Saki

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Hector Hugh Munro

Born December 18, 1870(1870-12-18)

Akyab, Myanmar
Died November 13, 1916 (aged 45)
Beaumont-Hamel, France
Pen name Saki
Occupation Author
Nationality United Kingdom
Hector Hugh Munro (December 18, 1870 � November 13, 1916), better known by the pen
name Saki, was a British writer, whose witty and sometimes macabre stories
satirized Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short
story and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. His tales feature
delicately drawn characters and finely judged narratives. "The Open Window" may be
his most famous, with a closing line ("Romance at short notice was her
speciality") that has entered the lexicon.

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].

In recognition of his contribution to literature, a blue plaque has been affixed

to a building in which Munro once lived on Mortimer Street in central London. One
of his young characters lived in a similar "roomlet which came under the
auspicious constellation of W" [6] (i.e. within the postal district of the West
End of London, where the fashionable set lived in Edwardian times).

[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.

[edit] Short stories

Saki's world contrasts the effete conventions and hypocrisies of Edwardian England
with the ruthless but straightforward life-and-death struggles of nature. Nature
generally wins in the end.

Saki's work is now in the public domain, and all or most of these stories are on
the Internet.

Some of his best-known short stories are listed below.

[edit] "The Interlopers"

"The Interlopers" is a story of two men, Georg Znaeym and Ulrich von Gradwitz,
whose families have fought over a forest in the eastern Carpathian Mountains for
generations. Ulrich's family legally owns the land, but Georg � feeling it
rightfully belongs to him � hunts there anyway. One winter night, Ulrich catches
Georg hunting in his forest. The two would never shoot without warning and soil
their family�s honor, so they hesitate to acknowledge one another. As an �act of
God,� a tree branch suddenly falls on them, trapping the men next to each other
under a log. Gradually, they realize the futility of their quarrel and become
friends to end the family feud. They call out for their men�s assistance, and
after a brief period, Ulrich makes out ten figures approaching over a hill. The
story ends with Ulrich�s realization that the "interlopers" on the hill are
actually wolves.

[edit] "The Schartz-Metterklume Method"

At a railway station, an arrogant and overbearing woman mistakes the mischievous
Lady Carlotta for the governess she expected. Lady Carlotta, deciding not to
correct the mistake, presents herself as a proponent of "the Schartz-Metterklume
method" of making children understand history by acting it out themselves, and
chooses a rather unsuitable historical episode for her first lesson.

[edit] "The Toys of Peace"

Rather than giving her young boys gifts of toy soldiers and guns, their mother
instructs her brother to give the children "peace toys" as an Easter present. When
the packages are opened, young Bertie shouts "It's a fort!" and is disappointed
when his uncle replies "It's a municipal dust-bin". The boys are initially baffled
as to how to obtain any enjoyment from models of a school of art and a public
library, or from little toy figures of John Stuart Mill, poetess Felicia Hemans,
and astronomer Sir John Herschel. Youthful inventiveness finds a way, however.

[edit] "The Storyteller"

"The Storyteller" is a cynical antidote to crude didacticism. An aunt is traveling
by train with nieces and a nephew. The children are naughty and mischievous. A
bachelor is sitting opposite. The aunt starts telling a story, but is unable to
satisfy the curiosity of the children. The bachelor intervenes and tells a
different kind of story which feeds their curiosity and imagination.

[edit] "The Unrest-Cure"

Saki's recurring hero Clovis Sangrail, a sly young man, overhears the complacent
middle-aged Huddle complaining of his own addiction to routine and aversion to
change. Huddle's friend makes the wry suggestion of the need for an "unrest-cure"
(the opposite of a rest cure) to be performed, if possible, in the home. Clovis
takes it upon himself to "help" the man and his sister by involving them in an
invented outrage that will be a "blot on the twentieth century".

[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] "The Open Window"

A man with the unlikely name of Framton Nuttel comes to a country village for some
peace and rest. He calls upon a lady named Mrs. Sappleton his sister used to know;
for a few minutes he is left alone with her niece named Vera, who has quite an
active imagination. She tells Framton a story about the tragedy of the lady's
husband and two younger brothers, who had gone hunting one day three years earlier
and never returned. The bodies were never found, and because of this the window
from which they left is always kept open. When indeed they do return that very
night, Framton, who has suffered from nerves in the past, runs out of the house,
and the niece explains his sudden departure to her relatives with an equally
imaginative fiction.

[edit] "Sredni Vashtar"

The story of a young, sickly child, Conradin. His cousin and guardian, Mrs. De
Ropp, "would never... have confessed to herself that she disliked Conradin, though
she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him 'for his good' was a duty which
she did not find particularly irksome." When Mrs. De Ropp finds Conradin's beloved
Houdan hen, it is sold and taken away, but she is unaware of the pet polecat-
ferret, called "Sredni Vashtar," which Conradin worships as a god. Just before
tea, Mrs. De Ropp enters the shed in which the ferret lies in his hutch. As the
time slips by without a stirring from the shed, Conradin begins to pray to Sredni
Vashtar � and receives his darkest wish.

[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.)

[edit] BooksWikipedia:Avoid weasel words

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This page documents an English Wikipedia style guideline. It is a generally
accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated
with common sense and the occasional exception. Any substantive edit to this page
should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.
Shortcuts:
WP:AWW
WP:WEASEL

This page in a nutshell: Avoid using phrases such as "some people say" without
providing sources.

Weasel words are generally considered to be words or phrases that seemingly

support statements without attributing opinions to verifiable sources. They give
the force of authority to a statement without letting the reader decide whether
the source of the opinion is reliable. If a statement can't stand on its own
without weasel words, it lacks neutral point of view; either a source for the
statement should be found, or the statement should be removed. If a statement can
stand without weasel words, they may be undermining its neutrality and the
statement may be better off standing without them.

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."

Although this is an improvement, since it no longer states the opinion as fact, it

remains uninformative:

Who says that? You?

When did they say it? Now?
How many people think that?
How many is some?
How many is most?
What kind of people think that? Where are they?
What kind of bias might they have?
Why is this of any significance?
Weasel words don't really give a neutral point of view; they just spread hearsay,
or couch personal opinion in vague, indirect syntax. It is better to put a name
and a face on an opinion than to assign an opinion to an anonymous source.

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..."

[edit] Other problems

The main problem with weasel words is that they interfere with Wikipedia's neutral
point of view. But there are other problems as well.

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.

[edit] Improving weasel-worded statements

The {{weasel}} tag can be added to the top of an article or section to draw
attention to the presence of weasel words. For less drastic cases, the {{weasel
word}} tag ([weasel words]), the {{Who?}} tag ([who?]) or the {{Which?}} tag
([which?]) (all of which include an internal wikilink to this page) can be added
directly to the phrase in question; same as the {{fact}} tag ([citation needed]).

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.

[edit] See also