Myth-making

A while back I was contacted by a young man named Colin Cutler, a student at Patrick Henry College. It had been suggested to him that I might be willing to serve as his mentor in a student writing project. He wanted to write a mythic treatment of the Christian gospel, in Anglo-Saxon/Viking style.

I agreed to help, and gave him some pointers as he produced a very worthwhile story, The Ward of Heaven and The Wyrm in the Sea.

Recently he has published the story in book form, and he asked me to write an Introduction. You can read my Introduction below the fold. Continue reading Myth-making

The Ale Boy’s Feast, by Jeffrey Overstreet

Puzzle, puzzle. What to say about The Ale Boy’s Feast, the final book in Jeffrey Overstreet’s remarkable fantasy tetralogy, The Auralia Thread?

I have highly praised the author’s writing skill and creative imagination, and I stand by those evaluations. Overstreet is a writer of rare ability, and he has created an unforgettable world, familiar enough to be recognizable but different enough to be exotic and evocative.

Yet the whole thing works out to a resolution that leaves me… troubled.

Maybe I’m just not smart enough to get the point.

Or maybe leaving me troubled was the point. Continue reading The Ale Boy’s Feast, by Jeffrey Overstreet

It’s Your Fear; What Will You Do With It?

Paul Tripp writes about handling our fears: “Own your fear and run to the only one who can defeat it. Confess that you don’t always remember his presence and glory. Confess those places where you assess situations as if he didn’t exist. Own the fact that you often love your comfort more than you love his glory. Confess that you are sometimes more in awe of people than of him.”

Stand-up Thomas

My thoughts, for some reason, wandered to the apostle Thomas today, a guy who’s had the bad luck to be remembered primarily for the weakest moment of his life. Hence his lasting nickname, “Doubting Thomas.”

If you’re one of our younger readers, it’s fairly likely you don’t know who I’m talking about. So I’ll share a short passage from the Gospel of John, just after the resurrected Jesus has appeared to His apostles (John 20:24-29):

Now Thomas (called Dydymus¹), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Countless preachers have railed about Thomas’s doubting, but what’s impressed me about the story has always been Jesus’s graciousness. I have the feeling that if a medieval writer had composed the story, he’d have had Jesus appear in a blast of lightning, striking Thomas deaf, dumb and blind. Then he’d have Jesus declare, “Woe to him that doubteth. Those carnal senses in which he trusted, behold, they shall be taken from him forever, and he himself shall abide in eternal fire.” Continue reading Stand-up Thomas

On the Notion Club Papers

This is a remarkable way of writing. Most writers know roughly what they mean in their first draft, and in the process of revising and re-drafting they try to get closer to that known meaning. But Tolkien did the reverse: he generated the first draft, then looked at it as if that draft had been written by someone else, and he was trying to understand what it meant – and in this case eventually deciding that it meant something pretty close to the opposite of the original meaning.

I am a Tolkien fan, but not a Tolkien acolyte. Aside from the standard texts, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, I’ve read The Silmarillion and a few other writings, but I never made it through The Book of Lost Tales, and I’ve never even tried The History of Middle Earth.

Prof. Bruce Charlton is hard core. I was directed to his blog, Tolkien’s The Notion Club Papers, by our friend Dale Nelson, who has been in correspondence with him. Dale sent me a file of Prof. Charlton’s long blog post, A Companion to JRR Tolkien’s The Notion Club Papers, which I read with some interest. You can find it at the blog right here and judge for yourself. Continue reading On the Notion Club Papers

Link sausage, 8-8-12

A couple links via Neatorama:

A Japanese company has adopted a radical strategy for success in a world where Japan is rapidly disappearing, as an economic force and as a culture. They do business exclusively in English:

The country has both a dread of English and an understandable attachment to its own ornate business customs. Those idiosyncrasies made Japan a bewildering but envied powerhouse during its economic boom. They now make Japan a poor match, experts say, for global business.

Mikitani took a step few other companies here have dared because, he said, he thought it would help his company expand and thrive. He also wanted to prove a point — that the Japanese, counter to the stereotype, could embrace the risks and embarrassment that come with learning a foreign language.

In another part of the world, a group of masked bandits in armor robbed a French/German Renaissance Faire:

A bunch of people dressed as knights and armed with a sword and an axe forgot to look up the definition of knight. They robbed the organizers of a medieval festival and stole $25,000. Yeah, they’ve apparently been learning knighthood from the likes of Jaime Lannister.

They needed this Englishman (not from Neatorama)–a man who has lived out the not-so-secret fantasy of every historical reenactor:

A Civil War re-enactment enthusiast used the battle skills he learned playing a Cavalier to disarm a knife-wielding robber.

Alf Thompson, 60, sprang into action when the thug threatened to slash a shop assistant’s throat.

Mr Thompson, a member of the Sealed Knot, grabbed the robber’s hand and dragged him over the shop counter.

The grandfather wrenched the knife from the man’s hand and then pinned him to the counter while the shopkeeper dialled 999.

During the brawl, the masked robber drew a second knife – but Mr Thompson disarmed him again before pinning him to the floor and waiting for police.

Someday you’ll read about me doing something similar.

The story will be accompanied by my death notice, of course.

It will be worth it.

Critiquing David Barton’s History

David Barton of WallBuilders is a big name among public speakers and authors who teach on our nation’s founding fathers and the soul of America. His latest book, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, is being harshly criticized by historians who usually agree with his conclusions. World Magazine reports:

Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President (Salem Grove Press), argues that Barton “is guilty of taking statements and actions out of context and simplifying historical circumstances.” For example, they charge that Barton, in explaining why Jefferson did not free his slaves, “seriously misrepresents or misunderstands (or both) the legal environment related to slavery.”

In response, Barton says he cites his sources extensively so that critics can take up their arguments in their original context.

Electwic Twain

Somebody shared this on Facebook, and I thought it was just the thing for a book blog. The only known footage of author Mark Twain, taken by Thomas Edison in 1909.

Somebody noted in the comments that both Twain and his daughter Jean would be dead within a year.

What do we learn from this fragment? Well, Mark Twain walked a little funny. Also, Thomas Edison was a better inventor than cinematographer. Didn’t it occur to him that the middle daughter’s face, in the second scene, is mostly hidden behind that samovar, or whatever the thing is? Then she puts on a big hat, and we can’t even see her hair. Frame the shot, Tom!