Fiction, Reviews

‘Kristin Lavransdatter: The Cross,’ by Sigrid Undset

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Surely she had never asked God for anything except that He should let her have her will. And every time she had been granted what she asked for—for the most part. Now here she sat with a contrite heart—not because she had sinned against God but because she was unhappy that she had been allowed to follow her will to the road’s end.

So it is done at last. I have completed yet another reading of Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter – volume 3, The Cross. Tiina Nunnaly’s translation this time.

It’s a little like completing a long mountain hike, I guess. There’s more than one point where you pause along the path and think about how far you have to go, and sometimes you do get tired. Yet that’s just part of the experience, what you go through to enjoy the clear air and the spectacular views.

In case you’re not familiar with the story, the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy begins with our young heroine, the beautiful daughter of doting parents in 14th Century Norway, rejecting the dull young man they betrothed her to, and running off with a handsome, dashing knight.

In the following two books, she has to live with the consequences. Erlend, her husband, is not a prudent man. He leaves the management of their farm to others (often to Kristin herself) to involve himself in political intrigues, which in the end lose him his ancestral estate. In this book, they have retired to Kristin’s home farm, where Erlend is resented by the neighbors. Sigrid’s chief concern is transferred to their seven sons, and she learns the torments that accompany parenthood. Meanwhile, the Hound of Heaven is always pursuing her.

There’s exquisite irony in watching Sigrid, as she passes through the stages of life, first inspired by romantic ballads, then compared to a ballad, and finally seeing her son inspire a ballad of his own through his misguided actions.

Read Kristin Lavransdatter, and you’ll come to know Kristin better than you know a lot of your friends and family. In a sense, the trilogy is a soap opera – but it’s what soap operas aspire to be; a deep, unwavering examination of the human soul in its glory and its weakness. The scenery descriptions are vivid and immersive. It’s also a paeon to the grace of God.

Not light reading, but highly recommended.

Music

Advent Singing: Break Forth, O Beauteous Heav’nly Light

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Advent starts today, and I think my hymn selections this month will lean into Christmas Day songs more than proper Advent songs. I may need to study the subject. The Trinity Hymnal has six hymns under Advent versus thirty-four under Christ’s birth. So, today’s hymn is a gorgeous carol the angel’s announcement and the awesome reality of what happens on Christmas, which is Christ’s first advent.

“Break Forth, O Beauteous Heav’nly Light” was written by Johann von Rist (1607-1667), a Lutheran pastor and prolific hymnist in the Hamburg area, in 1641. This translation comes from Englishman John Troutbeck (1832-1899).

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth (1 John 1:5–6 ESV).

1 Break forth, O beauteous heav’nly light,
and usher in the morning.
O shepherds, shrink not with affright,
but hear the angel’s warning:
this child, now weak in infancy,
our confidence and joy shall be,
the pow’r of Satan breaking,
our peace eternal making.

2 Break forth, O beauteous heav’nly light,
to herald our salvation.
He stoops to earth, the God of might,
our hope and expectation.
He comes in human flesh to dwell,
our God with us, Immanuel,
the night of darkness ending,
our fallen race befriending.

Fiction, Publishing, Writing

Gazing into the creative abyss

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Should I share negative thoughts about my own books on this blog? Is it acceptable to indulge in self-criticism, or should the tone be relentlessly rah-rah and self-promotional?

Oh heck, that ship sailed long ago.

I’m working on formatting The Ghost of the God-Tree, the second part of The Year of the Warrior, for paperback. I’m not saying it’s bad. It’s got some strong stuff in it.

But I think it’s among my weakest books. There are lots of things I’d change, if I didn’t feel obligated to keep the editions relatively uniform.

And I’m pretty sure why.

I am very grateful to Baen Books, and to Jim Baen the maverick publisher, who gave me what little legitimacy in the industry I possess.

But Jim had a system. A program for his authors. And into that program I did not fit well.

Jim felt that nothing contributed more to an author’s success than having a bunch of books with his name on them all together on the shelves in the bookstores. This worked for him again and again. He knew his business. In order to achieve that shelf-space goal, he wanted several books from his new authors, quick. That’s why I got a three-book deal.

The problem is, I’m not a fast writer. I’ll admit that some of my languid output is due to laziness and inattention. Fair enough, mea culpa. But regardless of that, it just takes me a while, and many drafts, to produce decent prose. It took me years to produce Erling’s Word, the first part of the book. The Ghost of the God-Tree was written in haste, and suffers from my parental neglect.

On the other hand, judging by history, I’m probably being a little over-critical here.

And there are parts I like. I enjoyed the section where Ailill (Aillil) and Asta go to Thor’s country and meet the god himself. I thought that was kind of fun.

Poetry

“Let me not waste the days You’ve given me.”

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Bethel McGrew offers a poem for Thanksgiving that begins this way:

Let me not waste the days You’ve given me.
The mornings I might sleep away, the nights
When all my fears are all that I can see,
Trapped in the glow of flickering blue lights.

She notes our Internet-driven fears and her personal ones, asking the Lord to revive her with His goodness.

Let me believe that this, my grateful prayer
Is not in vain. Lord, let me not despair.

Uncategorized

Pump up your pumpkin pie

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Every few years, I like to perform the public service of providing my mother’s pumpkin pie recipe, which is now known in the family as “my” pumpkin pie recipe. But I don’t mind taking false credit, since I’m pretty sure Mom got it from somebody else in the first place.

I took time from my busy work schedule and madcap whirl of social obligations this morning to make pies for our family gathering tomorrow, at an undisclosed location. The picture above is not those pies; it’s a picture I took of a long-departed pie pair from a bygone year. But they are enough, they will suffice; I did not make any notable innovations.

The thing about this recipe – WHICH IS REALLY SIMPLE – is that it produces a more nuanced pie. There are people out there, I understand, who like the traditional pies with their in-your-face, extreme, street-level pumpkin spice flavor. If you’re one of those, God bless you. Enjoy your gustatory shock.

But if you like things a little more gentle, here’s what you do:

  1. Follow all the instructions on the can of pumpkin pie filling. All brands work equally well, in my experience.
  2. Instead of the two eggs called for in the recipe, make it seven (7). YES! SEVEN EGGS! DEFY CONVENTION!
  3. Pour the resulting mixture into two (2) deep dish pie crusts.
  4. Bake as instructed.

What you get is two (2) delicately flavored, custardy pies.

Enjoy.

And if you think of it, pray for whatever long-dead lady in Kenyon, Minnesota Mom lifted this recipe from.

Publishing

The Year of the Paperback

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My writing time lately – as I guess I’ve already told you – is devoted to getting my books, previously only available in e-book form, into paperback on Amazon. All my Erling books have been done now, except for two. One is The Baldur Game, the last, still waiting for its cover art. The other is The Year of the Warrior. TYOTW is still published electronically by Baen Books (my toehold on legitimacy). And I’ve also been having the book printed privately (with Baen’s agreement) for hand sale at Viking events and lectures. But I’ve decided it’ll be a better deal – and cheaper – to get it done by Amazon like the others.

No doubt there will be last-minute technical problems explaining the dual publication to the Amazon people. But I’ll cross that cognitive bridge when I get to it.

So here I am, reading the book pretty much for the first time in a quarter of a century.

Am I a great writer? One likes to think so. I like to imagine I’ll be discovered by posterity, even posthumously.

Some parts I like very much. I think that when I’m on my game I’m very good. I think I do a good job at high dramatic scenes – I actually sometimes give myself the shivers, which is a little like tickling yourself.

And sometimes I do dialogue pretty well. When I’m not being preachy – though I’m not as preachy as I feared. Most of the time.

Plotting is my weakness, as far as I can tell. Sometimes I think my plot points are kind of contrived.

And I made one large historical error – I had Erling hold his local Thing at his own farm, which (I’ve learned since) was never done. Things were always held at a distance from the chieftain’s home, to prevent undue influence on his part (which in fact occurs in the scene as I wrote it).

Nothing to be done about that now. Another discussion point for future Walker scholars.

Greetings, fans of the future. I greet you from Eternity.

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My musical sins

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I have been, for the last couple weeks, a very dull boy (that’s what the journalists call a “dog bites man story”). My life has consisted of translating, reading, and some noodling on the internet for a break now and then. OK, I do sleep. I go to the gym 3 or 4 times a week, and I get up early to work on my novel-formatting 6 days a week. But basically, not much variety.

This morning I was looking for my Amazon Fire tablet. Couldn’t find it anywhere. I was going out to lunch (Perkins) and I wanted to read while eating, as is my wont. Well, I also have a Kindle reader, which I keep for emergencies (and for the inevitable day when the Fire burns out, because they never last long), so I pulled my book (the third volume of Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset) up on the Kindle. But I stopped at the gym on the way to Perkins, to see if I’d left the Fire there. They didn’t have it.

Long story short, at the restaurant I came up with a vague memory of putting the Fire down among the junk on the dining room table this morning. And behold, when I got home, there it sat, like a friend left off the guest list.

Which provoked thoughts about growing old and forgetful.

So let’s suppress that thought. How about an excursion into my murky past? I mentioned my college musical group a while back and somebody (I don’t think there was more than one) asked how our music could be heard. I answered – with some relief – that our stuff has been mercifully lost in the detritus of the analogue recording age.

And then one of my old friends posted the YouTube video above. Somebody – for some reason – has acquired our two albums and posted one song from each. The other one is disqualified for my purposes because I neither wrote it nor sing in it.

The song I posted above, “Elizabeth to Me,” is not characteristic of our output, being not religious, but a plain love song. The melody was written by my friend Chuck Pedersen. He asked me to give it lyrics. He wanted to have it addressed to his girlfriend Beth (who later joined the group and, even later, married him). The lead vocalist on this recording is yours truly. I don’t like it much – my voice seems to me uneven and weak. However, the song as a whole is, I think, not much worse than a lot of songs that became big hits in those fuzzy-minded days.

Anyway, you wanted one of our songs; here it is. You asked for it, as the judge said to the man sentenced to hang for attempted suicide.

Music

Sunday Singing: We Gather Together to Ask the Lord’s Blessing

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Today’s Thanksgiving hymn is “We Gather Together,” a 1625 anonymous song, translated from the Dutch anthem “Wilt heden nu treden” by Theodore Baker. The melody is a popular sixteenth-century Dutch folk tune.

“… for the LORD your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory” (Deut 20:4 ESV).

  1. We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
    He chastens and hastens his will to make known;
    The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
    Sing praises to his name; he forgets not his own.
  2. Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
    Ordaining, maintaining his kingdom divine;
    So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
    Thou, Lord, wast at our side; all glory be thine!
  3. We all do extol thee, thou leader triumphant,
    And pray that thou still our defender wilt be.
    Let thy congregation escape tribulation;
    Thy name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!
Fiction, Reviews

Cozy, Irish Lit: Small Things Like These

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Sheila had written the shortest letter, asking plainly for Scrabble, providing no alternative. They decided on a spinning globe of the world for Grace, who wasn’t sure what she wanted but had written out a long list. Loretta was not in two minds: if Santa would please bring Enid Blyton’s Five Go Down to the Sea or Five Run Away Together or both, she was going to leave a big slice of cake out for him and hide another behind the television.

Claire Keegan’s 2021 novella, Small Things Like These, is a story about Bill Furlong, a hard-working father of five girls. He’s the man who keeps his 1980s Irish town, New Ross, warm, selling timber, coal, anthracite, and slack. It’s honest work that puts a roof over your head, though the windows may be drafty. He regularly remembers his childhood as the son of a single woman who worked for a kindly widow. Surely, he thinks, someone in town knows who his father is, if by nothing else than a strong resemblance. But no one has even suggested a possibility.

With the Christmas holidays coming and typical last-minute fuel orders to fulfill, Furlong makes a delivery that raises significant questions about his role as a man and member of the community.

I don’t know why I love Irish things. I think half of my family hails from Ulster, which probably means they were Scottish, but something provoked me as a teenager to define myself as being half-Irish (in the loose way many Americans talk about their heritage). All that to say, Keegan’s novella had cozy moments in both the Christmas atmosphere and the Irish dialogue. I found those pages nostalgic somehow. I bought the book wondering if the whole story would be that way.

No, this is a sparing, literary work that captures a few days of Bill Furlong’s life. He’s a man of few words, so a brief story like this fits him, leaving us with a good impression of him and perhaps the same questions he has. I don’t want to spoil the book by articulating those questions, but I will say they are relatively timeless and fit with the Christmas story, just as the title echoes the primary theme: “inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me” (Mt 25:40 NKJV).

Photo by Dahlia E. Akhaine on Unsplash

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Eviction of Hope,’ ed. by Colin Conway

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I have enjoyed Colin Conway’s 509 series, detective novels set in the Spokane, Washington area. When the story collection, The Eviction of Hope, showed up, I realized I hadn’t read one of the books in a while, so I got this one.

The concept (based on a real-world situation) is that “The Hope,” a residential hotel, once a grand place but now home to transients and drug addicts, is being sold for gentrification. That means the residents, some of them hard-luck civilians, others low-level criminals, are being thrown out onto the streets. Author Conway gathered a group of established crime writers to imagine some of the stories of those dispossessed people.

I am of two minds about the stories in this book. They are well-written. Several of them grabbed me.

However, most of them are downers. One, in particular, involves a Christian woman who disappoints us morally.

All in all, The Eviction of Hope was depressing but well done.

Cautions for language and mature situations.