You may or may not recall (it’s seared, seared into my memory) my recent post in which I highly recommended the novel The Last of the Vikings, available on Kindle. I had to hurriedly post a correction once I had downloaded it myself and discovered that it was an entirely different (and to all appearances much inferior) English book.
I now think I see whence the problem arose. The first listing of the book I saw on Amazon was not the listing I linked, but this one, which very specifically identifies it as Johan Bojer’s book on fishing in the Lofoten Islands. I bought it today and checked it, just to make sure. Nope. Same old English novel. Now I have two copies on my Kindle.
I suppose there’s some mechanism for requesting a refund, but it’s a little late in the day to start standing up for myself now.
My publisher, Nordskog Publishing, has now posted my book trailer on their web site, here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page. It’s also on their page for West Oversea if you want to bore in and see it there too, for some reason.
All posts by Lars Walker
As solid as our political system
Library of Congress
Washington had to shut down for a few minutes today, and the stock market soared. Coincidence?
Actually, that wasn’t an earthquake. That was the economy settling.
(Cue rimshot.)
Film review: Conan the Barbarian
With this review, I consciously renounce all right to any respect as a film critic. I loved Cowboys and Aliens, which right-thinking people seem to despise, and now I’m going to admit to the world that I enjoyed the new Conan the Barbarian, which everybody except me and a few Facebook friends seems to loathe.
I’m going to start by moving my recommendation, which I usually leave for the end of the review, to the beginning. The good things I’m about to say about Conan the Barbarian should not be taken as an endorsement for most of our readers. This movie earns its “R” rating. There is much violence, and enough graphic, special effects-enhanced gore to please Odin’s ravens. Also considerable female nudity, often in situations involving bondage. I think this was a major error on the part of the filmmakers. They could have made a movie just as good without voluntarily reducing their paying audience through shock techniques and salaciousness.
On the other hand, the “R” rating is not inconsistent with the original material.
I approached Conan the Barbarian with something less than low expectations. I mistrusted the re-boot project from the first, and Michael Medved, whose opinion I respect, hated it. So I was pleasantly surprised when, somewhere along the way, I realized I was enjoying the show. Continue reading Film review: Conan the Barbarian
Survival story
I finished reading the history book from Kvalavåg (one of my ancestral homes in Norway) about which I wrote the other day. Most of it is stuff that wouldn’t interest you much, but there was one amazing paragraph in the section on the German occupation during World War II (my translation follows):
One of the leaders of the 14-man German troop was Konrad Grünbaum. He was actually of Jewish origin, and came from the city of Furth. His civil occupation was metal work, and he had been an active member of the Socialist Workers’ Youth. Before the war he himself had been in Dachau concentration camp. He had been accused of illegal work and sentenced to three years’ punishment. Through an error he came to Norway in ̀́41 and was promoted. Grünbaum himself said later that he had had very good relations with the people in Kvalavåg while he was there, up until 1943. People used to call him “the Englishman” because he spoke only English with the people. Others called him “Grandfather.”
What a bizarre story. I can only imagine the terrors he must have suffered, worrying in his bed that somebody in Personnel would notice his ethnicity and denounce him. And after the war, what must he have felt, when he pondered the cosmic lottery win that saved his life when so many others perished?
"Never mind," Black Death edition
“The Plague in the Stairway,” by Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen
You know how they taught you in school that the Black Plague was caused by fleas carried by rats?
At least according to one scholar, this is probably a slander on fleas and rats.
“The evidence just isn’t there to support it,” said Barney Sloane, author of The Black Death in London. “We ought to be finding great heaps of dead rats in all the waterfront sites but they just aren’t there. And all the evidence I’ve looked at suggests the plague spread too fast for the traditional explanation of transmission by rats and fleas. It has to be person to person – there just isn’t time for the rats to be spreading it.”
He added: “It was certainly the Black Death but it is by no means certain what that disease was, whether in fact it was bubonic plague.”
People at the time believed it was caused by “bad air.” Maybe they were right, if it was caused by human-to-human contact.
G. K. Chesterton would have loved that.
Film review: Twelve O'Clock High
I’m sure every one of you has seen the movie Twelve O’Clock High already, but I never saw it until last night. I know I write too much about movies in this books blog, but I want to meditate on the film a little bit, particularly as an exercise in storytelling. It’s a superior example of the art.
What you’ve got in Twelve O’Clock High is two layers of story going on at one time. There’s the surface story—the sort of thing a small boy watching it would come away with, and then there are the truths the story conveys, buried under the surface but identifiable if you’re looking for them.
The surface story is pretty simple. The 918th Heavy Bombardment Group, based in England at the very beginning of American participation in World War II, is suffering heavier than average losses. The men, and their commander, Col. Keith Davenport (Gary Merrill), think they’re jinxed. Their commanding general thinks the problem is more practical, and sends in hard-nosed Brig. Gen. Frank Savage (Gregory Peck) to whip the unit into shape. This he does, through hard—sometimes cruel—discipline. As the men learn to repress their individual fears and concerns and operate as a group, they manage to achieve their goals and lower their losses.
But that’s not the real story. The real story is what’s going on inside the men. I don’t mean any disrespect to John Wayne (frankly I think John Wayne could have handled the Frank Savage part just fine), but you understand what I mean when I say this isn’t the typical kind of war movie we associate with John Wayne. Gregory Peck’s Gen. Savage sometimes pushes the men too hard, and he’s not as confident as he seems. There’s a splendid little moment when his adjutant, Lt. Col. Stovall (Dean Jagger) says, “You know the difference between Col. Davenport and Gen. Savage? Gen. Savage is about this much taller.” In the end, Davenport’s and Savage’s roles get very neatly reversed.
Because the real message here is that war is impossible. Fighting in a war is like walking a tightrope while carrying ever heavier burdens, while crosswinds change at random. No man can bear the strain indefinitely. The strongest iron breaks at last, through constant fatigue.
A friend of mine who’s a combat veteran says this is the most realistic war movie ever made. That’s remarkable when you think that it was made in 1949, taking into account all the special effects advances that have been made since then, and changes in audience toleration for on-screen gore. What sets Twelve O’Clock High apart is outstanding storytelling, a profound understanding of the human heart.
Political noodling
In case you’re a visitor to Brandywine Books, I need to make it clear that two political posts in one day is a great rarity here. One political post in a day is a rarity. Phil and I generally eschew political comments (we don’t even have a Politics category), in favor of the far less controversial subject of religion.
But I’ve been worried the last few days. First President Obama (peace be upon him) visits Cannon Falls, Minnesota, just up the road from Kenyon, my home town. The next day he’s in Decorah, where I spent a year at Luther College sometime around the Coolidge administration. It began to look as if he were stalking me. Perhaps he finally figured out that my tin foil hat prevents him from controlling my mind with his delta rays, and he’s trying to follow my trail instead. About thirty years in my rear view mirror, but that’s civil service work for you.
However, I remember that one of my high school classmates actually graduated from Luther College. So it’s probably him the president is stalking.
Whew. That was close.
If I understand the news reports correctly, a lot of people are saying Michele Bachmann isn’t qualified to be president, because she opens her mouth to eat a corn dog.
I have to assume that sophisticated, civilized people who attended Ivy League schools have some superior method of eating their corn dogs. If anybody knows what it is, I’d appreciate hearing about it, because I always end up dripping ketchup on my shirt.
But Rep. Bachmann’s campaign is over anyway, it seems to me. She confused the anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death with his birthday.
You can get away with a lot in American politics, but I’m pretty sure messing up your Elvis essentials takes you beyond the pale.
The nice thing about being beyond the pale, though, is that you can eat your corn dog any bloody way you like.
Spoils of the weekend
It was one of the most exhausting weekends I’ve had in a long time, involving considerable interaction with other human beings, always a workout for me. But nevertheless it wasn’t a bad weekend. Two things that happened, in particular, pleased me inordinately.
First of all, I got this link from my friend and sparring partner, Ragnar. They’re going to do The Long Ships as a movie again. In fact, they’re going to do two movies and a TV miniseries. They’re going to do it in Sweden, and if the Swedes are to be believed (always, ahem, a gamble), they’re going to do it right this time. Continue reading Spoils of the weekend
Killing Floor, by Lee Child
After my unpleasant experience with Philip Kerr’s Field Gray, I was in the mood for something less ambitious and more fun. I found it in Lee Child’s first Jack Reacher thriller, Killing Floor
Child, an English television writer who does a very creditable job portraying American characters and settings, knows a few important truths about thriller writing. He knows that “movie logic,” the phenomenon that allows movies to get away with a lot of unlikely or impossible story elements because “I just saw it right there,” also works—to a certain extent—in action novels. The very unlikely coincidence on which this book’s plot pivots doesn’t bear close examination, but Child treats it matter of factly and keeps the interest up, and most readers come along for the ride. I know I did. Enjoyed it too.
His hero is Jack Reacher, a former military policeman who was raised a Marine brat. Having left the Marines, he is now traveling the United States, getting to know the country of which he is a citizen, in which he has never actually spent much time. And so, purely on a whim, he gets off a bus and walks to a tiny town called Margrave, Georgia, where he is immediately arrested by the police. A man has been murdered, and the stranger is a natural suspect. By the time Jack’s alibi has checked out, he’s met a very attractive lady cop he wants to know better, and come to feel a certain responsibility for a fellow prisoner, a rich man who doesn’t know how to handle himself in lock-up. But when he learns the identity of the murdered man, Jack’s course of action is decided. He has an obligation.
Fortunately for the good guys, Jack’s a very dangerous man—the very kind of man you want around when you’re up against a murderous, amoral conspiracy.
Killing Floor has all the virtues—and some of the faults—of an inspired first novel. Some of the detective work seemed a little too neat to me, and one of the big mysteries probably won’t be as much a mystery to readers today as it was when the book was published, more than a decade ago. But I took it on its own terms and had a great time. I’m already reading the second Jack Reacher novel, Die Trying, which starts with another coincidence almost as dubious as the one that kicks off this book.
Jack Reacher has some similarities to Stephen Hunter’s Bob Lee Swagger, but the classic character he reminded me most of was John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee. Travis McGee, although he had a permanent address, lived on a house boat, and so was metaphorically adrift in the world. Jack Reacher is literally rootless, describing himself at one point as a hobo. The two have similar attitudes, and even resemble each other.
Killing Floor is recommended for grown-ups.
Update: Endorsement retracted. The reasons may be found here.
A moral problem
I remember it like it was yesterday, and I’m still not sure how to think about it.
I believe I was in sixth grade, so I must have been eleven years old. It was a tough year. The usual troubles at home, and my teacher, a forceful lady whose family had had some historical differences with mine (I have no evidence that that fact influenced her), had decided that the only explanation for the trouble I was having in arithmetic class must be laziness. She had made it her business to shape me up. She lectured me often in front of the class. She gave me special punishments. She’d made me one of her personal projects.
One afternoon when school was over, I was coming out into the entryway to the building. There were inner doors at the top of the wide steps, and outer doors at the bottom. Three guys were waiting for me outside the inner doors. They ringed me, blocking my way. “Why don’t you try harder at math?” they asked. Continue reading A moral problem