D.G Myers has a list of American novels who won major literary awards. You won’t want to read through this list, a “flapping, gobbling, squawking turkey” of books.

Gina Dalfonzo, editor of BreakPoint.org and Dickensblog, explains how Joss Weldon’s Much Ado About Nothing undermines itself in the opening scenes by depicting Benedick and Beatrice having a one-night stand before the play begins. This is a play about a betrayal plot to ruin a man’s life by ruining his finance’s virtue. She is a maiden, that is, a virgin, and her friends vehemently defend her.

“Hero’s father hints at one point that an already-engaged couple yielding to temptation wouldn’t be such a grave offense. But a drunken one-night stand–that would have gone against everything that Beatrice had ever been taught.”

This may be a good example of many retellings of old stories, Shakespearean and non. The plot is established and relatively unchanged, but when modern writers attempt to add modern backstory to the characters, they do so within their own moral framework, not recognizing the contrast between their world and the original writer’s.

Just overheard: a reviewer complaining that Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is unsuitable for vegan children. Perpetuates “carnism.”

Beautiful downtown Robbinsdale

It was a weekend of detours, of cancellations and adjustments. You might be able to do what you planned this past weekend, if you had the misfortune to be me, but you had to find a new approach.

The pattern for our days in this neck of the woods has been hot weather with vicious storms overnight. Rinse, repeat. Wherever you travel in the Twin Cities, you see branches on the ground. Small branches most everywhere, large branches here and there, and now and then a whole tree keeled over onto somebody’s home or car.

I myself didn’t suffer any damage I’m aware of. But I saw some.

On Saturday I took myself off to Culver’s, a fine hamburger establishment on which I’d decided to bestow my business that day. As I drove off I saw the beginnings of what would be a momentous event in the history of my town. The street one block over from me was abundant with rivers of water, and what looked like a fountain was bubbling up in the midst of it (probably, I assume, from a manhole cover). The little park alongside was filling up with brown runoff. Police were just then pulling up to cordon the street off.

When I got back from lunch the flooding was more extensive. I was temporarily the owner of property with a lake view, though it was a pretty dirty lake. Continue reading You can't get there from here →

A miserable weekend. The weather wasn’t bad, at least on Saturday (so far as I noticed; I had other things on my mind that afternoon), but I came down with something malevolent and spent most of my time in bed. Or in the bathroom.

I ate a sumptuous lunch at a Chinese buffet, so I might have fallen victim to an

Employee Who Neglected to Wash His Hands. But I also think I had a fever, so it might have been some new kind of stomach bug. In any case, it occupied almost my entire attention from Saturday afternoon to the present. I took today off work. I have hopes — though it’s far from certain — of going back to work tomorrow.

I got a lot of reading done, of course, and certainly one — probably two — of the books will be reviewed in this space.

But not today. Today I don’t have the sand.

The artist in any medium is the happiest of men (people, if you insist), in one sense – if he/she has wisdom. Because when things go well, that’s great. But anybody can enjoy that. The artist is able to enjoy things that go wrong, too, because it’s grist for the mill. Accidents, inconveniences, and disasters are what works of art are made of.

Which means that Danish Day, this past Sunday at the Danish American Center in Minneapolis, was a good experience in itself, but an artistic wash.

We’ve had passing few nice days this spring in these parts, but Sunday happened to be one of them. The sun shone, but the air was cool enough to make even long periods of sitting in the sun pleasant (except for one of our Vikings who has red hair and had to seek the shade). The crowds were good, swelled by hordes of Minnesotans punchy with extended cabin fever. I sold a satisfactory number of books, and all the people I spoke with were pleasant. Generally the phrase “a good time was had by all” is pro forma, but I think in this case it was substantially true.

The only real disappointment was that – for some reason – the Danish hot dogs (pølser) were not available this year. A Danish hot dog, I’ve learned in festivals past, is a foot long hot dog with mustard and what seems to be shredded onion rings. I don’t care for mustard, but I’ve come to enjoy the Danish pølser. But there were none. They did have a very nice ordinary foot long, though, and I didn’t complain. Also æbelskiver, the delicious spherical pancake (or waffle), and fransk vaffler, an actual waffle sandwich with something like Bavarian cream inside. Compared to Norwegian Day and Swedish Day in Minnehaha Park, the Danes do themselves proud in the food department.

I had a plan to take some good pictures of the combat shows, to placate those among our readers who asked for more gratuitous violence in my reports from the Tivoli Festival in Elk Horn, Iowa (also Danish. I’ve been getting in touch with my inner Jutlander of late). But although I remembered to bring my camera, I forgot that I myself am part of the combat show. So I wasn’t in a position to take pictures, especially while wearing my combat mittens.

Thus you’ll have to take my word for it that I won most of my fights, including a crowd-pleasing dispatch of one opponent at close quarters with my skramasax.

Professor Jerram Barrs’ book, Echoes of Eden, has 11 beginning criteria for judging the arts. For example: “Is giftedness from God evident in the work of a particular composer or performer of music, poet or novelist, painter, sculptor, or filmmaker? We should ask this question about the presence of giftedness for all artists, whether Christian or not.”

Reader TWS requested a picture of fighting from the Tivoli Fest in Elk Horn, Iowa. This is the best one I got. Unfortunately the selection is small, because my camera batteries ran down.

I suspect there are many followers of Christ who are called to the arts (they may not believe they are qualified to be labeled Christian artists) who feel out of place in the church or maybe at home or maybe everywhere. In this post, Philip Ryken lists many reasons artists feel uneasy in their churches. He says, “…Christians called to draw, paint, sculpt, sing, act, dance, and play music have extraordinary opportunities to honor God in their daily work and to bear witness to the grace, beauty, and truth of the gospel.”

We may be discouraged by other believers who commodify all art or praise cheap or bad art regularly. Some never offer to pay for the artistic work they want, but they also praise successful artists as if material success validates their artistic call. I’ve felt the tension of thinking of art only in terms of evangelism or pre-evangelism. But to requote N.T. Wright, artists “have a vocation to re-imagine and re-express the beauty of God, to lift our sights and change our vision of reality.” I want to climb that ladder, but I fear I will never leave the ground.