Talk:Saki

message: "Basically Saki is like Charles Dickens......" I don't think this line should remain, or should at least be heavily qualified. It is a highly subjective opinion; which I for one don't share. I think Saki and Dickens' styles are very different. I personally think Saki is like a more bitter and twisted version of Wilde......but that's my opinion and I wouldn't present it as fact.  -B.G. 13/10/05
: You're quite correct. It's gone. - DavidWBrooks 14:53, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  And a good thing, too. I completely fail to see the resemblance. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:31, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  What the Dickens? 

message: At present she's rather in a Balkan state of mind about the treatment of the Jews in Roumania. Personally, I think the Jews have estimable qualities; they're so kind to their poor- and to our rich.
- from Reginald on Worries, so you could ascribe it to Reginald rather than Saki himself. There's another  story with a nasty tone- A Touch of Realism.
I don't think Saki was very antisemitic [nor was Buchan, actually- in The Three Hostages the villain is an archetypal "jew out to conquer the world", with Svengaliesque hypnotic powers except that he is a CofE conservative MP] and his attitude to the jews of eastern Europe- where jews faced real persecution- was sympathetic in his journalism. However, there is a long tradition in English literature of antisemitism as a convention- often an unthinking convention. Even radicals like Bage and Peacock were casually antisemitic in their books. I think Saki- like other writers then- assumed the same attitudes. Compare Belloc and Chesterton who made definite attempts to import European politico-religious antisemitism to Britain to see the difference in attitudes and assumptions.
- found your remarks while I was looking up refs for another site discussing Saki's antisemitism, so what I wrote there seems appropriate. 
Another interesting book involving Edwardian antisemitism is Israel Rank by Roy Horniman, the basis for Kind Hearts and Coronets.
Roger Allen 08:09, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Saki's antisemitism 

message: I'd just like to put in a good word for this little-known story, the first of six uncollected ones, a link to which is included at the end of the article.  I think this is a neglected masterpiece (unlike the other five).  It is exquisitely poised between tragedy and comedy, with a most moving resolution in favor of I won't tell you which.
38.117.238.82 07:23, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  Most of the other five are deservedly forgotten, like much of his longer pieces of writing, but The Pond is good. BrainyBabe 13:23, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The Pond

message: I welcome the addition of new material by an anonymous (probably new?) editor, and encourage this person to create an account.  In addition to various small changes, I have stripped out the phrases praising the works added to the reference section (e.g. "A very useful and entertaining biography"), while retaining the works themselves.  We can make value judgements on Saki's stories -- that they are witty or cynical or whatever -- only because we are reflecting the opinion of published commentators.  Anything else would be original research, which  Wikipedia avoids.  We cannot write our own value judgements about Saki's work, or works about him.  Again, thank you anonymous person for your contributions. BrainyBabe 09:31, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Frankly, I think you're being a bit too rigid, Brainy.  You and I wrote our own value judgment about The Pond in the paragraph immediately above, didn't we?  Yet you don't seem to have any problem with that--nor should you.  It is, of course, carefully labeled as our opinion, and the fact that the story is linked to the article enables anyone to check it out and see whether or not they agree with us--just as anyone is free to check out the new editor's references and see whether they agree with his opinions about them.  It is not as though he were submitting information without backing it up.  Kostaki mou 05:58, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Welcome to Wikipedia!  And thank you for creating an account -- it helps, among other things, keep track of who made what comment.  Two things: one, have a look at WP:A, the policy on attribution, which supercedes those on original research and sources.  Two, you are quite right that we editors have given our own opinions on the story above, but that's OK because this is a talk page, a place to discuss the article.  Pretty much anything goes here, as long as it's civil -- spelling mistakes, typos, vociferous opinions, unsubstantiated facts, value judgements, etc.  Rules and expectations on the article page are rather different. It is a fundamental distinction.  Hope this helps.  BrainyBabe 16:38, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Avoidance of loaded adjectives

message: Someone claimed that this novel, published in 1911 by Hector Munro, is by Saki. There are very good reasons to doubt this claim. The main bases for it are an allegation by the aged and famously untruthful Montague Summers in The Galanty Show and an article in the TLS  in 2003 pointing out trivial similarites. Against it are the following facts: the remarkable differences in subject matter and style between it and Saki's own books, in 1911 Saki was publishing as often as ever, so had little time to write another otherwise unknown  book, when he did publish under his own name it was as H. H. Munro or as Hector Hugh Munro, but never by his frst name alone, and the fact that no-one who knew or claimed to know Saki but Summers, over thirty years after Saki's death, ever suggested that he wrote it. Until there is more reliable evidence we should not consider this one of Saki's own books.Roger Allen (talk) 23:53, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Mrs Elmsley

message: I've added a couple of tags and cleaned up some of the POV, but a lot remains.  The bane of Wikipedia is essays and school papers posted as articles.
Here's the tag about literary criticism:
"Do not write articles that present your own original theories, opinions, or insights, even if you can support them by reference to accepted work."  This is not a guideline but official POLICY. It means that it is NOT all right to hunt for someone else who shares your interpretation, then cite them as a reference.  The "Controversy section," beginning with the weasel words "Some believe," really should be completely deleted.  Please, stick only to fact. — J M Rice (talk) 16:06, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have cleaned up the crap about anti-semitism by attributing both the pro- and anti-argument to published writers with links.   Perhaps Roger you could do the same for Ethel's personality, and then we could see the weasel templates removed?  Steve Rapaport (talk) 01:34, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tried to clean up 

message: I removed the line
"However, Saki's anti-semitism is not obsessive and all-pervading in the way of such contemporaries as Belloc or Chesterton."
because it makes no sense unless he was anti-semitic.  Even if we make a really extreme effort to be broad-minded and take this slander seriously it has to be treated as something "controversial" not something that is fact.
I also cleaned up the part about alleged "misogyny" a little bit trying to keep the core idea without the bizarre speculation about "childless women".  His aunt was crazy and abusive and he hated her in a way that comes out often in his writing.  He hated her because she was abusive to him, not because he cared about whether or not she had children of her own.
As for the anti-semitism, if anyone seriously cares about this I would suggest that you read "The Unrest Cure" since it's actually about anti-semitism.  If he was going to let slip anything anti-semitic it would be there.  You must keep in mind two things:
1)  In polite upper-middle-class England in the 1900s pogroms were a thing of the past.  Saki's readers did not know that the holocaust would happen 40 years later.  They only knew that violence against Jews had been decreasing since long before they were born.
2)  Many of Saki's stories juxtaposed middle-class England with the more chaotic and violent circumstances of places he had been to like Burma, India, the Balkans, or the Middle East.  "The Unrest Cure" follows this formula.  The pogrom is something extremely violent that was happening at the time but far away from the tranquil English setting that Saki inserts it into.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abu America (talk • contribs) 10:06, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: ...and then I removed the entire section. It just doesn't prove that there really is any controversy. PiCo (talk) 06:36, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: On balance, I agree with the removal. It was clearly an WP:UNDUEWEIGHT problem. DreamGuy (talk) 14:57, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  controversy 

message: Do we know for a fact how Saki is to be pronounced?  For context, A. A. Milne was confused too:
It may have been my uncertainty (which still persists) whether he called himself Sayki, Sahki or Sakki which made me thus ungenerous of his name
--Introduction, The Chronicles of Clovis by Saki, 1911
Do we have some other source? Ijon (talk) 20:54, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation of 'Saki' 

message: 'By his marriage to Mary Frances Mercer (1843–1872), the daughter of Rear Admiral Samuel Mercer.' That's the set-up - where's the payoff?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.98.187.218 (talk) 03:19, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: There was a misplaced capital letter, the full sentence reads "Saki was the son of Charles Augustus Munro, an Inspector General for the Indian Imperial Police, by his marriage to Mary Frances Mercer (1843–1872), the daughter of Rear Admiral Samuel Mercer". I have corrected the typo. DuncanHill (talk) 17:15, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incomplete sentence 

message: SAKI LIFE IN ARMY 2409:4064:4D06:B20F:0:0:3448:630F (talk) 14:08, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Saki life in army