In case you’re wondering how I’m doing on the Virtual Book Tour I’ve been working on for my publisher, I think I can say it’s been going well. I’ve finished one blog post and several interviews for various literature-related blogs. And yes, I’ll let you know where to look for them, once they appear (assuming I find out myself).
I’m nearly finished with the first batch of interviews. I understand more are coming. Today the publicist asked me how I felt about writing a food-related post for a blog that talks to authors about their favorite recipes.
Now on the surface that doesn’t make much sense, me being a certified microwave-dependent bachelor (though I do make a mean scratch chocolate chip cookie when the fit is on me). But the idea of writing about Viking food, and relating it to West Oversea (buy it here) is intriguing. I’ve decided to do it, and I’ve made arrangements to borrow a recipe from a reenactor friend.
(And yes, in case you wondered, I will give her credit for it.)
I feel confident I can produce a post unlike any this particular blog has seen before. A hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners exposé of genuine Viking cuisine, featuring such delights as rotten shark (a delicacy in Iceland which reportedly made that Chef Gordon Ramsey throw up), and sheep’s head (also popular in Iceland. The eyeballs, I’m told, are especially relished). Many is the joke that’s been made about lutefisk over the years, but the Norwegians’ beloved lutefisk is just a pale, ghostly remnant of the true Nightmare On Elm Street mealtime horrors of the Scandinavian past.
Because we’re talking about a marginal economy, where taste places a far distant second to survival.
People sometimes ask me whether I wish I had been born in the Viking Age.
My answer is no, for three reasons.
One, I was a sickly child who would in all probability have been exposed on a hillside for the wolves at birth.
Two, the plumbing was awful.
Three, the food was inedible to the modern palate.
I’ve written a time travel book (still unpublished at this date) in which a father and daughter get the opportunity to go back to Viking Age Norway and stay there. She points out that if they did, they’d never get to eat chocolate again.
I call that an excellent point.
All posts by Lars Walker
Man-Kzin Wars XI, by Hal Colebatch, Matthew Joseph Harrington, and Larry Niven
I reviewed Man-Kzin Wars X: The Wunder War a while back. This is the sequel. My friend Hal Colebatch, who wrote all the stories of the previous volume, contributes the bulk of Man-Kzin Wars XI
The background (these books are set in Larry Niven’s Ringworld
My first ukelele-inspired post, I think
Over at Grim’s Hall (we seem to be doing a lot of profitable cross-pollination between our two blogs these days) Grim posted this amusing clip of the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain doing a number you’ll… probably recognize.
This is a lot of fun, and I’m glad there are people doing silly things like this in the world.
And yet, as I mentioned in the comments, it’s not a great thing in itself. It’s great in being unique in its sub-genre, excelling in a field in which there’s little competition. I remember an old Peter Sellers movie, “The Bobo,” in which he played “The World’s Only Singing Matador.” Not the best matador, not even a very good matador, just the only one who sang.
I once saw a poster on the University of Minnesota campus, back in my college days. It advertised a movie about the struggles of Labor. It proudly proclaimed that this was the first film ever produced purely on Collectivist principles. Every detail of scripting, production, casting, and filming was decided by a vote of all the workers involved.
Needless to say, I did not go to see this masterpiece. I’m fairly sure I’d rather have the insides of my eyelids tattooed by a prison inmate than see that film.
Because any work of art that says, “See me for some reason other than that I’m a good piece of work” can pretty much be counted on to be very bad.
And that applies to Christian art, too.
Even mine.
(Which does not in any way mean the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain isn’t really, really cool.)
Njal's Saga
I just finished reading Njal’s Saga again today (actually Magnusson’s and Pálsson’s translation, not the new one pictured above). It would be pointless to review such a classic, but I thought I’d jot down a few reader’s impressions, fancying myself (as I do) a fairly knowledgeable reader.
Njal’s Saga is often named as the greatest of all the Icelandic sagas. It’s not my favorite; I prefer the more action-oriented sagas like Egil’s and Grettir’s. That’s not to say Njal’s Saga lacks action. There’s plenty. The body count piles up like kills in a Stallone movie. But Njal’s is perhaps the most reflective saga, the saga that worries most about its soul.
The central character, of course, is the title character, Njal Thorgeirsson. He’s not the hero; there are actually two heroes, Gunnar and Kari, both mighty warriors of whom Schwarzenegger is not worthy. Njal, by contrast, is a man of peace. He’s famed for his wisdom and shrewdness, not for his martial skills. He can’t even grow a beard, a fact that makes him the target of some contempt. In spite of his efforts, his family gets caught in a cycle of killing and revenge that leads to his death (and his family’s) by burning, in his own house. Continue reading Njal's Saga
From Homer to Rosie…
I have achieved a sort of anonymous immortality through this post at Pajamas Media by Bryan Preston. Bryan’s a Facebook friend of mine, and the Facebook friend he quotes at the bottom of the first page, the one who came up with the Homer Simpson gag, was me.
(Caution for the faint of heart—political snark abounds.)
Roy Jacobsen came up with the answer to my Filing Cabinet Drawer Label Joke Challenge yesterday. As he notes, my labels are based on some lines from Harold Arlen’s classic song, “Blues In the Night.” I admit I cheated, rearranging the towns so they’d be alphabetical. But I still think it’s funny.
“From Natchez to Mobile,
From Memphis to Saint Joe,
Wherever the four winds blow,
I’ve been to some big towns,
I’ve heard me some big talk,
But there is one thing I know…”
Here’s Rosemarie Clooney doing the song sometime back in the 1950s.
I like the arrangement, and the guys with hats and cigarettes. And it’s documentary evidence of how smokin’ hot (and talented) Rosie was back in the day.
File it under "Inside Jokes"
James Lileks blogged about many things today, but among them was labels on filing cabinet drawers. This prompted me to mention, in the comments, a secret joke I’ve been carrying on for years.
I was working at my student job, sitting behind the library desk at Waldorf College, Forest City, Iowa, back around 1968, when I came up with what I thought was a hilarious filing cabinet drawer label joke. (This is a small, rather specialized field of humor.)
Two file drawers, one above the other.
The first is labeled, MEMPHIS to MOBILE.
The second is labeled, NATCHEZ to SAINT JOE.
I’ve had those labels on filing cabinets wherever I’ve lived and/or worked ever since. I don’t think anyone has ever gotten the joke.
Do you? (You get no points if you read down the comments on Lileks’ post and see what I wrote there.)
Hwaet!
Photo copyright: Newscom.
Joi Weaver at the Evangelical Outpost has recently “discovered” Beowulf, through experiencing it in the way it was originally intended–as a performance. She’s pretty excited about it, and the performance she recommends–that of actor Benjamin Bagby–sounds delightful.
What followed was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Benjamin Bagby, founder of the medieval music group Sequentia, sat on a bare stage, and sang the first part of the Beowulf story in Anglo-Saxon, accompanying himself on a reconstructed Anglo-Saxon harp. Over the next hour and a half, the story of Grendel’s attacks unfolded, culminating with the coming of Beowulf and the defeat of the monster. I hadn’t gotten any work done–instead, I was perched on the edge of my seat, hanging on every word of the performance. Reading Beowulf had stirred nothing in me: hearing it set my mind and heart on fire.
A DVD is available.
(By the way, my friend Sam the Viking has built a Viking hall at his farm in Missouri. Recently he hosted a Beowulf night for a college professor and her class, during which they recited Beowulf in that historically authentic setting. Wish I could have been there.)
Dale Nelson sent a link to a blog post by Inklings aficionado Jason Fisher. He believes he’s discovered a previously unrecognized influence on Tolkien’s concept of “the Circles of the World.”
I’ll attempt to show how Tolkien’s figurative “Circles of the World” may have emerged from three such disparate sources: the Ynglinga Saga of Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla; the Latin Vulgate Bible, with particular emphasis on the Book of Wisdom; and perhaps even the Hereford Mappa Mundi, a medieval map of the world on display in the West Midlands of Tolkien’s youth. In the end, at this late stage in Tolkien source-hunting, it can be difficult to uncover substantially new (and sufficiently verifiable) source-traces; however, in this case, I believe I have something new to offer to Tolkien Studies.
Check out the blog as a whole. Looks good.
Klavan reviews Ellroy
Thriller writer nonpareil Andrew Klavan reviews James Ellroy’s new memoir, The Hilliker Curse, for the Wall Street Journal.
He admires the book, but sees (plausibly, in my view) some things the author apparently hasn’t noticed.
It would be pretty to think so. Yet one has the feeling that there is as much hidden here as revealed, that Mr. Ellroy’s belligerent candor disguises some deeper and still secret shame. How could it be otherwise? Every confession is also a mask. As all good crime writers understand: There’s no bottom to the perversity of the human heart.
Remember
Copyright Getty Images.
Sometimes I forget people actually see this stuff…
Yesterday, in my post on the Zombie course at the University of Baltimore, I referenced Prof. Brendan Riley, who taught a similar course even earlier at Columbia College, Chicago.
Prof. Riley was kind enough to drop in and participate in our comments, and he did so in a highly courteous and reasonable manner. I won’t say he won me over to his point of view, but I’ll declare freely that he didn’t turn out to be the sort of fellow I would have expected him to be.
His blog, which is extremely interesting (in my view) is here.