Life in the barrens

I’m not going to tell you the exact letters on the “vanity plate” on the car I followed on the way to work this morning. That could, theoretically, lead you to identify the owner individually, and it’s always possible I misunderstood them.

But the message of that license plate offended me morally, as I understood it. What it said sent the clear message that the driver did not have any children. Not in terms of lamentation, but as a boast – “I’m better than you are. I’m not cluttering the world up with toxic human beings.”

Now it’s hardly my place to criticize people for not reproducing, I who am myself a biological dead end. There are lots of innocent, even praiseworthy, reasons for having no children. There might be physiological causes, or psychological problems (my own case), or a person may have followed the call of the Lord to Kingdom service in a single state – as, for instance, in the case of priests and nuns.

But I’ve never heard anyone in those classes actually brag about not having children. Bragging implies a choice – not only a decision, but a decision of which one is proud. “Children are evil, and I have avoided that evil. I am no breeder.”

One of my college textbooks included a passage I’ve never forgotten, because it irked me. The author referred, with contempt, to Christian theologians (specifically John Calvin, as I recall), and called them “life-hating.”

His point, as I recall, was that the joy of life was identical with sexual gratification. Life-loving people were people who advocated (and practiced) the maximum amount of sex with the maximum number of partners, without consequences (the fact that sex without consequences was impossible in Calvin’s time didn’t interest him). Anyone who advocated traditional sexual morality – marriage and waiting for marriage – was obviously motivated by a deep-seated hatred for life itself.

Now, about forty years on, we can see the end of that thinking. The consummation of sexual “liberation” is not love of life, but hatred of life – at least human life. If life is free sex, then anything that interferes with sexual freedom (which babies certainly do) is anti-life. By this logic, having babies – extending life to another generation – is anti-life. To love life is to say that human life should end with Blessed Me.

For more on the consequences of such (profoundly life-hating in the true sense) thinking, see Jonathan V. Last’s new book, What to Expect When No One’s Expecting. I haven’t read it, but it looks like it’s worth reading.

New Map for Games of Thrones Episodes

I’m not keeping up with HBO’s Game of Thrones, but for those who are there’s a new map of The King’s Road [link now defunct], giving you the locations and plot points for each episode through season two. The creators promise to update it during the next season, which starts March 31. Do I need to alert you to spoilers? I didn’t think so.

The Black Box, by Michael Connelly

I wonder if the recent popularity surge of Scandinavian detective novels influenced Michael Connelly to add a Scandinavian element to his latest Harry Bosch novel, The Black Box. It doesn’t really matter. The Bosch series continues very strong, and I think the Scandinavians will like it for its own sake.

When Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch, Connelly’s most famous detective, first appeared in a novel, he was dealing with the chaos of the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. This story takes us back to that surreal time. There were so many murders that detectives weren’t able to do proper crime scene work. They got shunted from place to place, protected by the National Guard, with time only to take a few pictures and notes before calling the meat wagons and rushing off somewhere else.

One murder scene he visited that night has nagged at Harry ever since. It involved the body of a white woman, who “shouldn’t have been in that neighborhood” at all. In time she was identified as Anneke Jesperson, a Danish freelance reporter and photographer. Twenty years later, now working on the Unsolved Crimes squad, Harry takes the case up again. But he finds that his superiors are not only not enthusiastic about him opening the case, but openly obstructive – it would be bad politics to solve the murder of a white woman on the twentieth anniversary of the riots.

Harry doesn’t care. He plays hardball both with the brass and with his suspects. He’s willing to go without backup onto his enemies’ home ground in order to flush them out. I was a little worried about a somewhat clichéd plot element here, but I thought Connelly resolved it in a believable way.

The Harry Bosch series is one of the best police procedurals going today, and it shows no sign of flagging. Recommended, with cautions for violence, mature themes, and language.

Steps to Writing

ScribblePreach recommends getting off your proverbial rear-end and writing with these simple steps. This hits me where I live. I often get discouraged when I sit down to write, because it takes me so long to get going. I can’t just vomit words on the page or screen. I have to have something to say. Even when I do have something to say, I must fight my doubt over saying it.

The Crooked Road, Vol. 2

One of my weaknesses as a reader and reviewer is that I’m essentially a prig. I don’t like criminals, and (though there are certain exceptions) I don’t much care for stories where criminals are the main characters. In stories, criminality is always being explained by creativity and a hunger for excitement, but I have a strong suspicion that there are lots of ways to skate close to the edge in life without stealing and murdering.

Still, when Andrew Klavan announced the publication of his story, “The Christian Killer,” in the anthology, The Crooked Road, Volume 2, I downloaded the Kindle version. And Klavan’s story is almost worth the price of the volume in itself. It’s a Christmas story that plays deftly on holiday tropes, managing to be cynical and sentimental all at once. And funny.

As for the rest of the stories, I liked some and didn’t like others. I found Janice Law’s “The City of Radiant Brides” pretty satisfying, a story with a surprise. Also Peter Lovesey’s “The Best Suit” completely confounded my expectations, in a good way.

Other stories went the sociopath path, and I generally didn’t take to them. Particularly Lawrence Block’s “Keller in Dallas,” another pleasureless (for me) outing with his stamp collector/assassin character. Dana Cameron’s “Disarming” left me entirely confused.

And some stories just broke my heart, especially Clark Howard’s long final story, “The Street Ends at the Cemetery.”

This is a pretty good collection, if you like this kind of thing. My problem is that I generally don’t.

Hot Money, by Dick Francis

Reviewing a Dick Francis book is almost a pointless exercise. I’ve only read one book of his that actually disappointed me, and you can be sure that the writing will always be professional and satisfying. But I’ve had a couple criticisms of his attitudes now and then, and Hot Money calls for one such, so I guess that justifies a critique.

It’s always interesting to discover by what angle Francis will approach his always racing-related plots. This time around the unique element is complicated family relationships, what psychologists call “constellations,” where parents and children fall into predictable roles, into which they tend to relapse whenever they get together.

In Hot Money the constellation is more of a supernova. Multimillionaire gold trader Malcolm Pembroke has been married five times, and has sired a number of children, most of whom resent each other and their siblings’ other mothers. One thing most of them agree on is their hated for Ian, the narrator of this book, whom their father seems to prefer. They’re all certain he’s plotting to cut them him out.

But when Malcolm’s latest wife is murdered, and a couple attempts are made on his own life, he goes to Ian and asks him to become his live-in bodyguard. Ian agrees, and commences picking through the minefield of his family’s loves and hates in order to stop a killer and save both their lives.

The large number of characters in this book make it sometimes hard to follow (make sure to bookmark the character list). That also goes for the superfluity of murder motives – everybody has one, but none of them seem adequate to murder. Sometimes I found the sheer volume of “soft” data kind of overwhelming.

And again, as I’ve seen at least once before in Francis, there’s a tolerant attitude to adultery that displeased me. On the other hand, there wasn’t any explicit sex, and the language wasn’t bad.

Not top drawer Francis, but good.

Keeping the Art Behind Closed Doors

Carlos Whittaker says, “In a society where people are now making art for the sake of fame as opposed to for the sake of art, this is the most refreshing documentary trailer I’ve seen in years. So many of us are pushed through the funnel of social media to create art for the sake of likes.”

He shares a curious trailer about a woman who kept her street photography in boxes behind a locked door, and then invites readers to share their secret arts.

More from Through Norway With a Knapsack

I’m feeling a bit better now, thanks for asking, having seen a doctor last week and gotten antibiotics and a steroid for my lungs. But a day at work still wipes me out, and I’ve got stuff I need to get done tonight. So, in lieu of the hard work of thinking out a blog post, I’ll just post another short excerpt from Williams’ Through Norway With a Knapsack, last night’s subject.

In this episode, our hero has gotten lost and spent a long day on the mountains, finally finding a guest house late at night, exhausted.

On awakening, I found a stout gentleman sitting at my bedside. He was the pastor of Lom. A Norwegian pastor is not merely a preacher; he is clergy-man, physician, magistrate, arbitrator, and general friend and father, to whom all his scattered parishioners appeal. In a country where there are none but peasant farmers – no aristocracy, no gentry, no towns and villages, no shopkeepers, no professional class – a highly educated man must be strangely isolated, and, unless endowed with the true spirit of Christian benevolence, must be one of the most miserable of men; but, if suited to his work, he may be one of the happiest, for his opportunities of doing unmistakable good, and of witnessing the full fruits of his good deeds, are almost unlimited. Most of these Norwegian pastors are, I believe, excellent men, and render great services to the people around.

In the present instance, the paternal relations of the good pastor of Lom were illustrated in my case, for he sat at my bedside, where he had evidently been watching for some time, as though he feared that some fever or other ailment might result from the over-exertion, excitement and fasting….

Something New, by P.G. Wodehouse

In a 1948 letter, Wodehouse said he liked his Blandings Castle stories over his others because his character Lord Emsworth is his favorite. The dottering old earl, more content weeding in his garden than doing anything else, is introduced in the novel Something New (later published in the U.K. as Something Fresh (the two books are not exactly the same)), Wodehouse’s first story about the quirky folk of Blandings Castle.

The story gives us the young man Ashe Marson, a writer of monthly juvenile detective adventure novels, being challenged by a beautiful, new acquaintance to take his life in his own hands and try something new. This beauty, Joan Valentine, soon discovers that the Honorable Freddie Treepwood, reprobate son of the Earl of Emsworth, was once terribly in the love with her and would rather that part of his life never see the light of day. The reason is Freddie has proposed to Aline Peters, daughter of American millionaire J.P. Peters, who moved into a home near Blandings several months ago. (Mr. Peters is said to be “suffering from that form of paranoia which makes men multimillionaires.”) Aline intends to marry Freddie, perhaps more to please her father than herself, but she hasn’t given herself much time to think about it. Her father, Mr. Peters, is an Ancient Egyptian scarab enthusiast. When he decides to gush about them to the absent-minded Lord Emsworth, trouble broods.

I laugh easily with Wodehouse’s wonderful stories. The first time I got a head of steam behind my laughing was before the scarab-enthusing incident when Lord Emsworth visits the Senior Conservative Club in London. Here he demonstrates his lack of lucidity with the steward Adams, who attends the Earl professionally while soaking in his many utterances and expressions for imitation among friends later that evening. Adams has developed a reputation as a humorist, imitating the members of the Senior Conservative Club.

The next time I remember rolling along, like one of Adams’ friends, was in a very satisfying scene in Blandings Castle toward the end. It’s something of a climax, so I can’t reveal it for you, but I love when Wodehouse brings his characters together in ways that you may see coming for several pages and still cracks you up when it happens. Often such scenes begin with what you see coming and carry on with what you don’t.

Lord Emsworth doesn’t play much of a role in this character-rich story, but it’s still a great introduction to him. Wodehouse tells us, “His was a life that lacked, perhaps, the sublime emotions which raise man to the level of the gods; but undeniably it was an extremely happy one. He never experienced the thrill of ambition fulfilled; but, on the other hand, he never knew the agony of ambition frustrated.”

Contentment, thy name is Emsworth.

Reading Report: Through Norway With a Knapsack, by W. Mattieu Williams



Photo credit: Russavia, 2008.

It’s part of my necessary duties as a novelist, one who specializes in a country where he does not live and has only visited a few times, to do my best to read travelers’ reports, especially old ones from before the days of the automobile and the high speed ferry. When I found Through Norway With a Knapsack, by W. Mattieu Williams, first published in 1853, and slightly expanded and updated in 1876, I jumped at it, especially since the Kindle version came cheap. And I’m glad I did. Not only does it largely cover parts of the country I’m less familiar with, but the author – though not free of the congenital arrogance of the 19th Century Englishman, turns out to be pretty congenial. He knows how to laugh at himself, and is flexible in the face of unfamiliar conditions. He likes to travel light, like an early Rick Steves, which was not common for men of his background and class.

Instead of analyzing the whole thing, I just share a portion I particularly enjoyed:

After a few hours’ sleep, and a repetition of the meal just described, I started at two in the afternoon and walked on by a good road to Nordgård. On the way I was hailed by a man on the other side of a hedge, to know if I had seen two horses on the mountain. On finding me to be an Englishman he spoke to me in good English, and told me that long ago he emigrated to America and lived there for sixteen years; but the desire to see his ‘Gamle Norge’ again had brought him back, and finding his daughter married, with a farm and family about her, he was persuaded to remain and end his days there. I asked him which he liked best, America or Norway? He preferred America. Why then did he not return? He tried to explain; and, after some help in wording and shaping the expression, told me that he liked America, but did not love it; and that he loved Norway, but did not like it; and as loving was stronger than liking, he resolved to die at home.

Perhaps not recommended for any reader whose ancestors came from Telemark, unless you like hearing about how your people were the filthiest in Norway at the time. Otherwise, pretty good.