Category Archives: Reading

Reading, Uncategorized

Faith among the ruins

Leave a comment
Kristofer and Gry Molvaer Hivju. Photo credit: NRK

I have some dislocated thoughts I’m going to try to coordinate in this post tonight. Just subjective responses to a couple recent entertainment experiences. They may or may not mean anything to you.

The picture above is of Kristofer Hivju, a Norwegian actor who’s attained high visibility since appearing in the Game Of Thrones miniseries. Beside him is his wife, Gry Molvær Hivju, who is a documentary film maker. They constitute, as you’ll note, a striking couple.

I heard about a documentary series they made together, and watched it recently on the Norwegian NRK network feed, using a VPN. I don’t know if it will ever be offered outside Norway. The series is called simply “Olav,” and it relates a personal quest to find the historical truth about Norway’s patron saint, Olav (or Olaf. Best known, of course, as a character in my novel, The Elder King) Haraldsson. We learn that Kristofer first learned of Olav as a boy, when his father, also an actor, played Olav in the annual Olav play presented (most years) near Trondheim, Norway. He tells us that Olav has been his hero all his life – the Viking who became a Christian king, and converted his country.

I’m not sure how seriously to take the dramatic arc of the series. Hivju may be playing a role as he presents himself as a lot like a little boy, shivering with excitement to go where his hero went and see all the evidence of his life. His disappointment is palpable as he travels to England, France, and Russia and finds – generally – that evidence for Olav’s life (outside the Icelandic sagas) is pretty sparse. Judging by the evidence, Olav was a fairly minor player on the European scene until after his death, when Norwegian churchmen and chieftains promoted him and his saga for political reasons. (I note that no mention whatever is made of the work of Prof. Torgrim Titlestad, whose book, Viking Legacy, I translated. They even report that a Norwegian translation of the Icelandic Flatøybok has recently been released, but they don’t mention its publisher, Saga Bok, Prof. Titlestad’s publishing house, or even let us see a copy).

The final resolution of the whole thing (and I’d have bet my house that this would be the case) is that they conclude that history and faith are different things, and each is important in its own realm. I reject that principle in terms of the central affirmations of Christianity, though I don’t doubt that many false stories have been told of saints and holy men over the years. I wondered about Hivju’s own faith, which he never really explains. Does his faith include Olav’s God, or only Olav as a hero? None of my business, I suppose.

 Around the same time, I was reading a couple books by Blake Banner, whose Cobra series of thrillers I’ve enjoyed very much. So I picked up a couple from his Dead Cold Case series, which I’d started and given up on for some reason. Reading again, I remembered why.  I’ve never encountered a more God-bothered series of books, and in a bad way. In each of these books (as far as I could tell) the author felt it necessary to insert a few Awful Christians. Judgmental, repressed, joyless, hypocritical, and often criminal. His knowledge of Christianity seems to come primarily from a bad experience of Roman Catholicism – when he describes an American Methodist Church, he assumes that they cross themselves when they enter the church, call their services masses, and reject sexual pleasure as sin. I feel sorry for whatever bad experience the author must have had, but I couldn’t take much of it.

We live among the ruins of shattered faith today. Those who believe, generally believe in a subjective way that has little to do with the real world. Those who don’t believe seem furious at God for not existing. We who hold onto Christianity have lots of work to do. It may be illegal work, before long. But that’s how Christianity started, after all.

Reading, Writing

Expository weight

1 Comment
Photo credit: Sergey Zolkin @szolkin, Unsplash

Once again tonight, I have nothing to review for you. This book I’m reading, which I mentioned yesterday, continues a slow read. I’ve figured out the reason – it’s longer than a federal regulation. I bought it assuming it was an ordinary World War II thriller, but it turns out to be more than 500 pages long – an epic. And although I remain interested in the events, I don’t think there’s enough story here to support that much expository weight.

It’s also a reproach to me as a writer. Because as I continue working on the new Erling book (still haven’t come up with a title), my word count is lower than I think it should be – like butter spread over not enough bread, as Bilbo would say. People expect epic fantasy books to run at least 80,000 words or so nowadays, and I’m not sure I can make it that long. I don’t want to just pad the story, but I’d rather not disappoint the reader either.

I have the idea my prose used to take up more space. Maybe I’m a victim of my own efficiency.

Reading, The Press

Why Read the News? Seriously, Why?

1 Comment

Gary Furnell notes Sturgeon’s Law in his review of Rolf Dobelli’s book, Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life, saying the news fits in that law too.

“Sturgeon’s Law” is named after sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon who, when needled by a patronising critic complaining that 90 per cent of science fiction was rubbish, replied that 90 per cent of everything published was rubbish.

Furnell agreed with the premise before he picked up the book. He notes Dobelli chapter titles to show the rationale. News works against your creativity. It gives you the illusion of empathy and obscures the big picture. It create artificial fame.

Dobelli admits that when he was a young man he was constantly reading newspapers, fearful of not knowing what was happening in the world. He describes himself as an addict, a news-aholic. He doesn’t quote Kierkegaard, but I will: “What we need is a Pythagorean silence. There is far greater need for total-abstaining societies which would not read newspapers than for ones which do not drink alcohol.”

This is probably the advice we all need. Stop Reading the News (Bookshop link) (via Prufrock News)

Fiction, Reading

Reader’s report: ‘The Return of the King’: The Scouring of the Shire

1 Comment

‘We’re not allowed to,’ said Robin.

‘If I hear not allowed much oftener,’ said Sam, ‘I’m going to get angry.’

Blogging my way through The Lord of the Rings, final installment from The Return of the King.

I have come to the end of the story. For each reader of The Lord of the Rings hereafter, I expect, one of the final impressions of reading the saga must be the Scouring of the Shire, made conspicuous by its absence from the Peter Jackson movies.

I’m not going to look back and check, but I’ll bet the last time I did this pilgrimage on this blog, I remarked on this very subject. I can see why, for dramatic reasons, a filmmaker might leave the Scouring out the story. It makes for a substantial anticlimax, which might detract from the eucatastrophe of the defeat of Sauron.

But I have an idea there might be other reasons.

Moviemakers today, it would be redundant to say, are generally leftists. The Scouring is highly problematic for leftists, particularly in these times. The same people who read the books as Hippies in the ‘60s, and cheered when Merry, Pippin, and Sam tear down all the signs posted by the Chief’s men, are now Woke leftists. There’s nothing Woke leftists today love more than lots of cautionary signs – No Smoking, No Firearms, No Automobiles (Tolkien wouldn’t have minded that one), No Pets, Please Recycle, Masks Must Be Worn.

There’s a quotation making the rounds in which Tolkien says that his political views tend toward Anarchism. He didn’t mean 19th Century, bomb-throwing Anarchism, of course. Those guys assassinated kings, and Tolkien loved kings. He meant something more like what we call Libertarianism today (I’m not a Libertarian myself, so I have my own issues here). The fans of the movies, who often believe (I suspect) that it’s all about environmentalism, probably don’t enjoy reading about the hobbits tearing signs down and smoking all over the place (in the movie they suggest that pipeweed is really marijuana, but they’re wrong). But Tolkien’s environmentalism is different from that of today’s left. The professor loved trees, but he didn’t love wilderness as such. In the time of the King, he writes:

…the evil things will be driven out of the waste-lands. Indeed the waste in time will be waste no longer, and there will be people and fields where once there was wilderness.

Tolkien’s ideal world is a world of villages, solidly middle-class and bourgeois.

One other point is even more delicate. The Shire needs scouring because Saruman has filled it with foreigners. Men of low character who bully the hobbits and have no respect for their property or traditions.

For today’s England, and for most of the West, that’s a subject best left alone.

Fiction, Reading, Religion

Reader’s report: ‘the Return of the King’: Happy endings

Leave a comment

And he sang to them, now in the elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.

Blogging my way through The Lord of the Rings, now reading The Return of the King.

I’ve gotten through the hardest part. The ring is destroyed, Sauron is fallen; his followers are scattered and defeated. The great evil has passed, and the world begins to heal under the wise power of the King and the White Wizard.

Tolkien’s essay on Fairy Stories emphasizes the importance of the Eucatastrophe – the surprising happy ending. The eucatastrophe doesn’t work unless the dramatic tension is intense. All must seem lost. Any hope that remains must be no hope at all. “We must do without hope,” as one of the characters says. Only after the good side has lost hope and continues fighting merely out of a stubborn determination to die on the right side, if the right must fall – only then can you have a real eucatastrophe.

It seems to me that most writers – and I am certainly one of them – are a little shy about happy endings. We know how to pile up the obstacles; we know how to frustrate our heroes and test them past the point of despair. But when – beyond all expectation – they triumph in the end, we’re not sure what to do with the victory. Mustn’t do an end zone dance, after all.

Tolkien does an end zone dance. He knows that the drama doesn’t exist for its own sake. It exists for the sake of the happy ending, just as the saga of humanity itself exists only for the sake of Christ’s Kingdom. The Return of the King should be read side by side with the Book of Revelation.

He describes in loving detail how friends are reunited, the wounded are healed, the land is cleansed, the pollution is washed away, and justice is restored. He understands that after the sufferings his characters (and the reader, vicariously) have endured, they well deserve a reward.

I need to bear this in mind as I work on my latest Erling book. My current story actually involves a happy ending with historical warrant. I need to be less shy about rejoicing and vindication.

Like most modern people, I know more about depression than rejoicing. More about ambivalence than victory. I need to look to the Word of God to guide me in subcreation.

Fiction, Reading

Reader’s report: ‘The Return of the King’: Healing hands

Leave a comment

Blogging my way through The Lord of the Rings. Now reading The Return of the King.

It’s a moving scene in the book, and moving in the movie too – the scene with the “healing hands of the king.”

“For it is said in old lore: The hands of the king are the hands of a healer. And so the rightful king could ever be known.’

Then Aragorn exercises his healing arts on Eowyn and Merry and Faramir. It’s beautiful in itself, and an evocative image of Christ as King and Healer. Lovely.

I don’t know where Tolkien first came across the idea of the king having healing hands, but I’m pretty sure I know one place where he read about it – Snorri Sturlusson’s Heimskringla. But in Snorri it’s a far darker story. Snorri generally shows conventional reverence for Olaf Haraldsson as the patron saint of Norway. But his treatment can be ambivalent, and it’s at this point in Olaf’s saga, not long before his exile to Russia, that Olaf loses the sympathy of a lot of readers. Historically, it certain lost him some allies.

The situation is this: Thorir Olvesson, a young man with important family connections, is getting married, and King Olaf and his entourage are invited. The hospitality is splendid. Food and drink are plentiful, and everyone is having a good time. But one of Olaf’s men whispers to him that Thorir, the bridegroom, has been bribed by King Canute of England/Denmark to murder the king.

From Lee Hollander’s translation:

When the king sat at table and the men had drunk for a while and were very merry, while Thorir went about, serving the people, the king had Thorir called before him. He came up to the king’s table and rested his elbows on it.

“How old a man are you, Thorir?” asked the king.

“I am eighteen years old,” he replied.

The king said, “A big man you are for your age, Thorir, and a fine fellow.” Then the king put his hand around Thorir’s right arm and stroked it above the elbow.

Thorir, said, “Gently, sire! I have a boil on my arm.” The king held on to his arm and felt something hard underneath.

The king said, “Haven’t you heard that I am a healer? Let me see that boil.” Then Thorir saw that it would not do to conceal it any longer and took off the ring and showed it to the king. The king asked whether it was a gift from King Knut. Thorir said he would not deny it.

The king had Thorir seized and put in chains.  Then Kalf [Arnesson] came forward and asked for mercy, offering money for him. Many supported him and offered compensation. The king was so furious that no one dared to address him. He declared that Thorir was to have the same sentence [of death] which Thorir had intended for him, and had him killed afterwards. But that deed created the greatest ill-will….

Fiction, Reading

Reader’s report: ‘The Return of the King’: Concerning tombs

3 Comments

Blogging my way through The Lord of the Rings. I’m on The Return of the King now.

Reading impressions: I was struck, as most readers will forever be now, I suppose, by the differences between the movies and the books. I know this, and yet it always sort of surprises me. The impression I always get from the movies (and of course it’s much easier to watch the movies than read the trilogy) is that the movies are pretty faithful, except for a few obvious changes. The role of Arwen is the most famous. The omission of Tom Bombadil is another. And we could go on and on, in orders of relative importance.

But in fact, the movies are very different from the books. The general plot lines are largely the same, though the order of presentation has often been shuffled. But there are actually few scenes in the films that are presented substantially as Tolkien described them. Compression and economy have had their effects everywhere. Most of the dialogue is new, too. We notice the direct quotations when they come, and quote them in Facebook memes. But they’re actually relatively rare. Most of the dialogue is new – streamlined paraphrases of Tolkien’s general sense.

Every fan of the movies should read the books at least once.

Of course, they won’t.

Looking at the story through the eyes of a Viking buff, one thing struck me in my recent reading. When Denethor commands that Faramir be carried into the kings’ tombs, the entrance is described like this:

Turning westward they came at length to a door in the rearward wall of the sixth circle. Fen Hollen it was called, for it was kept ever shut save at times of funeral, and only the Lord of the City might use that way, or those who bore the token of the tombs and tended the houses of the dead.

In other words, bodies were not carried in through the main entrance, but through a separate, smaller, door. I’m probably reaching, but this reminded me of a Norse custom known from the sagas. We’re told that when someone died in a house, the corpse was not carried out through the main door. Instead a hole was broken into a side wall, and the corpse carried out that way. Then the hole would be repaired. The idea was that if the dead person were to “walk again,” they would try to get back in the way they left, and be unable to find that door. This would protect the residents.

The two things are different, in that one involves carrying corpses in, and the other involved carrying them out. Still, I thought it might have been in the back of the Professor’s mind.

Authors, Fiction, Reading

Reading report: ‘The Lord of the Rings’: Incompatibility

Leave a comment

Blogging my way through The Two Towers:

To some extent Ronald and Edith [Tolkien] lived separate lives at Northmoor Road [Oxford], sleeping in separate bedrooms and keeping different hours…. She and Ronald did not always talk about the same things to the same people, and as they grew older each went his and her own way in this respect, Ronald discoursing on an English place-name apparently oblivious that the same visitor was simultaneously being addressed by Edith on the subject of a grandchild’s measles. But this was something that regular guests learnt to cope with. (J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography, Humphrey Carpenter.)

‘But our hearts did not go on growing in the same way: the Ents gave their love to things that they met in the world, and the Entwives gave their thought to other things, for the Ents loved the great trees, and the wild woods, and the slopes of the high hills…. But the Entwives gave their minds to the lesser trees, and to the meads in the sunshine beyond the feet of the forests…. ‘ (Treebeard, in The Two Towers)

Just a parallel that struck me, from Tolkien’s life and his books. It’s not for me to say much about the Professor’s domestic life (which was full of love by all accounts, though a little eccentric). Just to point out a similarity.

Authors, Fiction, Reading

Reading report: ‘The Lord of the Rings’: Diversity

Leave a comment

Blogging my way through The Two Towers:

Another theme in these books that strikes me is the vision of what – at the risk of political correctness – I might call “diversity.”

The Fellowship of the Ring is, self-consciously, a diverse group. It includes members of several of the more-or-less human “races” not dominated by Sauron – Men, and Elves, and Hobbits. No doubt this mirrors Tolkien’s experience with classes and Imperial ethnicities (not to mention Allies) during the Great War. The feeling (it must have seemed very strange in those times) of thinking, “Here I am, crouched in a trench with men I might have despised or even fought against in the past. But we’re all at war for a single cause now, and I find much to love and admire in them.”

No doubt it would have occurred to a thoughtful mind that one could conceivably come to feel the same way about the enemy, under different circumstances.

But it wouldn’t only have been the war. The fabled Inklings group was itself (to an extent) a disparate gathering. Not radically disparate, but to Tolkien, as a member of a religious minority, the chasm between Catholic and Protestant was always significant. I don’t recall that any of the Inklings was an atheist or agnostic, but Owen Barfield was a Theosophist (though he eventually became a communicant Anglican).

Which reminds me of the issue of “Jack” Lewis’s Anglicanism, always a sore point with Tolkien. After the famous night in 1931 when he and Hugo Dyson convinced Lewis that mythology might be a kind of inchoate prophecy from Heaven (leading to his Christian conversion), Tolkien hoped Jack would join him in his Roman faith. But Jack remained at bottom a Belfast Protestant, though he learned to appreciate certain beauties in his friend’s church.

And when I read of Gimli and Legolas, tentatively finding common ground in which an Elf might go so far as to visit caverns, in order (perhaps) to discover the beauties a Dwarf sees there, and the Dwarf condescends to travel in a forest with the Elf for the same reason, we may be peering into the heart of Tolkien’s and Lewis’s friendship.

Fiction, Reading

Reading report: The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien: The name of Erling

2 Comments

Blogging my way through The Lord of the Rings.

I’m well into The Two Towers now. An anxious nation will be gratified to know that I Have Thoughts.

I noticed – for the first time, I think – the name of the ancient warrior who – we are told – founded the Kingdom of Rohan. His name was Eorl the Young.

This is where I did a little linguistic analysis, based on my fair knowledge of Norwegian and my sketchy grasp of Old Norse.

I figured Eorl must be etymologically related to the Norse word, Jarl, which means a ruler. I was pretty sure that the Norse cognate when used in personal names was “Erl.” I had looked up the meaning of Erling (for obvious reasons) and learned that the name means “young ruler.”

That makes sense, because the “ing” suffix is common in sagas to indicate “the younger,” as in “junior.” Thus the sons of Arne Arnmodsson (whom I mentioned a few days ago in my post on my novel writing) were known as the Arnmodings.

My guesses were verified by the author of this web site, assuming he knows what he’s talking about.

Therefore, when you encounter the name Eorl the Young in TLOTR, think “Erling.”

Did Tolkien have Erling Skjalgsson in mind when he named the character? I have no evidence for that. But I like to think so. Because what I like is extremely important.