Category Archives: Non-fiction

Authors, Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough,’ by John J. Ross, M.D.

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Those who claim that Shakespeare did not write his plays often argue that only some wealthy, privileged, and highly educated person would have been capable of writing them. The premise of this argument is fundamentally mistaken. Literary genius more often arises from disappointment and chagrin than comfort and complacency; the rich and content have no need of imagination.

The Duke of Wellington is supposed to have remarked that no man is a hero to his valet. No doubt there’s some truth to that – familiarity, especially regarding a person’s phobias, thoughtlessness, and hemorrhoids, has to take the shine off their glamor, however eminent they might be. Nevertheless, there’s another way to look at it.

Years ago, I read a book called Napoleon’s Glands, by Arno Karlen (unfortunately out of print now). I found it fascinating, and learning about famous people’s physical frailties did not generally lower my opinion of them (even if, as in the case of Napoleon, I disliked them from the onset). I had a similar experience with John J. Ross’s Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough, which applies very much the same analysis to great English-language authors.

The book deals with William Shakespeare, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, The Brontë sisters, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, William Butler Yeats, Jack London, and George Orwell. We learn that Shakespeare might have contracted syphilis (which was endemic in England in his time), though it’s not certain, and the author describes the harrowing medical treatment (surprisingly not worthless) he might have undergone for it. More solidly, the Bard’s deteriorating handwriting indicates essential tremor, a common malady in aging people (we have it in my own family).

Milton suffered detached retinas; Jonathan Swift probably had Ménière’s Disease and certainly died of dementia. Tuberculosis, probably contracted in a horrific private school, plagued the Brontës. Nathaniel Hawthorne may have had Asperger’s Syndrome, and probably died of stomach cancer. Melville looks like Bipolar Disorder. Yeats seems to have suffered from brucellosis; Jack London had scurvy and yaws, and probably died of an accidental drug overdose. James Joyce looks like a case of reactive arthritis, a condition related to venereal disease, and suffered greatly from deteriorating eyesight. Orwell was (probably) another victim of tuberculosis, aggravated by bad lifestyle choices.

Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough may be an unpleasant read for sensitive readers (I myself grew up on a farm and am son and brother to nurses, so my threshold of nausea is pretty high). But I found the book absolutely riveting. And rather than inspiring contempt for these remarkable artists, my admiration for their achievement, in the face of such suffering, only rose.

The book did make me wonder, though, whether my lack of literary success might be due to insufficient craziness in my makeup.

Authors, Non-fiction, Religion, Uncategorized

Surprised by A.I.

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I found this video on YouTube. It seems to me both wonderful and troubling.

First of all, Jack Lewis is using “my” microphone. It’s a Blue Yeti, and I have one exactly like it, even unto the color. (Or “colour,” as he would have spelled it.)

Secondly, it’s pretty well done, except for a couple glitches. The voice appears to be cloned from Lewis’ well-known The Four Loves recordings. (On the downside, I’ve read a statement from one of Lewis’s friends, who says that that was not his normal speaking style.)

The troubling aspect is – of course – just that this is A.I. I’m almost obligated to hate A.I., which took a much-needed job away from me.

The very idea of resurrecting actual humans through A.I. is just disturbing to many of us, whether it’s affected our bottom lines or not. It seems creepy, like necromancy. However, I’m not sure that creepy feeling is to be trusted. When radio was a new technology, there was a fair number of sincere Christians who denounced it as demonic – voices coming through the air; that has to come from the domain of the Prince of the Powers of the Air! (For our young readers, that’s a biblical reference to the devil (Ephesians 2:2 in the King James Version).

But the bottom line, for me, is that I found it kind of fun.

I’d like to see more of this sort of stuff, and no doubt I will. Maybe somebody can recreate Moody preaching, or Jonathan Edwards declaiming “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (contemporaries reported that he read it from a manuscript, in a very rote voice).

The best thing about A.I. might be that it could kill Hollywood. We can bring back the great actors of the past and cast them in new movies, bypassing Wokeness. I’d love to see a young Clint Eastwood playing Travis McGee, for instance. Authors could have total control of film adaptations. Who wants to do an A.I. production of The Year of the Warrior for 50 bucks? I might be able to spring for half of that.

Fiction, Non-fiction

New Culture Commentary from Klavans

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There’s a new show on movies, games, books, and other cultural artifacts, and it’s hosted by Andrew and Spencer Klavan. Episode two Klavans on the Culture dropped yesterday on a subtle horror movie based on a small, popular game, Exit 8.

The movie doesn’t have much to talk about. Like the game, it’s more of a feeling than a story. The hosts spend half of this episode talking about ghost stories and recommending a couples recent books.

Non-fiction, Reviews

’24 Hours in the Viking World,’ by Kirsten Wolf

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I run into many people who are looking for books to introduce them to the Vikings. Kirsten Wolf’s 24 Hours in the Viking World isn’t a bad book for the purpose, in spite of some weaknesses.

The plan of the book is a little strange, but it’s part of a series of similar books set in various historical periods and places, so readers must appreciate it. Each chapter is devoted to a single hour of the day. For each hour, we focus on one Viking Age character. These characters’ locations and historical dates are not coordinated – the reader is shuttled back and forth in time and space.

We see men commit murders, build ships, and compose poems. We see women give birth, prepare feasts, and take up unaccustomed weapons in defense. Each situation is described in detail, so that some aspect of Viking life is illuminated. New Viking enthusiasts will learn much here.

The weakness of the book is in the dramatizations The author, an academic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, knows her material but is not gifted in scene-setting or dialogue. The dialogue is too modern (in my view), with characters delivering lines like “Hang in there.” And the characters – especially the men – are generally more sensitive in their conversations with their wives than I suspect real Viking men were. The characters, in short, talk like modern people dressed up in Viking clothes.

On the plus side, author Wolf is not a partisan of the “Lagertha Party” in Viking studies. When she recounts the famous Vinland episode where Leif Eriksson’s sister Freydis brandishes a sword to scare off the “scraelings,” we’re told she has no idea how to use a sword. I’m not sure I’d have gone that far myself, sexist though I am. Ditto for her statement that Icelandic women had “no legal rights.”

One chapter involves a baker at Hedeby in Denmark. Oddly, his name is given as Hans Jensson. That’s a bizarre name choice for a Viking, as both “Hans” and “Jens” are colloquial versions of the Christian “John.” And it took time for those adaptations to evolve. I don’t think those names existed as such in the Viking Age.

Still, 24 Hours in the Viking Age isn’t a bad introduction to Viking everyday life. I recommend it moderately.

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

‘The Early Lives of St Dunstan’

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I don’t expect this review will sell many copies of The Early Lives of St Dunstan, edited and translated by Michael Winterbottom and Michael Lapidge. The book is expensive (I got it as a gift from a generous friend), and it’s pretty specialist stuff. Invaluable for me, though, as I am thinking out my coming book on King Haakon the Good of Norway.

The calculation goes like this: Haakon was raised at the court of King Athelstan of England. Athelstan was a patron of Glastonbury Abbey, a major center of learning at the time. So it makes sense that he would have sent Haakon, along with several other princes he fostered, to Glastonbury for training (I’m assuming Haakon was literate). Dunstan was known to have been trained at Glastonbury around the same time. Ergo, it’s artistically plausible that they were schoolmates. Glastonbury’s reputation as a center of spiritual power and mystery adds a numinous atmosphere, irresistible to the fantasy writer.

The Early Lives of St Dunstan consists of two translations of Latin hagiographies (saints’ lives) of Dunstan, from the late 10th and early 11th centuries, along with extensive notes and explanatory information. Such books were commonly written in the Middle Ages, for liturgical use in church during the saints’ festivals.

Being early hagiographies, written within living memory of the subject himself, these two “Lives” are surprisingly prosaic compared to what one might expect. There are many legends about St. Dunstan, but the miracles in these accounts are relatively prosaic. Both describe what sounds like an incident of somnambulism during his boyhood, in which he left his bed and climbed onto the church roof, then came down unhurt, without any memory of what he’d done. There are stories of his harp (he was a noted musician) playing by itself as it hung on a wall. Various accounts of prophetic dreams and visions and answered prayers. Falling stones that just missed him. Not a lot of healings.

Later on, his legend grew. Traditionally, he’s been remembered as the bishop who caught the devil’s nose in a pair of tongs (he was a blacksmith too). The poem (which I lift from Wikipedia) runs:

St Dunstan, as the story goes, 
Once pull'd the devil by the nose 
With red-hot tongs, which made him roar,
That he was heard three miles or more.

Another legend says that the devil once came to his smithy to have his cloven hoof re-shod. Dunstan nailed on a plain horse’s shoe, which hurt the devil badly. He only agreed to remove the shoe when the devil promised to never again enter a building with a horseshoe nailed over the door – which is, supposedly, the origin of the lucky horseshoe superstition.

I cannot say the two lives of Dunstan were great entertainment. You know how annoying it can be in Christian books, when the writer lapses into preaching? These authors had no storytelling purpose at all; preaching was their sole purpose. It gets pretty sanctimonious.

But useful for my purposes. For instance, Dunstan seems to have had a lot of trouble with slanderous enemies throughout his lifetime, which got him repeatedly expelled from bishoprics. I think I can assume from this that the man may have had a small problem with tact. I can use that.

Below is a famous picture from an old manuscript, believed by many to have been painted by Dunstan himself, as a book illustration. The large figure is Christ, but the kneeling monk in the lower right-hand corner appears to be Dunstan. A self-portrait. All the stories say he could draw.

Non-fiction, Writing

Taking a stand for Athelstan

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The YouTube video above concerns my current study, King Athelstan of England, who is described in the Icelandic sagas as “the Mighty,” though he never attained the popular status of “the Great” in his own country. Today he’s generally acknowledged to have been the first monarch of all England – of all the English. This is because he unified Wessex with Mercia, and the other little kingdoms the Vikings had left tottering had little choice but to tag along.

I’m re-reading Paul Hill’s book, The Age of Athelstan, in preparation for my Haakon the Good book. Haakon is one of those saga characters whose very existence is frequently questioned by historians. Scholars these days tend to be so skeptical of saga accounts that they actually treat a saga mention as evidence against a person’s existence – as if people are more likely to tell stories about people they made up than ones who actually existed. As if nothing ever happened in prehistory, so all the stories had to be invented.

Haakon is not mentioned in any contemporary document we possess. Although we’re told he was raised in Athelstan’s court, no record of his presence has survived. We know of several exiled princes who were raised by Athelstan, but Haakon gets no ink.

I need hardly say that I do believe he existed, and what I read about Athelstan’s court seems to me an excellent place for a king like him to be educated. Athelstan was interested in writing and education (despite the fact that not much record of his rule survives). Young Haakon may or may not have been interested in reading and writing Latin himself (though I figure I’ll make him literate). But there was also much to be learned there about running a kingdom, and (especially) organizing national defense – a field in which the sagas say Haakon made innovations in Norway. Athelstan carried out legal reforms – for instance, he raised the minimum age for capital punishment to fifteen, which was pretty soft by the standards of the time. Haakon also took an interest in revising the law.

There is also reason to connect him with Glastonbury Abbey, and with Saint Dunstan. The sagas say Egil Skallagrimsson fought for Athelstan as a mercenary at the Battle of Brunanburh, though Haakon doesn’t take to him.

Also not implausible. Egil was an easy guy to dislike.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Sociopath Next Door,’ by Martha Stout, Ph.D.

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The prevalence rate for anorexic eating disorders is estimated at 3.43 percent, deemed to be nearly epidemic, and yet this figure is a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality.

I’m thinking of incorporating a sociopathy (how do you pronounce that word, anyway? Emphasis on the third or fourth syllables?) theme in my next novel. So I bought a book on the topic. I read The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout, Ph.D., during my Minot sojourn.

It was not comforting reading.

According to psychologists, about four out of every 100 people around us are entirely without conscience. Possess no empathy. They walk among us, they look an act no differently (or not very differently) from anyone else. And yet there’s something important missing there.

Fortunately, they’re not all Charles Mansons or Hannibal Lectors. Most of them are just annoying – they may be the overbearing neighbor who’s always calling the homeowners’ association on you, or the cellar dwelling son who just sponges off his parents, never looking for work. Many of them are extremely charming, having mastered techniques for manipulating others to get what they want. They may be serial seducers or con men or politicians. Several fictional case studies are offered in illustration here.

The bad news is that sociopaths are hard to identify. Author Stout devotes a chapter to methods of recognizing them, but – sadly – the process takes time. They need to be observed in action for a while before the telltale signs can be discerned.

I was pleased by some positive quotations from the church fathers early in the book, but less pleased by the chapter at the end discussing religious concepts, which favors eastern religions because of their emphasis on shared spiritual connections. Still, it’s interesting that contemplation of the sociopathic condition – which occasionally expresses itself in acts that can only be described as evil – leads even scientists inevitably to a consideration of the soul.

The big problem for Christians, I think, is that it seems as if the sociopaths around us are incapable of grace. They cannot repent, because they are utterly blind to sin. They would appear to be children of the devil from birth. I don’t really have a category in my theology for this.

The Sociopath Next Door was a fascinating read, and well written. But troubling.

Non-fiction, Reviews

A Light in the Northern Sea, by Tim Brady

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The publisher’s presentation of A Light in the Northern Sea, by Tim Brady, treats it as an account of the remarkable rescue of the majority of Denmark’s Jewish population in World War II. That’s slightly misleading. This book is in fact a brief history of the whole Danish resistance.

As occupied nations went, it must be admitted that Denmark enjoyed a relatively easy war. The first western European country to fall to German assault, it was prevented by both unpreparedness and geography from making an effective defense. The Nazis steamrolled Denmark.

In consequence, the conquerors took the opportunity to pretend that their occupation was a friendly one, a kindly older sibling protecting his Aryan brother from the evil British.

So the German occupation operated with a somewhat lighter hand there than in other countries. Denmark was allowed to mostly police itself… for the present. Its Jews were left alone… for the present.

This situation provided opportunities for anti-Nazi Danes to organize a resistance network and carry out some limited sabotage. This underground network would prove crucial in 1943, when the Germans, increasingly desperate and “doubling down on stupid” as the war went against them, began to suppress Danish freedoms and demand cooperation in solving “the Jewish problem.”

Without going into too many details, it’s worth noting that 95% of Denmark’s 8,000 Jews were safely spirited away to neutral Sweden (which deserves credit as well for its willingness to receive them).

Things “got real” at that point. The occupation became genuine, brutal oppression. The resistance and the reprisals quickly got serious, bloody, and tragic.

If the Danes are sometimes chided for their quick surrender, and for their “easy” wartime experience, they also deserve credit for saving a larger proportion of their Jewish population than any other occupied country. No one can take that honor away from them.

I recommend A Light in the Northern Sea. The writing had a few glitches, but all in all it’s readable and highly interesting.

I was also pleased that the town of Horsens in Jutland, from where my own Danish ancestors hailed, occupies a prominent place in the story of the resistance.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Napoleon: A Life,’ by Paul Johnson

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But whereas Bonaparte wore his hat square on, Wellington put the ends fore and aft. Why? Wellington liked to raise his hat, out of courtesy and to return salutes. Bonaparte rarely raised his hat to anyone.

So I had picked up a mystery novel, one of those e-books you can get through free offers. The description called it “a gripping thriller.” (They all say they’re “gripping” these days. The word “gripping” has become a meaningless annex to the article “a.”) The book proved to be as gripping as an empty cotton glove. The hero meandered through his days, having breakfast, lunch, and dinner with his girlfriend (we were helpfully informed exactly what they ate on each occasion), discussing business with his partner, and occasionally seeing reports on TV about the murder which – one assumes – would eventually become interesting. I gave up on that book.

Then I turned to the late Paul Johnson’s Napoleon: A Life (part of the Penguin Lives series), and found there all the drama and excitement I’d missed in the “gripping thriller.”

The Penguin Lives books are short by design, and Paul Johnson’s particular talents as a historian suit the format perfectly. He was a master of the broad brush (and, frankly, the drumhead verdict). Napoleon’s life is one of the most epic in history, and the reader of this book is swept up – and horrified – to observe its progress.

Bonaparte (he rarely used his first name, and Johnson accordingly calls him Bonaparte most of the time) was the scion of impoverished minor nobility on the island of Corsica, ruled in those days by the French. He benefited from being the right man in the right place at the right time, a soldier exquisitely equipped to rise in the chaos that was about to descend on France. Bonaparte had a natural genius for maps and mathematics, enabling him to plan campaigns and strategies with remarkable prescience. His approach to tactics, on the other hand, was simple, based on dividing the enemy, softening them up with artillery, and taking the offense. These qualities worked well for him… until they didn’t anymore.

I personally have never liked Napoleon. Among other matters, I blame him for the British blockade of Norway, which caused untold suffering. Author Johnson and I are entirely compatible on this point – Johnson has little good to say about the man. He caused the loss of “four or five million lives,” left his country more or less as distressed as he found it (though smaller in population), and provided the model for every tyrant of the 20th Century, from Hitler to Mao.

He has his admirers, and many books exist to serve the needs of such readers. But for the person who (like me) has some interest in the period (and prejudice against its subject), but not enough motivation to plow through hundreds of pages of details, Napoleon: A Life offers a vivid and entertaining introduction to a life which, whatever you think of it, was undeniably important.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘What’s Wrong With the World,’ by G.K. Chesterton

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If one could see the whole universe suddenly, it would look like a bright-colored toy, just as the South American hornbill looks like a bright-colored toy. And so they are—both of them, I mean.

Reading G.K. Chesterton is (at least for me), most of the time an intellectual romp. Though I frequently agree with many of the author’s points, I certainly never agree with all of them. But I enjoy the caperings of his mind, as one enjoys watching an acrobat. Chesterton looks at the world every which-way, often from upside down. He had the body of a sedentary beast, but an acrobatic imagination.

What’s Wrong With the World is different from most of his books because (as he declares) he leaves religion mostly out of it, except in reference to other things. Though I’m a damned heretic in his view, I find that I like his religious writing better than his political writing. He was devoted to a political movement called Distributism, a sort of a mild socialism. It retained private property, but wanted to parcel that property out more fairly, so that every free man would have a piece of land of his own, holding the dignity of a property owner. The aristocracy would be eliminated as a vestigial organ (gently, if I understand it correctly). Chesterton regards everything around him in comparison with an imagined medieval Catholic world, populated by free, contented peasants.

What’s Wrong With the World is a systematic explanation of why he considers the present system of capitalism and moneyed oligarchy unjust. Along the way, he exercises his trademark imagination, peppering his pages with paradox.

For the modern reader, though, it makes for some hard going. I think I understood many of Chesterton’s references (to prime ministers, poets, and current political controversies) better than the average American reader, but a lot of it was still opaque to me.

If you’re a Chesterton fan, you’ll probably want to read What’s Wrong With the World for the sake of completeness. If you’re new to GKC, I’d recommend starting with some other book.