Sorry - in all that excitement about Kipling and Bacon, I don't think I
made it clear that it wasn't Francis Bacon the writer Kipling poked fun at
(he always respected a great writer), it was the people who maintained that
Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays. 'The Propagation of Knowledge' (the
story that I see as clou of the overall message in Debits and Credits)
sounds like a schoolboy translation of the Latin version of Bacon's title
'The Advancement of Learning' - I think it was 'De Propagatio Scientia'.
The message itself, as I saw it, was the Kipling notion that you must have
a rule of law, but it has to have exceptions in it; and you need a
religion, but it shouldn't be exclusive - it must respect other people's
beliefs; while our most intimate emotions are hidden by masks/clothes or
locked away behind gates/doors.
Other people might read it differently. But I still think the
method is good - in a collection of stories, you look for key themes and
images and see how they work in the different stories.
I pile up all this information and when anyone looks even remotely
interested, I shovel it all over them. Us obsessives are like that. Can
be fun though. Lisa Lewis
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