All posts by Lars Walker

Writing

Writer’s journal: Character lists and pronunciations

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King Olaf discovers a young man’s “treachery,” a scene I use in The Baldur Game: Illustration for Heimskringla by Christian Krogh.

First of all, I need to correct myself. I’m a little surprised nobody has rebuked me on the point already in comments. No doubt that’s because our readers are highly sensitive and polite people.

In a previous post, I called the list I’m working on right now, for my upcoming novel, The Baldur Game, an index of characters. It’s not an index. It’s just a list. Every index starts as a list, and the process reminded me of indexing. But to be an index, my list would have to specify pages on which the names are found, and doing that would be just making work for myself. Writing a deathless epic is plenty to do already, without such excess exertion.

The really hard part of the character list is the name pronunciations. I discussed that challenge earlier too. How many different ways are there to pronounce Saga Age names? You can use the pronunciations the top scholars use – the ones recreated on the basis of known linguistic laws concerning vowel shifts and the softening of consonants (there’s a name for that, but I can’t recall it. And it hardly seems worth the effort to look it up, even on the internet. Grimm’s Law enters into it, I know – and yes, it’s the same Grimms you’ve heard of, the ones who collected fairy tales). But nobody understands those scholarly pronunciations. I’m inclined to think, in my cattier moments, that the scholars themselves just use them to intimidate us.

Then you can use contemporary Icelandic pronunciation. But I’d have to master Icelandic pronunciation to do that, and it would sound strange to my readers, who are English speakers by and large.

And you can use contemporary Norwegian pronunciation. That’s more or less what I do, as the possessor of a middling facility with Norwegian. But you can only go so far with that too. I can do no more than suggest characteristic Scandinavian diphthongs that don’t exist in English. I fear my attempts won’t entirely please my Norwegian friends and family. My relatives in Rogaland, for instance, pronounce the name Einar something like “AY-nar,” but I make it “EYE-nar,” like Kirk Douglas does in the Vikings movie. Because I don’t want to challenge my American readers’ patience too much. Not when I’m expecting them to plow through my prose too.

The bottom line is that I’m unsatisfied with my pronunciations – and if I changed them I’m pretty sure I’d still be unsatisfied.

It looks like there’ll be a small delay in getting the book finally published. One collaborator, whose contribution can’t be omitted, is being delayed due to multiple obligations.

Still, I have a few things left to do. I need to make some more Photoshop additions to my map – locations mentioned in the book.

I could do another read-through, of course, but my instincts tell me no. I’ll give it one more reading before it’s published, but I think that should be the last step. There comes a point when you’re just rearranging the furniture in a manuscript, changing words and then changing them back. I suspect Frank Herbert was thinking as an author when he inserted an invented quotation in Dune that said (as I recall it): “Arakis teaches the maxim of the knife, cutting off that which is incomplete and saying, ‘Now it is complete because it ends here.’”

Any work of man can be “improved” indefinitely. At some point you’ve just got to let the baby be born already.

Fiction, Reviews

‘No Room for the Innocent,’ by Dan Wheatcroft

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The “Leveller” trilogy rounds itself off in a satisfying way in Dan Wheatcroft’s No Room for the Innocent.

This series, as you may recall, involves intertwining plots centered on two main characters – Inspector Thurstan Baddeley of the Liverpool police and a man known as Nicks, who is a top-level assassin dispatched by a high-level, secret government organization to kill the worst criminals the police can’t touch. The two men know each other, and share a grudging respect, though Nicks is always one step ahead of investigators.

But now there’s a problem. Nicks’ handler, Don, has been murdered. Because Don is his only contact in the organization, he’s suddenly out in the cold and vulnerable. When he learns that his controllers have been less than altruistic in their operational aims, he can think of only one person to go to for help – Inspector Baddeley.

The writing in these books is adequate, with occasional grammatical lapses. But the author’s knowledge of police work (he’s a former cop himself) makes the settings and procedures authentic, and I liked the characters a lot.

I enjoyed this series, and recommend it, with only minor cautions for grown-up themes and violence. Conservative opinions are occasionally hinted at.

Music, Religion

Memorial Day, Battle Hymn

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Today is Memorial Day. It was raining here today, so I couldn’t fly my flag. I’d better lose no (more) time in posting my virtual commemoration of the holiday. The video above was (oddly), compiled by a Canadian, using footage from some of our more patriotic movies and TV series, the kind they don’t do anymore.

The Memorial Day tradition goes back (according to Wikipedia, to a proclamation by John A. Logan, Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (the Civil War veterans’ organization), declaring May 30, 1868 to be a day for placing flags on the graves of fallen soldiers. Decoration Day, it was called. (That was what my grandmother used to call it. The official name was changed in 1971, some time after her death.) However, the Veterans’ Administration credits the idea to a woman named Mary Ann Williams.

The hymn tune, “Battle Hymn of the Republic” is obscure in its origins. It seems to have risen in the camp meeting culture of the American south, and possibly echoes a Negro spiritual. The tune was picked up by the 2nd Infantry Battalion, Massachusetts Militia (the “Tiger Battalion”). They used the coincidence of one of their members being named John Brown to make up a song that teased him, when he was late to report for duty (apparently a frequent occurrence). They joked that this was excusable on the grounds that he was dead – all the papers said that John Brown (the abolitionist) had been hanged. Other units picked the song up without the teasing, as the conviction grew in the ranks that they were carrying on John Brown’s work.

Julia Ward Howe, the abolitionist, felt the lyrics were not worthy of the cause, and sat down to write a nobler version, which was first published in 1862 in the Atlantic Monthly. It is a stirring song, and I remember thrilling as I sang it as a member of the Waldorf College Choir in 1969.

A few years back I discussed the hymn with a scholarly friend whose field is American religion. He pointed out to me – and I should have been aware of this, but emotion dulls the sight – that the theology here is in fact rather bad. A political/moral cause is elevated to the level of the work of salvation. The fighting of a war is compared to Christ’s sacrifice for our sins.

Howe was in fact a progressive, my friend pointed out. She had left Calvinism to embrace Unitarianism. In the manner of progressive Christians, she downplayed the atonement for sin and focused on the creation of a more just society. She and her compatriots were the forerunners of today’s social justice warriors.

There has never been a nobler cause in human history than the abolition of slavery. It’s a supreme triumph of Christian civilization – one for which Christian civilization gets insufficient credit. But it wasn’t the same thing as Christ’s redemption.

Having conceded that, I still have to say I’ll always love the Battle Hymn of the Republic. It’s not a true Christian hymn, but it’s a very good earthly sentiment. I’ll put it up against secular sentiments from anybody’s culture you care to name.

Writing

Writer’s journal: Nearing the finish line

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King Olaf gives a sword to Sigvat the Skald. An incident I use in ‘The Baldur Game.’ Illustration for ‘Heimskgringla”: Christian Krogh.

Today was a good writing day. Yesterday was too, come to think of it. I finished up a side job on Monday, which opened up some time to exercise my muse beyond my routine two hours daily. And I was coming to the end of another draft of The Baldur Game.

This was the draft where I incorporated most (not all, but most) of the suggestions I got from my beta readers, one of whom is my co-blogger Phil. (Why are they called beta readers, anyway? Who are the alpha readers? No one ever explained that to me. And here I call myself an author.) I appreciate the comments and tweaks. They unquestionably improved the product and spared me numerous errors.

As one nears the finish line on a project, one often finds extra inner energy for the final sprint, which is what happened now. This is part of the final polish stage, and I feel things coming together. My next step, I think, is to construct my index of characters.

I like indexing. This was a surprise discovery for me. I recall looking at indexes in books I read as a kid, and thinking, “Somebody actually runs through these books and itemizes each item mentioned, and what page it’s found on. What an incredibly tedious task.”

But I took an indexing class in library school, and it turned out to be the most enjoyable class I had there. Indexing, it turned out, is perfect for my minor OCD nature. Approach it systematically, and when you’re finished you’ve got something neat and organized.

Character indexes are easier. I just go through the manuscript, note people’s names the first time they show up, and enter them in an alphabetized list, which is a breeze when you’re word processing. No need for page references. If you miss one the first time it appears, it’ll probably show up again. If not, he’s a pretty minor player, so who cares?

And once that task is done, there’s just the public domain map I plan to insert, to which I need to add some locations with Photoshop.

And then – I hope – one more quick read-through. And then I should be done, with only the cover to approve and the rigamarole of getting it published on Amazon left to do.

I do think this is a good book. In fact, I have an idea it’s a great book – but I also have an idea I’m biased on that score.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dark Ride,’ by Lou Berney

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My city is a midsized metropolitan area in the middle of the middle of the United States. It’s flat and sprawling and a lot like a lot of other places, with no distinguishing characteristics geographic or otherwise. If my city was a suspect in a crime, the eyewitnesses would have a tough time describing it. You could probably say the same thing about me.

Think of The Big Lebowski. But imagine it, not as a dark parody, but as a full-on, dead-serious 21st Century Noir novel. That’s more or less the ambience of Lou Berney’s Dark Ride.

I’ve reviewed a couple Lou Berney novels before, and I liked them very much. I haven’t read one in a while now because the publisher prices them high, but I got a deal on Dark Ride. And it’s very, very good.

Hardy “Hardly” Reed is a classic slacker. Long, shaggy hair, tee-shirts, board shorts, flip-flops. He holds a minimum wage job as a “frightener” at a horror-themed amusement park, and the rest of his time is spent playing video games and getting stoned with his slacker friends.

Until one particular day, when he’s at the Department of Motor Vehicles, getting an extension on a parking ticket. He notices a pair of small children sitting on a bench outside of an office. He’s puzzled by how quiet they are. They don’t laugh, they don’t play, they don’t talk. They just sit staring, like commuters on a bus. He approaches them to say hello, and then notices small, perfectly circular marks on their bodies. Someone has burned these children with cigarettes.

Something comes over Hardly then that he’s never experienced before. He discovers he cares. He tries to get help from a DMV worker, then from Child Protective Services. Nobody seems greatly concerned. The bureaucracy is snowed under with work. Hardly decides that if nobody else will help, he will. He can’t afford to hire a private detective, so he’ll learn to investigate on his own. Usually in his life, he’s given up on any task that seemed difficult or dangerous. But he can’t let go of this one.

Will Hardly, just this once in his life, be good enough?

I read Dark Ride almost in one sitting. It proved to be a grimmer story than I expected, but that only pulled me in. This is an excellent and original thriller. I recommend it. Cautions for language, sex, and drug use.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Ask the River,’ by Dan Wheatcroft

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Installment Two of Dan Wheatcroft’s “Leveller” series. I still haven’t entirely made up my mind what I think about Wheatcroft’s work, but I have to say I enjoyed reading Ask the River.

Like the previous volume, this books follows two different main characters – Inspector Thurstan Baddeley of the Liverpool police, and “Nicks,” the mysterious hit man who eliminates very bad criminals under the direction – and protection – of some shadowy, unnamed authority.

The main problem with Wheatcroft’s books is their complexity. No doubt this mirrors real police work where – in contrast to the average cop show – detectives work on many cases simultaneously. It does tax the reader’s memory at times, though.

There’s the case of an old man, a Polish Holocaust survivor, who dies in his bed, overdosed on sleeping pills – it might be natural causes, but Baddeley is suspicious. There’s a neighborhood terrorized by punks on motorcycles, whom the police can never catch or stop. There’s a crooked businessman found hanging from a bridge abutment. Among others.

Meanwhile, Nicks (he doesn’t really advance the plot much in this book) dispatches several monsters by untraceable means.

This book was ultimately something of a downer, though there’s a nice rescue scene toward the end. But – as I keep saying – I just like these characters and enjoy following them. (Also, the books are free on Kindle right now.)

As always, I have quibbles. Wheatcroft is not at his best with grammar. He uses the word “intercede” wrong, speaks of someone being “in the throws of” something, and has never figured out how to conjugate the verb “sat.”

He makes a firearms error when he assumes a revolver can be effectively silenced. He mentions some of the CIA’s more unsavory accomplishments, which might indicate a political sentiment – though, on the other side, numerous jabs are taken at political correctness.

In short, not a perfect book, but engrossing.

Authors, The Press

I’m probably wrong

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Jon Fosse. Photo credit: Jarvin – Jarle Vines. Creative Commons Attribution, Share Alike 3.0

Our friend Dave Lull sent me a link to this article from Literary Hub. It’s about the work of Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse (whose Septology I reviewed for Ad Fontes). What particularly interests me about this article is that it’s written by a woman who has translated Fosse’s plays into “American” English.

I was particularly struck by the fact that Sarah Cameron Sunde, the author of the article, deals in particular with a translation issue on which I have views of my own. And her views are the opposite of mine. The difference hangs on how to translate a simple, two-letter word: “Ja.” (It means yes.) She writes:

One such word that appears again and again (over 150 times, in fact) in Natta Syng Sine Songar is “ja”—I had noticed that this repetition was missing in the British translation, and instead the translator had chosen to replace each “ja” with what he thought it meant in each given moment—which often meant “yes” and sometimes deleting it entirely, when it seemed like filler word. But the repetition felt critical to me for several reasons: 1) the everyday quality of the word as it is spoken, not written, 2) the way this “ja” could function to build tension between live performers, 3) and how it unites the characters despite the vast space between them.

In my Ad Fontes review of Septology (which was generally favorable to the translation by Damion Searls) I criticized his repeated use of the word “yes” to translate “ja” in the text. My own view is that the Norwegian “ja” serves multiple purposes in Fosse’s Nynorsk dialect. It can stand for “Well,” or “All right,” or “I don’t know,” plus a host of other expressions. For that reason, I felt it ought to be translated with several different everyday interjections. Sunde translates it “yeh” in every case, in her work. Perhaps that’s a good choice in the context of theatrical production, but I question it.

Nevertheless, Sunde’s article is an insightful and interesting one.

Fiction, Reviews

‘One is Evil,’ by Jeff Buick

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I had never heard of the Canadian author Jeff Buick before I picked up One is Evil, the first volume in a prospective series. I’m pleased to report that I was highly impressed.

Bobby Greco used to be an Orlando, Florida homicide cop. Set up by crooked vice cops, he got kicked off the force. But he had friends who owed him favors, and managed to snag a good job doing insurance investigations.

It’s in that capacity that he checks out a claim relating to Alexis Chamberlain, the wife of the highly respected head of a major aerospace technology firm. It’s just a routine job – the company is ready to pay off on the claim. But Bobby has a cop’s instincts, and those instincts tell him something is off about this woman. Looking into her life more deeply, he reaches a startling conclusion – this isn’t the same woman. Somehow, she’s been switched for a duplicate. Which puts an unknown entity within reach of some of the country’s most sensitive military secrets.

That spark sets off an avalanche of consequences. Bobby teams up with an attractive female NSA agent, and before long not only they but their families are under threat – even as the clock is running out for the real Alexis Chamberlain. The action will stretch from the American south to the French Riviera, and on to Siberia.

There were flaws in One is Evil. The Canadian author sometimes gets American diction wrong – the Girl Scouts become the Girl Guides, bars become pubs. Cookies, of course, become biscuits. The prose is effective but not elegant, and there’s an occasional spelling mistake.

But the plot is intricate and beautifully choreographed. The dramatic tension ratchets up mercilessly. Like any thriller, One is Evil was less than entirely plausible, but it was convincing, and I bought into it completely. I also liked and cared about the characters.

One is Evil is a winner, and Jeff Buick is an author worth following.

Music, Uncategorized, Writing

17 May

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It is my custom, every May 17, to make some kind of mention of Norway’s Constitution Day, celebrated each year on this date. I’ve told the story of the holiday many times – this year I’ll restrict myself to saying that Norway celebrates its Constitution Day as its major national holiday because of a historical anomaly – we had a constitution for almost a century before we got independence. So Constitution Day became the traditional patriotic holiday.

The video above is rather nice – lots of natural beauty, in which Norway is excessively rich. If you’d like a translation of the lyrics, you can find it here.

The Syttende Mai present I received today was a good writing session. I actually gave myself the shivers reading the current draft of The Baldur Game. I suppose that’s insufferable, like comedians who laugh at their own jokes. But writing at my level offers few tangible rewards. And finding the same exhilaration in your own writing that you get from your favorite authors’ is as delicious as it is rare.

To make things even better, I had a thought today – not as common an occurrence as you might imagine. (G. B. Shaw once said that he’d made an international reputation by thinking once or twice a month.) I can’t remember what provoked the thought (perhaps it was the creative thrill I described above, but I’m not sure). But it suddenly appeared, fully formed in my head, and even after several hours I can find no fault with it. It goes like this:

No work of art is ever fully original, nor should it be. Art is a multimedia matrix of interactive themes and influences — all hyperlinked, in a sense. Taken all together, great art participates in an infinitely greater tapestry.

I think I’ll stand by that.

Have a good weekend.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dead Beat,’ by Micheal Maxwell

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Detective Comrade (seriously, that’s his name!) Flynt is part of the police force in a small, fictional California city. He is known to the other cops as “the leprechaun,” because he’s short, ugly, and his red hair is always unkempt. He was traumatized in a bad shooting some years ago, and his old partner covered for him ever since.

But his partner is dead now, and as Micheal Maxwell’s Dead Beat begins, Flynt is partnered with Lieutenant Noah Steele (Flynt and Steele, get it?). Steele is an up-and-comer, and their commander has tasked him, among other things, with finding a reason to fire Flynt, whom he considers (not without cause) dead weight.

But then they’re called to investigate the murder of a teenage drummer from a punk rock band, found stabbed to death with his drumsticks in a storage locker. As they proceed, Steele gradually discovers that, in spite of his partner’s eccentric and even repulsive personal habits, he has genuine gifts for investigation. And they start to form a bond.

When I find an ineptly written book these days, my inclination is to drop it quietly without ragging on the author. But author Micheal Maxwell describes himself as an “Amazon bestselling writer,” and that annoys me in a petty way. The fact that this kind of writing can generate bestsellers is painful to contemplate for someone who’s worked hard to improve his skills.

What was wrong with Dead Beat? Let me list some of the problems:

The prose was awkward – a representative line runs, “She was both maternal and attention-starved at the same time.” Or, “A mad array of pushing and shoving…”

In describing life in a Catholic orphanage, the author indulges in extreme stereotyping: All the nuns are cruel and abusive. Even as a Protestant and a well-known misogynist, I find that implausible. Women, in my experience, tend to be pretty sympathetic people – I find it hard to believe that, in any group of women, every single one could be a sadist.

In general, the writing here is amateurish. The author describes his characters to us (at excessive length), rather than revealing their personalities through their actions – and their actions, in fact, seem inconsistent and pretty much random.

I found an odd continuity problem in one particular scene, where the characters are described getting ready to sit down in a room, and then suddenly they are back in the hallway, walking toward the room.

Police procedures (I won’t describe them in detail) seemed implausible and unprofessional.

And finally, the big, brilliant deduction that impresses everybody at the climax turns out to involve a very obvious technical matter that I’m certain any crime scene technician would recognize in a minute.

In short, Dead Beat was a book that any pulp publisher back in my day would have shot back to the author before he’d finished reading the first page. I do not recommend it.