A hundred years ago in Vietnam, when the French controlled their education, Edgar Allan Poe was believed to be “America’s literary giant.” They were familiar with eerie stories of supernatural beings, which a long-standing Chinese genre gave them, so discovering Poe was like grandkids discovering Mam-ma.
“Poe’s name evoked liberation of the mind, and he was praised as someone who had ascended from the mundane by the power of imagination,” Nguyễn Bình writes for Literary Hub, offering several examples of Poe’s influence on the nation’s literature.
In 1937, author Thế Lữ began writing detective fiction. “In the story “Những nét chữ” (Letter Strokes), [Hanoi-based hero] Lê Phong told the Watson-like narrator: ‘The stuff about reading people’s thoughts from their faces like Edgar Poe and Conan Doyle said… I’m only more convinced that they’re true. Because I just did so.'” (via Prufrock)
A couple more links for today.
Ted Gioia says the big guys are out to get independent creators. For example, Apple is squeezing Patreon. Google says it can’t find select websites. It’s ugly. Gioia writes, “I’ve been very critical of Apple in recent months. But this is the most shameful thing they have ever done to the creative community. A company that once bragged how it supported artistry now actively works to punish it.”
And is this the best sci-fi classic most fans have missed? “Though it routinely ends up on best-of-all-time lists, somehow, the 1974 science fiction novel The Mote in God’s Eye never actually seems to get read.” A quick glance at the first of 2200 reviews on Goodreads suggests the book hasn’t aged well.
Photo: Dinneen Standard station, Cheyenne, Wyoming. (John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.)
I wanted to find some video of Sigrid Undset’s home, Bjerkebaek in Lillehammer, tonight. My translation of the Undset bio has gotten to the point where she’s an established literary figure, in a position to organize her life however she likes. One of the first things she did was to buy Bjerkebaek and remodel it in the style of a medieval farm.
But alas, the videos I found were either very short or in Norwegian without English subtitles. So I ended up looking for virtual tours of Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, which was also an important place to Undset, the Catholic convert. Her books include several journeys and pilgrimages there, a place where medieval Norwegians often went to pray at St. Olaf’s shrine.
I’m sure I’ve told you before that (according to my mother) one of my great-grandfathers worked as a laborer on the 19th century cathedral’s restoration. It needed restoration badly — centuries of Protestant neglect had left the place in pretty bad shape before National Romanticism inspired the population to want to see it the way it had once been.
I visited there on one of my Norway cruises, and have very pleasant memories of Trondheim and the cathedral. It was a beautiful day, and Trondheim is a beautiful town, laid out in a circular grid, like spokes in a wheel. To add to my pleasure, the archbishop’s palace (seen in this video) was hosting a medieval fair that day.
Brandywine Books is indeed your go-to venue for major publishing news! Today, for instance, I find this item, selected purely at random from among the many notices that flood our executive offices:
West Oversea is now available as an ebook on Amazon!
Granted, it was available on Amazon the day before yesterday, too. But in the interim I have worked my publishing magic. WO is no longer a Nordskog Publishing book, but part of my own burgeoning publishing empire.
Tomorrow I hope to get the paper version uploaded.
I may or may not make a splashy announcement about that. Depends on how slow the news day is.
Today was a big day for me for another reason. I finally found myself with a few hours I could call my own, and I went out and bought myself a new laptop. For years I’ve been bouncing from one cheap laptop to another; you may recall me kvetching a while back about how hard the letters on my keyboard were to read, and the fact that I couldn’t view the thumbnails of my saved photos. The keys on this one are white on black – and illuminated(!). And I can see the thumbnails just fine. Seems to have been a matter of digital memory or the flux capacitor or something. I am reveling in the snappy response and the vivid graphics.
Occasionally I get a brief respite in my life where my financial head is above water. This is one of those times. So I treated myself. A parsimonious man I am, son of a haywire farmer. Making a semi-large expenditure is a challenge. But I do use the contraption for work, I must insist.
My only complaint is that I couldn’t plug in the plug-in thing for my wireless mouse. Have they changed USB connectors that much since I bought the thing? I’ve got a replacement coming from Amazon; until then it’s the humble track pad for me.
I also bought a little tensor lamp to illuminate the Sigrid Undset biography I’m translating, so I can work more easily at night.
It’s all conspicuous consumption, I guess. I did, after all, grow up near the home of Thorstein Veblen.
What could be less interesting than a health post by a blogger?
Oh! Oh! I can answer that. A health post by an old blogger!
However – spoiler alert – I can promise you that it’s not a depressing story. You will not be required to feel sorry for me.
What happened was, on Friday night I had a Sons of Norway meeting. Then I came home, noodled on the ‘net a while, and then got ready for bed. As I brushed my teeth, I noticed a pain in my chest, on the left-hand side.
Inevitably, I thought about heart attacks.
As I went to bed, reading a chapter of the Bible and “composing my limbs for rest” as the Victorians used to put it, the pain continued. A sort of dull, tight pain like a ball up against my ribs.
One thinks interesting thoughts at such times. Not only, is this a heart attack? But is this a serious heart attack? Suppose I went to the emergency room, and it turned out to be just some kind of indigestion I’ve never felt before. Is it worth the embarrassment? Would that be more embarrassing than finding myself unnecessarily dead?
At last I figured I’d given the pain sufficient time to fade naturally. “I won’t be sleeping tonight anyway,” I thought at last. “I might as well take a book and wait in the emergency room.”
So I did that. I know you’re not supposed to drive yourself to the ER in such circumstances. But I didn’t feel like I was going to lose consciousness, and the hospital is only about a mile away.
I drove into the parking ramp. There were plenty of spots not far from the door. As I wandered through the building, I met a tall man, a security guard, who said, “How you doin’?” I said that remained to be seen. He stopped and took the time to tell me about the importance of having a positive attitude. I thanked him, and said, “God bless you.”
I have to give North Memorial Hospital credit for their triage system. I walked to the desk and told the woman there that I thought I might be having a heart attack. Within five minutes I was in a room with a technician, who was giving me an EKG. Very soon I learned that my heart rhythm was perfectly normal. The rest of the night would be low pressure – but sloooow.
They took some blood and said I’d have to wait for the results. I asked if I could go home. The technician looked at me oddly – as if to say, “Do you actually think we’d let you just come in and go home again? You can’t skip the most important part of the process – vegetating in our waiting room.”
Fortunately, I had come prepared. I’d brought my Kindle – and I mean the Paperwhite, not the Fire. The Paperwhite has a much longer battery life, and I had a suspicion I’d be needing it.
And I did. Surrounded by an ever-changing cast of silent, patient sufferers, I alternately read and dozed until about 5:30 AM. I wondered, often, if they’d forgotten about me. But at last I got called to a room where they told me I was fine and could go home, after signing the necessary papers.
I suppose a man’s first heart attack scare counts as a milestone in his life. Like every other living fossil, I need to remind myself several times a day that I’m actually an old man. Not even middle-aged. Bona fide old. I believe I’ve outlived three of my four grandparents. I’m overdue, in fact, for a heart attack scare. If you’re lucky, it’s a false alarm. I lucked out. It’s all good.
My Saturday was pretty much shot at that point. I got a little sleep. I ate some food. I tried to do some translation work, but my brain was fuzzy and my eyes wouldn’t focus.
I’m better now. But I feel I’ve turned a corner.
Such moments in our lives cause mortals to pause and assess their lives.
What occurs to me offhand is that I’m way behind schedule for my midlife crisis. I’ll have to make it an end-of-life crisis.
But I definitely need a sports car and young girlfriend.
Understanding, even as he thought it, that asking yourself, Why not? was usually the beginning of a bad decision, the first domino tipping over.
I like Lou Berney’s Shake Bouchon novels very much. The main problem with them is that he brings them out pretty slowly. So it was a pleasure when I saw that there was a new one available – Double Barrel Bluff. It’s an excellent, offbeat, dark comedy thriller.
Charles “Shake” Bouchon, our hero, is a former wheel man for the Armenian mob in Las Vegas. But he’s now married to Gina, a former pickpocket, and they’ve gone straight. Straight to Bloomington, Indiana, where they have square jobs and live a square life. Which they love.
Until one morning Shake finds himself accosted by an old enemy, Dikran Ghazarian, an Armenian thug the size and strength of an ox, with only a little more brains. To Shake’s astonishment, Dikran – who has often promised to murder him – does not want that today. He explains (after catching Shake) that Lexy Ilandryan, the woman leader of the Armenian mob, has disappeared while on vacation in Cambodia. He needs Shake to go to Cambodia with him and find her. Shake feels some obligation to Lexy, and so they fly there, to hunt for Lexy among the slums and ancient temples.
The dark humor of Double Barrel Bluff rises in large part from Shake’s attempts to keep a rein on Dikran, whose idea of investigating is to punch people and break things. Meanwhile we also follow the team of kidnappers, also a “smart” one and a dumb one, oddly parallel to Shake and Dikran. Author Berney excels at characterization – the good guys and bad guys constantly surprise us, but never pass plausibility.
Cautions for language and extreme situations. And some psychic/Buddhist nonsense. But Double Barrel Bluff was a very exciting and amusing light thriller. I enjoyed it a lot.
There was a time when I was a great fan of the late Jack Higgins’ books. (His real name was Henry Patterson.) In time I began finding him repetitive, and I gave up on him. But I don’t mind picking one up for old times sake, now and then, if I happen to find one I haven’t read before. Such was the case with Dark Side of the Street.
Higgins explains in a foreword that this book was one of his early ones, written with the idea of competing with the James Bond franchise. His character Paul Chavasse is a very Bond-ian British intelligence agent. In this outing, Chavasse is called in on a special assignment to help the police, based on his experience in undercover work. They want him to commit a crime, get caught, and go to prison in order to ingratiate himself with a prisoner.
The background is this: The criminal he’s supposed to befriend, Harry Youngblood, was one of three men convicted of a major theft, and the money has never been recovered. Both his partners have already been sprung from high security prisons and have utterly disappeared. What nobody knows is that these men have not been spirited off to anonymous lives in foreign countries. They were in fact murdered for their loot. When Chavasse befriends Youngblood in prison and joins him in his escape, they will both be walking into a waiting death trap.
Dark Side of the Street benefits from some decent characterization – author Higgins humanizes the ruthless Youngblood, without romanticizing his essentially selfish and brutal nature. There’s also a sad subplot involving an unattractive, lovestruck girl.
The story includes a scene involving a mortuary and the embalmment of a beautiful young woman. It seemed familiar because it was – I’ve encountered the same scene twice in other books by Higgins – one of his weaknesses was a tendency to recycle material.
The layout of the book was marred by a lack of double spacing between chapter sections – meaning the reader frequently finds himself in a new scene with new characters, with no warning. This is the sort of error that happens increasingly in e-books these days, and it’s annoying.
But otherwise, Dark Side of the Street wasn’t bad as light entertainment.
David Ignatius’ new novel, Phantom Orbit (2024), is like a Zen koan asking: When is a thriller not a thriller?
Let me explain.
Those of you familiar with Mr. Ignatius know he is a renowned reporter for the Washington Post who writes a twice-weekly column there. He is also the author of several works of fiction, mostly thrillers. Personally, I wasn’t familiar with his creative writing until I picked up this new novel.
As you might expect, his writing skills are very good. The man can craft the textures of a wide variety of global cultures and wield national idioms with a time-honed and deft ability. His professionalism shines through on every page.
That’s the good part.
On the flipside, this was a frustrating, meandering read that I would’ve given up on about a quarter of the way through if not for a sense of masochistic curiosity that made me wonder how long it would remain so pointless.
Three Decades of Backstory
The story of Phantom Orbit follows three characters over three decades, from the mid-90s to the current time.
Our first hero is Ivan Vladimirovich Volkov, a one-time student of astronomy and astrophysics at Tsinghua University (Beijing), who is feeling the effects of the dissolution of Soviet Russia. As a young man studying hard, he hooks up with a visiting American woman named Edith Ryan—our second heroine. The two have an intense romantic relationship that ends in a tearful separation.
Ivan greatly regrets the breakup yet wonders if he might’ve dodged a bullet. After all, there were subtle indications that the young woman might’ve been a CIA operative.
Our third character is Professor Cao Lin, a distinguished researcher and member of the Academy of Sciences who eventually becomes head of a committee on “special projects” that reports to the Central Military Commission. Essentially, he’s there to get China’s spy/intelligence space program working, including attacking the Americans by whatever means they can manage.
Promises to Keep
Phantom Orbit commits what I consider to be one of the most grievous sins for thriller novels (or indeed any novel genre if you get right down to it): Failing to follow through on its promises.
The book is marketed as a taut page-turning thriller that is part The Martian, part The Da Vinci Code. The dust jacket teases us with the story of a Russian student (Ivan) stumbling upon an “unsolved puzzle” contained in the writings of the famous 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler. Ivan brings this puzzle to a prominent scientist within China’s space program, expressing his determination to find the solution that could have “significant implications for space warfare.”
Sounds intense and dynamic, right? Moreover, the book’s prologue is practically textbook-format for attracting thriller aficionados. Here’s a summary:
Today’s hymn is a new one from the great Keith Getty and Stuart Townend. “My Heart Is Filled with Thankfulness” was completed in 2003. The video above is a 2020 evensong version. The lyric is still copyrighted, but it is displayed in the video.
“I will give to the LORD the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the LORD, the Most High” (Ps 7:17 ESV).
Over the past several days, I’ve looked for peaceful, beautiful images or videos to share on Twitter in an effort to calm people down. No doubt dozens of readers had a momentary sigh because of it. Not a long enough sigh to like the tweets. Of course not. That would be too much like making eye contact on the street.
But I have tried to share peace on Twitter, the primary social media I use, because what Thomas Kidd says about news consumption is true. “News Anxiety Is a Waste of Time.”
He recommends dialing back your daily news calories to almost nothing, giving this detail on contextual reporting. “Newspapers are generally better at telling readers what’s going on – normally with some hours or days of time to digest events – than the insta-reactions of cable tv and social media.” Add to that good magazines and podcasts, like the good people at World News Group.
A 24-hour news cycle should not be the soundtrack of our day. Let’s set it aside and take up good and praise-worthy things instead.
I thought of Mahalia Jackson tonight, for some reason. I don’t think she’s much remembered anymore, but in the Ancient Days she was the most acclaimed and respected gospel singer in the world. Here she sings “Just As I Am.”
The hymn is an English one, written by Charlotte Elliott (1789-1871) who spent much of her life as a semi-invalid. The story is that she said to the Swiss evangelist Henri A. Cesar Melan one day that she did not know how to come to Christ. He replied, “Come just as you are!”
