All posts by Lars Walker

The Culture Alliance

The Culture Alliance can be found here.

The Culture Alliance is based on the awareness that social reform and cultural renewal cannot be achieved through politics alone. Politics rules, but culture shapes politics. People’s basic assumptions come from cultural institutions—the education system, entertainment outlets, the art world, and media—currently dominated by those on the ideological Left. People who embrace classical liberal ideas have largely abdicated these institutions, thus those ideas cannot penetrate the public’s basic assumptions.

TCA has been founded to address this crucial need. Certainly, there are numerous fine organizations attempting to influence culture, but they are a separate and dispersed lot. Our objective is bring people who understand and appreciate the nation’s founding values into the cultural influence professions and create a grand narrative of cultural renewal, to make a case for the development of a Culture of Liberty in the United States today. The Culture Alliance is designed to build synergy and connection among groups and individuals, resulting in an impact, through cooperation and outreach, which is greater than the sum of its parts.

You can sign up for their Weekly Update, which includes what they call Fiction Friday. Rumor has it that a certain good-looking author of Viking fantasies will be featured this week.

ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON

St George (dc303)

DIRECTED BY JAMES CAMERON

The scene is a desolate, rock-strewn mountainside. In the foreground stands a tall, thin, finger-like rock. Chained to this rock is the PRINCESS. She is dressed in a torn white gown, and sobbing softly. Behind her, in the face of the mountain, we see the mouth of a cave. A red glow is visible in the cave’s darkness, as if a fire is burning there.

The camera pulls back to a wider view. Along a narrow road, a horseman, all in white armor, can be seen approaching. This is ST. GEORGE.

CLOSEUP of ST. GEORGE. His expression reveals that he has seen the princess, and a look of noble determination comes over his face. [Note to casting: Try to find an actor who isn’t using Botox yet. There must be somebody.]

ST. GEORGE rides up to the rock where the PRINCESS is bound. He dismounts and approaches her.

ST. GEORGE: Don’t be afraid, Princess. I am St. George, and I’ve come to set you free. I’ll cut these chains with my sword, and we’ll be away in a moment.

PRINCESS: I fear that can’t be done, good sir. These chains are dragon-tempered steel. No sword can cut them. Nothing can free me but the key the dragon keeps in a casket in his cave.

ST. GEORGE: Then I shall kill the dragon. For I am pure of heart, and I bear a magic shield, forged by elves, proof against all fire.

He sets out toward the cave mouth.

PRINCESS: God bless you, good saint!

As ST. GEORGE nears the entrance, the CGI DRAGON (Voice of Morgan Freeman) appears before him. The DRAGON is huge, and strangely beautiful, with a long, graceful neck and soulful brown eyes.

DRAGON: Halt! Who dares invade the dragon’s domain?

ST. GEORGE: It is I, St. George, here to slay you and free yonder innocent princess!

DRAGON: Innocent! Innocent, you say? Do you not realize how her civilization has destroyed the natural environment, cutting down forests, draining marshes, hunting animal species to oblivion? Have you not seen how the smoke of their fires fouls the atmosphere, warming the earth and causing the polar bears to drown? As a representative of a threatened species, I claim the right to reparations, in the form of a virgin or two now and then. Don’t you agree? Or are you some kind of speciesist?

ST. GEORGE: You have convinced me, good dragon. I shall leave you in peace to live out your personal lifestyle in harmony with the natural order. I only ask one thing of you.

DRAGON: And what is that?

ST. GEORGE: Devour her off camera, please. We don’t want to spoil the inspiring closing shot.



THE END

Olsen letter #4b

Here is the second part of the letter written by my great-great-grandfather to my great grandfather, whose beginning I posted on Tuesday. The previous letters are posted here, here, here, here, and here.

I also want to tell you that I have been fishing this winter too with our seine; ja, thanks be to the Lord who gave to us out of His blessing this year also. We got ourselves a nice little share, but we haven’t gotten it settled yet, for the berth-holders have postponed it until the first of April. We had our berth on an island called Hovring—that is right across from Kopervik, and we were there a month. There hasn’t been such a great herring catch in 35 years as this year, for imagine, the herring have been all around Karmøy this year. There was no renting of berths here this year. There was plenty of herring, but no seines at home then. There has also been good codfishing here for those who have been at it, but I for my part have not taken part in it, so that there is no fish to be found in my house now, and I haven’t gotten a herring home this year either, but that will have to be as it may be. We were so far away that we couldn’t bring herring home, and when I got home Mother was so unwell that I couldn’t go away codfishing.
But the worst of all for me was that she could not talk with me. You can believe that we had much to talk of together, but it was impossible for me to understand her, other than yes and no. I went home every single Sunday to her, if I was away. The last evening I was home with her, she could not talk any more, but she got up to prepare something for me to take with me. The next Friday I came home, and then I ran home from the valley, because I heard there that she was now worse than before. Continue reading Olsen letter #4b →

Dangerous cult?

While opening a carton of books from Zondervan Publishing today in the bookstore, a question occurred to me:

“Who was this man Zonderv, and what were his teachings? And who are his followers, these Zondervans? What do they really believe?”

Inquiring minds want to know.

Mini-review: Final Victim, Stephen J. Cannell

This will be a mini-review. I’ve reviewed one of Stephen J. Cannell’s novels already, and will doubtless review more (I’ve become a fan). Final Victim isn’t a world-changing novel, but I thought it very well crafted, and I just wanted to meditate on its virtues.
Cannell, as you likely know, is one of the most successful television producers in the industry. He’s also a prolific script writer (though, interestingly, he’s dyslexic). As a professional, he knows how to tell a story, seizing the viewer’s (or reader’s) attention with a wrestler’s grip, and never letting go. Continue reading Mini-review: Final Victim, Stephen J. Cannell →

R.I.P. two authors

WORLD Magazine reports that two prominent authors died recently–Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser and Jesse Stone detective series, and Erich Segal, best known as the author of Love Story.

I never read any Segal that I’m aware of, but I was a big fan of Spenser in the early years. I lost my enthusiasm with time, but Parker was an excellent storyteller.

Olsen letter #4a

Photobucket
Katrina and Ole Olsen Kvalevaag
It’s been a while since I shared one of my translations of the letters from my great-great grandfather to my great-grandfather. (The first three are posted here, here, and here, and here.) This one is the most dramatic of them all. I’ll give it to you in two parts, but this section is the meat of it. Five years have passed since the last preserved letter, and John has moved from Illinois to Iowa.

[Envelope postmarked 7 IV 97, addressed to Mr. John Walker, Radcliffe, Harding co., Jova, North Amerika]
Kvalevaag, the 7 April 1897
Mr. Jan H. Olson,
Dear children of my heart,
I received your very welcome letter this afternoon, and re-read it with tears, and I want to answer it right away if I get the strength from the Lord to manage a letter to you at this time. I saw and heard from your letter to me that all was well with you when you wrote to me, which was precious to me to hear from you.
Ja, dear son and daughter and children, I have another piece of news to tell you today, and that is that the Lord has called your mother from me to Himself; and now, God help me, I am left here forsaken and alone as a wild bird, and have no one to cling to. Ja, God must now be my comforter and helper both now and preferably forever. Continue reading Olsen letter #4a →

The Good, Old Book

For some time, “higher critics” of the Bible have assured us that the biblical text can’t be older than the 6th century B.C., “because the Hebrews didn’t know how to write before that.”

Oops.

“It indicates that the Kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research,” said Gershon Galil, a professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa in Israel, who deciphered the ancient text.

As an added bonus, the inscription itself (not an actual biblical text) is a rather lovely one, calling on the reader to show kindness to widows, orphans, the poor and slaves.

Tip: Mere Comments.

Flying Dutch, by Tom Holt

A couple of my friends are Tom Holt fiends, and they’ve contrived to place in my hands three of his best novels (I reviewed the other two here). Flying Dutch is another offering in his original idiom (to quote, appropriately, Sir Lancelot in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”), the legend-based farce. (He’s moved into actual historical fiction with his more recent novel Meadowlands, a story of Vikings in America which I haven’t read yet.)
As you may have guessed, this is the story of the Flying Dutchman. In legend, the Flying Dutchman is a sea captain who cursed God, and so was condemned to sail the seas forever, allowed to visit shore only once every seven years, until some condition (true love, in Wagner’s opera) is fulfilled.
Holt’s version is slightly different. The Dutchman, Cornelius Vanderdecker, is indeed immortal, along with his crew, and only gets shore leave once in seven years, but the reason is somewhat more prosaic (I won’t spoil it for you). His story gets entwined with that of Jane Doland, an English accountant who stumbles onto the financial complications that naturally result from owning a still-in-force, three century old insurance policy.
As she investigates, and eventually gets to know the Dutchman herself, the true story is gradually revealed. We encounter among other elements alchemy, an immortal cat, and the meddling of a television producer who has figured in other Holt novels.
Once again, I felt that Holt’s writing resembled nothing so much as P.G. Wodehouse’s. Holt isn’t as great a genius as The Master, but he can be very funny, and the plots are similar—a colorful cast of characters, many of them none too bright, meaning well and crossing one another in multiple boneheaded ways. There’s a hint of politics, with some mild criticism of the United States, and the conventional assumption that nuclear power is purely evil, but you’re not intended to take any of it seriously. The ending is satisfying, if off-center.
No offensive elements that I recall. Recommended, if you can find a copy (it’s out of print, sadly).

Robert Crais interview

Thanks to Aitchmark, for sending me the link to this National Review “Between the Covers” interview by John J. Miller, with author Robert Crais (whom I’ve reviewed frequently here). He discusses his new novel, The First Rule.