify. For
example, "Some people prefer dogs as pets; others prefer cats."
When contrasting a minority opinion. "Although Brahms's work is part of the
classical music canon, Benjamin Britten has questioned its value." Brahms's
importance is almost, but not quite, an undisputed fact; it's not necessary to
source the majority opinion when describing the minority one.