Religion

Really dynamic equivalence

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Here’s an oddity, and pretty much up my alley. Tip: Grim’s Hall.

I think I’ve mentioned before how I’ve gradually been won over, at least tentatively, to the view that the original Viking raids against England, particularly the one against Lindisfarne (793 AD), may have been intended as a preemptive attack, in order to send a message to the Emperor Charlemagne. This would have been because Charlemagne, at the Battle of Verden (782) forcibly baptized the defeated Saxons, and (probably) massacred them, an action that Denmark (understandably) considered provocative.

Under the rule of the Franks, the Saxons were formally Christianized. In order to teach them the gospel, Frankish missionaries did something both interesting and questionable. They “translated” the Gospel story into Germanic epic form, in a work known as the Heliand. (I actually have a friend who’s been raving about this poem for years, but I’ve never read it myself.)

We’ve wrung our hands recently over a New Testament translation that caters to Muslim sensibilities. But those changes pale compared to the alterations the Franks made, in order to put Christ’s story into a form that would be intelligible to Germanic warriors.

Having been thoroughly ‘Saxonised’, Christ becomes a warrior, the towns of ancient Israel become ‘hill forts’ and the three wise men become warriors and thanes. John the Baptist is called a ‘soothsayer’ and the Lord’s Payer [sic] apparently contains ‘secret runes’. When Christ leaves the wedding at Cana, the Heliand says that

‘Christ, the most powerful of kings decided to go to Capharnaum, the great hill fort, with his followers. His forces of good men, his happy warrior company assembled in front of him’

Read all about it here.

Uncategorized

Ronald McDonald, matchmaker

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Originally broadcast on a Twin Cities TV station, this story comes from Neatorama. The McDonald’s in question is about three miles from my house.

Fifty years ago, then 16-year-old Steve Rydberg was working at a local

McDonald’s. Since he worked at the grill, his co-workers developed a code

to let him know whenever a cute girl walked in the restaurant.

Here’s a wonderful story of how Steve met his true love back then and

how he surprised his wife on her birthday fifty years later at the same

McDonald’s:

Fiction, Reviews

The Untamed, by Max Brand

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Dan was laughing. At least that chuckling murmur was near to a laugh. Yet there was no mirth in it. It had that touch of the maniacal in it which freezes the blood. Silent halted in the midst of his rush, with his hands poised for the next blow. His mouth fell agape with an odd expression of horror as Dan stared up at him. That hideous chuckling continued. The sound defied definition. And from the shadow in which Dan was crouched, his brown eyes blazed, changed, and filled with yellow fires.

If the passage above, taken from Max Brand’s novel The Untamed, seems a little turgid to you, I am in agreement. The book was free for Kindle, and I’d never read any Brand, so I thought I’d give him a try. I don’t think I’m going to be a fan. The prose is labored, and dialogue (though the slang is probably authentic, since the author actually worked as a cowboy for a while) clunks like a counterfeit double eagle.

And yet… considering how literary tastes change, I could see how this could have been an extremely popular book in its time. There’s a mythic quality to it, especially toward the climax, where the image of a mysterious rider in the dark, whistling a weird melody as he approaches with death in his hands, evokes a scene that could have inspired Sergio Leone. Continue reading The Untamed, by Max Brand →

Bookselling

Certain Words Need Not Apply

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Banned Books Week We’ve talked about censorship here before. We’ve noted often that when a government stops a book from being printed or distributed, that’s censorship, but when a parent complains about the appropriateness of a book for her child, that’s not. We hope parents are actually morally and reasonably when they question some of the recommended reading at school. Doesn’t always happen, of course. Recently a teacher was investigated by school and community law enforcement because a parent complained that Ender’s Game is pornographic. Help us.

BTW, you can buy Ender’s Game (with cool cover art) here.

But we usually don’t talk about bookstores that won’t sell perfectly good books because of one or more select words. Caryn Rivadeneira writes about a few of these examples, particularly an argument author Rachel Held Evens had with her publisher. In short, Thomas Nelson wouldn’t let her use the word vagina.

Rivadeneira notes the difficulties. “They are businesses after all, and to be successful, businesses need to sell products their customers will read without getting up in arms. The problem with Vagina-gate and similar forms of “censorship” is that, in an attempt to protect customers, publishers and bookstores are making it a lot harder for writers to tell the stories God has called them to write. And when Christians are barred by other Christians from serving God, it dishonors God. In fact, it’s sin.”

I think she’s right.

BTW, you can pre-order Evans’ book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband Master, here.

Fiction, Reviews

The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association, by Loren D. Estleman

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I’ve always had a fondness for tales of early Hollywood. It was an amazing time and place in history, in a sense the culmination (as author Loren D. Estleman himself argues in this novel) of the American Wild West. There, in the dusty hills of sleepy Los Angeles, a dysfunctional aggregation of eastern Jewish businessmen, stage actors, vaudevillians, European artistes, and ordinary cowboys improvised like mad to create an art form that had never existed before, and so had no rules or traditions to which to appeal.

Loren D. Estleman is best known as a mystery novelist, but he also writes good westerns, and The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association contains elements of both genres. It’s a fun book, and I enjoyed it quite a lot.

Presented in the form of three long flashbacks, interspersed with vignettes describing the main character’s (and Hollywood’s) later history, TRMMPA tells the story of Dmitri Pulski, who when we meet him in 1913 is working for his father, an ice merchant with an operation in northern California. His father, who has received a huge order for ice from the titular Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association, has grave doubts about the likely solvency of such an enterprise (“Moving pictures are a fad,” he explains, “but people will always need ice.”). So he sends Dmitri south, along with a Russian immigrant co-worker, in a Model T to investigate. Continue reading The Rocky Mountain Moving Picture Association, by Loren D. Estleman →

Writing

How To Do a Review

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Maxine talks about book reviews after getting some criticism that her review was a plot summary, not a review. She says, “I find it hard to judge whether to read a book if ‘random reviewer’ states a view on the writing quality, the plot, etc, rather than giving the reader some degree of objective information (which I do not think is found in the official “blurb” of the book, as in crime fiction these blurbs tend to summarise key, late plot points and so remove suspense and even in some cases any point in reading the book).”

So, plot summary or review?

The Press

It’s True, Despite Lies

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What is truth outside of the facts? If someone writes a memoir describing his remarkable experiences, drawing from these profound truths about the world, do people not treat this differently than a novel? If it is learned that his experiences were completely fabricated, do we not see the book in a completely different light? And if an author writes fiction but claims it is fact, is he not appealing to the evidence of reality which he can’t do in a novel? He is, and yet some will still argue that his intentions outweigh his lies.

Mike Daisey has a one-man show called, The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. Mike D’Virgilio writes, “Daisey conveys his experiences on a visit to China of seeing the allegedly deplorable working conditions in Apple’s production facilities. It turns out much of what he speaks about in his theatrical monologue and on the ‘This American Life’ episode about it, never happened.” That liberals will defend this non-factual account which purports to get at the truth is typical of them, D’Virgilio argues.

Kudos to Ira Glass for rejecting lies presented as truth.

Fiction

Christians Are Starting to Make Good Movies

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“The aggregate product coming out of Hollywood is something that can be deeply offensive to people like myself, and I think Christians have sat back. … Now we’re realizing instead we need to engage, and we need to make quality work,” says Jon Erwin, director of October Baby, currently in theaters.