Without actually planning to do such, I'm in the happy position of reading the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself alongside the short stories of Kipling. It's sort of comforting to escape from the racial (racist?) confusions of RK into the moral certainties of Douglass's compelling narrative, despite the horrors unfolded therein.
The rhetorical power of the narrative still holds a certain exhilaration despite what might be regarded as its dated qualities. It's easy to see how so many of its pages had their origins in the writer's speech-making and easy to understand just how powerful those speeches must have been. And all this from a man denied a formal education. Astonishing.
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