All posts by Lars Walker

Writing

Writer’s journal: Spring freeze edition

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Crocuses. Photo credit alesmaze. Unsplash license.

It’s a very Minnesota thing, actually. Yesterday was the first day of spring, so the temperature, which had been flirting with a springlike 60 degrees for weeks, plunged promptly to freezing. And that makes sense, in its way. One consistent thing about our winters is that, however mild they may have gotten, a final blast must infallibly come after the spring equinox. One last hard freeze. Maybe one last blizzard. Like a kid being wakened for school, who whines for just a few more minutes in bed.

We might get snow over the weekend. Quite a lot, even. Don’t put that snow blower away yet, neighbors.

You want spring in this state, you gots to pay your dues. Even if it’s been spring most of the winter.

How is the book coming? The Baldur Game is coming together. I finished another revision and sent it off to beta readers. Once they get back to me, pointing out my howling howlers and shrieking sins of omission, I’ll do some more work on it and – I imagine – get it up on Amazon.

I took a peek at the first few paragraphs after I sent it to the readers – which is cheating according to my personal protocols. This is the time to wipe my brain clean, forget everything about it, so I can come back and view the thing with semi-unbiased eyes.

But that peek told me I’ll probably need to polish it a little more. I may have actually sabotaged myself at some points. I have this quirk I employ, especially in the Erling books. I try for an antique effect by altering my verbs. Instead of writing, “I haven’t got any bread,” I’ll write, “I’ve no bread.” Sounds vaguely Irish, which fits Father Ailill. But my peek suggested that maybe I overdid it. Made the prose difficult to read. I’ll have to check for that.

But not now. Don’t think about it now. For the time being, I’m working my way up to my audio book version of The Year of the Warrior. Very preliminary. Learning stages. The technology scares me, but some people helped me out generously with equipment, and I need to master this stuff. Small steps, ascending learning curve, in the Jordan Peterson style.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Surf City Acid Drop,’ by Craig Terlson

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“Trust a guy like you to drive this far. What’s wrong with Minnesota?”

“Too many Scandinavians.”

Craig Terlson’s entertaining Luke Fischer mysteries began with Surf City Acid Drop, which I’ve finally gotten around to. I had assumed, on the basis of the title, that we’d find about our hero’s background as a surfer, but in fact it’s just a metaphor. The “acid drop” is a phenomenon where a wave drops out from under a surfer; Luke (who has never surfed) gets the water pulled out from under his feet, so to speak, more than once in this story.

Luke Fischer is a Canadian expatriate slacker living near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. He insists (often) that he’s not a private detective, but occasionally people ask him to look for things. His new client is a slightly shady woman who tells him she wants him to find her brother, who has disappeared and gone on the road.

Thus Luke sets out on a road trip that will take him through the American West and Midwest. Along the way he’ll encounter an eccentric hit man he calls Mostly Harold, who will become his problematic ally – if Harold doesn’t decide to kill him instead. All in a quest for a much-coveted bag full of rocks (not diamonds).

As always, Craig Terlson’s quirky characters and socko prose are what made the book. I found this one a little more cohesive than the one I read previously, but still I think Luke’s great weakness as a main character is his lack of fire in the belly. He doesn’t seem to care much about anything, and even his fear of death seems muted. Which doesn’t mean he isn’t still fun to spend time with. But it did make some stretches of the book a little slow. The humor, though often dark, helps pass the time.

All in all, I quite enjoyed Surf City Acid Drop, and recommend it. Cautions for language and violence.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘All Hands On Deck,’ by Will Sofrin

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…being aloft in that storm made me appreciate all I was learning. We were on only day four of our passage, had traveled only one-tenth of the distance to our destination, and I had already seen more than I could have imagined or planned for. There was no off switch, no time-out, no opportunity to stop and take a break. That moment forever changed my understanding of how to handle adversity. The only way out was through.

Like many other people of taste, I have a great fondness for the 2003 move, Master and Commander, starring Russell Crowe. I find sailing fascinating (though I have almost no experience with it), and have enjoyed reading both the Horatio Hornblower and the Aubrey/Matchurin classic novel series. The movie was a box-office disappointment, but has acquired a well-deserved popularity in the ensuing years.

But one thing it never occurred to me to wonder about was where they got the ship that served as the HMS Surprise in the movie. Turns out it was originally called the Rose (after the historical HMS Rose of the British Navy), and had had a lackluster career as a museum ship and tourist attraction on the US East Coast. When the movie studio decided to buy it, it was docked at Newport, Rhode Island. That was where Will Sofrin, a somewhat rudderless young boat bum, joined the crew. He and a motley, coed group of sailors took the ship (which turned out to be poorly built, badly maintained, and leaky) through the Panama Canal to San Diego, surviving a hurricane, a dismasting, and various interpersonal conflicts along the way. The final result is the book, All Hands On Deck: A Modern-Day High Seas Adventure to the Far Side of the World.

I always enjoy a good sea story, and Sofrin does an excellent job telling the tale of this voyage. He works in a lot of background about how the British Navy operated in the Age of Sail, as well as more detail than most of us will probably ever need about sailing techniques and technical terms. This information will be of great benefit to fans of Patrick O’Brian’s novels.

The human drama that went on among the crew, particularly when it comes to sexual relations between members of a mixed-sex crew, sometimes offered more information than I wanted. But the story as a whole was human and relatable, and the lessons the author learned were exemplary. He also writes pretty well.

I enjoyed reading All Hands On Deck, and recommend it, especially for O’Brian fans.

Authors, Uncategorized

Avalsdnes Viking Farm

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I was looking for another kind of video for tonight. Back when the Kristin Lavransdatter film was shot, I read somewhere that they were preserving the sets they used for Kristin’s father’s farm in the Gudbrandsdal, to have as a tourist attraction. But I can’t seem to find any mention of it, so it must have either never happened, or it failed to thrive.

Instead, I found this relatively new video, about the Viking farm at Avaldsnes. This is the place where I attended the Viking festival 2 years ago. It’s very familiar to me now, and brings back good memories.

Some of you might even be interested in visiting yourselves.

I’m still proud of making that walk twice a day, at my age. Not bad for a fat American. (Confession: I cheated and wore modern shoes.)

Reading, Uncategorized

Kristin Lavransdatter clip

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I think the clip above is not an official trailer for the 1995 Norwegian film, “Kristin Lavransdatter,” directed by Liv Ullman. It’s something somebody put together themselves. But I think it’s nicely done, and it explicates the plot pretty well. I wasn’t over the moon about the film, but this clip pleases me.

Uncategorized

‘Kristin Lavransdatter: The Crown,’ by Sigrid Undset

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And it had been awkward and strange for them to sit together in full view of everyone; they had had little to talk about because they had shared so many secrets. A slight fear began to stir inside her—faint and dim, but always present—that perhaps, in some way, it might be difficult for them when they were finally married, because they had been too close to each other in the beginning and then had been separated for far too long.

I’ve now finished the first book of Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, The Crown, in Tina Nunnally’s translation. In spite of some criticisms I’ve expressed about the translation, I have to state for the record that I found the book extremely moving.

The story of Kristin Lavransdatter is pretty well known, and I’ve certainly described it here before. Kristin lives in Norway’s beautiful Gudbrandsdal valley. She is the daughter of a highborn man who, due to political misfortunes, has lost his prospects, and is now a big man in a small community. But he’s highly respected, and deserves it. He adores his daughters, especially his oldest, Kristin, who is very beautiful and whom he tends to spoil. He has betrothed her to a suitable young man, decent but somewhat dull.

Kristin loves her father and means well, but she’s headstrong and doesn’t understand the power she has over men. When she gets in a situation that ends in a young man’s death, her parents send her to spend a year in a nunnery, until the gossip dies down. There she meets the dashing Erlend Nikolausson, who is a bona fide knight, and very handsome. But he has a bad reputation, having had an affair – and fathered two children – with a married woman from whom he is now estranged. The two of them fall passionately in love, and vow to marry. Kristin sets out – through defiance and manipulation – to get her father to break her betrothal and give her to Erlend instead.

Here’s the great conflict of the book. Kristin’s father is a wise and caring man, and he senses immediately that Erlend, for all his glamor, is utterly lacking in character. He knows that if he gives Kristin to this man, her heart will be broken down the line. But Kristin’s willfulness – her fatal flaw – will defeat him in the end, to her own sorrow. That, however, is a tale for the subsequent books.

I have read this book as a young man, as a middle-aged man, and now as an old man. Like all great books, it speaks differently with each reading. This time out, I was impressed by the author’s understanding of character – especially of sin. (Frankly, it stung a bit.) There are people in the book who are known to be sinners and recognize themselves as such, but the “good” people are sinners too. They carry the seeds of their destruction inside them. Kristin means well, but she’s immature and spoiled, and heedless of her power over men. Erlend is gallant in theory – a knight tested in battle – but in his private affairs he’s a sneak and a coward. Even Kristin’s father, though a man of great character, hasn’t the sternness of heart he needs to protect Kristin from herself (though he seems to be in a no-win situation).

Another thing I remarked this time out was the book’s rich descriptions. Sigrid Undset had a lifelong fascination with botany. She names the trees of the forest and the flowers of the field as they come into the picture, and that enriches our imaginations, even if we can’t picture them precisely.

The medieval sexual morality of The Crown must be a puzzle to contemporary readers. No doubt many of them wonder what all the fuss is about. But I suspect that even they can’t help being compelled by the strong characters and their very human conflicts.

The Crown is a tremendous book.

Reviews

Amazon Prime film review: ‘Marlowe’

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I caught the 2022 film, “Marlowe” on Amazon Prime. Anything related to Philip Marlowe always intrigues me, so I watched it in spite of the poor reviews it’s gotten. I liked it in many ways, but somehow it fell apart at the end.

There seem to be two varieties of Philip Marlowe in the cinematic world. Usually he’s portrayed as a strong, tall man, young or no older than middle age. But 1975 brought us “Farewell, My Lovely,” featuring an aging Robert Mitchum, who was so perfect for the role that he made it work (there was even a sequel, “The Big Sleep,” where the whole scenario got bizarrely transplanted to London. But once again, Mitchum pulled it off).

“Old Marlowe” is back, after a fashion, in Marlowe, based not on a Chandler novel, but on a 2014 pastiche called The Black-Eyed Blonde, which I understand to have been based on an outline (or a note or something) from Chandler himself. Liam Neeson dons the trench coat and fedora, playing the role with a world-weary slump. Traces of his Irish accent edge through, and we’re told that he fought in an Irish regiment during World War I. (Which is, I think, new information.) The film is set in 1930, and the costumes and sets are pretty good.

Marlowe, as one expects, gets a visit in his office from a beautiful, wealthy blonde, Clare Cavendish (Diane Kruger). She is married, but her concern is with her lover, Nico Peterson (Francois Arnault), who has disappeared. Marlowe learns with little trouble that Nico is officially dead, run over by a car outside the swanky Corbata Club. But Clare insists that she recently saw Nico alive in Tijuana. Complications arise in the form of Clare’s mother, the aging actress Dorothy Quincannon (Jessica Lange. Her character is blatantly based on Gloria Swanson). Drug smuggling and Hollywood studio politics also show up, and civic corruption is revealed.

Liam Neeson is always fun to watch, even when he looks tired. The script was erudite – too erudite, it seemed to me. Raymond Chandler could rock a classical allusion with the best of them, but he knew better than to put quotations in everybody’s mouths.

But my main problem with the film was that the plot kind of went to pieces at the end. A new Maguffin appears out of the blue, and then we get swept up in a lot of references to Nazism that haven’t been set up in the story.

Nevertheless, I can’t deny I enjoyed watching “Marlowe,” most of the way through. Cautions for language, adult themes, and (of course) violence.

Reading

Reading report 2: ‘Kristin Lavransdatter’ (Hubris alert!)

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I proceed with reading Tina Nunnally’s translation of Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter. It’s a very long work, but I’m not going to read the whole trilogy at once. After I’ve finished the current (first) volume, I’ll turn to other things for a while, getting back into my review schedule.

The thing that’s surprised me most, so far, is a subjective response of my own that will probably make me seem pretty arrogant. I believe I could have done a better job on the translation.

This is ridiculous on the face of it – Nunnally is a successful, established literary translator. I’m a low-paid screenplay translator with one large book under my belt, Viking Legacy. And VL has hardly made many waves in the publishing world.

Nevertheless, the conviction has grown on me as I read. I don’t like Tina Nunnally’s approach.

There’s an old proverb I like to quote, Italian or French in origin, I believe – “A translation is like a wife. If she is faithful, she’s probably not beautiful. And if she’s beautiful, she’s probably not faithful.”

Nunnally is a faithful translator.

She seems to be aiming at precise fidelity to the text, as in these sentences: “There is still so much between us, more than if a naked sword had been laid between you and me. Tell me, will you have affection for me after this night is over?”

That’s precisely faithful. But “laid between us” would sing better, and “feel affection for me” is an awkward construction. “Care for me,” or even “like me” would be more natural. I’d have translated it something like one of those.

A work of literature, especially a masterpiece like KL, is more than a series of bald statements. Considerations of pace and tone need to be taken into account. To borrow a term from biblical translating (without taking sides on the biblical issue), I’m an advocate of dynamic equivalence.

It’s good that an uncut version of KL is now available. But I think a more satisfying job could have been done by a more sensitive translator.

I’m available (cough, cough).

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Reading report: ‘Kristin Lavransdatter,’ by Sigrid Undset

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“It seems to me that the dragon is awfully small,” said Kristin, looking at the image of the saint who was her namesake. “It doesn’t look as if it could swallow up the maiden.”

“And it couldn’t, either,” said Brother Edvin. “It was no bigger than that. Dragons and all other creatures that serve the Devil only seem big as long as we harbor fear within ourselves. But if a person seeks God with such earnestness and desire that he enters into His power, then the power of the Devil at once suffers such a great defeat that his instruments become small and unimportant. Dragons and evil spirits shrink until they are no bigger than goblins and cats and crows. As you can see, the whole mountain that Saint Sunniva was trapped inside is so small that it will fit on the skirt of her cloak.”

Saint Sunniva won’t be familiar to non-Norwegian readers, and not even to most Norwegians if they’re the American kind. She is a legendary saint supposed to have been martyred by Jarl Haakon (whom you’ll remember from The Year of the Warrior and Death’s Doors). She fled into a cave with her companions to avoid falling into Haakon’s hands, and they all died there. Later King Olaf Trygvesson found their uncorrupted bodies and declared their sainthood. I never used the legend in my own books.

I shared with you a special deal on Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy in the Tina Nunnally translation last month, and now I’ve taken up (re-)reading it myself. I’ve read the trilogy before – twice in the previous English translation and once in the original Norwegian. I should probably read that again, but my second-hand copy’s in very poor condition. And I wanted to try Nunnally – I’ve heard good things about her work.

I admit I approached the book with some degree of reluctance. It’s a fine example of the great Scandinavian tradition of depressing literature (though with the ameliorating influence of Christian faith, which most of the other modern stuff lacks). Kristin is a vivid and fascinating character, mostly respectable by most people’s standards, and always honorable in her own eyes. Yet Undset’s penetrating artistic eye looks deeply into her essential selfishness, which is gradually revealed to Kristin herself through a lifetime of living with consequences.

I’ve often said that Kristin Lavransdatter is an inverted romance novel. The beautiful, willful young girl defies her parents to run off with the dashing knight. But where the romance heroine lives happily ever after, Kristin has to live with her choices. All her chickens come home to roost, one after the other. And yet, the promise of God’s grace never leaves her.

What do I think of Tina Nunnally’s translation? It’s good. I can never read a Norwegian translation (my own included) anymore without quibbling, of course. I sometimes think this one a little too literal, just a little clunky. But I probably need to remove the beam from my own eye before I say that.

The first English translation, done in the 1920s by Charles Archer and J. S. Scott, has been criticized as artificially mannered, featuring deliberate English archaisms that don’t correspond to Undset’s idiomatic Norwegian. I understand the concern, though I can’t help sympathizing a little with Archer and Scott. One of the pleasures, for me, of working with Norwegian is the fact that its diction does have a kind of medieval quality from an English-speaker’s point of view. If I ask, “What means this word?” in English, that’s Renaissance Faire talk, but it’s perfectly grammatical in Norwegian. Getting used to such sentence construction has heavily influenced the way I write my Viking novels. When I think out a sentence in Norwegian, I sound medieval.

But the old translation had other sins, too, I am informed. Certain passages were bowdlerized, and are now restored in this version. (No doubt another, politically correct, bowdlerization is on its way soon, courtesy of Our Betters. So read this one while we enjoy a season of free speech.)

It’s pointless to criticize Kristin Lavransdatter as a work of art. It’s above my pay grade, and I’ve written much about it before. But I recommend it without reservation.

Writing

Who was Vigleik Arnesson?

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Work continues apace on The Baldur Game. I think I’m nearing the end of my initial drafts. Once I’ve finished this current red-pen revision, I plan to give it one more personal read-through, and then send it to some readers for comments. After that, I expect to do one more revision, and then move into the publication process. So I think that light up ahead may be the end of the tunnel, not just phosphors in my eye.

The tough part about nailing a large construction together is that you find out where you measured wrong. An intriguing little irregularity has appeared. I think I can describe it in vague enough terms not to spoil it for you.

If you read King of Rogaland (and of course you have. You haven’t left a review yet, though, have you? Not that I want to nag…), you may recall the wedding of Ragnhild Erlingsdatter (my hero’s daughter) to Thorberg Arnesson, a son of an important Norwegian family.

Okay, so I set that up. Thorberg will play a major role in The Baldur Game. So far, so good.

But in the saga accounts of the events I’m describing now, there’s another character named Vigleik Arnesson. He doesn’t actually appear on stage in my narrative, but an action he performs has important consequences. And I’ve been trying to figure out who this Vigleik Arnesson was. Snorri Sturlusson never tells us. One would imagine he was a brother to Thorberg, but I’ve seen several lists of those brothers, and Vigleik never appears.

I searched extensively online, not only in English-language but in Norwegian search engines. I found one notation on a Norwegian site that said Vigleik Arnesson was Erling’s nephew. But I couldn’t find out how that connection worked. Who were his parents?

Here’s where my scholarly sins caught up with me. In actual history, I learned at last, two of Erling’s daughters were married to Arnesson brothers – one to Thorberg (as I chronicled), but another to his older brother Arne. Vigleik was this Arne’s son. I had missed the Arne Arnesson connection completely. And the circumstances I set up in King of Rogaland left no room for that marriage. It has to have happened before the Thorberg-Ragnhild wedding, for various reasons, but I made it clear that (in my book) there’d been no previous alliances.

Now if I were Stephen Hunter, this would be no problem. He simply ignores any contradictions that pop up between various volumes of his Earl Swagger series. But I can’t do that. If you find contradictions in my Erling books (no doubt there are some), they’re due to sheer inadvertence. So I have to work this problem out in terms of my fictional world.

I think what I’ll have to do is wrest Vigleik from the bosom of his true family, and give him some other kind of pedigree. Perhaps I’ll marry his mother to some other Arne from some other family. It’s not that uncommon a name. I’m thinking about it.

When a man undertakes to write an epic, he takes on a vainglorious, hubristic task. He will make radical mistakes, demanding radical remedies.

All for about three paragraphs in the final book.