All posts by Lars Walker

Dead Zero, by Stephen Hunter

January 30, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

There are various ways for authors to handle the problem of aging in popular series characters. Some characters never age at all. Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin were unaffected by the passage of decades. John D. MacDonald, as I recall, allowed his hero Travis McGee to age about one year for every three in real time. This lent an illusion of realism, while extending McGee’s effective life as an action hero as long as the author was likely to live. Perhaps the bravest course is to just let nature take its course.

That’s what Stephen Hunter is doing in his Bob Lee Swagger novels. Old Bob Lee, decorated Vietnam War Marine sniper, is getting long in the tooth. He’s moving slow, and feeling his aches and pains (especially the ones from his multiple wounds) pretty badly.

So Hunter has apparently decided to take the series in a new direction. And I salute him for it. In Dead Zero he’s produced an exciting and compelling action novel in which Bob Lee acts as the shrewd old detective, reader of human “landscape,” and spotter, but another, younger sniper has come on board to do the running and crawling and shooting. Continue reading Dead Zero, by Stephen Hunter →

Fiction, Religion

Stolen Away, by Max Allan Collins

January 26, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

In the shadows of the reflecting fire, her face was lovely, but she looked tired, and sad—or anyway melancholy, which is the wealthy’s way of feeling sad.

I have a memory of the first time my parents ever mentioned the Lindbergh kidnapping. To them, it was almost like a tragedy in the family. Charles Lindbergh was not only a national hero, he was a Minnesota hero, a Swedish boy from Little Falls. My father, a frustrated aviator, idolized him.

Max Allan Collins’ Stolen Away is a fictionalized account of the investigation, starring his private eye character Nathan Heller (I said I’d come back to this series, and I have). It’s a long and convoluted book, because it was a long and convoluted investigation. Judging from the author’s overview of source materials at the end, it appears one could do worse than come to this book first, if one were in the market for a comprehensive account of the whole thing (always taking fictional elements into consideration, of course).

The story starts in Chicago in 1932, when young Nathan Heller, a police detective, sights a suspicious woman carrying a baby through the LaSalle Street railroad station. Because police all over the country have been keeping their eyes out for the missing Lindbergh baby, he follows her, which leads to a gunfight and the recovery of the kidnapped baby—of a bootlegger. Continue reading Stolen Away, by Max Allan Collins →

Uncategorized

Sleeping with the fishes

January 25, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

Photo by Faucon

Honestly, I never meant to kill them all.

I’m talking about fish, of course.

If you’re new to this blog, you may not know that I occasionally report on my fish keeping adventures. I don’t own fish myself. But for reasons I won’t bore you with, the library I manage has a fish tank, and I care for it.

There are challenges. For one thing, the local water is highly alkaline, resistant to any pH altering treatment, so a lot of fish just don’t like it, and express their disapproval through dying.

But over the years I’ve found a couple of species that do well. One is the Harlequin Rasbora, and the other, discovered more recently, has been the Tiger Barb. Both varieties seemed to do fine with the water (does their orange coloring have anything to do with it? Probably not), and I do my part by keeping the aquarium clean and the fish food coming.

But on Tuesday morning I goofed up. One of the frustrations of keeping fish is measuring out fish food. The containers come with little sliding apertures, and you open them as far as you consider prudent, then pour. Sometimes you get a lot less than you expected, and you have to shake the container. Sometimes you get a lot more than you intended.

That was what happened Tuesday. I immediately grabbed the net and and tried to fish the food out. But apparently I didn’t get enough.

Because the Tiger Barbs did what Tiger Barbs do (apparently the Rasboras are more prudent), and ate themselves to death. At the end of the day, I’d already flushed one Barb, and another was looking peaked.

This morning every single Tiger Barb was belly up. Every single one. Leaving the Rasboras (all of them) and the one other fish that was there when I came, which I’ve never actually identified, to survive.

I’ll get some more Tiger Barbs. They seem to do pretty well, when I’m on my game.

I’m just working on what level of shame and guilt I should feel.

I mean, I sometimes went fishing when I was a kid, and killed fish on purpose.

Religion

Educational news

January 24, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

The big news in the publishing world today is that our friend Hunter Baker, author of The End of Secularism, will be the author of one of the volumes in a forthcoming series from Crossway Books.

JACKSON, Tenn. – January 24, 2012– Union University President David S. Dockery has been named the editor of a new series of books designed for Christian students and others on college and university campuses.

In “Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition: A Guide for Students,” published by Crossway, Dockery and other experts argue that vibrant, world-changing Christianity is not anti-intellectual but assumes a long tradition of vigorous Christian thinking and a commitment to the integration of faith and scholarship….

Four other books in the series will also be released in 2012, including “The Liberal Arts: A Student’s Guide,” by Gene C. Fant Jr., Union’s vice president for academic administration, in May, and “Political Thought: A Student’s Guide,” by Hunter Baker, associate dean of arts and sciences at Union, in July.

Good luck with the book, Hunter. It sounds like a much-needed contribution.

I feel the need to comment on a recent news story that hasn’t gotten (I think) as much attention as it deserves.

As I grow older, a particular experience becomes more and more common (and no, I’m not talking about anything having to do with the bathroom). An announcement is made, in a rather low-key way, about some grand theory which was all the rage when I was younger, often one that was used, hammer-wise, to pound on Christians, given as “proof” that we are moral luddites motivated by pure hate. The news item now tells us that new research indicates that the wonderful, world-changing theory has, in fact, not borne the weight of either experience or further research. Take this story from The Washington Post:

For decades, the prevailing wisdom in education was that high self-esteem would lead to high achievement. The theory led to an avalanche of daily affirmations, awards ceremonies and attendance certificates — but few, if any, academic gains.

Now, an increasing number of teachers are weaning themselves from what some call empty praise. Drawing on psychology and brain research, these educators aim to articulate a more precise, and scientific, vocabulary for praise that will push children to work through mistakes and take on more challenging assignments….

You know, just once I’d like an apology from the people who called us names. But I don’t expect that to happen. It might damage the apologizers’ self-esteem, after all.

Fiction, Reviews

What the Night Knows, by Dean Koontz

January 20, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

I’m a fan of Dean Koontz, so when I say that I wasn’t entirely pleased with What the Night Knows, you must understand that I’m not saying it was a bad read, or that it bored me. It’s a professionally constructed story, with appealing characters and gripping terror. But there were things that disappointed me about it.

As in so many Koontz stories, the action is sparked by a bigger-than-life villain. This one is Alton Turner Blackwood, a gigantic, deformed sexual sadist who has an extra advantage—he’s dead. He can possess inanimate objects or people, and he uses them to commit horrific sex murders against entire families. He especially craves young, innocent females.

Years ago police detective John Calvino, then a teenaged boy, walked in on Blackwood just after he had murdered Calvino’s family. Calvino shot him to death. But somehow Blackwood’s evil spirit endures, and he is determined to recreate his last string of murders, on precisely the same timetable, finishing up with Calvino and his wife and three children. Continue reading What the Night Knows, by Dean Koontz →

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Reviews

Apparently I have hidden depths

January 19, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

Our friend Grim at the Grim’s Hall blog has the honor of posting the first blog review of Troll Valley. And what he has to say about it is extremely intriguing:

There is a wider lesson to her example. A family home is like a broader human community in that it has rules that establish a way of life, and under that way of life a community is possible. We see in the early chapters how the traditions of Norwegian families at Yuletide sustained a broad community through hard work. It is at that feast that the mother first uses her power to force a change in the rules, in her interest and against the interests of others. It is by forcing continual alterations of the rules of life that she destroys the community within the house, so that finally no one can live with her at all.

Each of these rules is meant to represent moral progress, but each of them destroys the living community in which human kindness is possible.

Grim sees the book as a drama of modern ideas of societal reform in conflict with the old traditions, and traditional relationships, that actually bind society together.

I find this fascinating, because I honestly didn’t have that in mind when I wrote. I was thinking of politics vs. religion, not politics vs. tradition. But now that he mentions it, I can see that the lesson is there. What I did was try to represent factually the kind of changes that were going on in the first couple decades of the 20th Century, and the “lesson” grew kind of organically from the events.

This all pleases me immensely. I like being smarter than I intended.

Uncategorized

Link sausage, Jan. 18, 2012

January 18, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

Anthony Esolen has written one of the best articles I’ve read in a long time about culture in general, and art in particular, for Crisis Magazine. What Makes Norman Rockwell Possible?

And that sense of wonder, especially at what is but small or homely or unregarded, is everywhere to be found in Rockwell’s paintings. For the Christian world, properly understood, is the only real haven for man, because in it we learn not only that man is made in the image of God, but that God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Son, born of a virgin and laid in a manger. Every man we meet bears within himself the mysteries of Christmas, and Good Friday, and Easter, whether he is aware of it or not, and we find these mysteries most clearly manifest in the meek and the lowly.

On some level I believe that Norman Rockwell understood this. Some critics try to shore up his reputation by pointing to the “serious” political paintings he executed: the small black girl escorted to school in the midst of National Guardsmen, or the man standing up in a town meeting to exercise his freedom of speech. I don’t wish to deny the success of those works. I think they are very good. But Rockwell’s heart lay elsewhere.

Today is the day Wikipedia blacked itself out to protest the SOPA legislation. I am not taking a strong line on the subject, but I believe those who say it’s a bad law, destructive of freedom (most of them seem to be, these days). On the other hand, I’m a copyright holder myself, and favor intellectual property rights in general. As I believe many people protesting SOPA are.

Somebody on Facebook linked to a Twitter discussion where people were panicking–“THEY SHUT WIKIPEDIA DOWN? HOW WILL WE LIVE?” “HOW CAN THE GOVERNMENT DO THAT?”

I suppose these people’s problem is that Wikipedia is their only source of information about the world, and they couldn’t check the news on Wikipedia.

Fiction, Reviews

Manalive, by G. K. Chesterton

January 17, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

When men are weary they fall into anarchy; but while they are gay and vigorous they invariably make rules. This, which is true of all the churches and republics of history, is also true of the most trivial parlour game or the most unsophisticated meadow romp.

We are never free until some institution frees us; and liberty cannot exist till it is declared by authority….

This may be the most delightful of all G. K. Chesterton’s fictional romps. Many love The Man Who Was Thursday, but Manalive is perhaps the distillation of the author’s philosophy of life; a comedy that makes his most serious point.

The central character of Manalive is Innocent Smith, a huge but oddly graceful gentleman who leaps into a suburban London garden one day, chasing his hat in the wind. He is not at all irritated by having his hat blown away; he declares to the people present that hat chasing is one of his favorite sports. He then proceeds to shoot a physician’s hat off with a pistol, an action which sparks the story’s odd action.

Soon three young men have proposed to three young women, and had their proposals accepted. Then authorities come to take Innocent Smith away. He is, according to information received, an attempted murderer, a burglar, and a bigamist, believed to be dangerously insane. Through one of those odd plot contrivances that could only happen in a Chesterton story, a hearing on his sanity is held in that very house. Evidence against Smith is heard, and explanations given.

Without giving away the details, the whole point is that Smith is a man who has discovered how wonderful life is, and is determined to make himself forever aware of the wonder of living through finding new ways rediscover its beauty. He seems insane because he’s eminently sane. He looks like a murderer because he imparts life wherever he goes. He is a walking paradox, Chesterton’s perfect brain-child.

If you’re looking for realistic fiction, this is not the book for you. Chesterton, as is his wont, stretches probability as wide as Innocent Smith’s waistcoat. He plays with ideas, plays with his characters, and plays with the reader. He is endearing and maddening—just like his main character.

Recommended without reservation.

Brandywine Books

All posts by Lars Walker

Dead Zero, by Stephen Hunter

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Stolen Away, by Max Allan Collins

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Sleeping with the fishes

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Educational news

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What the Night Knows, by Dean Koontz

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Link sausage, Jan. 18, 2012

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Manalive, by G. K. Chesterton

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