Customer Reviews

THE WALLET OF KAI LUNG With an Introduction by Grant Richards

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

 

 

Bramah sure can spin a phrase. The book is a collection of stories told by Kai Lung, and as such is excellent. You are transported back into this fictional China, where introductions can take hours as the two people flatter each other & humble themselves endlessly. The stories are very amusing, but be forewarned; the language takes some time to read through & comprehend. Not a book to breeze through (but oh so rewarding when you do read it!)

The Kai Lung books have a nice dry humour, a beautifully way of turning a phrase and a concoluted way of using the english language. It is a China that never was but really ought to have been.

I love the over-the-top pseudo-chinese-classical style of Bramah's writing: "It is indeed unlikely that you could condescend to stop and listen to the foolish words of such an insignificant and altogether deformed person as myself. Nevertheless, if you could retard your elegant footsteps for a few moments, this exeedingly unprepossessing individual will endeavor to entertain you."

If you don't like that style, you'll find it difficult to get past it to the entertaining and humorous stories of Kai Lung.

The formatting could use some improvement (uneven margins on my iPhone, double line breaks for paragraphs), but it's not too bad.

Well written, enjoyable, and chock-full of subtle moral lessons. At a time when so much of what passes for fantasy writing is nothing more than junk, Wallet of Kai Lung does not pretend, like so many others, to be like Tolkien, or anyone else. It's just a good, fun, read all on its own.

'The Wallet of Kai Lung' is a collection of tales told by the itinerant storyteller Kai Lung as he roams the purely fictitious ancient China of British author Ernest Brammah Smith's imagination. Smith published 'The Wallet of Kai Lung' in 1900, after a failed career as a farmer, and went on to write many more Kai Lung stories, as well as other genre fiction that influenced a wide range of authors in the early part of the century. But it is probably for these stories of a China that never was for which he is best known, especially after two later collections were reprinted in the old Ballantine Adult Fantasy imprint edited by Lin Carter.

I suppose they are a particular brand of fantasy - especially with their occasional inclusion of gods and dragons - but it is above all for the dry wit that Bramah infused into their narratives that makes them worth reading. Written as if translated from the Mandarin, the resultant, often tortuous, renderings are full of subtle fun that refuses to call attention to itself, and therein lies much of the charm of Bramah's style. Speaking in a highly refined and polished manner, Kai Lung and the characters he tells of are so cautious of giving offense that the conversations dance and twist around one another until it becomes nearly absurd. No brief example can really do Bramah's style justice, but here is an attempt anyway. At the conclusion of one of Kai Lung's stories, a group of brigands who had been enchanted away from a planned robbery by the storyteller's spell are at first infuriated, but then find out that their plans had been known anyway, and would surely have been caught and hanged if they had carried out the heist:

'At this intimation of the eminent service which Kai Lung had rendered them, the nature of their faces towards him at once changed completely, those who only a moment before had been demanding his death particularly hailing him as their inspired and unobtrusive protector, and in all probability, indeed, a virtuous and benignant spirit in disguise'.

Also scattered throughout the stories are scores of invented proverbs and sayings, my absolute favorite of which is 'Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet'.

Altogether, 'The Wallet of Kai Lung' is an enjoyable diversion; unfortunately it can also be a bit taxing. Sometimes Bramah's syntax is so convoluted that I had to read it over more than once to get its meaning. By the end of the collection, I was ready to move on to something a little more clear. Still, for its charm and subtlety, I can safely recommend Ernest Bramah to those who appreciate those things, even if it might best broken up into smaller doses instead of read straight through.

I'm a big fan of Kai Lung, but this installment disappointed me rather. The pseudo-Chinese is a little too twee, with the puppy-pies and the cute-ified but insufficiently disguised English cliches (the "well-known exclamation of the Emperor Tsing on the battle-field of Shih-ho, 'A sedan-chair! a sedan-chair! This person will unhesitatingly exchange his entire and well-regulated Empire for such an article'"). Kai Lung himself is much less prominent than in other books I liked better, such as his "Golden Hours" and "Unrolling His Mat," merely the storyteller here never a character in an overarching frame story (there is one story he claims to be telling about himself, but it's hardly the real K.L.)--and in the last several stories, he isn't there at all even as the teller, they're just unconnected little vignettes.

So my first reaction was: a much later and lesser work, Bramah really got sloppy after a while. Not so, it turns out: according to Wikipedia, this was the first of the Kai Lung books, and by a good long head start, like 20 years. So it wasn't that Bramah got worse with time, instead he greatly improved. Which I find a happier thought. But even so, this book only gets only a couple stars, where later works in the series are clear fives.

Should also note that Bramah lets some real satire peak through from time to time concerning the literary and publishing world. Enough to be worth mentioning. Enough to make you wonder what sort of experiences he might have had.

Ernest Bramah is , in my humble opinion, one of the greatest weavers of tales ever. He has the ability to make me swoon with his wonderful use of words, his wit and humor.

This collection of stories is a jumble of humorous anecdotes, not well connected or introduced. The only unifying elements are an over-elaberate mocking of Chinese literary conventions in English and a common narrator in Kai Lung. This is as a hut made of ill placed and random sticks. Some of the sticks may be interesting, but as a whole they do not provide much shelter.