I started thinking up something to write today, but I decided at last that it was too depressing and demoralizing to inflict on you. Judging by my behavior over at Facebook, I’m not fit for company.
Losing the Election
Marvin Olasky describes how last night’s presidential election (and many others) began to be lost about 50 years ago. Here’s one strong point:
Twenty years ago, as the advent of talk radio left many conservatives thinking they had a weapon adequate to overcome the influences of liberal newspapers and news magazines. That proved untrue, because those print publications still do the original reporting and storytelling that frames national debates.
That’s what we see in the current reporting on what happened in Benghazi and everything related to Muslims in the news. That’s what we see in the established process for candidate debates (“Mr. Ryan, should women be afraid of your election?”). That’s what we see in the reporting on government spending, budget modifications, fiscal cliff, etc.
I stopped listening to NPR over the summer when they used the news on Pixar’s Brave to deride the idea of princesses and ask a homosexual entertainer, who I think goes by the name Princess, to expand on being a princess means. I turned it on the other day to hear them pass lightly over a colonel’s criticism of the grossly irresponsible handling of our Libyan embassy’s defenses to focus on what he believed was miscommunication from the Marines on the ground.
We live in an infoworld today. Our kings or kingmakers are the information keepers.
Decision day!
Today, America, it is your duty and honor to make what will be perhaps the most important choice of our lifetimes.
No, not that political race. Most of you, being upright citizens, have probably cast your votes in that one already.
No, I’m talking about the solemn and portentous decision as to what the cover of my next novel will be like.
As you know if you’ve been around here, I’ve gone to e-publishing, with the generous assistance of our friend Ori Pomerantz, who does the technical publishing stuff, and Phil Wade of this blog, who designs the covers. (You can see my previous masterwork, Troll Valley, here.)
The new book is another Erling Skjalgsson novel, and I call it Hailstone Mountain. It’s a sort of H. Rider Haggard-esque story, centering on a lost civilization high in the mountains of Norway. We’ve been brainstorming it and have gone through a few versions. Here’s one. The background is a photo I took during my last trip to Norway. It’s a famous place in Romsdal called Trollveggen (Troll Wall). The people in front are members of my Viking group, the Viking Age Club and Society of the Sons of Norway.
What Would the Founders Think?
What would our founding fathers think of today, Election Day 2012? Author Ron Chernow talks about it:
Washington did take public opinion into account. In fact, during his first term as president he made a tour of the Northern states and a tour of the Southern states because he wanted to hear what people had to say about the Constitution and the new government. So, he wasn’t oblivious to public opinion, but it wasn’t a situation where you had poll numbers on an almost hourly basis that you’re consulting.
…
People might disagree with him, and they certainly did, but they never felt that they would be betrayed by him. There was an extraordinary sense with all of the early presidents of authenticity, that is, what you saw was what you got. These were not people capable of that kind of guile. That mystic bond I don’t sense with either Obama or Romney.
Author Jon Meacham also answered the question what Jefferson would think about modern elections: “Let’s stipulate that this is an unknowable question. That said, Jefferson loved big political fights, and while he often said he disliked controversy, in many ways political strife was the air he breathed. So he’d enjoy this dash to the finish.”
Sound of Blood, by Lawrence De Maria
I’m half ready to become a big fan of Lawrence De Maria just on the basis of having read Sound of Blood. The other half is ready to cast him into utter darkness for a couple mistakes that seemed to me bush league.
The story concerns Jake Scarne, a New York private eye with military and police experience. Jake is no Philip Marlowe, smoking a lonely cigarette in a seedy office. Jake recently moved into the big leagues. He has a nice office, a beautiful secretary, an expensive apartment, and a babe-magnet car. He’s approached by a wealthy man named Sheldon Shields, who believes his son Josh has been murdered. Josh was a reporter working on a story about a mysterious Australian business tycoon, Victor Ballantrae. Jake’s investigations lead him into a world of corruption, violence, and sex. They also introduce him to Alana Loeb, Ballantrae’s associate, a beautiful, seductive, dangerous, yet strangely sympathetic character. Continue reading Sound of Blood, by Lawrence De Maria
Feedback for the Professor
From the Bulletin of the New York C.S. Lewis Society’s July/August 2012 issue: In an article entitled “Between Friends,” Pastor Mark Koonz provides extracts from reminiscences by George Sayer (who wrote the Lewis biography, Jack), in which he recounts a visit by J.R.R. Tolkien to his home in the summer of 1952. Tolkien was depressed, having had his The Lord of the Rings manuscript rejected by several publishers.
To entertain him in the evening I produced a tape recorder (a solid early Ferrograph that is still going strong). He had never seen one before and said whimsically that he ought to cast out any devil that might be in it by recording a prayer, the Lord’s Prayer in Gothic, one of the extinct languages of which he was a master.
He was delighted when I played it back to him and asked if he might record some of the poems in The Lord of the Rings to find out how they sounded to other people. The more he recorded, the more he enjoyed recording and the more his literary self-confidence grew. Continue reading Feedback for the Professor
Poetry and Memorization
Professor Hunter Bakers writes, “It is interesting to read about education in the 19th century. One encounters a former emphasis on memorization and recitation. I suppose that method is considered inadequate now and we have moved well past it.”
I think memorizing is important. It’s recommended in the Trivium at early ages, because kids like to rattle off quotes. They are little parrots at that age.
77 Shadow Street, by Dean Koontz
One thing that can be said for Dean Koontz is that he likes to mix it up. His characters may tend to look similar (as what author’s don’t?), but he likes to experiment with his stories. 77 Shadow Street, I think, is unusual among his books in featuring quite a large cast of characters and constantly jumping the point of view from one to another. I wish I could say I thought the experiment was a great success, but I wouldn’t call it a total failure either.
77 Shadow Street is the address of an exclusive residential apartment building, something like the Dakota in Manhattan, home to a number of wealthy and/or famous people. They include a drunken ex-senator, a stock broker with military experience, a single mother who writes hit country songs, a female novelist raising an autistic daughter, a retired lawyer, a working hit man, a famous geneticist, and others. When they first begin to notice strange phenomena in their building—lights, vibrations, and strangers appearing and disappearing in antique clothing—they aren’t alarmed at first. Until the whole building is transported into a future time where the world is depopulated and strange life forms stalk the hallways, intent on turning them all into something other than human. Continue reading 77 Shadow Street, by Dean Koontz
Reformation Day, 2012
Personal note: I told you a while back that the Viking Age Club and Society of the Sons of Norway, my reenactment group, was being considered as the subject of a reality TV show. We got the final word today that the production company has not been able to find a buyer for the project. So that’s that.
I told another member a while back that my feelings on the whole thing were mixed. For my own sake, I’d like it to happen so I’d get exposure for my novels. But for the sake of the young people in our group (and we have a fair number now), I hoped it wouldn’t happen. Because fame in your youth is one of the worst disasters that can happen to you.
All for the best, then.
Today is Reformation Day, so as the Lutheran caucus of this blog, I think I ought to say something about it.
I direct you to this post at Anthony Sacramone’s Strange Herring blog, if you have a taste for tall grass theology. Anthony is underappreciated as a theologian, and I think he nails the point of the discussion.
In overview:
It starts with a link to a post from Russell Saltzman, a Lutheran pastor, over at First Things. He considers a recent article by Carl Braaten, a noted theologian of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Braaten sees no reason why Lutherans should not be allowed to commune in Roman Catholic churches, giving a long list of things that Lutherans and Catholics now agree on. Saltzman, taking exception, points out that women’s ordination is a serious and sufficient disagreement.
Then, in the comments, a Catholic priest points out further, more fundamental differences in how Lutherans and Catholics understand the very nature of the church.
Finally, Anthony himself notes that all this still misses the point. He expounds a number of differences from the Lutheran point of view. Especially in terms of the doctrine of justification.
I agree with him entirely.
But what amazes me is that, as a conservative Lutheran, I even agree with the Catholic priest far more than with the ELCA theologian. I far prefer an honorable opponent to a shifty ally.
I think Luther would have agreed.
Many Literary Critics Are Vampires
Columnist Ruth Dudley Edwards joined a panel discussion on Bram Stoker’s Dracula and was reminded what she hates about the fruitcakes who populate many humanities departments. “Now, it’s not that I don’t know that the wilder fringes of academia are populated by the ignorant, mad or just silly: indeed several of my crime novels are savage about the lunacies of humanities departments. But every time I revisit that world it’s the sheer stupidity and tunnel vision that gets me cross.” (via Books, Inq.)