Customer Reviews

The Stolen White Elephant

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"The Stolen White Elephant" is a broad farce mocking the self-proclaimed omniscience of many fictional detectives, told entirely in the form of a series of ridiculous telegraphs. Revolving around the theft of a literal white elephant, the gift of the King of Siam, this manifestly absurd story is nevertheless modeled after the real life efforts of a blundering New York Police Department to recover the corpse of one Alexander T. Stewart, stolen from his family vault in 1878.

There seems to be problems with transcribing some parts of books such as this. Throughout, the major turning points of the stories, which are quotes from either letters or newspaper articles, are completely missing. I am guessing that the missing sections appear in italics or some variant form.

This not the only book in which I have seen this -- makes the entire thing useless. The whole development of the story involves newspaper ads -- all of which are missing.

This is not a well done copy of The Stolen White Elephant. As other reviewers have noted, bits are missing throughout the story. Mostly newspaper clippings are missing, but frequently the article bits that do make it in have their formatting a bit butchered. The story is still very good and worth reading in this format, just know that if you really love it here then it is worth rereading in a printing that has the whole thing.

After reading this story twice at my different ages, I feel that now I might approach to getting more insightful implication from the author.

However, I still cannot figure out what the real implication given by the author is, but his description on media and people who pursue fame is very much insightful.

I have to admit, this story really captivated my attention. There was a lot of chaos and "secrecy" going on but in the end, he got me.

Mark Twain gave advice to a young man who wanted to be a writer: "When you catch an adjective, ill it. No, I don't mean that utterly, but kill the most of them - then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together, they give strength whenthe are wide apart. An adjective-habit, or a wordy, diffuse, or flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice."