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Authors, Blogs, Socials, Uncategorized

Como on Helprin

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James Como (a noted C.S. Lewis scholar) writes an insightful appreciation of the novels of Mark Helprin at New English Review (by way of Books, Inq., by way of Dave Lull).

He delivers (as C. S. Lewis has put it) a realism of presentation, a high definition intensity of multi-sensory appeal, an imagism that, blurring (as do the Romantics) the line between exterior and interior, inexorably involves the reader in its vitality. Light, blue coldness and ice, but also heat, shimmering foliage, dramatic skyscapes, the ocean, the Hudson Valley with its precipices and bays and bordering towns and pastures, a predilection for knowing how tasks are done (and in detail) and how objects work—these are touchstones of Helprin’s prose, these and a rhythmic, phonic drive. He surely writes for the ear. The style is further marked by analogy, by lists (they can make the man), and by hyperbolic wit (with every now and then a punch line).

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Another year, another Hostfest

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I suppose you’ll want a report of my week at Høstfest 2017 in Minot, North Dakota. You’re demanding that way; I’ve been meaning to discuss it with you.

Hostfest 17a

My major reaction, frankly, is that I’m pretty exhausted. That doesn’t mean it was a bad week. It just means I’m old and too fat, and not as much up to the challenge as I used to be. Back when I was a fighter, I found the fight shows kind of demanding. Now that I’m retired, I miss the action. 11 hour days, surrounded by crowds of strangers. Walking around on concrete floors wearing unstructured medieval shoes. The dusty, dry air of the horse barn which was our venue. It all took its toll.

Hostfest 17b

But the thing in itself was pretty successful. We had a large group of reenactors, most of them of pretty high on the authenticity scale. I met or improved my acquaintance with some interesting people – notably Phil Lacher the wood carver, Dawson Lewis the Saxon moneyer, and – surprising to me – Randy Asplund, an artist who used to work with Baen Books, and now – get this – makes medieval books in the traditional manner.

My basic criterion for a successful Høstfest is whether I make enough money selling books to cover the cost of the Viking bling I buy. I succeeded at that, and I got some pretty cool stuff. One was a finger ring based on a famous Danish arm ring. The other, an even greater delight to me, was a silver crucifix that looks like this:

Birka crucifix

This picture isn’t of mine, it’s the original, but they’re pretty much identical, except that the thong ring on mine is a tad narrower, and mine is – I honestly think – a little better executed than the original. I used to have a rather crude copy of this crucifix, but I lost it last year. This one, I am told, was made by a Polish artisan who once crafted a chalice for Pope John Paul II. It is tiny and perfect and exquisite.

So all in all, a good festival. Now excuse me, I have to lie down.

Uncategorized

Learning English in North Korea

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In Pyongyang 1989, a man greeted Theodore Dalrymple in an open square, asking if he spoke English.

“I am a student of the Foreign Languages Institute,” he said. “Reading Dickens and Shakespeare is the greatest, the only, joy of my life.”

Dalrymple says, “I think I understood at once what he meant. In Dickens and Shakespeare, even the poorest and most downtrodden person speaks in his own voice. His utterances are at least his own, and are the product of his own brain. In North Korea, with its endless speeches in the most rigid of langues de bois, to speak in your own voice was impossible. All speech is either compulsory or forbidden.”

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Fall migration

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The time has come, as it does every year when I’m not in graduate school, for me to fare forth to Minot, North Dakota for the Norsk Høstfest. I leave this weekend, and I’ll be gone all next week. Blogging from this quarter will be light or nonexistent during that time. We appreciate your patience, and thank you for flying Brandywine Books.

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Skeleton in armor (not by Longfellow)

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A number of people have drawn my attention to an article recently published in The American Journal of Physical Anthropology. I think I’ve seen it linked at least twenty times of Facebook: A Female Viking Warrior Confirmed by Genomics.

Several people asked my opinion of it. My initial responses were brief. I had a pretty good idea that there was more smoke than fire here, and that the article was going to get some pushback.

And I was right. This article is by none other than Judith Jesch, author of Women in the Viking Age, a standard work on its subject. I’ve never read the book, allergic as I am to feminist historians, but I think I’ll get it now. Because Ms. Jesch has articulated exactly my concerns. (Plus a lot more, because she’s you know, smarter than me.) Continue reading Skeleton in armor (not by Longfellow) →

Religion, Uncategorized

Speaking of Vikings…

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Sorry about not posting yesterday. It was a day like no other, remarkable in its occurrences. There was no time, or energy, for blogging.

I don’t think I mentioned it before, because the event was a closed one, but I was invited to speak – twice – at a retreat for the pastors of my church body. They wanted me to first do an afternoon presentation on the Vikings, and then give a sermon to the pastors at the evening banquet.

Even I thought this rash, and probably ill-advised.

But I prepared my talks, and I was on the spot at the appointed hour. First I spoke about the conversion of Norway in the Viking Age, rehashing Fridtjof Birkeli’s revisionist arguments that the whole business was more peaceful than the saga writers suggest, and that Haakon the Good has been unjustly underrated by historians. I wondered whether any of the pastors would care about this, but in fact it turned out to be the first standing room only crowd I’ve ever addressed. The question and answer session afterwards was thoughtful and fun, and it ran overtime.

In the evening I gave a sermon on 1 Corinthians 12:12-20, where St. Paul describes the church as being like a body, in which every member has a function to carry out. I related this to our church body’s history, and to its emphasis on lay participation back in the days when it was still a debatable question whether a layman would be allowed to lead a prayer in the pastor’s absence. I stressed the risks involved in this way of doing church, and urged them to become risk-takers. (Easy for me to say; I’m not a pastor.) It went over very well, and the response was positive.

Oh yes, the food was delicious, too. We bachelors don’t get that many really good meals that we can afford to overlook them.

Then I drove home (depending on my GPS to get me around a bridge under repair), a shell of my former self, because that was about all the human contact I could handle in one day.

Uncategorized

Tragic anniversary

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I feel that I ought to post something about the 9-11 anniversary. But I really don’t want to.

The day makes me sad. And not just (though certainly in part) for the loss of innocent lives on that black day 16 years ago.

I’m sad because, for a short time, we thought we were all united as a nation again. “This,” some of us hoped, “will be the event that will turn America back to its founding faith (secular and sacred).”

But that did not happen. It didn’t happen because of one – essentially racist – conviction held by the Left today. That conviction is that only white people possess moral agency (the ability to choose and decide issues of right and wrong). For leftists, brown people and black people cannot act as moral agents. They are like children, or animals. Their sins are always really the fault of white people.

Because of that belief, we have failed to meet the challenge of 9-11. Our enemies hoped to frighten us into compliance. And, as far as I can see, they have succeeded.

I would be delighted to be proved wrong.

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Beautiful Home Libraries

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You’ve likely seen photos of some of these libraries before. At least, I have, and I don’t know how they retrieve books from the three-story shelving in Haus W or some of the others pictured here.

via GIPHY

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Scandinavian crime

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Scandinavian mystery novels are all the rage these days. I’ve reviewed a few here, though in general they’re not my cup of aquavit. But there’s a big murder case under way in Denmark right now. It doesn’t seem to be much of a mystery, though. But full points for bizarreness.

A Swedish journalist named Kim Wall, 30 years old (and quite attractive judging by her photograph), boarded a small private submarine in Copenhagen on August 10. She was there to interview its Danish inventor, Peter Madsen. Only the two of them were aboard. The submarine was reported missing the following day, and a search began. The sub was spotted returning to port the same morning, but it sank suddenly. Madsen was rescued by a private boat. He claimed Wall had been fine when he’d put her ashore the evening before.

Police raised the sub, and investigators began to examine it (they found blood). Madsen then changed his story, saying there’d been some kind of accident, and he’d “buried her at sea.”

(The old “buried at sea” defense. Works every time.)

On August 14, investigators announced that the sub had been sunk deliberately. On the 21st, a headless, limbless torso, weighed down with metal, was discovered in the area where the sinking had occurred. Police say it was “deliberately mutilated.” It has been identified by DNA analysis as Wall’s.

Innocent until proven guilty and all that, but this one looks open and shut. Not a novel’s worth of work for dour Danish detectives. Too bad sentencing is so light in Scandinavia.

Uncategorized

The Party Line (non-political)

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Rotary phone
Our original phone, as best as I recall, looked pretty much like this. Photo credit: Infrogmation (talk) of New Orleans.

It is a failing to which old men largely tend, to talk about “the way it was when I was a boy.” We like to imagine that younger people are interested in this information. As a not insignificant bonus, it gives us the opportunity to brag about the sufferings and deprivations of our youth. There’s a subtext that says, “I’m tougher than you, punk, and if you don’t think so, just try me.”

We call this “passing on tradition.”

Somebody on Facebook recently asked about things we did and used when we were young that kids today just wouldn’t understand.

My immediate response was, “Party Lines.” You may have even run across the term “party line” at some point, where it did not refer to the agendas of political parties. This denotes the party lines of my youth.

I shall speak to you now of Party Lines. Continue reading The Party Line (non-political) →