Reviews, Uncategorized

Amazon Prime film review: ‘Castle In the Air’

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Temperature around 50 today. This pleases me. I left the house three times – to the gym, to the grocery store, and to pick up pizza. All the trips were satisfactory, except for the grocery store, because I forgot to get pizza. Which isn’t so bad, because I’d planned to get carryout today anyway. I can get a large Domino’s for about nine bucks with a coupon, and I get four meals out of it. Which turns an indulgence into an economy.

Something about that scheme doesn’t seem right, though. I’m still waiting for the universe to rain justice down on me, for my hubris.

Watched an amusing old English movie this afternoon. Castle In the Air, from 1952. Based on a stage play. It’s slightly Wodehousian, in having a mix of classes, romantic misunderstandings, and competing prevarications.

The Earl of Locharne is played by David Tomlinson, who seems to American eyes a strange choice for a romantic lead (he’s best remembered for a later role, as the father in Mary Poppins). I have an idea that the British film industry was slightly short on talent in those days, and had to cast less-than-beautiful people just to fill the roles. The same is true – to an extent – of Helen Cherry (Mrs. Trevor Howard), who plays “Boss” Trent, the earl’s assistant and love interest. She’s just slightly less than beautiful, but I can easily imagine falling in love with her anyway.

In any case, the earl’s great cross to bear in life is the ownership of Locharne Castle, which is falling apart faster than he can afford to fix it. He operates it as a residential hotel, for tenants who constantly complain about the cold drafts and the lack of hot water. And oh yes – there’s a ghost, a beautiful phantom named Ermyntrude, who is actually good-natured and helpful. (Filmmakers loved superimposing ghost images in movies back then. It was a special effect that was easy, cheap, and didn’t look cheesy.)

A man from the National Coal Board arrives to assess the property. The board is considering acquiring the castle (by requisition, not purchase), so everyone is doing their best to impress him with the castle’s ruinous condition and unsuitability for habitation. But when a rich and beautiful American divorcee shows up, pondering buying the place for good money, he has to talk it up to her. Meanwhile, a genealogist with Jacobite sympathies (played by Margaret Rutherford) is on site, working out charts to prove that the earl is the rightful king of Scotland.

All very silly, and pleasant, and the ending’s happy. Enjoyable fluff, in the tradition of… did I mention Wodehouse? Cautions for sometimes incomprehensible Scottish accents.

Authors

Pit Orwell against Hemingway, Englishman Wins

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John Rossi compares George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway, noting the similarity of their styles and differences in career and influence.

Although made famous by his two political allegories, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell’s mastery of English prose shows best in his essays. In “A Hanging,” and “Shooting an Elephant,” Orwell produced little morality tales filled with vivid concrete images.  . . . However, it was through his essays and his political journalism that Orwell left his most lasting mark. “Politics and the English Language” became a kind of Bible for a generation of political writers, with its simple rules for good writing.

Hemingway is largely unread today except for short stories, and he is easy to parody. In fact, in some ways he was parodying himself after World War II. His novel Across the River and Into the Trees—E.B. White spoofed it with “Across the Street and Into the Grill”—is an example of the worst excesses of Hemingway’s prose. 

I remember thinking, as a young man, that my prose style was sparse like Hemingway’s, but it’s closer to the truth that my style is sparse as in lack of effort. And lest I slip into musing over my failures, let me ask what you’re read of Hemingway and Orwell. I remember reading a Hemingway’s short story in college and getting a lower grade on the analysis than I expected. I felt I had too little to go on to judge the meaning of the story. Still bitter about it.

I don’t think I’ve read anything by quotes by Orwell, though I may have seen an adaptation of Animal Farm.

Uncategorized, Writing

Spring, our false friend

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False spring is what we call it. At least I think so. I’m not actually sure I’ve ever heard anyone say “false spring.” But if that’s not what they call it, they ought to. I’ll take full credit. Registered trademark.

Anyway, the sun shone, and the temperature got into the upper 40s (farenheit, for our European readers). The snow is more than half gone from my neighbors’ lawn to the east. It seems barely diminished on my neighbor’s lawn to the west. And I’m kind of in the middle. I supposed the inequity has to do with the angle of the sun. Or systemic sexism – but in that case, it favors the woman.

Anyway, it was so nice out I decided to go on the back porch this afternoon and work on the new Erling book. I’d been stalled in my revision; a timeline problem that overwhelmed me one evening a month ago. Since then I’ve been spooked about it, sure it was beyond my powers to solve. I decided I was in a rut and needed to change my writing environment, so I sat on the porch, rolled my pants up to get some sunlight, and gave it another look.

I think I solved the problem – which means there’s probably a couple loose threads I’ll still need to fix in a later revision. But anyway, I’m on the job again.

James Lileks complained (sort of) about this warm spell a few days back. He noted that it won’t last, that we’ll get more snow and all this warmth and sunlight will have been but a cruel tease.

I sympathize keenly with that sentiment. If there’s one thing I’m all about, it’s looking at the dark (and cold) side. But you know, the knowledge that more snow is coming doesn’t make today less sweet. The air was no less mild. The photons my legs absorbed were no less Vitamin D-incentive.

It’s not just about false spring, either. You’ve got to think that way every day, when you get to my age.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Art of Danger,’ by Stuart Doughty

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Interesting concept. Over the top execution. That’s how I’d describe Stuart Doughty’s The Art of Danger, first book in his John Kite series.

John Kite is a former London policeman, now working as an investigator for an insurance company that writes policies on objects of art. What no one knows is that John Kite is not his real name. He has a secret history, a former life from which he has cut himself off completely.

The theft of an obscure painting by a middling German Renaissance painter wouldn’t appear to offer any major challenges. But when John shows up with the ransom money to buy the painting back for its owner, no one meets him. Instead, someone gets killed, and John is plunged into a convoluted mystery involving Middle Eastern terrorists and an English public relations guru. John doesn’t know how a forgettable, not-at-all-priceless portrait could relate to the World Cup finals in Qatar. But he will learn the truth, even if it takes high-speed car chases and a helicopter pursuit.

John Kite is an interesting character, and art crime is an intriguing field for mystery fiction. John’s gradual revelations of his past, and the surprising things he himself learns, were strong plot elements. I felt the second half of the book lost credibility though, as the author resorted to high-speed chases right out of a Hollywood movie to tie up his story with a bang.

Cautions for language and some sexual content.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Silent Death,’ by Peter May

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Through the window of his taxi, he watched rain-streaked red sandstone tenements drift past, the colour leeched from them somehow by lack of light, like watching a black-and-white movie of his childhood spool by.

Peter May excels at creating interesting protagonists for his novels. He’s given us another winner (at least for this reader) in John Mackenzie, hero of A Silent Death. Mackenzie is a policeman with issues – highly intelligent but utterly lacking in interpersonal skills. Kind of like Monk, or Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes (in fact, Cumberbatch would be a good casting choice if this book is ever filmed). He made himself unwelcome at the Metropolitan Police, and now works for the National Crime Agency, not a step up career-wise.

It’s as much to get rid of him as anything else that his boss sends him to Spain, to collect a criminal being extradited. Only when he arrives, he finds that the criminal, a murderer and drug dealer named Jack Cleland, has escaped. This fact is of particular, urgent concern to Spanish officer Cristina Sanchez Pradell, who is tasked with meeting and escorting Mackenzie. Jack Cleland blames Cristina for the death of his fiancée, and has vowed to take his revenge on her – by targeting her husband, her son, and her blind-and-deaf-aunt, Ana.

As Mackenzie applies his considerable brain to the problem of where Cleland might be hiding, Cleland kidnaps Ana. Surprisingly, an odd relationship gradually rises between the two outsiders, as Mackenzie also learns a few things about being human from Cristina.

Silent Death was engrossing, poignant and exciting. I rate this book very high. Occasional references to religion are not positive, but are fair from the characters’ point of view. 

Fiction, Reviews

‘Immortal Hate,’ by Blake Banner

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I recently reviewed a novel that I found a little difficult to read. Blake Banner’s Immortal Hate was not like that at all. It was fast and easy and very quickly finished. Popcorn reading, well done according to its kind.

Harry Bauer, hero of Immortal Hate and the other books in the Cobra series, is an international assassin working for the customary shadowy international organization. His brief is to eliminate the worst of the worst monsters in the world. He’s good at it, and remorseless.

“The worst of the worst” certainly applies to General Kostas Marcovic, fugitive Serbian warlord, who was guilty of one of the greatest atrocities in the recent Balkan troubles. Now he’s been identified as living under a pseudonym on the Caribbean island of St. George. Harry’s orders are simple – go in, kill the man (make it look like an accident if possible) and leave without making a fuss.

That, however, is not Harry’s style. On the ferry to the island he meets Helen, an attractive woman who runs a bar on the island. Helen senses that this is a dangerous man, and sets about enticing him to help her friend Maria extricate herself from the affections of a local drug lord. Harry is in no way reluctant to help out – he has a particular hatred of drug merchants – but Helen is not prepared for the swift and ruthless way Harry will go to work.

But that’s just the beginning. It turns out there are two old Serbians living on the island, and each claims the other is the real Marcovic.

On top of that, there’s a hurricane coming.

Over the top, lightning-paced and morally problematic, Immortal Hate was the equivalent of a Hollywood action movie. I enjoyed it, but I’m not entirely proud of myself for it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Relentless,’ by Mark Greaney

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The tenth novel in Mark Greaney’s exciting Gray Man series is Relentless. The Gray Man, you may recall from previous reviews, is Courtland Gentry, a former CIA assassin who was expelled from the service, operated as a free-lancer for a while, and has now been reinstated, though off the books. In Relentless, we find him in a hospital, being treated for wounds and a bone infection. But his boss asks him to interrupt his recovery to do an emergency extraction of a fugitive from Venezuela. That mission goes sideways in a big way. But Gentry learns that Zoya Zakharova, a former Russian agent and the woman he loves, has been assigned to a dangerous assignment in Berlin. He figures he’ll just postpone his treatment a little longer, to watch her back until the operation is over.

The mission is a complicated one – more complicated than most of the participants think. A private security agency called Shrike has been hired by a group – whom they believe to be Israeli Mossad-backed – to carry out an operation in Berlin. Only it’s not the Mossad they’re really working for, and the objective is known to only one man – a terrorist with lots of money and grandiose ambitions.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I found this book slow reading, and wasn’t sure why. I think the problem was that it was very, very complex – involving three nested covert operations. Also there were several different groups maneuvering against one another, and I had trouble keeping them straight. I think that kept me from getting emotionally invested until I was fairly well along in the story.

High stakes, lots of action. I’m not sure my trouble getting involved was the fault of the book. So, recommended, because I like the series as a whole.

Uncategorized

Blathering post, in lieu of actual thoughts

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Why is it taking me so long to finish this book I’m reading? I haven’t been that busy – just some volunteer translation. And the book’s interesting enough. And yet I’m proceeding at a very slow pace. I could finish it tonight and then offer up a late review, but my Kindle tells me there’s 2 hours of reading left.

So what to write instead? Post a YouTube video? Did that last night. Writing advice? The night before that. Report on my afternoon movie viewing? Today it was one of the Renfrew of the Mounted Police series, and it wasn’t memorable for anything except the original concept that a group of thieves at an airfield would kill their enemies by sabotaging their own airplanes – an expensive modus operandi, that one.

Today the weather was beautiful, and I didn’t get out in it at all. Should have, but the sidewalks are still icy, and I need to remember I’m an old man with hips made in China (I assume that’s where they were made – everything else is). When I was younger I had other excuses for not going for a walk, but this one should last me the rest of my life.

My volunteer translation project is moving along. I figure it’s better to take the tortoise strategy – I do one page a day, every day, rather than wearing myself out on a long, obsessive session one day, then being too tired of it the next day to do anything. I’m better than half-way through, so steady as she goes. That’s how I write novels too. When I write them at all.

Personal note: Like so many American men, I’ve gone about a year without a haircut. I’ve now reached the point where I can tie my mane up in a queue and it doesn’t all work itself out in floating strands over the course of the day. I remember a time, back during the tumultuous ‘70s, when I facetiously told my dad I was thinking of growing a bicentennial queue for 1776. He was not amused.

It’s not a ponytail, by the way. It’s tied low, at the nape of the neck. In my world, a ponytail sits high on the back of the head, and resembles the south end of a north-bound horse. Girls have ponytails. I have a queue.

One advantage is that when they come to take us away to the re-education camps, I might be able to sneak away through the crowd, disguised as an old member of the Weather Underground.

Religion, Writing

Writing advice: Paragraphs

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Photo credit: Thom Milkovic @ thommilkovic, via Unsplash

I’m deep in translation work right now, but not the paying kind. I’m translating another article for the Georg Sverdrup Society, whose journal I edit. (Sverdrup, in case you don’t want to bother with the Wikipedia link, was a founding father of Augsburg Seminary and College in Minneapolis, and of The Lutheran Free Church, which no longer exists. Its principles are carried on by The Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, to which I belong.) Sverdrup isn’t the easiest writer to translate, though I’ve translated far worse (see below). But this article is harder than usual, Sverdrup wrote it early in his career, before he immigrated to the US, and he hadn’t figured out yet that paragraphs shouldn’t run a whole page in length.

Hans Nielsen Hauge was far worse, though. I’ve written about him before, both here and in The American Spectator. He was the peasant preacher who sparked a revival in Norway around the turn of the 19th Century. Hauge was a man full of Christian zeal, but with little education. I’ve translated some of his books – all this is unpublished to date – and a couple of them feature long, long sections with no paragraph breaks at all. The man was not cerebral; he was an enthusiast. He sat down with pen and paper and just wrote whatever his spirit put into his mind. Thank the Lord for Post-It Notes (which got their inspiration, by the way, in church); without them it would be almost impossible to keep your place as you work your way through books like that. (Oddly enough, Art Fry, who got the Post-It idea in church, worked for Augsburg College, which I mentioned in the previous paragraph. This fact seems like it should be significant, but is not, so it doesn’t rate a paragraph of its own.)

It all comes down to something C. S. Lewis wrote… somewhere. Might have been a letter to a kid. He said that when you write badly, you’re asking the reader to do your work for you. It’s your job to a) think out what you want to say, and b) say it as clearly and comprehensibly as possible, without putting roadblocks in the reader’s way.

In case you’re unclear on how this is done, you basically change paragraphs whenever you move on to a new idea. It’s like a subheading in an outline. If your paragraphs vary in length, that’s perfectly fine. Some paragraphs can even be one sentence. In extreme situations, one word will do.

In the old days, when reading material was rare and relatively expensive, people with the reading bug would read pretty much anything they could get their hands on. If you rode into a town in the early American west, any reading material you brought with you would be eagerly borrowed – old newspapers were especially prized, and it didn’t matter how out of date they were.

But those days are past. Today you need to fight for your readership. Keeping your paragraphs short – and congruent with your narrative purpose – is a way of working with your reader.

Like all rules, there are exceptions. But exceptions to this rule are pretty darn rare.