All posts by Lars Walker

Fiction, Reviews

‘Out of the Silent Planet,’ by C. S. Lewis

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It seemed to Ransom that he had never looked out on such a frosty night. Pulsing with a brightness as with some unbearable pain or pleasure, clustered in pathless and countless multitudes, dreamlike in clarity, blazing in perfect blackness, the stars seized all his attention, troubled him, excited him, and drew him to a sitting position.

Yet another book that I love and haven’t read in a while is Out of the Silent Planet, first in C. S. Lewis’ science fiction trilogy. Perhaps the least noted of the three books, because it’s less lyrical/symphonic than Perelandra and less controversial than That Hideous Strength, it is nevertheless one of the great space travel books of the 1930s, and (I believe) a game-changer in the genre.

If you haven’t read it before, we meet our hero, philologist Elwin Ransom, out on a walking tour. Traveling later than he intended due to a disappointment in accommodations, Ransom encounters an old woman, weeping and searching for “her Henry.” Henry is her son, who is a little “simple.” Henry works at a nearby facility run by two rich men, one of them a university don. Hearing about this don, a colleague who might offer a night’s rest, Ransom offers to go look for the boy. He manages to get onto the facility grounds, where he sees two men trying subdue poor Henry, who cries out that he doesn’t want to go “in there.” Ransom interferes, enabling the boy to escape. Then he finds that one of the men is in fact someone he knows (and has always disliked), a man named Devine, once a scholar, now a businessman. He introduces his colleague Weston, a world-famous physicist. After some initial unpleasantness, Ransom is indeed invited in to spend the night.

What he doesn’t know is that Devine and Weston are planning a trip to “Malacandra” (Mars). They’ve been there before, and encountered creatures called Sorns. The Sorns asked them to bring them someone “of their own kind.” Assuming the Sorns want a human sacrifice, they’d intended to use poor Henry. But if Ransom insists on interfering, he’ll do just as well.

So soon Ransom finds himself on a spherical spacecraft, headed to Mars. He finds space (wonderfully) different from what he expected. Once he’s arrived on Malacandra (brilliantly imagined according to the scientific knowledge of the time), he gets free from his captors and soon encounters a “Hrossa,” one of the three indigenous sapient species. Again and again, what he finds confounds his presumptions and expectations. Aliens aren’t what he expects, the universe isn’t what he expects, and at last he even gets an objective look at humanity itself, through alien eyes. Then finally through Eyes even more alien.

I’m not an expert on Science Fiction in the 1930s-40s period, but my impression (reinforced by references in this book) is that the common assumption in the field was that aliens were either hostile super-intellects or primitives. Lewis lampoons this latter view in the character of Weston, who gives a ridiculous, patronizing, “me give-um you pretty beads” speech to an Intelligence infinitely above his comprehension. It’s a brilliant satirical scene, and – I suspect – stories like “Avatar” may be the distant descendants of this seminal book.

It goes without saying that I recommend Out of the Silent Planet unreservedly.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Maltese Falcon,’ by Dashiell Hammet

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He went out, walked half the distance to the elevators, and retraced his steps. Effie Perine was sitting at her desk when he opened the door. He said: “You ought to know better than to pay any attention to me when I talk like that.”

“If you think I pay any attention to you you’re crazy,” she replied, “only”—she crossed her arms and felt her shoulders, and her mouth twitched uncertainly—“I won’t be able to wear an evening gown for two weeks, you big brute.”

He grinned humbly and said, “I’m no damned good, darling,” made an exaggerated bow, and went out again.

Working my way through books I’ve read and remember fondly, I picked The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammet off my shelf. It’s a fascinating book, and I have much to say about it.

Of course, it’s impossible to contemplate this work without considering the looming image of the classic 1941 movie directed by John Huston, starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. After I finished reading, I immediately took out my DVD and watched the flick. I also watched a few clips from the original 1931 version, starring Ricardo Cortez, available on YouTube. It’s a much inferior movie, far more loosely paced, and Cortez (physically a better casting choice) plays the role with a constant leer, as if it’s all a joke, even when he’s giving up the girl he “loves.”

The first thing you learn when you read the book is that Sam Spade looks nothing like Humphrey Bogart. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, muscular. His face is “made up of v’s,” so that he looks “rather pleasantly like a blond Satan.”

In case you’ve never read the book or seen the movie, Sam is a San Francisco private eye, in partnership with a guy named Miles Archer (with whose wife he’s carrying on an affair). When beautiful, young Brigid O’Shaughnessy walks in and asks them to put a tail on a man who’s holding her sister against her will, they lick their lips (both at the fee and at Brigid) and Miles takes the job. The next morning Sam learns that Miles has been shot to death.

What follows is a complicated dance that goes on for some time before Sam even learns that Brigid is in competition with some other sinister types to get ahold of a figurine of a black falcon, believed to be worth a fortune.

The Maltese Falcon is a seminal book in the history of mystery literature, an archetypal hard-boiled tale. And hard-boiled it is. Sam is a shockingly tough character – he appears utterly insensitive, not only to the woman he’s committing adultery with, but to his starry-eyed young secretary (far more vulnerable in the book than the tough cookie played by Lee Patrick in the 1941 film); with men he’s just brutal. He’s big and strong, and it does no good to pull a gun on him, because he’ll just take it away from you. He appears to have no principles, either – he deals and double-deals on equal terms with the Fat Man and Joel Cairo.

It’s only at the end that you begin to see something deeper. This is a man with a list of certain principles – probably not a long list, but the ones he has he sticks to. At the end of the story, he stands left with nothing, and it’s by his own choice. Which makes Humphrey Bogart, in the end, a better Sam Spade than Ricardo Cortez. Bogart expresses the foundation of the character; Cortez portrays its façade.

There’s a running theme of sacrifice (of a cynical kind) in The Maltese Falcon. The famous scene at the end (spoiler here) where Sam tells Brigid he won’t “play the sap” for her is paralleled earlier by the scene where Gutman decides to sacrifice Wilmer, his catamite, as the “fall guy” for the murders. Author Hammet had it on his mind that there are things more important than being in love. Since Hammet was a Communist, I couldn’t help thinking of Stalin’s callous murder of millions “for the greater good.” But a Christian can also appreciate this, as our Lord told us that whoever loves father or mother, son or daughter more than Him is not worthy of Him. (Communism is, after all, only the most successful Christian heresy.)

In style, Hammet was, I think, a little inferior to Raymond Chandler. You look in vain here for Chandler’s lyrical, epigrammatic descriptive passages. The Maltese Falcon is heavy on description, but it’s punctilious description. Hammet tells you what everyone wears, down to details of style and color. He likes to set a scene, to leave nothing to the imagination. The dialogue, however, is sharp and tight. Read the book and watch the film, and you’ll see that the script writers’ main job was cutting. What you hear the actors saying in the film is almost always straight out of the book.

The Maltese Falcon is a tremendous hard-boiled mystery. Highly recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dangerous Behavior,’ by Walter Marks

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I almost liked this book very much. In the end I wasn’t quite satisfied, but there’s a lot to be said for it.

The hero of Dangerous Behavior (first volume in a series) is Dr. David Rothberg, who has recently taken a job as a psychological counselor at an upstate New York prison, for various complicated personal reasons. His first challenge is a big one – he’s supposed to do an evaluation for a parole recommendation on Victor Janko, “the baby carriage killer.” This man was convicted years ago of murdering a young woman while her baby daughter watched. Victor doesn’t seem like the type to commit such a crime – but then, murderers often don’t. Is he a very devious psychopath, or could he possibly be genuinely innocent?

Complicating the evaluation are Victor’s manipulative murder-groupie girlfriend, and a sadistic prison guard whom David knows to be abusing Victor.

I have to say that Dangerous Behavior did a great job of keeping my interest. I actually sat up late to finish this book, something I don’t often do at my age.

However, I thought the plotting was a little forced; characters sometimes seemed to break character in order to make dramatic points happen. Also, the climax was surprisingly understated. In addition, the portrayal of a Catholic priest hinted at an authorial attitude that usually bodes ill for me as a reader.

I don’t know if I’ll pick the sequel up or not. Nevertheless, I have to admit that Dangerous Behavior was a good read overall.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Laughing Gas,’ by P. G. Wodehouse

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‘The Hitlers and Mussolinis of the picture world,’ said George, ‘What do they do? They ship these assortments of New York playwrights and English novelists out here and leave it all to them. Outside talent don’t get a chance.’

The quote above is self-referential. P. G. Wodehouse was both a New York playwright (in the musical comedy line) and an English novelist, and he had, indeed, been imported to Hollywood in 1929 to work on scripts for a while. He didn’t fit in and left little visible trace on celluloid, but he did mine the experience for comedy in his novels and stories. One of his most explicit Hollywood novels is Laughing Gas (which doesn’t seem to be available as an e-book, or even as a reasonably priced paperback, right now. But the link will take you to an audible book).

Reggie Swithin has recently inherited the title of Earl of Havershot, but he still hasn’t accustomed himself to that status. So he hasn’t the resistance to refuse the family solicitor’s request that he travel to Hollywood, California to disentangle his cousin Egmont from some American girl (who certainly must be inappropriate) to whom he’s gotten engaged.

On the train trip across the American continent, Reggie meets the beautiful April June, a famous movie star, who confides to him that she hates her life of glamor and longs for a simple home where she can be with her books and her flowers and her cooking… why, Reggie’s ancestral manor sounds like just the place!

Reggie is working up his nerve to propose to her as he arrives in Hollywood, where he meets the girl Cousin Eggy is engaged to – awkwardly, she turns out to be Ann Bannister, to whom Reggie himself was once briefly engaged. Then Reggie has an attack of toothache. In the dentist’s office, he finds that another Hollywood star, little Joey Cooley (“Idol of American motherhood”) is having the same procedure done by the dentist’s partner. As they are both under the influence of laughing gas at the same time, some sort of mix-up occurs (“probably in the fourth dimension,” Reggie thinks) and the soul of each transmigrates to the body of the other. Thus Reggie wakes to find himself very small, dressed in knickerbockers, and sporting long golden curls. He’s going to have to figure out how to live a child star’s life – which is made no easier by his guardian, a formidable woman who limits him to a diet based on prunes, to maintain his weight.

We only learn through hearsay what’s happening with Joey, in Reggie’s body, but the boy seems to have a good time. He can get all the sweets he wants now, and there are a lot of people he’s been dreaming of boffing on the nose; Reggie has a healthy young body with a good right arm and boxing training.

And so the story proceeds. Reggie will learn to view April June from a whole new perspective, and will also learn to appreciate ice cream and breakfast sausage in a whole new way. In the end, of course, everything will turn out for the best.

I have to admit I didn’t enjoy Laughing Gas as much as I remembered from my first reading, long ago. It’s not because the story is a poor one; it’s not. It’s just that, for personal reasons, I have trouble with stories about kids in general. It was interesting, though, to see how Wodehouse looked at Hollywood from personal experience.

Recommended, if you can find a copy.

Fiction, Publishing

Major publishing announcement

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I am delighted to be able to announce that King of Rogaland, the sixth book in the Saga of Erling Skjalgsson, is available for Kindle download as of today. Makes a great Christmas present for Kindle readers.

Get your copy here.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Carry On, Jeeves,’ by P. G. Wodehouse

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‘I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I’ve got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the light of love in her eyes. I don’t know how to account for it, but it is so.’

I am at one of those points in life where I find it prudent to re-read beloved books from my past, rather than spend money on new ones. Having made that determination, it was but the work of a moment for me to ankle off to the bookshelf and pull a book out of my P. G. Wodehouse shelf. And so I offer my review of Carry On, Jeeves.

The characters of Bertie and Jeeves first appear in a story called “Extricating Young Gussie”, (not in this collection) which was published in 1915. In it, Bertie is dispatched to New York by his formidable Aunt Agatha, because his cousin Gussie has formed an ill-advised attachment to a vaudeville performer. Bertie crosses the Atlantic on this mission, but in the end the whole thing is resolved through a farcical coincidence.

What’s rummy about this story (as Wodehouse himself would have put it) is that, first of all, we’re never told Bertie’s last name (it appears, in fact, to be Mannering-Phipps). Also, Jeeves does nothing brainy at all. He answers doors and takes people’s hats. That’s it. This is a nascent Jeeves and Wooster story. The concept remains in embryo.

It wasn’t until the next story, “The Artistic Career of Corky” (1916), that Wodehouse faced the challenge of solving a plot problem without letting Bertie do anything smart, which would violate his character. It was then that he hit on the idea of making Jeeves a super-intellect. And a wonderful phenomenon came into being.

“The Artistic Career of Corky” is included in the collection, Carry On, Jeeves. But its first story is “Jeeves Takes Charge” (also published in 1916). Here we get the origin story, as “rebooted” (as they say of movie franchises) by Wodehouse himself. The story opens with a wonderful scene in which Bertie, hung-over and temporarily valet-less, opens his door to “a kind of darkish sort of respectful Johnny” who immediately diagnoses his complaint and mixes up his proprietary anti-hangover concoction. Bertie engages him on the spot, and as the story continues, Jeeves contrives to disentangle him from an ill-advised engagement to Florence Cray (“seen sideways, most awfully good-looking”), who had a plan for “making something of him.”

And so it goes on through ten wonderful stories. Sometimes Bertie helps a friend out with a spot of matrimonial trouble. Sometimes Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia enlists him in an insane quest to steal some ridiculous object. It’s all light, implausible, and hilarious.

As I read, I couldn’t help thinking about Heaven (see my review on the book about Near Death Experiences, a few inches below). I think Heaven may turn out to be a lot like a Wodehouse story. We never grow old, and the world never changes (Wodehouse attempts to keep up with the times in a couple stories, but they jar). And above all stands the great God of whom Jeeves is a symbol, who (in this life, anyway) allows us to go our wayward ways, knowing that in the end we have no resource but Him, and no one who cares more for our welfare.

Anyway, highly recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Beach Girls,’ by John D. MacDonald

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The breeze died. The high white sun leaned its tropic weight on the gaudy vacation strip of Florida’s East Coast, so that it lay sunstruck, lazy and humid and garish, like a long brown sweaty woman stretched out in sequins and costume jewelry.

Another classic John D. MacDonald book, non-Travis McGee variety, from The Murder Room. The Beach Girls is an interesting, often impressive tale stressing humans and society more than crime (though there’s some crime). These old paperbacks were intended for a male audience, so there’s also quite a lot of sex, though it’s not explicit. Very little monogamy is on display.

Stebbins’ Marina in Elihu Beach, Florida is a marginal operation. Its owner, an amiable widow, can’t afford to maintain it properly, and local interests are pressuring her to sell it to developers.

But the marina is home to a motley group of boat owners – local fishermen, poor boat bums and rich yacht owners. There are a couple stinkers among them, but most of them get along happily in a live-and-let-live way.

When Leo Rice shows up looking for work, something seems off about him. He’s nice enough, and he’s willing to learn and to work hard. There’s no arrogance about him. But he doesn’t seem to match the story he tells about himself. He has the look of a man used to bigger things, greater responsibilities.

Leo has a secret. He’s got an issue with one of the residents, one of the bad types nobody likes. He came for revenge, but now he can see that he’s not tough enough for that job. And he’s suddenly interested in Christy, one of the marina residents, a girl who’s been damaged in the past and put on a clown’s persona. Is he willing to die trying to get justice, or does he have a future with Christy?

The Beach Girls offers a very fine author’s human insight, empathy, and powers of observation. The mores of the time it describes are very different from ours, and will probably disturb conservatives and liberals alike. The sex is pretty free and easy in this little community, but there’s also a passage that seems to defend wife-beating (in an extreme case). Approach such passages with your sense of history in place.

Otherwise, recommended.

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

‘Real Near Death Experience Stories,’ by Kay and Tabatt

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I am no longer a young man. Occasionally, when I haven’t been dulling my reason sufficiently, I think about death. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that it’s not being dead that bothers me (especially as I believe in Heaven), but rather the actual process of dying that I find daunting. Seems like a pretty stressful exercise to put an old person through.

So when I found a deal on a Christian book called Real Near Death Experience Stories (by Randy Kay and Shaun Tabatt), I figured there might be some comfort in it.

It was comforting, for a Christian reader. Unfortunately, I didn’t find it awfully convincing.

The book consists of transcriptions of interviews conducted on the authors’ podcast, plus an introductory chapter about near death experiences in general. Everybody involved, the authors and their guests alike, seem sincere and seem to be people of good will. They tell lovely stories about how they’ve experienced death or near-death, and the wonderful (occasionally frightening) things they saw in Heaven (and in one case, in Hell).

Let me be clear. I absolutely believe in Heaven and Hell. I believe that Heaven is a place of eternal bliss, in the presence of the Triune God. I believe that Hell is a place where the unredeemed will suffer for eternity. So I don’t doubt that part.

It’s the extras. Having described their “go toward the light” experiences and the joys and beauties of Heaven, in several cases the interviewees go on to proclaim spiritual secrets (claiming in some cases that they have new revelations for the church in the end times). Tips on how to make it easier for miracles to happen in your life. That sort of thing.

It all sounded familiar to me. I used to hear this kind of thing a lot back in the ‘70s, during the Jesus Movement. All these stories were going around about miracles and visions and prophecies – which always happened somewhere else, never here. And the big message of it all was that Jesus was coming soon – certainly before the end of ‘80s or thereabouts.

For a lot of people, I think, the failure of these prophecies was an important element in their complete loss of faith. I got the idea, when I was reading science fiction, that 70% of the SiFi writers of my generation were embittered former Jesus Freaks. I was blessed to have a better scriptural grounding than these people, and I held onto my faith.

But when the interviewees in this book tell me, for instance, that Jesus in Heaven has blue eyes, or when another tells me that we have to let our “spirits” rule our “brains,” and that contemporary praise music is an essential weapon against demons, I am dubious.

I don’t really endorse the book Near Death Experience Stories. I have no doubt the authors (and the interviewees) are sincere. They’re probably even doing some good. But I don’t have confidence in them. “Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 23:28, ESV)

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Splendid and the Vile,’ by Erik Larson

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Diarist Phyllis Warner found that she and fellow Londoners were surprised by their own resilience. “Finding we can take it is a great relief to most of us,” she wrote on September 22. “I think that each one of us was secretly afraid that he wouldn’t be able to, that he would rush shrieking to shelter, that his nerve would give, that he would in some way collapse, so that this has been a pleasant surprise.”

Author Erik Larson has found himself a useful and profitable niche, writing about famous characters and events in historical accounts that combine the actions of famous persons with the lives of ordinary people, to give us a many-faceted picture. The Splendid and the Vile is his account of London during the Blitz; mostly set in the crucial year of 1940. The spotlight is, naturally, on Winston Churchill and his closest circle – his cabinet ministers and department heads, and his family. But we also get to see events through the eyes of ordinary citizens. And from time to time he looks across the channel to see how Hitler and his henchmen – who couldn’t understand why Churchill repeatedly snubbed their “friendly” peace offers — reacted and responded.

And meanwhile, the ordinary public suffered, died, and (most of them) survived.

It was a harrowing time, and this is a harrowing book. But also fascinating, informative, and sometimes even darkly comic. Historical figures come alive through their own words. The great drama and surprise in the book is something neither Hitler, nor even Churchill, really foresaw – the amazing courage of the English people; what they were willing to endure to defend their civilization.

What troubled me most as I read was something not in the book – the knowledge that this epic crusade for western civilization would end in the abandonment of eastern Europe to Stalin. Plus the knowledge that the children and grandchildren of these brave people would happily accede to the demolition of that civilization in our time.

Still and all, The Splendid and the Vile is an excellent look at a pivotal point in history. Highly recommended.

Religion, Reviews

Amazon Prime film review: ‘Mully’

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The story of Charles Mulli, chronicled in the documentary, Mully, would have offered a remarkable story even without its amazing second act. But that second act is nothing less than astonishing.

I was late in seeing this film, which I’ve known about since its release in 2017. One of its co-producers, Lukas Behnken, happens to be the son of one of my oldest friends, my college roommate Dixey Behnken. I should have believed what Dixey told me about it.

Charles Mulli was born in poverty in a village in Kenya. One morning when he was six, he woke to discover his family had disappeared overnight – they’d just moved away, leaving him behind. Then followed years of living on the street and begging, until he finally found work. He worked hard and made his way up the corporate pyramid, eventually owning his own bus company and becoming regional distributor for an oil company. He was a genuinely rich man in a genuinely poor country.

Then one day some street boys hijacked his car. Riding home on one of his own buses, Charles couldn’t keep himself from thinking about the boys who robbed him. They were himself, he realized, as he might have been. As a Christian, he felt a divine call to do something about it.

So he went onto the streets, found a couple homeless kids, and took them home with him. Then more. Then even more. He never stopped. His wife and children didn’t know how to deal with it, especially when he sent his own kids away to boarding school in order to make room for more orphans. Finally they all moved to a big new facility, and they established Mully Children’s Family, a wide-ranging enterprise that raises food and earns profits which are then poured back into several large children’s homes.

“Mully” relates this moving story through dramatic recreations and filmed interviews. It’s all fascinating and riveting – sometimes hardly believable. Inspirational. Deeply challenging.

Highly recommended. I watched it on Amazon Prime, but you can see it for free here.