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Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Saga reading report: Tales of Three Thorsteins

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King Olaf Trygvesson, as painted by my friend (okay, my acquaintance) Anders Kvaale Rue. I’ve never asked him why he pictures Olaf with a haircut documented as being popular with Danes.

Tonight, three more tales from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. Oddly, they’re all about guys named Thorstein. Perhaps the name was a statistical favorite among Icelanders. Or perhaps the name was becoming a go-to for storytellers, like “Jack” in so many British folk tales.

First, there’s “The Tale of Thorstein of the East Fjords.” We’re told that he was “young and fleet of foot,” though those qualities don’t really figure in the story. He is on a pilgrimage to Rome, and while traveling through Norway he comes upon a richly dressed young man defending himself against four attackers. Thorstein decides to intervene and kills three of the attackers. The young man he rescued tells him that once he gets back from Rome, he should go to King Magnus’s (Magnus the Good, I assume) court and see him. Just ask for Styrbjorn. (Styrbjorn was the name of a famous Swedish hero. I don’t know of more than one man who bore that name, and he was long dead by this time.)

One assumes that Thorstein goes to Rome and returns to Norway, though the saga writer fails to mention that. The next scene shows Thorstein showing up at the king’s hall, where he sends a message in, asking for Styrbjorn. All the kings’ men have a good laugh at somebody asking for Styrbjorn (like somebody today asking for Eliot Ness or Frank Sinatra, I suppose), but eventually the king himself silences them, explaining that he himself is this “Styrbjorn.” Thorstein ends up going home to Iceland with a lot of money.

The second tale is “The Tale of Thorstein the Curious.” This Thorstein went to Norway and joined the court of King Harald (Hardrada, I suppose). One day the king assigns him to watch his clothing while he’s taking a bath, and Thorstein can’t resist looking into his bag. There he sees a couple knife handles made from a strange, golden wood. When the king comes out of the bath, he intuits that Thorstein has peeked. Displeased, he demands that Thorstein fulfill a quest or lose his favor. He must fetch the king two more knife handles of the same wood – but he won’t give him a clue as to where such trees grow (considering Harald Hardrada’s history, it might have been anywhere in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, or Scandinavia). Thorstein eventually fulfills the quest, but only by way of escaping a giant serpent. In an oddly prosaic epilogue, we’re informed that this Thorstein died with Harald in England.

Finally we encounter “The Tale of Thorstein Shiver.” This Thorstein has joined the household of King Olaf (at first I assumed this would be Saint Olaf, but by the end it’s clear that it’s Olaf Trygvesson). One night the king gives a command (for no apparent reason) that no man is to go out to the privy without a buddy. Thorstein wakes in the middle of the night and is reluctant to wake anyone else, so he sneaks out alone. In the privy he encounters a demon. Then follows a sequence in which he asks the demon three times about which damned souls scream the loudest in Hell. The demon tells him about three famous Nordic heroes, describing their sufferings in the fires of perdition, and (at Thorstein’s request) each time screaming in imitation of that hero. Meanwhile, with each question the demon inches closer to Thorstein. But just before the demon can grab him, the church bells start ringing, and the demon flees back where he came from.

In the morning, the king asks how everyone slept. Thorstein confesses his disobedience, but King Olaf isn’t much bothered over that. He explains that he heard the diabolical screaming, and therefore ordered the bells rung, saving Thorstein from Hell.

There’s an interesting addendum. The king asks Thorstein if he felt frightened at any point, and Thorstein says he doesn’t know what fear feels like, though he shivered a little during the demon’s final scream.

This seems to anticipate a motif we find in several Scandinavian folk tales catalogued in the 19th Century – “The Boy Who Did Not Know Fear.” It seems to me that what we’re observing in these stories is a stage in the evolution of the folk tale – the point where stories are still connected to actual historical figures (likely the storytellers’ ancestors), but are growing increasingly extravagant and fabulous in the process of retelling.

Non-fiction, Reviews

Reading report: ‘The Vikings in Britain,’ by Henry Loyn

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When commenting on a book not easily available to readers in this country (I ordered my copy from England), it’s probably appropriate to call my review a reading report. Posting this does you no particular good, but I’ve spent a couple days reading the book (which I wanted for research on my Work In Progress), and I’m gonna get a review out of it, by thunder.

The Vikings in Britain by Henry Loyn was published back in 1995, which is a while ago, I must admit, especially in a rapidly expanding field of knowledge. No doubt much of the research in the book has been superseded, but in aggregate it seems to give a pretty good overview.

In fact, what The Vikings in Britain appears to be is a textbook, designed as a broad introduction. Just the facts, so to speak (so far as they can be determined). The material is presented through a combination of chronological and geographic perspectives, which seemed to me a little confusing. The book is, apparently, part of a series entailing certain format constraints, including length, so the prose is pretty dense.

My sad final impression after reading is that it wasn’t much fun. That makes it ideal for the textbook market, I suppose, but in my opinion there’s no excuse for a book about Vikings being boring. (Look at Viking Legacy for a sterling example of engaging historiography and [cough] translation.) If you happen on a copy of The Vikings in Britain, and want to mainline a lot of information in a minimal number of reading hours, this book might be right for you.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Borrowed Time,’ by John Nolte

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“A good man who cannot die, who lives forever, is cursed,” said Mason. “And an evil man who cannot die is a curse on everyone else.”

The legend of the longaevi is an old one in Christian tradition, and I suspect it probably exists in other cultures as well. Our ancestors believed in Longinus, the centurion who crucified Christ and was cursed not to die till Judgment Day (I employed this legend in my book The Elder King). They also believed in the Wandering Jew, who insulted Christ on His way to crucifixion and was doomed to wander the earth in a similar way. Both legends embody the understanding that, much as we’d like to lengthen our lives, death is in principle a mercy for fallen creatures.

The popular Highlander film and TV franchises took a different approach, but still couldn’t avoid the insight that earthly immortality would entail great sorrow and tragedy, if not evil.

John Nolte offers a new wrinkle on the concept in his recent novel, Borrowed Time. The man who calls himself Joshua Mason has wandered the earth longer than he can remember. If something kills him, he soon reappears under a certain Joshua tree in the Arizona desert. He’d always kept to himself and avoided transient humanity, until he met Doreen, with whom he fell in love and whom he married in secret, making a little family with her and her brain-damaged son in the run-down motel she ran.

To provide for them, Joshua began a secret business, based in the Dark Web. For a high fee, he allows very sick-minded human beings to murder him. He does not realize that the power of the people he’s dealing with, along with the increasing surveillance capacities of the government, will put him on a course that will lead to unleashing unthinkable horror on the world – through the most unlikely conduit you could imagine.

I first encountered author John Nolte on the old Dirty Harry’s Place blog, a fun movie blog. Lots of creativity and interaction. (Can anyone explain why the world abandoned blogs for social media? How long has it been since you’ve had a really good discussion on Facebook or X?) Since then, John has moved on to Breitbart, where he’s a big deal (we’re not friends, but I follow his career with interest). He’s written an effective urban fantasy in Borrowed Time, intended for a wider audience than Christian readers (watch out for language and graphic violence). The story is solid and well-paced. The characters are distinctive and lively. The prose is not polished, and there are a few typos and errors (such as putting Florida on the Pacific Ocean). But all in all this was a well-written, very readable, and gripping book. It moved me at the end.

Recommended for grownups.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Judgment Prey,’ by John Sandford

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It occurred to me (and not for the first time) as I read John Sandford’s latest Lucas Davenport novel, Judgment Prey, that these latest books in the series are about an entirely different character than the early Preys were. Back at the start, the emphasis was on street justice, and Lucas seemed to be a borderline psycho. Now he’s a settled family man anchoring stories that push gun control, and Lucas tends to operate as a buffer against violence.

As Judgment Prey opens, Lucas is still recovering from the wounds he received in the big gunfight at the end of the last book. He isn’t 100% yet, but he’s pushing to get back in shape. When one of his superiors asks him to look in on a crime scene, he puts up only formal resistance.

A federal judge has been gunned down in his home, along with his two young sons (the baby in the crib was spared). The widow, Margaret Cooper, discovers the bodies and is traumatized. A half-hearted attempt to make the crime look like a robbery gone wrong doesn’t convince. This was a hit, and it was personal.

Lucas, who is now a federal marshal, is allowed to join in the investigation as a sort of consultant, teaming up with his old buddy, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent Virgil Flowers.

The investigation will entail examining the judge’s will, and the organizations he’s involved in. Lucas begins to smell a rat.  One of the charities mentioned in his will, Heart/Twin Cities, starts looking pretty sketchy (this could be inspired by recent Twin Cities news in the real world). Which raises questions about its director, a local society figure who seems on closer inspection to be all façade. But he’s got an iron-clad alibi…

 There’s a fair amount of dramatic tension in all this, but we’re also following Margaret the widow, who responds to her bereavement with action – she and her best friend are laying plans to trap the killer and shoot him dead.

A well-crafted story. Interesting characters. Cop humor. I got everything I came for in Judgment Prey. Recommended for adults. Cautions for violence and language. The ending is kind of ambiguous and troubling.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Thrones, Dominations,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers & Jill Patton Walsh

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“It is perfectly possible, I suppose,” said Lord Peter to his wife, over breakfast, “for someone to be murdered while doing something she does not usually do, or behaving in a way unaccustomed to her. But it is an affront to the natural feelings of a criminologist, all the same.”

I was aware that Dorothy L. Sayers had begun a Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane novel back in the 1930s and abandoned it, leaving behind some isolated scenes and a tentative outline. And that the late author Jill Patton Walsh had completed the novel, Thrones, Dominations, which was published in 1999. But I hadn’t taken the trouble to read it. I feared that history would have contaminated it, especially in terms of feminism. Miss Sayers was certainly a feminist in her time, but the world has changed, and modern readers (we are told) demand certain thematic adjustments. I apply the same avoidance to the contemporary Battle of the Sexes as I do to the challenges of modern dating.

But a deal on Thrones, Dominations showed up, and I bought it. And by and large I was very pleased.

The story begins not long after the end of Busman’s Honeymoon. Lord Peter and Harriet are in Paris, still on their honeymoon. There in a restaurant they encounter a couple of other newlyweds, the London theatrical investor (“angel”) Laurence Harwell and his wife Rosamund. Rosamund is the daughter of a convicted embezzler who spent time in prison, but has overcome that social handicap through the sheer power of her ethereal beauty.

Then the story shifts to London, and I must admit it drags a bit in terms of plot. We spend a lot of time satisfying fans’ curiosity about how Lord Peter and Harriet will organize their new household. Interesting for that group (of which I am one), but I think it makes for a slow dramatic start. However, eventually a murder does happen, and the logical suspect has a solid alibi, while another fellow looks pretty guilty but Lord Peter has his doubts. It all leads to one of those alibi-breaking puzzles that’s so characteristic of Miss Sayers’ work, which was very gratifying. The conclusion was tragic and touching.

I saw occasional traces of a modern sensibility in the story, but all in all, Jill Patton Walsh did a very good job writing the kind of story Miss Sayers would have produced if she hadn’t lost interest. There were moments when the characters reminded me why I love them, and that made for delightful reading.

I don’t generally like the Wimsey/Vane novels as well as the earlier stories, because I find Harriet a little dull. She’s essentially the author without her Christian faith, and Sayers without God would be a kind of a bore, in my opinion.

But that’s just me.

The only serious error I noticed was that one major character changed hair color over the course of the story (unless I got them confused with someone else).

Thrones, Dominations is, overall, a highly successful literary experiment, and is recommended, especially for Wimsey fans.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Lonely Silver Rain,’ by John D. MacDonald

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So we went to take a look. It took an hour and forty minutes to get there, first south and then west. A lonely road on the edge of the Glades. Lumpy asphalt running string-straight through wetlands past wooded hammocks where the white birds sat on bare trees like Christmas doodads, thinking white bird thoughts.

As I think I may possibly have mentioned before, I’m a hopeless fan of John D. MacDonald, and especially his Travis McGee novels, about a Florida boat bum and “salvage specialist” who recovers people’s stolen property and keeps half the value as his fee.  The Lonely Silver Rain holds a special place in the series, as its 21st and final installment. It was published in 1985, and the author died the following year.

Trav gets a call from Billy Ingraham, an old friend who’s a millionaire and a widower, who recently retired, acquired a trophy wife, and had a yacht custom-built to his specifications. The boat had barely gotten in the water when somebody stole it. Billy has heard that Trav once found somebody else’s stolen yacht. Could he do the same for him? Trav explains that the first recovery was kind of a fluke, but Billy promises a generous finder’s fee. Helped by his best friend, the economist Myer, Trav makes a plan to use aerial photography and systematic analysis to try to find the needle in the haystack. And, to his own surprise, he does find it.

But when he boards the yacht, now abandoned in an isolated bay in the Keys, he finds it trashed, with three corpses inside. A young man and two young women have been tortured and murdered here. Trav recognizes the signs – this is a drug deal gone bad. This is nothing for outsiders to mess with.

Trav backs out carefully, covering his tracks, and phones the Coast Guard anonymously to alert them. Then he tells Billy to forget he was ever involved.

Too late, it turns out. One of the dead women was the daughter of a high-level Peruvian gangster. Someone has decided that somebody must be made to pay for the murders, and somehow they’ve identified Travis McGee as the scapegoat. He’ll have to either handle the problem or find a way to disappear forever.

I remember that, when this book came out, some reviewers commented on what they saw as a weary, graying quality. The author’s chronological plan was for Travis McGee to age at a somewhat slower rate than people in the real world. Under that plan, McGee was now middle-aged, but still had good years in him (though he worries now and then about losing a half-step). But MacDonald was approaching 70 himself at the time (which even I admit is old, though I’m older than that now), and he was clearly experiencing intimations of mortality. There’s even a fleeting moment in this book, a sort of throwaway scene, where Trav acknowledges the possibility of the Great Beyond sending us messages.

The Lonely Silver Rain may not be the top entry in the Travis McGee series, but it’s written with all the skill and craft of a consummate professional. Plus, as a special bonus, there’s an episode at the end that adds a (possibly unintentional but touching ) coda that rounds out a classic detective series rather nicely.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Shining,’ by Jon Fosse

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I had probably never done anything much worse than this, first getting my car stuck and then walking into the forest to look for help, really, what could have made me think I’d be able to find help in the forest, in the dark woods…

I’m working on a review of Jon Fosse’s Septology for… another outlet. As you may recall, Fosse is the latest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Like Sigrid Undset, he’s a Norwegian author who converted to Roman Catholicism, though his writing is nothing like Undset’s. I got his recent novella, A Shining, too, and there’s nothing stopping my reviewing that one here.

The first peculiarity one notices when reading Septology (of which this is not a review) is that the entire book – and it’s a long one – is one sentence. Not a single period there for the reader to rest on, like a swimmer at sea looking for an island. A Shining is less radical in that regard – it does have sentences, but there are no paragraphs. It’s a stream of consciousness story, in which we follow the unnamed narrator on a dream-like journey, to a destination about which we can only speculate.

The narrator describes how he drives his car out into the country, and then, on a whim, into the forest, where the vehicle gets stuck on a dirt road just as snow begins to fall. Incredibly, he decides to look for help by walking up a forest path, and before long he’s utterly lost. Then he encounters a shining “presence” whom he does not understand (but the reader can guess), followed by other apparitions.

One does not read a Fosse story for the plot. It’s all character, in a very immersive way. The narrator, wise or foolish, shares his every thought – sometimes to the reader’s frustration. The mystery of the story is what the narrator actually wants (he doesn’t know), and where he’s going (which he also doesn’t know).

The Christianity of A Shining is obscure and far from explicit, but the trip is absorbing if you give it a chance. Not light reading, but worth it if this kind of story intrigues you.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The House of Love and Death,’ by Andrew Klavan

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A young woman, slender as cigarette smoke, drifted toward him across the lawn. A breeze blew, bearing the first biting chill of winter. An armada of cumulous clouds sailed across the blue sky. Winter could picture the smoke-thin girl borne away on the breeze and vanishing. Yet on she came.

I’ve reached a strange point in my strange life when I no longer get Christmas presents. And yet I do get Christmas a present each year, ever since Andrew Klavan started writing his Cameron Winter books. These are my Christmas presents (a little early), even if I do have to buy them myself, and I await them with under-the-tree anticipation.

Klavan does the thing he does, perhaps, better than anyone alive. And it all comes together seamlessly in this idiosyncratic series of novels about a former government black-ops assassin, retired to teach English at a small midwestern college, but occasionally intruding himself into a murder investigation. Because he has a “strange habit of mind,” an instinctive ability to project himself into crimes, analyzing motives and methods.

In The House of Love and Death, the third in the series, Cam reads a news story about a multiple murder in Maidenvale, a small town not far from Chicago. In a mansion in a gated community, three members of a wealthy family were gunned down, along with their nanny. The police suspect the slain daughter’s boyfriend, a Mexican-American boy who attended her private school. But Cam senses a hidden logic in the crime, a logic he can’t yet put his finger on. So he drives to Maidenvale to ask questions. He finds the local police detective hostile, and adamant the boyfriend is innocent. A female security guard at the gated community is certain the boy did it. But Cam isn’t convinced either way. Before he gets to the truth, he’ll face threats from the police, the local drug gangs, and the family of one of the victims.

In a way, though, this is all a kind of distraction. Cam has reached a crisis point in his sessions with his psychologist, Margaret. He’s preparing to open up to her at a new level – to reveal to her the worst thing he ever did in his life as an assassin. Something that’s closed his heart off and prevented his forming romantic connections in all the years since. But will the truth be too much for even her to accept?

Another interesting plot thread is an ongoing subplot about Lori, a “diversity” officer at the college, who’s made it her mission to get Cam fired, not realizing that her inquiries are raising red flags in Washington. If she only knew it, Cam is the only thing standing between her and deniable liquidation.

I wish I could have brought myself to read The House of Love and Death more slowly. I’ll probably read it again.  I can’t imagine how it could have been better.

Fiction, Reviews

‘My Life As a Dixie Darling,’ by Mark Goldblatt

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When it comes to living our lives, I’m sure that the vast majority of us are making it up as we go along. “Lunatics, lovers, and poets.” …of the people I’ve known, they are the only ones who are certain about what they’re doing. But with all due respect to Shakespeare, I wouldn’t trust any of them to babysit my kid.

Occasionally I refer to the late D. Keith Mano, a somewhat tragic author who tried to write fiction about sex from a Christian perspective. I think he deserves a better posterity than he’s enjoyed so far, but I’m also not sure he ever really hit his target. I heard a critic say once that almost every great filmmaker tries to do a movie about sex at some point, to infallibly fail miserably. My friend Mark Goldblatt has written a novel about softcore porn in My Life As a Dixie Darling, and I think it mostly works.

The year is 2007. Doreen Martinelli is a very pretty wife and mother living in Shreveport, Louisiana. She’s married to Bobby, a fairly feckless man-boy who works on and off as a car salesman. They’re just getting by financially, and Doreen worries about how they’ll eventually pay for their young daughter Arielle’s college education.

Then Bobby has a brainstorm. There’s a porn site called “Dixie Darlings.” It runs on (I assume; I have no personal experience here) the same general principles as OnlyFans – a woman posts her pictures and film clips, and subscribers pay to see her nude in the member’s section.

Doreen is, of course, shocked and offended. At first. But Bobby is persistent. She isn’t a prude, is she? She’s a beautiful woman. He’s not jealous. And they could make enough money to send Arielle to Harvard, potentially.

That’s what gets to Doreen. She’d be doing it for Arielle. Who would it hurt?

Little does she know. She adopts the name “Dee-Dee” and posts some photos. The response is astonishing. Before long she’s the second-most popular Darling, and rising fast. But that means competition with the Alpha Darling. Plus the constant risk of the neighbors finding out. And Arielle getting teased at school. And Bobby becoming a seduction target for other women.

…As well as a weird flirtation with the boss’s son, an intelligent, well-educated dwarf.

The overall theme in My Life As a Dixie Darling seems to be materialism – the American tendency to justify any moral compromise – even when it leads us to neglect our children – so long as we can tell ourselves it’s for the children’s sakes. I also appreciated the unexpected complexity of the characters. This is one of those stories where there are no real villains, though many of the characters certainly do wrong.

I wasn’t entirely sure about the ending. I guess it should be seen as a peculiarly American kind of tragedy, but in a light-hearted way.

Recommended. Cautions (surprise!) for adult situations.

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Saga reading report: ‘Thorarin Nefjolfsson’s Tale’

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Illustration by Christian Krohg of the tale of Thorarin Nefjolfsson’s foot. This is not the tale we’re considering in this post.

I’ve got another saga tale for you tonight, from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. This one presented certain problems for me as a reader. In the first place, I found it poorly written (I’m blaming the original saga writer, not the translator) and rather hard to follow (all the saga writers couldn’t be geniuses). Secondly, it told me new things about a character I thought I knew pretty well, which didn’t quite fit my picture of him (can’t have original sources contradicting my assumptions!).

This one is “Thorarin Nefjolfsson’s Tale.” At first glance, anybody fairly familiar with saga literature will assume he knows what the story will be. I recounted it myself, in The Elder King (or was it King of Rogaland? Can’t keep my own books straight). It’s the story of how King Olaf caught a glimpse of Thorarin’s ugly foot in the morning light (illustration above), and bet him that there wasn’t an uglier foot in town. Then how Thorarin showed him an uglier foot, but got suckered anyway. It’s a great story. But this isn’t it.

Or then there’s the story I used for the climax of King of Rogaland, where Thorarin helps Erling Skjalgsson and his son Aslak (I think it was Aslak) to save Asbjorn Seal’s-bane from hanging. Also a great story. But this one isn’t that one either.

The somewhat disjoined story we’re dealing with here starts with Thorarin at the court of King Knut of Denmark (I didn’t know he ever went there), where he makes friends with a fellow named Thorstein. They agree to always stay in the same lodgings whenever they find themselves in the same country. As a result, they eventually join King (Saint) Olaf Haraldsson’s court in Norway together. There they are accused by jealous companions of treason against Olaf, and they have to go through the iron ordeal (which I’ve mentioned a couple times in my books) to prove their good faith. Thorstein turns out to have a miraculous mark on his palm which vindicates them.

I’m not sure what to think about this story. It’s not very plausible in its details, though I suppose it could have a core of fact, plus (as I mentioned) it’s kind of hard to follow.

What bothers me most, though, is the statement at the end that Thorarin died in battle alongside Olaf at Stiklestad. I always imagined Thorarin surviving to old age in Iceland, telling his grandchildren the marvelous stories of his life that eventually would be included in sagas. Also, I find it hard to imagine that Thorarin would have been allowed to stay in Olaf’s court after the fast one he pulled in the matter of Asbjorn Seal’s-bane.

Still, I suppose even a minor saga writer would have information about how Thorarin died. Now I’m hunting for more data, but the internet (even the Norway part of it) doesn’t have much to say.