‘A Mighty Fortress,’ by S. D. Thames
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.
Why Memorize Poetry
“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)
Breathless drama in the library
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.
A Great Literary Mystery
“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.”
Gloomy news day
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.
‘No Way to Treat a First Lady,’ by Christopher Buckley
Judge Dutch creaked forward in his chair. This is the source of the aura of judges: they have bigger chairs than anyone else. That and the fact that they can sentence people to sit in electrified ones. It’s all about the chairs.
Since I enjoyed The Relic Master so much (see my review a few inches down), I figured I’d give Christopher Buckley another go. This time I tried No Way to Treat a First Lady, a satirical novel about presidential assassination, always comedy gold.
President Ken MacMann (think John F. Kennedy, but updated to the 1990s or so), after a grueling session of intimate relations with a movie star in the Lincoln Bedroom, retires to his own bedroom, where he wakes his wife, Beth (popularly known as “Lady Bethmac”). She lobs an antique Paul Revere spittoon at his head and goes back to sleep. The following morning, the maid finds the president dead.
Beth is immediately arrested for murder and assassination. In her time of need, she turns to Boyce “Shameless” Baylor, America’s most famous defense attorney. He also happens to be the guy Beth was engaged to years ago, in law school, before she met Ken MacMann. Boyce takes the case eagerly, and contemplates the possibility of botching the defense, just to get his own back.
That is the premise of a story that, for all its lampooning of American institutions and hypocrisies, is surprisingly sentimental at its heart. I laughed often while reading No Way to Treat a First Lady, and I made a guess as to how the story would come out. I was wrong. I like being wrong when it comes to predicting story endings.
Full points for entertainment value and social commentary here. Cautions for adult language and (sometimes kinky) situations. Otherwise, recommended. (Oh yes, there’s a born-again Christian character who, though not generally sympathetic, does the right thing when it comes down to cases.)
Author Sued, Internet Mocks
“Seth Grahame-Smith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Unholy Night (among other titles), is being sued by Hachette Book Group for breach of contract,” reports Locus Online this week. Hachette says they agreed to publish two new books from Grahame-Smith after publishing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter in 2010, and they did receive one manuscript, but the second one, after some months delay, was, according to The Guardian, “too short and substandard, ‘in large part an appropriation of a 120-year-old public domain work’ (unnamed, but presumably 1897’s Dracula).”
As a result, Twitter users are running with their own ideas for #RejectedSethGrahameSmithManuscripts.
George Washington: Werewolf Spanker #RejectedSethGrahameSmithManuscripts
— Duncan MacMaster (@FuriousDShow) September 2, 2016
More examples:
- Tim Pratt: WALDEN, OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS WHERE BIGFOOT LIVES
- Harry Connolly: THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH, P.I.
- Molly Tanzer: FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD OF VAMPIRES
Klavan on ‘The Great Good Thing’
Andrew Klavan’s spiritual memoir, The Great Good Thing, will be released later this month. Here he describes his journey to faith for Christianity Today.
But perhaps most important for a novelist who insisted that ideas should make sense, Christ came to me in stories. Slowly, I came to understand that his life, words, sacrifice, and resurrection formed the hidden logic behind every novel, movie, or play that touched my deepest mind.
I was reading a story when that logic finally kicked in. I was in my 40s, lying in bed with one of Patrick O’Brian’s great seafaring adventure novels. One of the characters, whom I admired, said a prayer before going to sleep, and I thought to myself, Well, if he can pray, so can I. I laid the book aside and whispered a three-word prayer in gratitude for the contentment I’d found, and for the work and people I loved: “Thank you, God.”
‘The Relic Master,’ by Christopher Buckley
Did the relic emit fragrance? Had there been verification by ordeal? Had it caused a miraculous healing? Finally, had the saint permitted it to be stolen from its shrine? The correct term was “translation.” There was a logic to it: Saints were living beings, even dead. No saint, or member of the Holy Family, would permit his or her relic to be translated from one owner to another unless they favored relocation.
Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, has made a career of writing satirical novels about the modern world. Now (perhaps because modern life has begun to outstrip the most outrageous satire) he has turned his eyes to the 16th Century in his marvelous – and surprisingly sweet and inspirational – novel, The Relic Master. It’s still satire, but it’s also an insightful, exciting, funny, and informational book.
Dismas is a Swiss, a former soldier and a widower. He lives in Germany and makes his living as a relic master, procuring relics for two different, and competing, clients. His favorite is his uncle, Elector Frederick III, a man of piety and good taste. The other is Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, a greedy and corrupt man.
Dismas is an ethical relic master. He never buys anything he knows to be fraudulent – which sometimes displeases Albrecht. Continue reading ‘The Relic Master,’ by Christopher Buckley