Authors, Writing

Writing a Book? Don’t Ask.

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Writer Samuel D. James used to love being asked, “When are you going to write a book?” I mean, gosh, he might say, do you really think I should?

I probably mumbled something in false self-effacement, then spent the rest of the afternoon daydreaming about what kind of signature would be best for book signings. For me, that simple question was a validation–more than a query, it was an assertion that my talent and my work deserve the honor of being bound and sold in bulk.

The question felt great at first. But eventually something changed. What had sounded like the ultimate “You the man!” started sounding like the knowing inquiry of an accountability partner. As I was asked more and more about writing a book, I came to intensely dread that conversation.

He goes on to explain why he dislikes the question now.

Fiction, Reviews

‘In the Lion’s Den,’ by S.D. Thames

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In the Lion's Den

“I know that having a woman like that, it don’t do nothing for a man’s soul. If a man’s evil inside, no woman in the world’s gonna change that. Once that evil gets its hooks in you, you’re done. You ain’t ever gonna get them out.”

Having enjoyed S.D. Thames’ novel, A Mighty Fortress, as I did, I bought his earlier novella, In the Lion’s Den, as well. It’s a very good read, with definite similarities to AMF, though in less developed form, which you can’t help in a novella.

Danny Grey did a stretch in prison for felony murder. Now he’s out on parole, living in the Bronx, keeping his nose clean. He works in a pizza joint and saves his money. Four more months and he’s a free man. He plans to move to Florida and open his own pizza place. Legit all the way from now on.

Then he comes up against his old boss, the gangster he used to hurt people for in his old life. The boss blackmails him into working for him again, driving prostitutes around at night. That’s how he meets Veronika, a gorgeous Russian woman his boss treats as property. Gradually Danny falls for her, and then he faces a choice – he can escape from this trap on his own, or he can try to figure out a way to rescue Veronika. His decision will call for real courage and real sacrifice.

In the Lion’s Den is a cleanly written story that will draw you in. There are many similarities to A Mighty Fortress – Dan is a lot like Milo Porter, the hero of that book. But the religious elements are more subtextual here. For some that will be a reason to prefer this one.

I liked In the Lion’s Den very much, and I recommend it highly. Cautions for raw language and adult stuff.

Authors, Fiction

Crime Fiction Returning to Cozies

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A hundred years ago, Agatha Christie wrote her first novel, which featured her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Today,  Sophie Hannah is writing Poirot’s cases and the crime genre as a whole is returning to the type of story Christie helped popularize. The Guardian asks:

Why does crime’s golden era continue to exert such a pull? Hannah says it’s largely down to our desire to be entertained.

“I think the resurgence in the popularity of golden age crime fiction is partly down to the fact that we do, at some level, like to have that satisfaction of having a story told to us in a very overtly story-like way,” she says. “Inherent in golden age crime writing is the message: ‘This is a great story and you will have fun reading it’.”

Authors, Fiction

S. Y. Agnon’s “Fable of the Goat”

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What Agnon did with these familiar characters was so seemingly simple that it couldn’t but mean absolutely everything. Riffing on so many biblical and rabbinic themes that one could barely track them all, the story begins with a sick man whose doctors prescribe goat’s milk. But the goat he buys periodically wanders off for days, returning with udders full of milk whose taste is “like a taste of the Garden of Eden.” The man’s son decides to tie a cord to the goat’s tail and follow her. The goat then leads the son into a cave, an underground tunnel to an almost-mythical Land of Israel. (Rabbinic tradition suggests that when the messiah arrives, the diaspora Jewish dead will travel from their graves to Israel through underground caverns.) In the mystical city of Safed, the excited son is about to go back and get his father when he realizes that the Sabbath is approaching and he cannot travel. He quickly writes a note to his father to follow this goat, sticks the note in the goat’s ear, and sends her back through the tunnel. But when the goat arrives, the father assumes his son his dead; he has the goat slaughtered, and only then discovers the note. The father laments how he has doomed himself to exile, while the son flourishes “in the land of the living.”

Dana Horn writes about this story, S.Y. Agnon’s “Fable of the Goat,” in light of a new English translation and the difficulties therein.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Mighty Fortress,’ by S. D. Thames

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A Mighty Fortress

As Jimmy drove us farther north, I realized a serene calmness had fallen over me. It was as though I’d had my fix—maybe the way heroin calms an addict, or porn calms someone addicted to it. I’m my calmest when someone is pointing a gun at me.

[Cue sound effect: Ringing bell.] We have a winner! From a quarter where I wouldn’t have expected to find one! A Mighty Fortress is a first (full-length) novel by an author I’d never heard of. It has so much going against it – it’s a Christian novel (which usually means low quality, let’s face it, especially when the authors are starting out). It’s a hard-boiled mystery into which the author injects supernatural and theological elements. There are even miracles. The miracle for me is how well this thing worked, and how much I loved it.

Milo Porter is a Gulf War veteran suffering from PTSD. He makes his living as a private investigator and process server, working for lawyers in the Tampa area. When not working, he lets off steam doing power lifting at a gym owned by a friend, whose sister is Milo’s girlfriend. He sees a counselor for his insomnia and flashback dreams, but what he really enjoys is taking risks.

One Sunday he’s offered an unreasonable sum to do a special subpoena service on a guy connected to the mob. He figures a way to accomplish this and get out safely, but he still gets ambushed and kidnapped by the target and his henchmen later that night. But that’s the best part, as far as Milo’s concerned. By the end of the night somebody has been murdered.

Milo is compelled to get involved in the investigation, trying to locate a beautiful prostitute whose life is in danger. He encounters crooked politicians, crooked cops, pornographers, an alcoholic ex-judge, a preacher who’s lost his faith, and – a supernatural being. And that’s only the beginning of the weirdness.

The wonderful thing is that author S. D. Thames makes the whole thing work. His prose isn’t fancy, but it’s solid and compelling, highly professional in quality. The characters are interesting, and they often surprise us. Milo himself is a fascinating study.

I found A Mighty Fortress a delight, a little reminiscent of John D. MacDonald in style. I’m reading a previous novella by the author now, and look forward to more Milo Porter books when they come out. Well done. Not for the kids, but for anyone else, I highly recommend it.

Poetry, Writing

Why Memorize Poetry

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“To memorise a poem is to inhabit and understand it in a way rarely possible when you just read it.”

James Delingpole decided to memorize a poem and describes for us what we can learn from that practice. “Learning a poem is a good way of experiencing this creative process [of polishing a work to be its best] because, like the poet, you’re compelled to weigh each word.” (via Prufrock News)

Bookselling, Uncategorized, Writing

Breathless drama in the library

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It’s the roughest week of the year for this librarian.

First week of school. I’ve already done my orientations (a lecture and walk-through for Bible school students, a walk-through for seminarians). I’m training two new assistants (most years I have a junior and a senior assistant, so there’s only one to train at a time. But things happen). And I have a lecture to do on writing academic papers, tomorrow (I’ll be doing that with less practice than I hoped). And I’m putting together an article on the Reformation in Norway, for the Georg Sverdrup Society newsletter, deadline coming up.

Oh yes, I sell textbooks, too.

I’m not complaining. The days go quickly, and I’m not bored.

I also agreed, in a preliminary way, to tutor a seminary student in Norwegian. But that won’t happen (if it happens at all) until next year.

Oh yes, the Viking Age Club will be at the Nordic Music Festival in Victoria, Minnesota this Saturday. I’ll be there if I have any strength left.

Authors, Bookselling

A Great Literary Mystery

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“Why waste those cute little tricks that the Army taught us just because it’s sort of peaceful now.”

On a day in 1993, David Mason had possession of books and letters by and between writers F.S. Fitzgerald, E. Hemingway, and Morley Callaghan about a boxing match in Paris 1929. Callaghan leveled Hemingway, and whether it was for that reason alone or for many others as well, their friendship broke up. The whole story of the match has yet to be told, but it’s apparently all in the papers Mason locked in his safe one night in 1993.

The next morning, those papers were gone, making the great Hemingway Heist one of the literary world’s great mysteries. Mason tells some of what he knows to The Guardian. (via Prufrock News)

“Hello, this is a recording. You’ve dialed the right number; now hang up, and don’t do it again.”

Religion, Uncategorized

Gloomy news day

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Yesterday was the first day of school for my institution(s), so I was pretty busy. But I learned (primarily through Facebook) of two deaths that were significant to me. For very different reasons.

Phyllis Schlafly died. I assume that the left has assumed the same classy and openminded attitude toward her in death that it assumed during her life (which is to say, there is no epithet too vile for them to throw at her. I’ve seen one example already). I’m sure that in heaven she wears those clods and brickbats as royal decorations. She was a model to us all, in her patient endurance of personal insult, for the sake of the truth, and her refusal to back down.

I think of her most from back in the ‘80s, when I was living in that twilight world where I still voted Democrat while my heart was really with the Republicans. Oh, I still believed that high taxes were God’s chosen means for building the Kingdom of God, but the things my fellow party members said about Mrs. Schlafly made me mad. And eventually I figured out that the people who called her names didn’t think any more highly of me. It helped me to jump parties. Thanks, Lefties!

Another death yesterday was Hugh O’Brien, who – when I was a boy – starred in a TV series called “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.” I was a big fan of that show. O’Brien, unusually for television in those days, made some minimal effort to dress like the character he was playing. It wasn’t very authentic, but it was an effort. After all, there was no question of his affecting the real Wyatt’s magnificent mustache in those days. I’ve seen re-broadcast episodes, and while the show is not high art, and it leans too heavily on Stuart N. Lake’s highly unreliable biography, it’s a notch better than average TV western of the day.

He devoted his later life to a foundation for youth leadership development. He seems to have been a serious man.

Finally, our friend Gene Edward Veith posted an interesting article today in relation to the canonization of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. As a Lutheran, he doesn’t have much to say about the Catholic canonization process, but he articulates thoughts I share about her admitted struggles with depression:

I have heard this period of darkness referred to as evidence that Teresa “was not perfect,” but I think it makes her holiness more believable. The life of faith is not “perfection,” nor constant joy; rather, it often involves what Luther called “tentatio”–struggle, conflict, agony of conscience–and her descriptions of her depression shows that her faith was in Christ and not her own good works, which she had in such abundance.