Tag Archives: Andrew Klavan

Creative Writing, Religion, Writing

Sticky questions on Christian art

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Andrew Klavan posted a thoughtful article today called “Eyes Wide Shut: Christians Against Art” which ought to spark some discussion. Klavan is rare among Christian fiction writers in that he learned his craft first, and then embraced the Faith. That places him in what must be at times an awkward position – he knows what makes for a good story, and sometimes that’s something that his fellow believers don’t like.

An artist’s job — even if he’s a Christian artist — is not to sell Jesus, it’s to depict life truly. A Christian’s faith is that Christ lives in real life, not only in pastel greeting cards with Easter bunnies on them. Thus any honest and good work of art should be capable of strengthening a believer in his belief — even if it strengthens him by challenging him, by making him doubt and then address those doubts.
Art only goes wrong when it lies. Pornography is so deadening (and so addictive to some!) because it depicts human intercourse without humanity — something that never occurs in real life, not ever. Most bad art does something similar — and some good art includes dishonest moments that need to be confronted and rebuked.
But good art can be about absolutely anything and still lift us heavenward….

I can’t, frankly, share his approval of the Game of Thrones series, but I do so with fear and trembling, fully aware that Klavan understands stories at a much deeper level than I do. Still, after reading the first four GOT books, I grew wholly disillusioned with George R. R. Martin’s (to me) cynical and nihilistic approach. If I were to watch the Game of Thrones series (I haven’t), my only motivation would have to be seeing the female nudity, because I can’t work up any other.
Klavan might be comforted somewhat – though the example is an old one – to read the Science Fiction Fantasy Writers of America’s current Bulletin, which includes what may be the last “Resnick & Malzberg Dialogue.” (See my Wednesday post.) Barry Malzberg reminisces, in view of recent attempts to muzzle the two of them: Continue reading Sticky questions on Christian art →

Fiction, Reviews

Killer in the Wind, by Andrew Klavan

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See, I’d seen that look before. That wrinkled nose, that laughing sparkle in the eyes. In the movies, evil guys laugh out loud. Bwa-ha-ha. Or they chuckle suavely, swirling their drinks in their glasses. But this is the real deal, the real look most monsters have. A sort of cute, dainty, delicate recoil from speaking the thing out loud. The forbidden joke of it.

Are we being naughty now?
I know you’re used to seeing me review Andrew Klavan’s books, and I know you’ve come to expect me to praise each one to the skies. Nevertheless, I want you to believe me when I say that it’s been a long time since I actually stayed up late in bed with a book, unable to put it down except by a strong effort of the will.
Killer in the Wind is one of the most compelling thrillers I’ve ever read.
The hero, Dan Champion, is a former commando, a former New York City police detective, and a certified hero. Now he’s part of the police force in a small town in downstate New York. He’s dating a local waitress, a nice woman whose love he’d like to return. But he can’t commit. He can’t commit for a reason he himself knows is crazy. Three years ago, in the course of an undercover investigation, he had a hallucination under the influence of drugs. In the hallucination he encountered a woman named Samantha, whom he can’t get over. Even though he knows for a fact that she doesn’t exist.
Except that one day Samantha shows up in the flesh. She says one thing to him – “They’re coming after us” – before disappearing again.
Is this a real-world mystery, or a supernatural thriller? The borderline seems vague sometimes, and that’s no accident. Klavan likes to explore those boundaries. Some of the reviews on Amazon suggest that certain readers don’t get this. They take the uncertainty as over-the-top storytelling. But it’s not. It’s the author’s way of exploring the wonder of life itself – that all of us are living in an improbable world, a world impossible to explain by purely rational methods. For good and evil.
My own reaction to Killer in the Wind may not be yours. I’m pretty sure I was emotionally affected by the way it dealt with areas of human evil of which I have some personal experience.
But even if that’s the case, I can still recommend Killer in the Wind without reservation. It’s a tight, tense, deeply moving thriller with characters as real as your own family.
Cautions for rough language, sex, and violence.

Fiction, Reviews

The Scarred Man, by Andrew Klavan

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I’ve actually reviewed Andrew Klavan’s novel The Scarred Man (written under the pseudonym Keith Peterson, and recently released as an e-book by Mysterious Press) before on this blog. But I want to direct your attention to these books, and I re-read it recently, so it can’t hurt to discuss it again.

Mike North, the hero and narrator, is a young news reporter in New York City, and a very good one (this was written back before the internet holed the newspapers at the waterline). He is assistant to a legendary newsman named McGill, who asks Mike to come along upstate with him to spend Christmas at his home, since he (Mike) has no family. Mike agrees, and while there he meets McGill’s daughter Susannah, and falls so deeply and suddenly in love that everyone in the room can read it on his face. Susanna returns his feelings and they get along very well (including a sexual encounter under the Christmas tree while everybody else is sleeping) until somebody suggests telling ghost stories. Mike, on an impulse, makes up a story off the top of his head—about a sinister man with a scarred face, who dogs another man’s steps.

Suddenly Susannah is screaming, “Stop it! What are you doing to me?” She flees to her room, and the next morning she’s gone back to school.

It takes a few weeks before Mike realizes he has to go up to Susannah’s college and talk to her.

And as he pulls into the entrance to her college, he sees the scarred man from his story in his headlights.

I think this is one of the best set-ups for a thriller I’ve ever read. What’s especially great is that The Scarred Man is not a supernatural story. Everything that happens has a rational explanation. And it’s up to Mike and Susannah to figure it out, because the mystery involves the upcoming execution of a man who may not deserve to die. And the Scarred Man is still out there, dogging their steps, carrying the answers to their personal mysteries – which they may or may not want to learn.

On my second reading, I didn’t think the balance of the book was quite as great as the set-up, but it would be very hard for any story to meet that standard. Klavan fans who know him best from his current books should be warned that this is the early, liberal Klavan. He doesn’t slander conservatives, but the cultural insularity of his background shows through, especially in the addition of a character whom we are supposed to believe is a Christian fundamentalist preacher, even though his speech is peppered with obscenities. This is a fundamentalist preacher as imagined by a New Yorker who’s never actually met one. Attitudes toward sex may also offend some readers.

But it’s a great story, and one that will stick with you. Highly recommended.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Reviews

Praise from Caesar

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I had the pleasure of getting my review of Andrew Klavan’s novel Crazy Dangerous (not here, but in its The American Culture incarnation) linked today by Klavan himself. In the course of the linkage he refers to me as “my colleague.”

That’s kind of the apotheosis of the concept of generosity, right there.

I’m Klavan’s colleague in more or less the same way I was Sir Anthony Hopkins’s colleague when I was doing community theater down in Florida. Or in the same way I was Christopher Nolan’s colleague when I cobbled together my West Oversea trailer. Or in the same way that guy in the subway station who plays with his instrument case open for spare change is Yo Yo Ma’s colleague.

But the fantasy is appreciated.

Yesterday was Svenskarnasdag (Swedish Day) at Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis. As usual, the Viking Age Club & Society was there for the entertainment, enlightenment, and moral uplift of the community. I fought a few fights, and never did better than a mutual kill. I’ve come to accept the fact that that’s more or less my calling.

Talked to a fellow who asked me about the Vikings in Scotland, and I was able to unload a lot of the stuff I learned in The Viking Highlands.

The subject didn’t stray as far as the Battle of Kringen, in 1612, whose 400th anniversary is today. Information here. (Thanks to Tim Eischen for bringing this to my attention.)

In brief, King Gustav Adolf II of Sweden wanted to attack Denmark by way of Norway. He hired a group of Scottish mercenaries under the command of George Sinclair (ironically, the Sinclairs are one of those Highland clans with Norse roots. But I doubt if that bothered them much) to march across Norway. An irregular force of Norwegian farmers ambushed them in a narrow mountain pass at Kringen, killed most of them by causing an avalanche, and slaughtered most of the rest. A few survived, and numerous Norwegians in Romsdal take pride in being their descendents.

We Norwegians have relatively few military victories to celebrate in our history, so this event looms large in our cultural tradition.

Fiction, Reviews

Crazy Dangerous, by Andrew Klavan

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Andrew Klavan has taken a small (but worthwhile) detour in his writing career over the last few years, producing top-notch thrillers aimed at the Young Adult audience, published by Christian publisher Thomas Nelson. His previous four books, The Homelanders series, brought the Christian YA field to a whole new level. All in all, I think the stand-alone novel Crazy Dangerous is even better.

One improvement is the narrator/hero of Crazy Dangerous, Sam Hopkins. Unlike Charlie West, the hero of the Homelanders books, Sam is not an adolescent James Bond, outstanding at everything he does and equipped with a black belt. Sam will be far easier for most kids to identify with. He’s a smallish, not very popular, not academically outstanding, not very athletic teenager, struggling with the challenges of being a preacher’s kid in a small town in upstate New York. When he receives an odd offer of “friendship” from three of the shadiest kids in his school, he gets involved with them, just to escape the public expectations that face every PK.

But the situation changes when his new “friends” make an attack on Jennifer, a vulnerable classmate with mental problems. Rescuing Jennifer, and paying the price for it, seems to be the end of Sam’s adventure, but it’s only the beginning. Because Jennifer’s mysterious, oddly articulated visions of impending death and disaster have more truth in them than anyone guesses, and everyone in Sam’s world is not what they seem. But the lesson Sam is learning—“Do right. Fear nothing”—steers him through a variety of strange paths to the right decisions in a big, explosive story climax.

Great story. Great values. I found it interesting that Sam’s pastor father, though a good dad and a wise man, seems to be a liberal Christian, and therefore blind to some truths that might have helped his son. That was an intriguing—and narratively useful—nuance.

The plot was weak at one point, I thought, where Sam made a braver choice than I thought consistent with his character. But that might be just a coward’s reaction to reading about a better person than himself. It certainly won’t bother young readers, who will consume this book like nacho chips and shake the bag for more.

Highly recommended for teens and up. Great for adults too. Intense situations, but no foul language.

Fiction, Reviews

Agnes Mallory, by Andrew Klavan

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‘Look,’ she said wearily from the stairs. I was leaning against the stove, studying her stupid sneakers. My arms crossed, my soul leaden with sorrow. ‘I just don’t want to approach you too fast. I know you don’t like journalists. I saw you on TV: slamming the door? That’s why I was watching…’

‘Oh, admit it: you were being mysterious and romantic.’
‘Jesus!’ One of her little sneaks gave a little stomp. ‘You sound just like my father.’
Fortunately, this arrow went directly through my heart and came out the other side, so there was no need to have it surgically removed, which can be expensive….
Back in 1985, the young author author Andrew Klavan had a novel published in England which didn’t find a home in the U.S. This novel is Agnes Mallory, which is now, thankfully, available in a Kindle edition from Mysterious Press.
The narrator of the story is Harry Bernard. Harry lives in a secluded cabin, outside the New York suburb of Westchester. He is a recluse, a broken man, a disbarred lawyer who has left his family behind.
He wants nothing to do with the young woman who follows him home one evening, in the rain. Klavan introduces her in such a way that the reader isn’t sure at first whether she’s real or a ghost. And that’s appropriate, since this is a kind of a ghost story—but the ghosts are the memories we carry with us and the dreams we’ve buried in the cellar. Continue reading Agnes Mallory, by Andrew Klavan →

Authors, Fiction, Publishing

Under the pseudonym of Keith Peterson

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Phil has already mentioned this in prospect, but Andrew Klavan’s early novels, written under the name Keith Peterson, are now in print again from Mysterious Press.
I especially recommend the John Wells novels, the first of which is The Trapdoor.
I do not recommend The Animal Hour.

Fiction, Reviews

The Final Hour, by Andrew Klavan

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I’ll get out, I told myself. Rose’ll get me out. Two months, maybe three. I just need courage. I just have to survive.

That’s what I told myself.
But I was way wrong.
Andrew Klavan has completely realized his purpose in writing The Final Hour, the fourth and last in his The Homelanders young adult action series. He’s crafted a moral story that’s so exciting teenage boys will put off going back to their video games until they’ve finished it.
Is it over the top? Unquestionably. Poor Charlie West, the hero, caroms from one deathly peril to another, chapter after chapter. It’s like an Indiana Jones movie, except that Indie wouldn’t be able to keep up Charlie’s pace.
If you’ve been following the series, or just my reviews, you’ll know that the first book, The Last Thing I Remember, opened with Charlie waking up bound to a chair in a strange room, with terrorists outside the door discussing how much further to torture him. Since then he’s escaped and learned that (during a year that he’s forgotten completely) he’s been arrested and convicted of the murder of a high school friend. He’s escaped from custody since then, and has been on the run—gradually learning bits and pieces about the terrorists’ plot.
At the start of The Final Hour he’s in custody again, an inmate in a federal prison. The radical Muslim prisoners hate him for opposing terrorists, and try to kill him. He’s rescued by Nazi skinheads who want something from him, but he doesn’t want to have anything to do with them either. And oh yes, the corrupt prison guards have it in for him too.
Through it all, Charlie teaches lessons in Christian decency and patriotism, not by talking about those things, or even thinking about them much, but through practicing them—living out the lessons he’s learned from his parents and his karate teacher, Mike.
Which prepares him for his improbable but edge-of-your seat final confrontation with the murderous Homelanders.
Well done, Andrew Klavan.
Suitable (and highly recommended) for teens and up.

Authors

Klavan on Steyn

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I got through my first day at work with a cast (I guess it’s technically a splint) all right. The big nuisance is shifting my car.
Andrew Klavan (you probably weren’t aware, but I’m a fan of his) writes a tribute to Mark Steyn today at Pajamas Media:

But perhaps I wasn’t made to be a doomsayer. The dying of things—of art forms and civilizations as well as people—seems to me the inevitable and steady state of the world: a point of view that leaves me prone more to melancholy than to panic. What I really care about now is the immortal parts of mortal enterprise. I want to get at the spirit of human business: the wisdom and vitality of a culture’s Great Moment preserved in the artifacts it leaves behind. The irrelevant—the stuff that doesn’t matter but is simply beautiful—the music, the poetry, the pictures and storytelling—the arts—that’s where all the joy is, and it’s the joy that seems more urgent to me as the years pass.

Authors, Non-fiction

Klavan Reviews Mamet's Secret Knowledge

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Andrew Klavan reviews playwright David Mamet’s new book The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture.

In fact, “The Secret Knowledge,” written in Mr. Mamet’s tough and funny style, is entertainingly informative. But the book only really becomes indispensable when it is personal and specific to Mr. Mamet’s experience.