Satchmo on Stage

“Long Wharf Theatre’s production of Satchmo at the Waldorf has become the biggest hit in the history of the theatre’s Stage II,” the press release states. I’d love to say I know this personally, but I’m confident New York audiences are not wrong about this one. Learn more at playwright Terry Teachout’s blog.

The Black Mile, by Mark Dawson

Here’s a first class historical mystery. Mark Dawson’s The Black Mile takes place against the dramatic backdrop of the London blitz in 1940. Things are chaotic enough in the city, and plenty of people are dying, without the Blackout Ripper running around murdering prostitutes.

Charlie Murphy is the youngest son of a highly honored, almost legendary, London police detective, now a highly ranking officer. We first meet him in a squad of bobbies trying to put down an anti-Italian riot. Completely out of his element and disoriented, he ends up running away. Back at the station, he observes the abuse of some Italian prisoners by other policemen, and reports them, leading to the dismissal of two of them. This earns the anger of his older brother Frank, their superior.

Frank is a hard man, but no villain. A World War I veteran with facial scars from mustard gas, he orders his teenage daughter to stop seeing her Italian boyfriend, and she responds by running away. For the rest of the story he searches the streets for her, remorseful and terrified that she might be the next victim.

There’s also a newspaper man, only moderately honest, who sees the Ripper story as his ticket back to the front page. He knows things the police don’t, but he’s not sharing.

The most fascinating thing about this story (which is not to say the drama is weak—this is a book fit to be made into a thriller movie) is the depth of the character depiction. These are the kind of people we all know—essentially decent but flawed in various ways, caring for each other but wounded in their pride.

The prose slips occasionally, in terms of word choice. I noticed two instances where author Dawson repeated the same descriptive metaphor twice.

But those are minor problems. All in all a gripping, fully rounded, well-told story, which I recommend.

Cautions for language, violence, and sexual situations.

Red Gloves, by Tim Greaton

I bought Red Gloves by Tim Greaton because I quite enjoyed the first story in the Samaritans Conspiracy series, The Santa Shop. This isn’t top shelf literature, but it’s considerably better than the average Christian novel, and the author manages to radiate an atmosphere of goodness that’s hard for an author to do but welcome after you’ve read a few dozen gory thrillers.

Priscilla Harris is a detective with the Portland, Maine police department. Although she’s good at her job, she seems (to a male chauvinist like me) a pretty good argument for women—generally—staying out of policing. She’s close to breaking down under the pressures of her job and her family. Her teenage son, a former college basketball hot prospect, had his dream shattered in a car accident and has slid into drug addiction. She’s also certain her husband is having an affair with his secretary.

Meanwhile she’s got a growing drug problem in her city to fight. As she tries to defuse a stand-off with drug dealers in an apartment building, a mysterious stranger wearing a parka and red gloves steps in mysteriously to prevent bloodshed. Later the same stranger keeps her son out of a situation that would have gotten him arrested. Who is this man, and is he a good guy or a very clever bad guy?

The pleasant theme of the Samaritans Conspiracy books is the idea of a group of people devoted to acting in the world like we wish angels would, to straighten things out, rescue people, and turn people onto the right road. I like to imagine it, though I don’t actually think it would work very well in real life. Real life has a way of sending things to hell on a slippery slope of good intentions. But that doesn’t prevent me enjoying the story. And the characters are very well done.

Tim Greaton’s writing is good, but not entirely polished yet. He tends to overwrite, telling us more than he needs to. And his word use can be poor, as when he describes someone as having “an honest core about him,” or when he writes “allusions” when he means “illusions.”

Still, I think our readers will enjoy Red Gloves. Cautions for saltier language than you generally encounter in Christian literature.

Commentary’s Podhoretz, Myers Split

Broken Iphone 4Professor D.G. Myers has been writing for Commentary magazine for many years, and for the past 18 months he has been under contract for their literary blog. Last week, he was told to stop writing for a while. Editor John Podhoretz emailed him after seeing a post on Commentary’s literary blog which Podhoretz did not consider literary. It was policial.

Podhoretz expalins, “I told David that he could write at will on his blog without editorial supervision, as long as he stayed within the confines of the literary. … [With the post, “The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage”] David had decided unilaterally to convert Literary Commentary into a sociopolitical blog without a moment’s consultation. This I considered an uncollegial and insubordinate act,and I’m afraid it was not the first of these.”

Myers says, “I did not conceive of my post as political; it was, to my mind, a literary and philosophical defense of gay marriage, derived from my reading, utterly silent on questions of public policy.” And he praises Podhoretz for being a great editor.

Many Internet voices have reacted to this news, accusing the Commentary editor of being the very old white guy they say Republicans need to shove out of the lifeboat. Podhoretz reminds them that he and other editors had approved a post Myers wrote for their main political blog in support of gay marriage, so the subject of Myers’ post on the literary blog was not the issue. Continue reading Commentary’s Podhoretz, Myers Split

In which the world is upside down, and there is no justice

James Lileks, to the grief of millions, has announced a short hiatus from his Bleat blog. He attributes it, with commendable frankness, to a bad review of his novel, Graveyard Special.

Someone whose opinion matters a great deal gave a rather brutal review of “Graveyard Special.” I admit it has its deficiencies, and had hoped that the $4.00 price and general spirit of fun would carry it along, but man. Aside from a note that it had occasional patches of “brilliant” writing, there wasn’t a single positive thing said. Not much said at all, really, beyond just “I’ve been dreading this” and “do you really want to know?”

I’d say that we all know the feeling, but I’m not sure I do. I’ve gotten bad reviews to be sure, but never from anyone whose opinion mattered a lot to me. I suppose this is the sort of thing that happens when you get into the big leagues and the sharks start noticing your scent.

In any case, I wish Lileks well. If this can happen to him, who among us is safe?

I, on the other hand, have an almost embarrassingly positive review to report. Novelist and opinion writer Hal G.P. Colebatch sent me the link to a review he did almost a year ago in the Australian News Weekly. I think I’ve got a new blurb somewhere in there.

Ten Cities Depicted in Books

Mark Binelli has a list of ten novels that have distinctive depictions of cities in them, pushing them beyond the role of setting to something closer to a supporting cast. One example:

Davis has written extensively, and brilliantly, about Los Angeles, but City of Quartz, for my money, is his greatest book about one of my favorite American cities. As simultaneously visionary and paranoid as a Philip K. Dick novel, populated with an eccentric cast of characters ranging from L. Ron Hubbard to Ornette Coleman.

What now?

In all the vortex of commentary in the aftermath of the election, one argument in particular seems to me both plausible and troubling. I keep hearing people say, “The Republican Party has to go libertarian. Enough with social conservatism. Nobody wants it anymore. Christian America is dead and gone. We’ve got to promote an ideology of freedom, where the government just keeps its hands off all private matters, whether marriage or abortion or drugs or anything else. That will attract the younger voters.”

It’s conceivable, but I have a lot of trouble with it. Those who promote homosexual marriage have very poor track record of leaving alone the people who refuse to recognize it. They’re awfully prone to use laws to force acquiescence from businesspeople, or even churches, who don’t want to play that game. And I, personally, think that a society needs to privilege man-woman marriage in order to make it worthwhile for men to enter into marriages. Otherwise, men are congenitally inclined to wander away, and then the wife falls into the arms of the welfare state, which grows government, the very thing libertarianism wants to reduce.

I will never donate to a party that promotes abortion. And I consider drugs a societal danger. You may consider Amsterdam a paradise on earth, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Still, a libertarian regime might be more tolerant of Christians, all in all, than the socialist one we seem to headed to.

In either case, the old republic as we knew it is gone, it would seem.

Post-Election Reminders

Pastor Corey Widmer writes:

Reminder #1: Politics is not a Pass for Christian Discipleship

“Brian Roberts notes that political discourse is like the Vegas of Christianity – it’s that place where sin and indiscretion is winked at and excused. Hate speech, vitriolic language, childish names, caricaturing opposing viewpoints — just go on, Christian, your sin is excused here.

“Jesus doesn’t live in Vegas. Please friends, this is inexcusable.”