I’ve become a big fan of James Scott Bell, an excellent mystery-and-thriller writer who also happens to be a Christian. So when I saw he’d published a collection of novellas in hard-boiled style called Trouble Is My Beat, I snapped it up. It was excellent value for money.
Bill “Wild Bill” Armbrewster is a World War I veteran and a successful pulp mystery writer. But it’s hard to make a living doing that, even back in the late 1940s. So he works as a “fixer” for a Hollywood studio. That involves getting stars out of dangerous or illegal situations, avoiding scandal, and sometimes putting the scare on them to keep them on the straight and narrow. It might bring him up against rival studios, or gangsters, or dangerous dames, or the cops. He won’t let himself be intimidated, and he’s a hard man to fool. And at heart he’s a decent guy.
Bill Armbrewster is the kind of simple, old-fashioned hero you don’t run into much anymore, on the page or on the screen. Author Bell does a good job of writing in the hard-boiled voice, though his similes and metaphors aren’t up to Chandler and Hammett’s standards. No effort is made to shock the reader into a raised consciousness. The language is generally mild, and one story involving a Christian evangelist treats him with respect.
There was pretty much nothing I disliked about Trouble Is My Beat. Highly recommended.
If the name Augustus Thistlewood strikes you as something out of P. G. Wodehouse, you and I have that in common. And we’re both right. There are echoes of Wodehouse at the beginning of Dave Freer’s science fiction novel, Cloud Castles, though the book gradually evolves into something quite different.
Augustus is a son of a wealthy, but low-profile, family of industrialists. He went to university to become an engineer, but he’s so brilliant he needed more of a challenge. So he took a degree in Sociology too, and that’s where the trouble began. Convinced of “modern” views of society and economics, he decided he needed to spend time with the less fortunate, “uplifting” the poor.
That mission took him to Sybil III, a floating city in the “habitable region” of a gas-dwarf star. The city floats on antigravity engines and shares the skies with “floating castles” belonging to two alien races who are war with each other but “neutral” (though hostile) to humans. The skies also feature clumps of floating vegetation that nobody cares about much.
Augustus arrives in the floating city as the perfect innocent. The place is the most debased and claustrophobic of slums, but he, having no experience of real life, trusts everyone. He’s immediately spotted by an urchin called Briz (a girl, though he assumes she’s a boy), who “takes him under her wing” with the intention of robbing him blind. Only Augustus proves strangely resilient – the stupid moves he makes tend to work out all right for him (kind of like an old Mr. Magoo cartoon), and his engineering skills prove useful and even lifesaving. And Briz, against her will, finds herself drawn to this gormless do-gooder, developing a genuine sense of obligation.
Then they end up on one of the floating “skydrift paddocks,” vegetation clumps, and discover a thriving, if marginal, civilization – a place mirroring Australian Outback culture, but in the air. And gradually Augustus becomes “Gus,” their strong, inventive, and decisive leader. In this capacity he’ll face war, slavery, and worse from the aliens, on whose domains he can’t help encroaching.
Cloud Castles was a lot of fun – creative, original world-building, and a cast of colorful, well-developed characters. Dave Freer has been a Facebook friend for some time, but I hadn’t tried his science fiction before. This is an extremely good space opera, and I recommend it highly.
Naught to review tonight. It’s been a quiet day. No translation work. I started an article for the American Spectator; haven’t worked out the conclusion yet.
Kind of a nasty day, weather-wise. It started clear but cool, and now clouds and rain have set in. Still, it’s above freezing, and the precipitation isn’t snow.
Call it Norwegian weather. Vestland weather, anyway.
Speaking of Norwegian weather, my Norwegian almanac says that today is St. Gaius’ Day. Known in old times as the beginning of Gjøkmåned – Cuckoo Month. The Scandinavian calendar in old times began and ended its months in the middle of our months. The first day of Cuckoo Month was considered a good day to plant peas, I am reliably informed.
I’ve shown you a video of a past Viking festival at Bukkøy, Avaldsnes, Norway, where I’ll be going this summer. But that’s the first weekend. The following weekend, God willing, I’ll be at the Viking Market at Hafrsfjord in Stavanger. Above is video from the 2018 market.
I note that in their combat they allow guys to fight without helmets. Different rules, I guess. Neither my group nor any group I’ve run into in this country allow that, for safety reasons. Though it’s doubtless more historically authentic.
I have no plans to fight in Norway. I shall bring the power of my wisdom instead.
I hear they’re expecting ten Viking ships for the festival. Not bad at all.
He was the living truth. The religious had to kill him because they were religious. The leaders had to kill him because they were the leaders. The people had to kill him because they were the people. The law had to kill him because it was the law.
That was what it was like to be the truth in the world….
As he tells the story, he was troubled by his inability to understand Christ’s teaching. He knew the gospel story. He understood the doctrines (as much as any of us understand them). But how do we follow Jesus’ teachings? Are we really expected to give everything we own to the poor? Not to resist an evil man? To pluck out an eye that leads us to sin? What is Jesus talking about?
His son suggested that perhaps he was trying to solve a problem instead of trying to get to know a Man. So he plunged into the gospels – taught himself Koiné Greek to read them in the original language. And what he began to understand – oddly – led him to the Romantic Poets of England.
The book casts a wide loop, but always returns to those Romantics – Wordsworth, Keats, and Coleridge on the bright side, and Byron and Shelley on the dark side. And among them, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, in whose novel Frankenstein he finds a key to understanding much of the modern rebellion against nature – Victor Frankenstein, he hypothesizes, was not trying to play God. He was trying to eliminate the Female. Which makes him a harbinger of our times.
There is much to ponder in this book, and I can’t claim I understand it all. I need to read it again. But the answer to the problem of getting to know the mind of Christ, as Klavan sees it, is seeing how in all nature – not only the natural world around us but our own nature – the truth of Christ is revealed. The Trinity is everywhere, giving us glimpses behind the veil, calling out to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. The life that Jesus lives is promised to us. The Romantics at their best glimpsed this, and some of them embraced it in the end.
There were things in this book that troubled me from a doctrinal point of view. I think any thoughtful Christian will have a similar experience. Because Klavan isn’t doing apologetics here. He’s peering into mysteries. He may be wrong at some points, but I’m not prepared to say so on one reading of the book. By and large, I think he’s on the right track.
Highly recommended for thoughtful Christians, especially those who love literature.
If you’re lucky enough to have read my novel, Blood and Judgment (it’s not too late! Click the link), you’ll know that Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, was based on a story about a prince named Amleth, found in the medieval history of Denmark, Gesta Danorum, by Saxo Grammaticus. So doing a Viking movie based on the story seems an obvious enough angle. However, Robert Eggers’ violent new film “The Northman” (which I saw last night, wearing my Viking clothes, in a free preview in Minneapolis) still owes more to Shakespeare than to Saxo.
If I were Danish (come to think of it, I’m a quarter Danish), I’d be a little offended at how my country’s Viking heroes are treated in the entertainment media. The History Channel’s egregious Vikings series took the Danish hero Ragnar Lodbrok and shifted him to Norway. Eggers’ film about the equally Danish Amleth starts in Norway, then moves on to Russia and Iceland.
The set-up is that Prince Amleth is the son of King Aurvandill, of some Norwegian kingdom whose name I didn’t catch (the dialogue was consistently difficult to understand. Maybe I’m just old and deaf). Shortly after his return from a Viking voyage, Aurvandill is killed by his bastard brother Fjolnir (Feng in Saxo, and in my book), who then takes the queen (Nicole Kidman) and tries – unsuccessfully – to kill Prince Amleth, who manages to flee in a boat, repeating his vow: “I will avenge you, father. I will save you, mother. I will kill you, Fjolnir.”
We next meet him as a grownup (played by Alexander Skarsgård) in Russia, where he has joined a group of berserker warriors who fight shirtless (horrific scenes of rapine and plunder). By chance, he learns that Fjolnir has been driven from Norway by King Harald Fairhair, and is now a sheep farmer in Iceland. Amleth cuts his hair to look like a slave (a nice, correct historical detail) and sneaks aboard a ship of slaves headed for Iceland and Fjolnir. Once there, he quietly lays his plans to kill his uncle, aided by a Slavic witch (Anya Taylor-Joy) who vows to help him with her “earth magic.”
Amleth will learn that his own life story isn’t as simple as he remembers. But that knowledge will not interfere with his vengeance. The final showdown with Fjolnir, on top a volcano, takes the revenge story even farther from Saxo’s account than Shakespeare did.
What shall I say about this film?
First of all, I must say that “IT” has finally happened. By “IT” I mean the arrival of that elusive creature history buffs and reenactors have awaited so long. At long last, there is a good Viking movie. Possibly a great Viking movie.
That is not to say it’s a pleasant movie. It’s dark, dark, dark. You’d think there was never a sunny day in the 9th Century. Almost all colors are muted (I understand this to be a characteristic of Eggers’ style, but my costume historian friend will not be happy with the lack of bright colors). The only exception I recall is one scene early on, when young Amleth covers himself with a vivid red cloak to escape the royal farm unseen (which seems to me slightly counterintuitive, but no doubt there’s some thematic purpose I’m not bright enough to grasp).
Otherwise, the costumes, sets and props were very good (by movie standards). Fjolnir wears lamellar armor, which will annoy many Viking reenactment group authenticity officers. The great hall of Amleth’s father has its high seat at the end of the hall, rather than half-way down one side-bench. A headband with bangles that Nicole Kidman wears is based on a jewelry reconstruction no longer considered accurate (I read this somewhere). The horses in Norway are too tall (though the ones in Iceland are fine).
But by and large the authenticity is pretty good. Better than we’ve seen before.
For me, the Vikings have been the center of my personal Romanticism since I was about 12 years old. When I’ve dreamed of a good Viking movie, this wasn’t the sort of thing I was hoping for. But that’s just me – it’s a fallacy to judge a work of art based on what you’d like it to be. I think “The Northman” is very successful in being what the director intends.
The darkness of the cinematography mirrors the darkness of the story. The kind of revenge-obligation Amleth feels is entirely authentic to the period (and many other periods). Even when Amleth gets an opportunity to walk away at one point, he can’t do it. It would violate his deepest convictions; damage his soul more than death.
But the revenge is in no way glorified. Amleth’s road is mired in blood. His father initiates him in a blood ritual. He and his berserker friends exult in shedding blood. The Viking religion is bloody, he sees visions of blood, everywhere blood is shed cheaply. There’s nothing romantic about it.
But there is something mythic. The gods are around every corner. The wolves (foxes in Iceland, where there are no wolves) and the ravens are always watching. And sometimes the gods themselves appear. Drawn, it seems, by the blood, just like the wolves and the ravens.
I could make an argument, I think, that Christianity is conspicuous in this movie by its absence. Amleth has no way of avoiding his fate in a world without grace.
But I doubt that’s what Eggers has in mind.
In any case, here’s my summation: “The Northman” is bloody, harsh, hyper-violent and disturbing. It is absolutely not for children or the sensitive. But it’s also brilliant and unforgettable.
As almost everybody knows, Arthur Conan Doyle will be forever linked (shackled, as he might have put it) to his epically successful detective character, Sherlock Holmes. And most of you will be aware that Doyle grew very weary of Holmes after a while, and killed him off (temporarily). He hoped he could win the public over to another character he created, an officer of Napoleon named Brigadier Etienne Gerard.
Brigadier Gerard is a Gascon, like D’Artagnan. And like D’Artagnan, he lives for honor and adventure. He is always ready to fight a duel or steal a kiss, and always first to volunteer for dangerous assignments. Where he differs from D’Artagnan is that he’s not terribly bright. His stories are told, we gather, in his old age, in an inn, to a group of friends. Gerard is now living on a pension, which he supplements by growing cabbages. He sighs over hard fate, which has denied him the advancement he has no doubt he deserved. He refers often to the medal for bravery he received from the Emperor himself, but which he never has with him. He keeps it, he says, in his apartment, in a leather pouch. I suspect we’re meant to understand that he actually had to pawn it.
In a series of semi-comic short stories, he tells of headlong adventures he enjoyed during the great wars. Sometimes on secret missions, sometimes accidentally separated from his company of hussars, he escapes from ambushes, traps and imprisonment, often (like the later Captain Kirk) with the help of some woman who has succumbed to his manly charm.
Generally (but not always) the joke is on Gerard. He can be counted on to run (or gallop) toward the sound of the guns, but he’s often clueless about what’s really going on. So confident is he of his own sagacity and aplomb that (in a manner that anticipates Inspector Clouseau) he often mistakes jeering for cheering. He is, however, never mean or small-minded.
I didn’t like The Complete Brigadier Gerard as much as I hoped to. The author is laughing at his hero (if somewhat affectionately), and the reader is too. For some reason that made me uncomfortable.
Your mileage may vary. No objectionable material. I might mention that I often forgot I was reading a Victorian/Edwardian book. Doyle wrote in a style ahead of his time.
But Ruth wore her own face for the world—wore an expression of strength and humility and goodness. Should you become accustomed to her loveliness, there would still be all that left. This was a for-keeps girl. She couldn’t be any other way because all the usual poses and artifices were left out of her. This was a girl you could hurt, a girl who would demand and deserve utter loyalty.
I’ve read all John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee books, and a good number of his non-McGee works. I’m not sure if I ever read A Bullet for Cinderella before, though. I find it hard to imagine I could have read it and forgotten it. This is early MacDonald (1955), but it’s a gem.
Tal Howard is a returned prisoner of war from Korea. Nowadays we’d say he has PTSD. He came home to a job and a faithful, waiting fiancée, but walked away from both of them, because he wasn’t the same man anymore. He wasn’t sure what to do with his life, so he thought he’d go look for the money Timmy Warden, as he lay dying in the camp, told him about. The money he’d embezzled from his and his brother’s business and buried in a secret place. “Cindy will know where it is,” he said.
Tal arrives in Timmy’s home town, Hillston (no state named). He finds Timmy’s brother broken and bankrupt, a bitter alcoholic. He meets Ruth, Timmy’s old girlfriend, who never guessed his secrets. He starts searching for a girl named Cindy, but there doesn’t seem to have been any such girl in the small town in Timmy’s time.
But he’s also reunited with an old acquaintance – Fitzmartin, another camp survivor. He’s no friend, though. A loner, a sneak, a spy, all the prisoners had hated Fitz. He overheard Timmy’s confession to Tal, and he has preceded him to Hillston. But so far he can’t find any Cindy either, and none of the many places he’s dug up have yielded treasure. Fitz has no doubt he can solve the puzzle – or, even better, if Tal solves it, he’ll just kill him and take the dough.
You may recognize in this synopsis a fairly standard Noir set-up. And that’s what it is – a morally compromised hero going for the easy score and finding himself in over his head. What raises it to the level of art is John D. MacDonald’s sheer mastery of his medium, the lucid prose, the complex characters, the essential humanity of the project. This book was written fairly early in the author’s career, but it’s a complete, polished achievement. Superior in its time and superior today.
Good Friday. I have a book I want to review, but I’ve got to address more important things on the holiest weekend of the year.
Above, a beautiful rendition of O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, with words I’m not familiar with. The hymn’s origins are complicated. The original poem, of which this hymn is just a section, was written either by St. Bernard of Clairvaux or by Bishop Arnulf of Villers-la-Ville. The section was translated into German by the famed Lutheran hymn writer Paul Gerhardt, a pastor who suffered greatly during the Thirty Years War. The traditional setting is by no less a composer than Johan Sebastian Bach. The traditional American translation of the text came from James W. Alexander, a Presbyterian churchman and scholar.
To my mind, this is the best Lenten hymn. But there are many other fine ones out there too.
I want to write about a point of apologetics tonight. I’ve probably laid it out here before. But it seems to me the absolute, rock-bottom argument for Christianity.
Your mileage may vary. I may even be talking through my hat. All our proofs, I am certain, will whirl away like autumn leaves when we behold the One whom Father Ailill likes to call the Beloved.
Ask anyone what’s the most important thing in the universe. Doesn’t matter who. Christian, Jew, atheist. (This may be different in countries with non-Abrahamic religions – I know less about them. But I’m addressing my neighbors, my fellow Americans and Europeans.)
You know what the answer is: Love. Love is the answer. Love is all you need. The greatest of these is love.
But does this make sense outside of the Christian faith?
I’m sure there are lots of atheists around who also say, “Love is the answer, love is the greatest thing.” They take it for granted. It’s the minimal place-holder for religion they’ve been raised with (even if they were raised by other atheists).
But if there is no God, what does that mean? If the ultimate truth of the universe is impersonal, how can love be the answer? Objects don’t love. Energy doesn’t love. Rocks don’t love. Trees don’t love.
Only persons love.
If some Person doesn’t lie behind all the material things we know, then love means nothing. Because sentient creatures will die out eventually, and then love will go away. And it won’t be the answer.
Christianity says that a Person made the universe, and loved us, and demonstrated the greatest love conceivable in the atonement and resurrection.
Blab about love all you want, but if you don’t believe in that God, then it seems to me you’re just surviving on the scraps you picked up under Christianity’s table.
You could choose Judaism or Islam, I suppose, but there’s no parallel act of love.
Diane took a deep breath. “I saw her come at you. I was a hair’s breadth away from gunning her down. But I knew she was just another scared and confused person – a victim in all this. And I let her stab you instead. Which feels like a betrayal.”
I waved a hand at her dismissively. “I’m one of the worst people in the known universe. And I can’t feel pain. People can stab me.”
Frank J. Fleming is a treasure – creator of the hilarious IMAO blog, and now a leading light at the indispensable Babylon Bee, he writes some of the funniest stuff going today. And he’s now three books into his Superego series, a dark-comic space opera about Rico, the greatest assassin in the universe. Rico is untethered by conscience and genetically engineered to be a perfect fighting machine. Only now he has somehow fallen in love with a tortured Christian woman called Diane and is trying to make himself worthy of her. In Superego: Betrayal, this change of course has landed him with responsibility for leading a rebellion against a universal criminal empire run by his own father.
I didn’t enjoy Superego: Betrayal as much as the first two books, but the reason is easy to understand. Every story has an arc, and it’s necessary to include an act where things go from bad to worse and the hero’s goals seem impossible to achieve. This book holds that position in the series (unless it gets even worse in the next book). Hopes are dashed, friends turn to enemies, people you like die. I hope Frank isn’t going to Game of Thrones this series, but can tie it all up and give us our happy ending in the next volume.
Last night’s lecture, to the Synnøve-Nordkapp Lodge of Sons of Norway in St. Paul, was memorable enough that I might as well report some of the highlights to you.
I had a quiet day to prepare myself and pack my impedimenta. I have been known to forget to bring important things (such as the books I was planning to sell), so I always worry. I’m happy to say I brought everything I needed.
And that was about the last thing that went right, from a technical perspective.
Synnøve-Nordkapp Lodge had not met for a regular meeting in two years, due to circumstances you’ll easily guess. I arrived at the church where they gather to find some people setting up the meeting space, a large hall (it appeared to be a multi-purpose space used sometimes – perhaps every Sunday – for worship). When I asked about setting up for my PowerPoint presentation I was directed to a gentleman in back, sitting in front of an array of screens and multimedia gear.
I talked to him about my needs, and he explained that the church had changed the setup since the last time he’d used it. He couldn’t figure out a way to get the images on his screens projected onto the big screen in front. He made a call to somebody who was supposed to know, and spent the next hour-and-a-half or so talking to them, with no success.
The meeting began at last, and I grew fairly certain I wouldn’t get the use of the standing equipment. When the president announced me, I asked if I could get a table and some time to set up my own projector (which I’d brought along, being a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy). They happily accommodated me, and I spent a few hectic minutes setting my projector up and connecting it to my laptop.
Nothing. I couldn’t project an image either.
This was beginning to resemble a witch’s curse.
Finally I admitted defeat and delivered my lecture without visual aids. I gave it my all, summoning my considerable reserves of eloquence (or, as the skalds would say, opening my word-hoard). Taken as such, the lecture went very well. The audience was attentive and even laughed in the right places. And I sold a good quantity of books afterward. Got lots of compliments. So it was a good experience in itself. But ah, I regretted the lovely images I hadn’t been able to use.
I decided as I drove home (through hail part of the way; a nasty weather front passed through just then. It was suitable to the general theme of the evening) that my problem had been not trying the projector out with my new laptop ahead of time. I became convinced my new Windows 11 system couldn’t communicate with the old projector. Today I determined to run out to the computer store and buy a new, up-to-date projector.
But I didn’t go for some reason. And after lunch I had an attack of prudence and tried the projector with the laptop again. I discovered I’d used the wrong socket for the connector.
Now that I know the fault was mine, everything makes sense again. All’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
Websites store cookies to enhance functionality and personalise your experience. You can manage your preferences, but blocking some cookies may impact site performance and services.
Essential cookies enable basic functions and are necessary for the proper function of the website.
Name
Description
Duration
Cookie Preferences
This cookie is used to store the user's cookie consent preferences.
30 days
These cookies are needed for adding comments on this website.
Name
Description
Duration
comment_author
Used to track the user across multiple sessions.
Session
comment_author_email
Used to track the user across multiple sessions.
Session
comment_author_url
Used to track the user across multiple sessions.
Session
These cookies are used for managing login functionality on this website.
Name
Description
Duration
wordpress_logged_in
Used to store logged-in users.
Persistent
wordpress_sec
Used to track the user across multiple sessions.
15 days
wordpress_test_cookie
Used to determine if cookies are enabled.
Session
Statistics cookies collect information anonymously. This information helps us understand how visitors use our website.
Google Analytics is a powerful tool that tracks and analyzes website traffic for informed marketing decisions.
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests
10 minutes
__utmb
Used to distinguish new sessions and visits. This cookie is set when the GA.js javascript library is loaded and there is no existing __utmb cookie. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
30 minutes after last activity
__utmc
Used only with old Urchin versions of Google Analytics and not with GA.js. Was used to distinguish between new sessions and visits at the end of a session.
End of session (browser)
__utmz
Contains information about the traffic source or campaign that directed user to the website. The cookie is set when the GA.js javascript is loaded and updated when data is sent to the Google Anaytics server
6 months after last activity
__utmv
Contains custom information set by the web developer via the _setCustomVar method in Google Analytics. This cookie is updated every time new data is sent to the Google Analytics server.
2 years after last activity
__utmx
Used to determine whether a user is included in an A / B or Multivariate test.
18 months
_ga
ID used to identify users
2 years
_gali
Used by Google Analytics to determine which links on a page are being clicked
30 seconds
_ga_
ID used to identify users
2 years
_gid
ID used to identify users for 24 hours after last activity
24 hours
_gat
Used to monitor number of Google Analytics server requests when using Google Tag Manager
1 minute
_gac_
Contains information related to marketing campaigns of the user. These are shared with Google AdWords / Google Ads when the Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts are linked together.
90 days
Marketing cookies are used to follow visitors to websites. The intention is to show ads that are relevant and engaging to the individual user.
A video-sharing platform for users to upload, view, and share videos across various genres and topics.
Registers a unique ID on mobile devices to enable tracking based on geographical GPS location.
1 day
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
Tries to estimate the users' bandwidth on pages with integrated YouTube videos. Also used for marketing
179 days
PREF
This cookie stores your preferences and other information, in particular preferred language, how many search results you wish to be shown on your page, and whether or not you wish to have Google’s SafeSearch filter turned on.
10 years from set/ update
YSC
Registers a unique ID to keep statistics of what videos from YouTube the user has seen.
Session
DEVICE_INFO
Used to detect if the visitor has accepted the marketing category in the cookie banner. This cookie is necessary for GDPR-compliance of the website.
179 days
LOGIN_INFO
This cookie is used to play YouTube videos embedded on the website.
