More Odd, Less Gore

August 1, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

Last night as I was getting ready to turn in, I turned on Dennis Miller’s talk show, which is delay-broadcast here. A married couple was sitting in for him (I forget their names), and they announced that their next guest would be their friend Dean Koontz, to talk about his new novel, Odd Apocalypse.

I listened to the interview and took the book’s release date, my birthday, as a sign from heaven that I was meant to buy it now, and not wait for a lower price when the paperback comes out.

I’ll review it soon.

In other literary news, Gore Vidal has died.

They say you should speak no ill of the dead.

I have nothing more to say.

Religion

Mary, Mary

July 31, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

Today, by coincidence, is my birthday. Oddly enough, it fell on the exact same date last year. I wonder if that qualifies me for a Guinness World Record.

A dear friend bought me a steak dinner after work. Unfortunately, that dear friend was myself, but we didn’t let that spoil the festivities.

I came up with a question in my Bible reading the other day, and wondered if any of our erudite readers know the answer to it.

I was reading the account of the Resurrection in Luke 24:10, where it talks about the women who went to the tomb on Sunday morning, found it empty, and reported it to the disciples. “It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.”

There’s a parallel passage in Mark 16:1: “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body.”

There’s also an earlier reference to this woman in Mark 15:40: “Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.”

So here’s what I’m wondering. Scholars have pondered this previously unmentioned Mary, one among so many Marys who keep popping up in the gospels. Has it ever occurred to anybody to argue that this Mary might actually be Mary the mother of the Lord?

We know that the Lord had a brother named James, who became the head of the Jerusalem church. And an otherwise unmentioned brother named Joses (perhaps named after his father Joseph) isn’t unthinkable. If you’re Catholic you’d insist that the Virgin Mary wasn’t the mother of James, but the stepmother. But she could still be called his mother informally.

Why doesn’t it say, “Mary, the mother of the Lord?” I don’t know. Modesty? Fear of the authorities?

Another objection would be that James, the Lord’s brother, has traditionally been called James the Elder (I think) rather than James the Younger. My theory would require that tradition to be wrong.

Catholics probably wouldn’t take to this idea, though I might point out that it would give a biblical foundation to all those “Pieta” statues.

But my main question is, has anyone suggested this before? Or is it too dumb for anyone to have suggested before?

Fiction, Reviews

The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins

July 27, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

You can generally tell when my budget situation is getting tight by the way I start reviewing “classic” books, downloaded for free to my Kindle. And so we come to one of the first English mystery novels, Wilkie Collins’s 1859 book, The Woman in White.

I enjoyed The Woman in White, but found it frustrating at the same time. The story’s compelling, the characters wonderful, but (although I think I’m better suited to handle old fiction than most readers today) I found the Victorian conventions aggravating. Also, like any pioneering work in a genre, the author isn’t entirely sure how to handle his material, and does things which later writers, working in an established tradition, would never waste time on.

The Woman in White centers on two women who physically resemble each other, leading to tragic consequences. The first is Anne Catherick, who, when the hero, artist Walter Hartright, first encounters her, has recently escaped from an insane asylum. Hartright, unaware of this, chivalrously helps her find her way in London. The second woman is Laura Fairlie, a prospective heiress for whom Walter is soon hired to be drawing tutor. He falls in love with her without delay. But Laura is betrothed to a man of “her own class,” who eventually turns out to be an utter scoundrel. And so the foundation is laid for a diabolical plot to deprive her of her fortune and (perhaps) her life. Continue reading The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins →

Fiction

I sing of Beowulf’s cousins

July 26, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

From the pulse-pounding world of statistical research, we have a story that says the Iliad and Beowulf and the Irish epic Tain Bo Cualinge are all literally true in every detail.

Ha, ha. No, they’re not saying that. What they’re saying, as best I understand it, is that the social relationships portrayed in those ancient epics are more realistic than those in modern fiction.

“Of the three myths, the network of characters in the Iliad has properties most similar to those of real social networks,” they write in the journal EPL (Europhysics Letters). “This similarity perhaps reflects the archaeological evidence supporting the historicity of some of the events (the tale describes).”

Similarly, the way the characters of Beowulf are linked together “has some properties similar to real social networks,” they write. This confirms the archaeological evidence that a number of the characters are based on real people, “although the events of the story often contain elements of fantasy.”

Because, apparently, even though modern fiction is considered more realistic in terms of how people really relate to each other, modern fiction also oversimplifies enormously.

Or maybe it’s just that ancient people had big families and were proud of it, while we today have small families and generally try to keep them out of sight.

I know that I oversimplify in my Viking novels. One of the things you can’t miss in the Icelandic sagas is all the genealogies (I made some jokes about it in West Oversea). These things mattered to the original audiences. They knew those farms and those families, and the affiliations mattered. I keep the relatives pretty much to a bare minimum in my stories, and even so I have to add character lists so the readers can keep their score cards straight.

In general, I don’t like novels with large casts. I lose track. “There will be fewer, and better Russians,” said Stalin, and I can only wish Tolstoy had said the same.

Tip: Threedonia

Uncategorized

Is It Really Plagiarism?

July 26, 2012 philwade Leave a comment

Here’s a lightly political topic on which I’d like your comments. William Bigelow accused President Obama of stealing his latest tagline, “We’re all in this together,” from Britain’s Labour Party leader. Read the short post and tell me if you think this should be consider plagiarism. The last example given, where Mr. Obama copies words from Deval Patrick, looks like plagiarism to me, but the tagline? I don’t know. This seems fair game to me, though it’s naturally opening yourself up for a shot like Bigelow’s post. I mean, if the new socialist president of France talks about wanting a country where “we’re all in this together,” I’d hope that connection would still harm any U.S. national politician, notwithstanding Dennis Kucinich.

Authors, Non-fiction

Hunter Baker Interview

July 26, 2012 philwade Leave a comment

Hunter Baker talks about the ideas in his latest book, Political Thought: A Student’s Guide (Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition), with Brad Jackson and Allysen Efferson of Coffee and Markets. Dr. Baker explains the publisher’s intent of the series and that wanted to write a political book anyone could read.

Uncategorized

Hurrah for Macbeth!

July 25, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

DATELINE Elgin, Moray—King Macbeth released a new campaign ad today, condemning his political opponents for taking his words out of context.

In the ad, he says, ‘When my opponents quote me as saying,

“I am in blood

Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

‘They are willfully misinterpreting the plain meaning of my words. Rather than admitting that I was guilty of killing King Duncan, I was talking about our corporate guilt, and the culture of violence which—sadly—prevails in contemporary Scotland, and which my opponents in fact encourage when they oppose my sensible and moderate spear control laws.’

Thinking about Macbeth today. I’ve always liked the play, even before I realized it was set in the Viking Age, and peripherally in the Viking world. I could put Macbeth in one of my Erling novels if I wanted to. They were contemporaries, though Macbeth was considerably younger.

You’re likely aware that Shakespeare’s play is a complete libel. Shakespeare was writing under King James I, who believed himself a descendent of Banquo. Which explains all the business with the witches telling Banquo he would “get kings” without himself becoming one.

The real Macbeth was a popular and successful king, almost to the end. He killed King Duncan (who was not an old man but a young one), not in bed, but honorably in battle. Contemporary accounts describe him as both “red” and “golden-haired.” Very likely, I suppose, he was strawberry blond. He was confident enough in the security of his throne to make a pilgrimage to Rome in 1050, during which he is reported to have given money to the poor “as if it were seed.” Continue reading Hurrah for Macbeth! →

Writing

Two ways of storytelling

July 24, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

Albert Anker: Der Grossvater erzählt eine Geschichte, 1884

A commenter was kind enough to leave his opinion on one of my reviews from a couple weeks back. (No, I won’t link to it. But I won’t delete it either.) He wasn’t happy with my comments on a certain novel. He said the novel talked about things he knew from first hand experience, and he’d found it a great story. My criticisms of the author’s writing style and use of words (if I understood his comment correctly) were out of line, in his opinion. Nobody cared about that stuff.

In a way I sympathize with him. There’s a difference between good writing and good storytelling. There are a number of well-regarded wordsmiths out there who can’t tell an interesting story to save their lives. And plenty of guys who’d keep you fascinated telling tales at a campfire, who couldn’t write a coherent sentence. There’s some injustice in the fact that the first group is considered superior to the second.

I’ve known a couple fellows myself, in my time, who could keep an audience mesmerized, even though they butchered the English language. They made good use of the verbal storyteller’s tools—intonation, facial expression, changes in volume, dramatic pauses, gestures. Continue reading Two ways of storytelling →

Brandywine Books

More Odd, Less Gore

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Mary, Mary

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The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins

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I sing of Beowulf’s cousins

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Is It Really Plagiarism?

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Hunter Baker Interview

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Hurrah for Macbeth!

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Two ways of storytelling

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