My friend J. S. Earls is involved with a podcast called ‘Sithra.’ It’s an adaptation of a graphic novel presented in radio drama form. I’m pretty clueless about podcasts, but apparently you can access it on Spotify here. Also available, he tells me, on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and “most anywhere podcasts are heard.”
I listened to Episode One. Engaging story, well produced.
Big news in the literary world today – as this article from the Chicago Sun Times reports, Sherlock Holmes will finally be wholly in the public domain as of tomorrow, the last copyrights for his stories having run out. (If I understand correctly, most of the stories are already out of copyright, but Doyle was still cranking the things out – reluctantly – in 1927).
That was two years before he was filmed doing the interview above. It’s ten minutes divided into two halves. The first half – the interesting part – tells how he came to write Holmes, and discusses the character’s fame. In the second half, Doyle climbs up on his perpetual hobbyhorse, Spiritualism. You, like me, might want to give that part a miss.
I think Doyle underrates himself as a writer in this monologue. He suggests that the great appeal of Sherlock Holmes was the logical, “scientific” approach to problem solving. I think the great draw was always the inherent interest of the characters, especially the friendship between Holmes and Watson.
One of the little stock speeches I often employ to repel prospective acquaintances involves a comparison between Sherlock Holmes and James Bond. If you watch very old Holmes movies (and I’ve viewed a few lately), you might be surprised to see that they’re always set in the years when the film is made. Thus we see him and Watson tootling around in automobiles and talking over phones. (In one strange film, The Speckled Band [1931], Raymond Massey plays a youngish Holmes employing a stable of secretaries to continually collate information for him, like a primitive database.)
I like to point out that people in the early 20th Century saw Holmes just the way we see James Bond today. The Bond stories were originally written in the 1950s and ‘60s, but the movies began in the ‘60s and have gone on from there. Thus we think of Bond as a contemporary. We assume he’s operating in 2022 (soon 2023), and that he carries a cell phone and uses a PC, among other things. The fact that this is a very different level of technology from what’s found in Ian Fleming’s original stories doesn’t bother us at all.
In exactly the same way, people in the 1920s thought of Holmes as a man of their time. They expected him to drive a car and use a phone (and in fact, in the later Doyle stories he actually does those things). The idea that Holmes should be stuck in the late 19th Century only came later. The Hound of the Baskervilles with Basil Rathbone (1939) was the first movie to put him back in period, and that was an innovation.
A blessed New Year to you.
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.
I’m almost done reading Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, and last night I thought, “Everyone should read this. They should assign it in schools or colleges. It should be something that young people should be expected to read before they are thirty.” Hundreds of churches would benefit from reading of the unmerited grace God shows the whisky priest, his duty and that of the lieutenant, and sparks of faith you can see here and there. It would stir up the pious in a way they need to be stirred.
Patrick Kurp’s son may have a better idea. He suggests making The Gulag Archipelago required reading in high school. Kurp replies, “This simple idea is too commonsensical ever to be adopted. The historical memory of many Americans has almost evaporated, leaving it eminently inflatable with hogwash.” Education, he says, is being trivialized.
Thanksgiving: In Barry Levinson’s Avalon (1990), Titus Techera writes, “Thanksgiving has a double character. On the one hand, it’s a kind of nonreligious expression of gratitude—ultimately, a form of patriotism. These are not religious people, and it seems that, without religion, Americans don’t know who is especially deserving of their thanks. They love America, but it seems no different than loving themselves. . . . On the other hand, Thanksgiving is supposed to save Americans from this individualism by forcing them at least to stop busybodying and rekindling the love of their own family.”
Paperbacks: “Around about the 1950s, the American literary establishment—never exactly nimble on its feet—noticed its world had changed a decade earlier.” And somewhat related, here are 30 fantasy book series with brief introductions.
Rings of Power: Still joking about convoluted story mess in the first season of Rings of Power. There’s a lot of material there. I’ve watched several of Ryan George’s Pitch Meetings skits and feel there’s a cumulative effect to several of the jokes. If this is the first one you see, you may that watching a few more adds to the humor of the whole.
Swords: A swordsman reviews his blade, one styled after a 14th century bastard sword.
Faithful: Pastors remain in Ukraine, leaning on the Almighty every day.
In the second tweet, Lee writes, “The 5th day, he woke up alone in bed at 5 am, and began weeping for an hour, for no obvious reason other than a sudden realization of his new reality. 9 months have passed. What did he learn? ‘God is good, all the time. It’s not just a slogan for me— it’s a deep conviction.'”
God have mercy on us and string Ukrainian streets with peace.
In the wake of my fulsome review of Andrew Klavan’s A Strange Habit of Mind yesterday (it was so gushy it even embarrasses me a little, but I meant every word), I thought we could have some advice from the master on starting out as a writer. So here’s a video, which is apparently about a year old, since he plugs When Christmas Comes.
I should probably take this advice myself, though I wonder how many agents are interested in bright young authors in their seventh decades.
I am excruciatingly aware that I’ve kept my fans waiting far too long for my next book. I just got a reminder on Basefook the other day, showing me a post I’d put up ONE YEAR AGO, saying I’d finished another draft of the new book (to be called King of Rogaland), and hoped I’d have it ready soon.
This is way too slow. I need to purge my life of some lazy writing habits.
In any case, I can now announce that King of Rogaland is finished. Wrapped up. In the can. It’s in the hands of my long-suffering publishing facilitator, who’ll be getting the e-book up on Amazon as soon as he can. However, he’s got stuff on his own plate right now (really important stuff, by the way), so I can’t promise when that will be.
Sorry. It’s coming. I promise.
In better news, King of Rogaland went off Saturday. On Monday I had a… revelation, or something.
I know now how the next book will go. It’s a stylistic departure for me, taking my work up a level (I hope).
The title will be The Baldur Game. It will be big. It will be epic. It will be the climax of the series.
Hope I can bring it off.
I’m working on it now.
The Critic: “Most of all Johnson wrote to drive away demons.”
Religious Liberty: A new book by Norte Dame political scientist Vincent Phillip Muñoz “provides one of the best treatments we have on the meaning of the religion clauses” focusing on the debates held in each state “about establishments and religious freedom. . . . These debates, and the views of a spectrum of Founders, allow Muñoz to craft a convincing argument. He contends that the founding generation’s concept of religious liberty was rooted, first and foremost, in natural law and inalienable natural rights.”
Science Fiction: Disney now has creative input into the BBC’s Doctor Who series, boasting it with financial support. I loved the classic series growing up. I watched every episode broadcast on PBS from Jon Pertwee’s run (#3), Tom Baker’s (#4 and still the best ever), Peter Davidson’s (#5), and Colin Baker’s (#6). I may have watched all the episodes with Sylvester McCoy, but the show lost its appeal for me during that time. Recently, I watched the new season 5 and part of 6 with Matt Smith, who is great as a title character, but over half of the stories were so much nonsense, I lost interest again.
Book Banning: At least 520 Penguin Random House staff and connections are arguing that Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s book contract be cancelled. They don’t oppose free speech, they write. They aren’t calling for censorship. “Rather, this is a case where a corporation has privately funded the destruction of human rights with obscene profits.”
Photo: Tivoli Theater, Stephenson, Michigan. 1980. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
I have once again gathered up my hubris and sent an essay to The American Spectator. And once again, for unaccountable reasons, they have published it.
Honestly, I’m kind of proud of this one. It’s more upbeat than my usual stuff, and shows the influence of my recent Dave Barry reading.
It’s called “Liberals On the Border.”
The American Spectator posted my latest article on Sunday. You can read it here. It’s all about the disadvantages of high intelligence, a subject about which I know nothing at all.
Also, I’m going to be at the Norsk Hostfest in Minot, North Dakota Wednesday through Saturday, God willing. If you happen to be there and want to see us Vikings, we’ll be in the Flickertail building which is (I think) south of the main hall at the state fairgrounds.
Above is the trailer for the 1995 Norwegian film production of Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter, directed by Liv Ullman. As you’ll see from the link, it’s prohibitively expensive on Amazon, so I don’t expect I’ll be getting it on DVD. I do have the VHS version, but my machine isn’t hooked up so I can’t watch it.
I was, frankly, not entirely happy with the movie version. Liv Ullman was probably the least suitable director in the world; wholly unsympathetic to the author’s intentions. One could come away from watching it with the impression that Kristin and Erlend lived happily ever after, precisely not the point of the exercise.
But Sigrid Undset is on my mind tonight, because I just got an article about her accepted by a journal. My first draft was returned for improvements, which is of course kind of a bummer, but we professionals soldier on. I sent in a second draft, and they told me my prose was so good that they could go ahead and publish it without running it through the usual editorial processing.
That’s what I like to hear.
