Category Archives: Reading

Fiction, Reading, Religion, Writing

The mind of the Recruiter

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I’m still thinking about Andrew Klavan’s Find Me Nowhere, which I reviewed last night. It’s a tremendous novel, transcending its genre.

And I thought I might comment about one particular, evocative element in the Cameron Winter series.

I’ve often complained about how Christians are treated in most fiction. People who obviously know very few (especially evangelical) Christians put words into our mouths that none of us (at least those of us who are sane) would ever say in the real world.

Instead of complaining about this lazy habit, Klavan – himself a Christian – has opted to have fun with it. Being both a genuine artist and a bit of an imp, he turns it on his head.

In the Cameron Winter books, he gives us the enigmatic, seriocomic figure of the Recruiter.

The Recruiter was the head of the now-defunct top secret, ultimately deniable cadre of government assassins that once gave Winter purpose in his life, but also left him in need of extensive counseling.

The Recruiter seems to me to be a stand-in for God. He’s nosebleed-level smart, thinking five or six steps ahead of everyone, including his operatives, who never know quite what he’s up to. He’s ubiquitous and omnipotent and he moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.

And he talks like a preacher in a snake-handler sect.

Here’s a sample from Find Me Nowhere:

“Oh, did I mention Tubman says he’ll kill me if I ever come back to Kinnecombe? I think he might actually do it too.”

“No, I don’t think he might,” said the shape of the Recruiter in the shadows. “I think he almost certainly will. The man’s a sniper, after all, and a very good one. On the positive side, you won’t even feel it happen. One minute, you’ll be standing in the middle of nowhere, the next, you’ll suddenly be at the foot of Christ’s throne, all your deepest misgivings confirmed as you become fully aware for the first time that you were wrong about everything, which you’ll then continue to be painfully aware of through an endless eternity of suffering and flames.”

“That’s the positive side?”

“Wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding.”

The Recruiter is a conundrum to the modern reader. He talks like someone said reader has been taught to despise as an inbred idiot. But we know he’s the farthest thing from an idiot. On top of that, he’s black. There are no stupid black people in contemporary literature.

Winter himself never knows what to think of the Recruiter. Is he serious? Is he playing a game? Is it a psychological maneuver? That mystery helps to give the Recruiter power, both in the mundane world and in the mind.

It goes the same for the reader. The reader is forced to think about the Recruiter’s faith… probably the last thing most readers want to do.

Reading

Saga reading report: ‘The Saga of Gunnar, the Fool of Keldugnup,’ and ‘Gisl Illugason’s Tale’

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No doubt you’ve been waiting for my saga reading report from the second weekend of Viking Fest Minnesota. You are in luck; I did read a couple short sagas from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders during the festival, and my reports follow.

The Saga of Gunnar, the Fool of Keldugnup

This saga is one of the late ones, in which so many fairy tale tropes are employed that it’s questionable whether it has any basis in true events at all.

Gunnar is another example of the “Kitchen Sitter,” “Male Cinderella,” or “Kolbitar” (Coal-biter), a hero who loafs by the hearth all the years of his youth, then suddenly springs up with astonishing strength and skill to do what a man’s gotta do. He has some adventures in Iceland, in which (in an implausible plot development I’ve also noted in other sagas) he kills one of a pair of troll sisters, but spares the life of the other, who then becomes his devoted slave and helps him find great treasure. (Apparently, in the saga view, trolls have no sense of self-interest at all, but can be domesticated like wild animals.)

Later he travels to Norway (in the time of Jarl Haakon, whom you might recall from my novel, The Year of the Warrior) and manages to survive, even though Haakon plots to have him killed. Eventually Gunnar returns to Iceland and makes peace with the sister of a man he killed, in a rather anticlimactic manner.

At one point, Gunnar tells the jarl that he is twelve years old – which seems implausible to the modern reader, but that was indeed the age when a boy became a man under Viking law. A very short time later, though, he declares himself eighteen, so maybe it’s just a storyteller’s or scribal mistake.

Gisl Illugason’s Tale

The Tale of Gisl Illugason is a different kind of story. It takes place later in time than the classic sagas, in the days of King Magnus Barefoot (or Bareleg – he picked up the fashion of wearing the kilt in Scotland) of Norway. This story possesses enough plausibility to perhaps be based on true events.

Gisl travels to Norway, where he recognizes one of the king’s guard as the man who killed his father. So, naturally, he kills him. King Magnus wants to hang him immediately, but (in a development that resembles the story of Asbjorn Seal’s-Bane, which you may recall from my novel King of Rogaland), is persuaded to postpone the execution to the following day, so that the killing won’t be done at night, which was against the law. The next day – in a surprising twist – Gisl’s dying victim asks the king to spare his life. The king does so, and gives Gisl his victim’s place in his household.

We’re told, amusingly, that during his trial, Gisl offers (in the classic saga style) to recite a poem in praise of the king. The king gives permission and he does so, but the saga writer tells us “it was not much of a poem.”

Low points for drama; high points for realism.

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Saga reading report: ‘The Saga of Thord Menace’ and ‘The Saga of Ref the Sly’

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The Saga of Thord Menace

As usual at Viking events, I whiled away my quiet minutes this weekend by reading sagas from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders.

I read two. The first one, The Saga of Thord Menace, was of particular interest to me because it impinged (or intruded) on the family history of Erling Skjalgsson, the hero of my Viking novels.

You may recall “The Tale of Klypp the Hersir,” which I translated and posted a while back. That tale (from the Flatey Book saga collection) states that Klypp, just after avenging his wife’s honor on King Sigurd Sleva (translated as “Sigurd the Snake” here, though I’ve also seen it translated “Sleeve” and “Slobberer”), was slain by Ogmund Kaaresson, Erling’s grandfather and his own kinsman. But this saga identifies the killer as one Hroald Ogmundarsson, who would be, I assume, Ogmund Kaaresson’s son. However, I wouldn’t put much trust in this version – it’s a late saga, and not especially realistic.

The Thord of this saga is supposed to be a brother of Klypp’s, who went along with him to kill King Sigurd, and escaped with his other brothers. They flee to Iceland, where Thord ends up clashing with a man named Skeggi of Midfjord (a historical figure), who is said to have stolen the famous sword Skofnung from the grave of the Danish hero Hrolf Kraki. (The legend of Skofnung said that it must draw blood each time it was unsheathed). Most of the rest of the saga involves each one of the two men trying, repeatedly and unsuccessfully, to kill the other. However, Thord has adopted Skeggi’s son Eid as his foster-son, and Eid manages, time and again, to make peace between them.

A crudely amusing element in Thord the Menace’s Saga is the miserly old farmer Thorhall, who claims to be a friend to Thord, but always runs from a fight. For this he is repeatedly scolded by his young wife Olof. After Thorhall’s death, Thord marries Olof. I think this plot thread is intended by the saga writer as comic relief.

The Saga of Ref the Sly

The Saga of Ref the Sly (the name “Ref” actually means fox) follows a familiar fairy tale plot pattern – young Ref is a lazy lout, loafing around the home-fire while all the other boys and men are out working and fighting and competing in sports. Everybody laughs at him, and there are rumors that he’s effeminate (the translator actually uses the word “gay,” which I judge pretty anachronistic). However, when his father is dead and an aggressive neighbor starts pasturing his sheep on their family’s land – also killing their shepherd – Ref suddenly proves himself a formidable man. He kills the bad neighbor efficiently with a spear he made himself, and flees with his family to Greenland. Ref never returns to Iceland, but settles in Norway and Denmark respectively, dogged all the time by the kinsmen of the man he killed. He is skillful and inventive artisan and builder, often using inventions of his own to save his family’s lives (this saga is a little like the old “A Team” TV show in that way). In the end, he dies peacefully, on a pilgrimage to Rome.

One of Ref’s great enemies, we are told, is a member of King Harald Sigurdsson Hardrada’s bodyguard. King Harald (with the wisdom and foresight kings generally exhibit in sagas) grants the man permission to go on his vengeful journey, but warns him that he won’t succeed. I was amused by a description of a board game sent as a gift to King Harald from Greenland – it’s a set of gaming pieces, “both for the old game with one king and the new with two.” That would be a reference the old Viking game of hneftafl, and the “new” game of chess.

There’s also an intriguing moment when Ref’s uncle Gest calls on “The One Who Made the Sun,” an attempt to portray an old heathen as one who looked forward to the True Faith.

Non-fiction, Reading, The Press

Five books on the Vikings, from Neil Price

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The ever-vigilant Dave Lull, good friend of this blog, sent me the following article from the Wall Street Journal: Five Best Books on the Vikings, by Neil Price. Aside from the obvious defect of overlooking my own work, it’s an interesting list from a man who is no mean author himself.

Just to divert the income stream to our blog, I’ll list the list here:

The Viking Achievement, by Foote and Wilson

Valkyrie, by Friðriksdóttir

The Poetic Edda, translated by Larrington

The Road to Hel, by Ellis

Egil’s Saga, translated by Scudder

“But what do you think of the list?” you must surely be wondering.

Well, it’s not bad. The Viking Achievement is a book I’ve treasured for many years. It’s quite an old work now, and when I first read it long ago (while I was writing The Year of the Warrior), I assumed it would be just another historical/cultural guide. I found an excellently researched book, full of stuff I didn’t know already. We’ve had a lot of new discoveries since it was written, of course, and a new book along its lines is badly needed. In fact, I was pretty sure I found one a few years back and reviewed it here, but I can’t find it in our archives.

Valkyrie is a book I do not know. It may be very good. But I’ll tell you the truth – I avoid the whole topic of Viking women nowadays, since feminist scholars have gone all agog over the discovery of a couple women’s graves containing armor. I don’t think anyone can discuss women’s role in Viking society rationally at this point in history. (Myself included.)

I’ve read a couple translations of The Poetic Edda, but I don’t think Larrington’s is one of them. Anyone interested in the Vikings should certainly read one.

I haven’t read The Road to Hel, either. Hilda Ellis (also known as Hilda Ellis Davidson) was a foremost Viking scholar, so I really ought to correct this omission. However, the book appears to be out of print, and used copies are expensive.

Egil’s Saga, of course, I’ve read numerous times and in various translations, including this one. I’ve even read it in the scholarly Complete Sagas of Icelanders, but Scudder is, imho, more readable for the non-specialist

Bottom line: Neil Price knows his business, and this is a worthwhile list. I should probably compile one of my own, though my library is in such disarray right now that it would probably involve a lot of work.

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

La Mancha in the rear view mirror

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“…which the Queen Doña Maguncia, the Princess Antonomasia’s mother, so took to heart, that within the space of three days we buried her.”

“She died, no doubt,” said Sancho.

Though I have no personal experience of it, I’m told that people who complete marathons customarily get a tee-shirt announcing their accomplishment. I think anyone who finishes Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote ought to get one too (mine would be XXXL), featuring the date and illustrated with an image of the Knight of the Rueful Countenance tilting at windmills. Henceforth let no man call me illiterate.

What do I think of the whole thing? DQ is certainly a book worth having read. Like the Bible, it’s full of cultural references an informed person ought to know about. And there are certainly funny moments, as in the excerpt above.

But one of the things a modern reader learns from reading it is how different our world, and our thinking, are from those of Miguel de Cervantes. This is a man who respects the Inquisition, and takes it for granted that trashy books ought to be burned. He’s not evil – he’s a man of his time and place.

There’s the case of the Moriscos, for instance. The Moriscos were descendants of the Spanish Moors who had – ostensibly – converted to Christianity from Islam. A few years back, the king had banished them all, based on accusations of plots against himself. The novel includes two separate subplots concerning Christian gentlemen who fall in love with beautiful Morisco girls. In each case Cervantes strives to find resolutions by which the individual girls, who are always true Catholics, might be allowed to marry their sweethearts and remain in the country. But it’s taken for granted (and even the Moriscos themselves admit, in Cervantes’ account) that the expulsions were entirely justified.

There’s also a sequence where, with the encouragement of the Duchess, who loves to put Don Quixote through his mad paces, a young lady of her court pretends to fall passionately in love with him, to test his faithfulness to his lady Dulcinea. Don Quixote withstands the temptation to go to bed with her. We are informed, matter-of-factly, that the girl is 14 or 15 years old. There is, in Cervantes’ world, nothing scandalous about her age.

There’s a strange quality of metanarrative present in the second book of Don Quixote. Cervantes was largely goaded into finishing the book by the appearance of an unauthorized sequel, which was (according to him) unimaginative and poorly written. Don Quixote himself is told about this book in the course of the story, and goes so far, in one episode, as to choose to ride to Barcelona instead of to Salamanca, simply because the bogus book sent him to Salamanca. The intrusion of real life into the novel timeline raises all kinds of questions of subtext and alternate realities, which have no doubt been dealt with by critics. I’m not sure the scenario described by Cervantes is actually self-consistent, but trying to puzzle it all out seems like more work than I care to take on.

What impressed me most in my reading, though, was something I’ve mentioned before. While the duchess delights in playing tricks on Don Quixote, she reserves actual physical insults for Sancho Panza. We’re meant to laugh when Sancho is poked with pins, or lashed until he bleeds. Because Sancho is a peasant, his body doesn’t deserve the respect accorded the body of a nobleman. He’s a buffoon, the clown of the story, made of rubber like a character in a cartoon. His pain is meant to be hilarious.

My egalitarianism is, of course, another anachronism I shouldn’t try to impose on Cervantes, who knew nothing of such things. It’s unjust of me, really.

But I can’t quite avoid it.

So do I recommend Don Quixote?

I recommend it for anyone who wants to read it. If you don’t, I can’t criticize you greatly. You should probably read a condensed edition, though.

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Don Quixote’s biggest fans

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“…so Samson Carrasco told me, and he’s at any rate one that’s a bachelor of Salamanca, and people of that sort can’t lie, except when the whim seizes them or they have some good reason for it.” (Sancho Panza)

It’s getting to the point where I have trouble remembering a time before I was reading Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. According to my Kindle, I’m about 75% through it now, and I still have nearly 7 hours of reading to do. I don’t imagine I’ll be finished before sometime this weekend.

The profound literary insight that’s made me so rich and famous has enabled me to identify plot parallels between Book 1 and Book 2. In each book, a large portion of the story’s latter half is taken up with a kind of a drama. In the first book, the drama isn’t labeled as such, but the story takes on the form of a stage play. A large group of people are gathered in an inn, and the Aristotelean unities of place and time are observed – three (if I remember correctly) pairs of sundered lovers just happen to be present at once, and obstacles to their love are overcome, leading to happy romantic endings.

In Book 2, the drama is more overt. Don Quixote and Sancho happen upon a hunting party led by a duke and duchess, who turn out to have read Book 1. They are Don Quixote’s and Sancho’s Biggest Fans, and they proceed to merrily torture them, somewhat in the style of Kathy Bates in Misery, though with more charm.

Employing their considerable financial resources, the couple stage scenarios where costumed players present themselves as devils and wizards and ladies in distress, purposely enabling the old madman’s delusions, for the pure entertainment derived from seeing how far he’ll go in his self-destruction. The duchess delights in toying with Sancho, playing on his desire to be governor of an island, testing how far he’ll debase himself in exchange for that prize.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit I found some of it funny.

Being a professional social conservative, I tend to be somewhat sympathetic to the old class system. But as I contemplate the humor in Don Quixote, Book 2, I begin to feel like a Jeffersonian Republican. I even start to sympathize with the French Jacobins. Whom I loathe.

But there’s more of Don Quixote to read, so maybe this stage will pass.

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Quixotic beauty

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My opinion of Miguel de Cervantes’ classic novel, Don Quixote, based on reading a condensed version long ago, has always been that it’s a very long, difficult book that people read out of a sense of duty, but that few actually enjoy much.

I’m almost 70% through reading it now, and to be honest my opinion hasn’t changed a lot. It was a hilarious book by 17th Century standards, but it’s mostly plain hard work today. Despite amusing moments.

Today’s reading was highlighted by two major scenes. In the first, Don Quixote wishes to view a famous cave, and is lowered into its mouth on a rope by his servant Sancho Panza and their guide. While in the cave, the knight apparently loses consciousness and has a vivid hallucination, which he afterwards relates to his companions. It involves – of course – a castle and a couple famous knights, along with a brief vision of his own lady fair, Dulcinea.

Another big scene is a puppet show presented in an inn (I wish the author had described it in more detail – I couldn’t figure out whether the puppets were marionettes, hand puppets, or shadow puppets. No doubt Cervantes scholars have worked it out). Don Quixote, overwhelmed by the excitement of the drama, comes to the main characters’ rescue, smashing several puppets with his sword. He lives his life poised on the knife edge of delusion.

A topic I meant to discuss in an earlier post, but lost track of, was that of beauty. In a scene in Book 1, Don Quixote discusses with his friend the curate whether books of Chivalric Romance were true stories or not. The curate points out that the books are full of impossible creatures and incidents. Don Quixote’s response appeals to the spiritual – the stories must be true, he argues, because they’re so beautiful.

That’s a fascinating point, so packed that I can’t begin to deal with it here.

Keats wrote in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn” that “beauty is truth, truth beauty.” All my life I took that as a poet’s hyperbole. More recently I’ve been thinking there’s more to it.

Andrew Klavan’s book, The Truth and Beauty is one I’ve read several times without entirely figuring its point out. But it’s something to do with the idea that Beauty is a real expression of God Himself. In our mundane world, many beautiful things are corrupted by sin, but Beauty in itself is always a pointer to the Gospel. This is particularly notable in the experience of transcendent beauty, as when Wordsworth beheld a field of daffodils, or when Keats contemplated his Grecian urn. Wordsworth’s ecstatic experience of the daffodils actually led him on the road to Christian faith. Klavan thinks Keats would have become a Christian if he’d lived longer.

And it occurs to me that when a sinner repents and turns to Christ during an altar call, breaking down in remorse and suddenly in love with Christ, he’s having an experience not entirely different from those.

Nevertheless, Cervantes insists Don Quixote is wrong. In this world we live in, a thing can be both beautiful and bad. Beauty can be seductive, in a woman or in a story, or in an ideology. Socialism, for instance, is a beautiful ideology that springs from Romantic aspirations. But it leads away from God, and ends in death.

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Relating what will be seen there

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I’m sailing along into Book 2 of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote now. I see no reason to disagree with most critics, who think Book 2 is a little smoother and better-conceived than Book 1. The author has more control of his material, and has learned to exploit better the possibilities in his characters.

Sancho Panza, his squire, especially comes into his own. Sancho has always been smarter than his master, in matters of real life, and he’s learning to manipulate him (quite often for his own good).

The scenario at the start of Book 2 is that Don Quixote is resting, somewhat against his will, at home – but his family and friends perceive that he still longs to ride out and have adventures. A new character is introduced – “the bachelor Samson Carrasco.” (I find it amusing that the bachelor’s degree, which has become almost worthless nowadays, once carried enough prestige to function as a title, like “Doctor.”) The bachelor is a well-meaning young man, and he comes up with a clever plan to entrap Don Quixote in his own delusions and force him to give it a rest. Except his plan fails, leaving the old madman at liberty to ride forth to adventure again.

Sancho Panza is a little more successful operating along the same lines. When his master asks him to go to his fair lady “Dulcinea’s” village and find her for him, Sancho doesn’t know what to do, as he’s never actually seen the woman. He solves that problem by waylaying the first three peasant girls he sights riding along the road on asses. The inherent problems that none of the girls is at all beautiful, and that they have no idea what this old scarecrow in armor is talking about, are easily solved. Sancho simply talks Don Quixote’s own language to him – his perceptions, Sancho explains, have been confused by evil enchanters. The old knight is a sucker for evil enchanters.

As I read, I was struck more and more by the resemblance between Don Quixote and today’s Woke college graduates. They have both alike been driven mad through reading and believing insane books. I think it might be a good idea to study Sancho’s strategy, employing similar tactics to disarm the Woke. (The bachelor Samson Carrasco, perhaps because he’s a college graduate himself, was less fortunate in this strategy. Caution is in order.)

I also have to mention one of the actual laughs I experienced in my reading. Cervantes, in the style of his time, provides a long descriptive title to each chapter. But Chapter IX is entitled, “Wherein Is Related What Will Be Seen There.” That’s a nice, dry little gag.

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Quixotic minds

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I feel a little like Don Quixote myself today, having taken a journey on Saturday and having come away feeling a bit as if I’d been tossed by windmills.

They held an all-school reunion in my home town this past weekend. Our high school’s history ran from 1915 to 1990, after which year the district was consolidated with that of a neighboring town. The reunion was for everyone who attended the old Kenyon High School (our team was called the Vikings, which shouldn’t surprise you at all). My class was not the most snowy-headed and venerable among those present, but we were well along in that direction. I saw many old friends and acquaintances, some of whom I’d not laid eyes on in almost 60 years.

Yikes!

I strolled with my brothers through the hallways of our old elementary school, which still exists serving its original function, subsequent additions having been built on in stages, pushing ever westward into what used to be our playground.

When I think about it, I realize that I have both good and bad memories of the place. But it’s the bad ones that come to mind when I’m just flipping through the negatives. We discussed the nature of memory, how every time you remember a thing, you overwrite it, as in RAM. Thus, the more often you remember an event, the more unreliable its memory becomes. Do I really have any idea what happened to me?

Don Quixote, the first book of which I’ve now finished, presents a not entirely dissimilar problem. The old, crack-brained “knight” is certain of his perceptions, though no one else sees what he sees. This is no postmodern book, in which we’re supposed to wonder what the truth is. Cervantes is certain of what’s what – one of Don Quixote’s faults is that he refuses to submit to common reason. He’s a victim of pride, though insanity gives him some excuse.

When the curate and the barber, who come to bring him home, manage to lure him back to the inn where he’s suffered previous humiliations, we’re treated to fully three inserted subplots. In each of these episodes, lovers with sundered hearts are reunited through sheer coincidence. One could easily argue that stories like these are fully as fanciful as the Chivalric Romances Cervantes has already condemned. I suppose Cervantes might answer that, a) coincidences are a lot more plausible than the giants and wizards and flying horses of the chivalric stories, and b) such love stories are morally useful, as they assure lovers that God will intervene to bring them together if they only submit to proper social and religious strictures. (If readers who are lovers are disappointed in this expectation, they’ll at least have been kept from sin.)

Don Quixote is a sinner too, if an amusing one. His humiliations are the fruits of pride, and the same goes for those of Sancho Panza, who’s willing to become a blind man led by the blind, in his ambition to be governor of an island.

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

The Counterproductive Dream

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It was on Facebook or Twitter, just today, that somebody mentioned the movie, “The Shootist.” I commented that it was a very faithful adaptation of the novel, except that the final action (altered on John Wayne’s insistence) changed the entire point of the story.

Much the same could be said about “Man of La Mancha,” the blockbuster Broadway production inspired by (not based on, as the writers insisted) Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

I’ve never actually seen the musical, but I heard the songs multiple times, as my college roommate (confined today to a mental institution, I kid you not) was a Broadway musical nut. He especially loved “Man of La Mancha,” which was appropriate, because he never quite found a place in the real world.

“Man of La Mancha” takes the form of a play within a play. We find Miguel de Cervantes in prison, awaiting trial before the Spanish Inquisition (I don’t think that ever actually happened to him). The other prisoners try to steal his trunk of possessions, but their leader agrees to give him a “trial.” He is permitted to present a defense of his writing, and he makes it in the form of a play based on his novel. All the prisoners then act out the story.

The play includes the song, “The Impossible Dream” (performed above by the great Richard Kiley, who created the role) which became one of the monster hits of the second half of the 20th Century. I remember when it was new. It’s a splendid song, one of Broadway’s jewels. It’s also the precise opposite of Cervantes’ meaning.

Cervantes was delivering a warning against becoming so idealistic that you lose contact with reality. As a Christian, he understood that the body as well as the spirit must become sanctified. Don Quixote doesn’t only make a fool of himself. He injures people – and might have killed some of them if he’d been a little more accurate with his lance. He does kill a man’s sheep. He damages an innkeeper’s property and is too lofty-minded to even pay his bill.

Continue reading The Counterproductive Dream →