All posts by Lars Walker

Reading, Religion, Writing

Chronicle of a writer’s day

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“Daffodils and Glastonbury Tor.” Photo credit: Glastomichelle. Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons license.

What’s on tonight? Hey, how about a pointless account of my day? What could be more fun than that?

Last night my men’s Bible study group re-convened after several weeks of preemptions. I continue to be astonished how much these meetings nourish and uplift me. I feel an actual physical easing. I’ve been a solitary for so many years, getting by without close Christian fellowship. I knew that was the wrong way to do it, but I was hemmed in by… well, fear, to be honest.

I don’t think these guys will ever realize what they’re doing for me.

This morning I drove to the gym, and while I was inside, beavering away at my Sysiphian labors, a freezing rain came down, which covered my car windows in a matrix of icy pearls and made the road treacherous going home.

I worried about driving this afternoon, as I had a doctor’s appointment. But by the time I had to pull out again, the moisture had all melted and (mostly) dried off. I was able to reassure a technician, who took samples of my blood, on that point.

(No big deal on the doctor’s appointment, by the way. I wanted him to check something out, and he ordered tests, but didn’t seem greatly concerned. This stuff is just S.O.P. when you achieve venerability.)

Right now I’m re-reading two different books I read as a teenager, both of which deal with medieval Glastonbury. Because I’m writing a book about King Haakon the Good, and he grew up in England, and there’s good reason to think he might have spent time at that ancient site of monasticism and pilgrimage.

The first book is The Hidden Treasure of Glaston, by Eleanore M. Jewett. This is a book aimed at teenagers, and I remember that it surprised me when I read it (as a teenager), since I had known nothing about Glastonbury or the grave of King Arthur up to then. So far, I think it stands up pretty well. Entirely credulous about the legends, but well done withal. I’ll review it when I finish it.

The other book is Avalon, by Anya Seton, which I’ll also review. I read this as a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book (remember those?) back when it was new. It was quite a thrill for me, back in 1965 or 66, to discover any novel involving Vikings. I’m enjoying this book too, though I detect some historical errors. It’s set slightly before my Erling books.

What do I envy most in other historical writers’ works? The ability to describe geography, plants, and wildlife. I struggle with that stuff. “What kind of flowers would be blooming in an English marsh in Somerset in April, 980 AD, and how would they smell?” Would it be the same varieties they have now? How much have things changed in a thousand years? How much guessing do the authors do? Sigrid Undset was great at that stuff, but she was an amateur expert in botany.

What comforts me most? Finding mistakes. If successful novelists can screw up on details, maybe I can get away with a few howlers too. Because I know they’re there, like Communists under the beds (who were also actually there, as it happened).

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Lies We Tell Ourselves,’ by Steve Higgs

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I reviewed Shadow of a Lie,  the first book in Steve Higgs’s Det. Tony Heaton Trilogy, a few days ago. The second book is The Lies We Tell Ourselves.

A little orientation: Tony Heaton is a detective in English Kent. He had intended to just coast as he approached retirement, but was assigned to a new Cold Case squad headed by a hotshot young detective, Ashley Long.

Tony finds his own long-dormant passion for his job reviving as they dig into old puzzles, but that new enthusiasm is tempered by fear – fear that they will investigate one murder about which he has personal knowledge – knowledge he’s been covering up for many years.

In The Lies We Tell Ourselves, they examine a couple more cold murders, which turn out to be connected. The victories are sweet, but Tony’s guilty uneasiness is growing.

I noticed more typos in this book than in the first one. Also, one of the murder victims is a Frenchman named Michelle – except that’s the female spelling. I’m pretty sure it should have been Michel. This isn’t arcane knowledge; somebody should have noticed in the editing process.

These books are fairly well written, but Tony can be an irritating hero/narrator. Especially due to his blatant hypocrisy when he describes his contempt for people who conceal knowledge of murder, while he himself remains guilty of the same thing.

But that’s character complexity. I imagine it’s working up to a big crisis in the third book.

Goofing

Grandiose Friday

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I think you’ve seen this picture before. It was taken at Norsk Høstfest in Minot several years back, when they did a promotion deal with the History Channel, and brought in some costumed models to sully our camp’s authenticity with base sex appeal.

I didn’t really mind.

Today I checked out the new AI function of Duck Duck Go, my favorite search engine. I found a utility for enhancing photos, and so I plugged that photo in and asked for the style of Frank Frazetta. Here’s the result:

Say what you will about me — that I’m old, and poor, and alone, and obscure, and ugly, and… well, there’s no dearth of material.

But I’ve had some great photos taken over the years, and some of them clean up pretty good.

Have a good weekend.

Music, Religion

‘Behold a Host, Arrayed in White’

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I recall sitting in my office one day (I think it was a Saturday; I had to work Saturdays at the time) back when I lived in Florida, listening to the local Christian station on my radio. Suddenly I heard the strains of “Behold a Host, Arrayed in White,” (an English translation is at this link) and was astonished. This is not a hymn much known outside Scandinavian Lutheran circles, and down among the gators a lot of people had no idea what a Lutheran was, let alone a Scandinavian Lutheran.

The reason the radio station had that song, I later learned, was that they leased music from the University of Northwestern (St. Paul) radio network’s licensing library, and Scandinavian Lutheranism is pretty well known up in these parts.

In my mind, at least, “Behold a Host” is the preeminent Scandinavian choral hymn. My dad and my grandparents loved it. This recording has the Norwegian lyrics, whose first lines actually go “This great, white host we see, like a thousand mountains full of snow, before the Throne – who are they?”

It’s a reference to Revelation 7:13-17:

 13Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, “These who are clothed in the white robes, who are they, and where have they come from?” 14I said to him, “My lord, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15“For this reason, they are before the throne of God; and they serve Him day and night in His temple; and He who sits on the throne will spread His tabernacle over them. 16“They will hunger no longer, nor thirst anymore; nor will the sun beat down on them, nor any heat; 17for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”

The text was written by Hans Adolph Brorson, a much-loved Danish pastor and hymn writer. The tune is, I believe, traditional, but this arrangement is by none other than Edvard Grieg.

This particular recording is of the choir of Augsburg College, Minneapolis, which happens to be my alma mater, though this performance was around 1945, somewhat before my time.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder at Blind Beck,’ by Bruce Beckham

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I found that I had missed one of the recent novels in Bruce Beckham’s Inspector Skelgill series. So I purchased Murder at Blind Beck. Once I was reading it, I wondered if I might have skipped it on purpose, for reasons I’ll explain. But I carried on, and had a generally good reading experience.

In this installment, Inspector Skelgill, who operates in England’s Lake District, along with his team, has been assigned to assist a group of documentarians in examining a historical murder case from the town of Kendal, in their stomping grounds. Back in the mid-19th Century, a young, deaf-mute servant woman was convicted of the double crime of attempting to drown her illegitimate baby, and murdering the philanthropist nobleman who employed her. She was sentenced to be “transported” (along with the baby) to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). Their reexamination of the evidence has been prompted by the discovery of a locket belonging to the woman, along with a cryptic note in her handwriting. Inspector Skelgill’s intimate knowledge of the local waterways proves useful in determining facts not until now understood.

Meanwhile, the team is also looking into the affairs of the murdered nobleman’s current heir, whose business operations are starting to smell bad. It looks increasingly as if he’s involved in human trafficking and slave labor.

Much of action centers on Sgt. Jones, who as an attractive young female finds doors opened to her, both among local women and with a lecherous property manager.

The problematic part of the story – for me – is the involvement of a group of local witches (though they do not call themselves that). I’m on record as saying I don’t believe in witches, either in the ancient or in the modern senses of the term. I don’t believe in magic (fantasy writer though I am). And I also don’t believe that there is an ancient, secret order of women who’ve passed the religion of Wicca down through the centuries. I believe modern Wicca is a romantic movement invented in the early 20th Century. This book did not take that view.

Still, I suppose I could take that as a fantasy element in Murder at Blind Beck. It was a good read otherwise.

Uncategorized

In memoriam, Robert Duvall

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This day sort of didn’t happen for me, in some sense. Yesterday I did a lecture which involved a long drive, and today I was just wiped out. Slept late, accomplished little in the writing realm except for some research-related reading.

Robert Duvall has died. I don’t know if he was my favorite actor; I just don’t think in those terms. But I think he was the actor I trusted most.

He came up in the same generation as Pacino and Hackman, but he identified better than any other actor with the common people of America. Speaking as a farmer’s son, I believed him utterly when he presented himself as a redneck. His contemporaries didn’t have that touch, and (I suspect) didn’t even want it.

I became a Duvall fan, I think, when I read him quoted in a newspaper, many years ago. I don’t remember the words exactly, of course, but it went something like this – “Southern governors ought to place roadblocks at their state lines, and turn back every Hollywood film crew that tries to cross. ‘We know what you want to do here,’ they should say, ‘and we’re not putting up with it.’”

His performance as Robert E. Lee in “Gods and Generals” was the only portrayal of the man that ever satisfied me.

His actual origins were privileged and pure California. His father was an admiral, his mother an actress. He was raised as a Christian Scientist, though he later said he didn’t attend church at all.

And yet, in “Tender Mercies” (clip above) and “The Apostle” he gave portrayals of born-again Christians that rang true as a solid gold dollar in a collection plate.

R.I.P., Robert Selden Duvall. Well done.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Shadow of a Lie,’ by Steve Higgs

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English author Steve Higgs has written a trilogy about an aging police detective named Tony Heaton, of which Shadow of a Lie is the first volume. It didn’t blow me away, but it was well-written and intriguing in its way.

Tony Heaton often thinks about the movie cliché where a cop gets killed just as he’s coming up on retirement. He’s coming up on retirement himself, but has no intention of putting himself anywhere near harm’s way. He serves in a small, quiet community in Kent, and though he was a hotshot up-and-comer when young, his career foundered following a mistake, and he’s been coasting ever since.

Then his commander (who loathes him) tells him he’s been assigned to a special project, investigating cold cases. He’s partnered with a young detective named Ashley (male) Long. Ashley is the kind of rising star Tony used to be, and a martial artist to boot. In spite of seniority, Ashley is put in charge of the project, and he steers them to the disappearance, several years before, of a young man in another small town. No body was ever found, so it’s technically a missing person’s case, but Ashley has a feeling about it.

There are, in fact, people out there who know what became of the missing boy, and they will go to any lengths to muddy up the trail. The action will pass beyond raised voices and threats to actual physical battery and shots fired. Tony will find himself closer than he ever imagined to that movie-cliché ending he used to laugh about.

And when the case is solved, a plot twist will arise, impelling the reader to move on to the series’ second book.

Pretty good. I thought some of the action in Shadow of a Lie was a little implausible; on the other hand I never realized before how useful zip ties could be in a fight.

Not a great mystery, but pretty good. A professional job of work. I don’t recall any content that calls for special cautions.

Music, Religion

‘O Love That Will Not Let Me Go”

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A hymn tonight, as is so often my lazy default on Fridays. I’ve posted a different version of the one before, but it never gets old. I can’t find a composition or publication date for “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go, ” but Wikipedia reports that its author, Rev. George Matheson, wrote it on the evening of his sister’s wedding.  It must have been a poignant moment for him, as he’d gone blind as a young man, and his sister had been his caretaker since then.

He wrote, “I am quite sure that the whole work was completed in five minutes, and equally sure that it never received at my hands any retouching or correction. I have no natural gift of rhythm. All the other verses I have ever written are manufactured articles; this came like a dayspring from on high.”

He himself had been engaged to be married once, but his fiancée broke it off when she learned he was losing his sight. In spite of his handicap, he became a very successful minister in the Scottish Presbyterian Church and a respected scholar, publishing several books and earning an LL.D. degree.

Matheson is also the author of my favorite hymn, “Make Me a Captive, Lord,” which I hardly ever sing anymore, because my church doesn’t seem to know about it, and everybody but me sings it wrong anyway.

Have a blessed weekend.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Antihero,’ by Gregg Hurwitz

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Evan jostled to the fringe as the congregation surrounded Anca. Confusion pulsed in his chest, to have allowed himself to be pushed to the periphery, to lose someone he was protecting to a mob. But of course it was not a mob, it was a community, and he felt a sense of loss that his muscle memory had never been taught to distinguish between the two.

Gregg Hurwitz is, by his own confession, not a Christian. He’s a follower of Jordan Peterson, who famously does a perpetual flirtation dance around the gospel, batting his eyes but never committing.

Nonetheless, in his latest Orphan X novel, Antihero, he has given us the most fully realized, sympathetic, and admirable Christian character I have encountered in fiction in this century.

On a New York subway car, a vulnerable young woman is attacked by a feral gang of young thugs, who drag her off, film themselves gangbanging her, and upload the video to the internet.

A sympathetic witness unloads the abduction story to a man who happens to have contact with Evan Smoak, Orphan X, the Nowhere Man, our freelance hero. Evan is able to marshal unusual resources in order to find the young woman, Anca Dumitrescu, a Romanian immigrant. The next job is to locate the perpetrators, and make sure they never do this sort of thing again. Only this time Evan is working under an extra prohibition, beyond the strict rules by which he already lives – Anca is a devout Orthodox Christian, and she insists that Evan not kill them.

That’s not the only personal challenge Evan faces in Antihero. His teenaged female ward, Joey, is becoming a woman, and he has no roadmap (or role model) to help him deal with that. Or with Mia, the single mother who lives in his building, with whom he can’t get involved because she works for the DA and she’d have to arrest him. Or Candy, the fellow assassin who’s becoming a good friend and – this time out – a lover.

The action is explosive and excessive, but it’s the characters that killed me in this book. I cared about them deeply. They intrigued and surprised me.

I don’t know when I last read a book I enjoyed as much as Antihero. Get it. Read it. I’ve run out of superlatives.

(Cautions for sexual content and — of course — violent scenes.)

Religion

Inanities of mortality

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Photo credit: Fey Marin. Unsplash license.

Somebody said that we don’t know what we’re thinking until we write it down. Like most aphorisms, it’s probably only true in limited cases. But I want to think this thing through, and you’re my designated victims audience.

What I’ve had on my mind of late is death.

This is not, I hasten to add, my way of easing into grave news. There is no grave news. I’m doing okay, health-wise, for an old fat man, as my doctor told me a few weeks ago (I think those were his exact words).

But there’s been a lot of death in my life of late. I lost a friend in December, and another in January. Now one of the men in my Bible study group at church is in hospice; we went to see him Monday night. We’ll likely never see him again.

Also I lost an uncle last month. And another friend died earlier last year. (That one was complicated. We’d been very close at one time, but over the years he changed his opinions, and I felt he was using me more and more as an ideological punching bag. So I broke it off. Then word came that he was dying, and I agreed to one last phone call. It was civil, I left him with God’s blessing, and a couple days later he was gone. I’m sure I could have handled it better, but handling things badly is sort of my personal style.)

So it’s probably not surprising that I’ve had death on my mind. I’m disappointed to find that I’m not properly resigned yet to my mortality. I honestly thought I was. I assumed (perhaps judgmentally) that those intense people who live their lives with gusto were probably in denial. But I’ve always lived carefully. Measured out my life in coffee spoons. I have looked on the dark side. Gazed into the abyss. The Roman emperors, I seem to recall, had a slave who followed them about, muttering, “Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.” I fulfilled that function for myself. “Remember, it can always get worse, and probably will,” has been my slogan.

And yet I find myself resistant to assimilating the fact that I’m in my 70s, approaching the actuarial horizon for most of my family. I had a vague idea, I think, that I’d probably drop dead after I finished the Erling books, like Pres. Grant, who finished his autobiography (which paid off his debts) just days before dying of cancer. (It’s a good book, too. Very succinct and efficient in style. He wrote like he fought. You’d almost think it was written post-Hemingway.)

But here I am, my great project completed, trying to find a way forward with an even more ambitious (but hopefully shorter) work. I’m planning as if I’ll live forever. Caesar’s slave whispers to me, and I give him an elbow in the gut.

I am, in short, in denial. That offends my sense of myself.

On the one hand, the Bible tells us to number our days. On the other, we’re told to cast no thought on the morrow. Am I living my best life, looking on the bright side? Or am I deluding myself?

I have no internal instrument for judging this.

I suppose I could pray about it, but that sounds kind of extreme.