Category Archives: Authors

Authors, The Press

An Overpromising Article on Sanderson Smells like Rage-Baiting

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Yesterday, WIRED published a curious story by Features Editor Jason Kehe with this title and subtitle: “Brandon Sanderson Is Your God: He’s the biggest fantasy writer in the world. He’s also very Mormon. These things are profoundly related.”

In over 4,000 words, he tells us Sanderson is a bad writer, his fans and family are overly devoted nerds, and his guest bathroom is awesome. He says he spent two days at a Dragonsteel conference talking to fans, many hours with the author in his home and over meals, and that he, the reporter, hates Hugh Jackman. There are many words on the opinions and efforts of the reporter himself. But what is the relationship suggested by the subtitle? That Sanderson is a millionaire fantasy writer and a Mormon. Can you feel the profundity dripping from that statement?

I can’t decide what this article actually is, because it isn’t a feature of a popular fantasy author. It could be an attempt at a substantive observation that Kehe couldn’t produce. It could be a salvaged second draft, because Kehe wanted to write about Mormonism using Sanderson as an anchor but WIRED didn’t want to publish it. Or it could be rage baiting, a piece written with the simple goal of saying, “Hey, kid, you know that thing you like? It stinks.”

Maybe it is an attempt at substance and the reporter (or the magazine) doesn’t have the depth to swing it. It also checks all the boxes for rage baiting. YouTube already has several reaction videos, and Twitter is not reserving its disgust.

Kehe seems to know all the mechanics of good writing, so I hope he finds better subjects for expressing them or a healthier publisher.

A Little More: Here’s a great contrast of this article with one from another magazine about another artist, written by Shane Morris of the Colson Center.

Authors, Fiction, Non-fiction, Writing

An Endless Night, Culture Wars, and Editors Make Rotten Writers

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I read The Diary of Anne Frank in sixth grade and don’t remember thinking much about it. Something of the oppressive air stuck with me. Something of the final terror. One of my daughters read it last year and went on a rant against it. Maybe I read an abridged version, because I don’t remember reacting to any nasty thoughts or talk of her period. I think I would have noticed something like that in sixth grade. Then again, I could have drifted into a fog here and there, not realizing what I wasn’t reading.

I read Elie Wiesel’s Night for the first time recently. The author won a Nobel Prize in 1986 “for being a messenger to mankind: his message is one of peace, atonement and dignity.” While reading, I thought he had won the prize for literature for this book. Its sparse prose is marvelous, gripping, and conveys much of the dread of his experience.

In the opening pages, Wiesel’s family and neighbors didn’t know what was coming. Two people tried to warn them, but they couldn’t believe the outrageous truth. Who would do take 100s of people into the woods to dig their own graves before shooting them? Men couldn’t do that to each other. When the Germans came to town, one officer brought chocolate to his Jewish “host.” See? The Third Reich isn’t so bad. Many of them clung to any scrap of human decency they could imagine. Even when others were being killed, surely they would be shown mercy.

Such fantasies about the essence of mankind persist throughout the world and are one reason the museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau exists. Many, perhaps most, would say loving your neighbor as yourself is fairly easy if you just try it. They don’t recognize that Christ called this the second commandment, related and subordinate to the first. The first one they would call a nice premise or its own kind of fantasy, and there we have the seed for the hatred Weisel called an endless night.

What else do we have to talk about?

Spring Books: Goodreads has a long list of anticipated books. Some of these look good, not that I’ll ever get around to ’em. My supply of round to’em is a mite limited.

Writing: Jenny Jackson, an accomplished editor with many years of experience, suggests editors make terrible writers. They are used to calls shots, not executing the shots called.

College Closure: The King’s College in New York City has been running deficits for years and experimenting with online education without success. It will likely close by the end of the current semester.

Culture War: Professor Elizabeth Stice argues for living in the truth. “Those who think our culture can be changed only by those with obvious power should consider an alternative philosophical perspective. In 1978 Václav Havel published an essay titled “The Power of the Powerless.” Havel was writing from behind the iron curtain in Czechoslovakia, in a society he described as ‘post-totalitarian.’

“For Havel, the Soviet system was much bigger than the imposition of rules from a handful of powerful figures. It had come to rely on its own subjects for perpetuation. Using the example of a greengrocer who unthinkingly puts a ‘Workers of the World Unite’ sign in the shop window simply because life is easier that way, Havel explained that the people in Czechoslovakia were engaging in ‘auto-totality.'”

Photo: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Authors, Bookselling, Poetry, Publishing

Moral Sanctity, Authors Banned Left and Right, and a Speaking Tree

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I heard a podcast this week that raised the idea of moral sanctity, meaning there is value, nobility, and even peace in the fact that you have never done particular things (and further, that you’ve never even thought that particular things could be done). This contrasts with transactional morality, meaning that we consider some actions wrong and forbidden only because we perceive they have unwelcome consequences.

Perhaps you’ve heard of mock moral dilemmas as intellectual challenges. Someone asks, “Would you do this evil or that one, if you had to choose one of the two?” How do you rationalize the consequences of one action against the other? More transactionally, if you were in a room where no one could see you or know you were there, would you do this nasty thing for a dollar amount of your choice? If all moral choices are transactional, then we determine what is right and wrong after a bit of cost-benefit analysis. Plagiarism is good, if you don’t get caught, and even if you do, it may still be good enough to have attempted it. It’s up to you.

With the backing of moral sanctity, you can say no to both of the questions above. You don’t have to choose one evil over the other. Instead, you would attempt neither. You don’t have to name a dollar amount to outweigh the nastiness of doing some vice where no one can see you. You can choose instead the value of being able to say to yourself, if no one else, that you’ve never done such a thing.

And that touches on a truth secular society has ruled out. We are never alone. What we confess in private, we confess in God’s hearing. What we choose, we choose under God’s watch, and the consequences we earn from his hand cannot be sidestepped.

I’m probably out of my depth here, so I’ll move on.

More Rewriting: Not only is the Roald Dahl estate allowing the publisher to edit his books to avoid offending sensitive readers, the Ian Fleming estate is following suit. But R. L. Stine claims his publisher has gone behind his back to change his books. “Altering published works to conform to ever-shifting standards is more Orwellian than just banning them,” he said.

More Banning: Joel Miller talks about this subject in “What Else Can We Censor While We’re Here?” “When novelist Jane Smiley recently discovered a school district in Idaho banned her Pulitzer Prize-winning 1991 novel A Thousand Acres, she was thrilled. ‘Most authors know that banning books can increase sales, so here’s hoping,’ she said.”

Comic Books: Word on the street is that Marvel and DC are struggling to keep their readers and have or will reduce the number of printed comic books they produce. Some might say this is a case of Go Woke and Go Broke. Andrew Klavan had a short discussion about this with comic book author Mike Baron, who notes several writers that have been pushed out of the comic space for not toeing the current party line.

Poetry: Dream of the Rood

Wondrous was the victory-tree, and I was stained by sins,
wounded with guilt; I saw the tree of glory
honored in garments, shining with joys,
bedecked with gold; gems had
covered worthily the Creator’s tree.
And yet beneath that gold I began to see
an ancient wretched struggle, when it first began
to bleed on the right side.

Eleanor Parker writes about this ancient poem for Plough. “The story it tells is shaped to resonate with an Anglo-Saxon audience. By imagining Christ as a warrior and the Cross as his loyal follower, it echoes the relationship found in poems like Beowulf, where the bond between a warrior and his men is invested with the most intense emotions of love and grief.”

Photo by Maxim Lugina on Unsplash

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Fiction

Life Builds Its Own Fences, and Fond Memories of Louis Armstrong

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A few months ago, I watched August Wilson’s Fences on Amazon. The play was first produced in 1985 and won a Pulitzer and a Tony in 1987. When the play returned in 2010, it won another Tony along with awards for the main actors. I watched the 2016 movie adaptation, directed by and starring Denzel Washington along with Viola Davis and Stephen McKinley Henderson. They were compelling and marvelous.

It’s a moving drama about a man, Troy, who was something of a star in baseball’s negro leagues and now works in Pittsburgh as a garbage man. His wife, Rose, asks him to put up a fence around their back lot, and he is a common-sense man who will do a job right, if he doesn’t talk it to death first. The story spans a couple decades, I think, and the fence is incomplete for the majority. It’s a metaphor for the boundaries Rose wants to protect their family and the boundaries Troy wants to exceed as a man who has done something with his life.

I don’t know what viewers of the trailer think of these lines, but coming as they do with the full weight of the story, they had me bawling.

Troy: It’s not easy for me to admit that I’ve been standing in the same place for eighteen years!

Rose: Well, I’ve been standing with you! I gave eighteen years of my life to stand in the same spot as you!

Troy had chosen his ego over his wife. He framed his choices as his ambition struggling against life and society. She framed them as betrayal. Many men take the same stand while making the different choices. That’s what mid-life crises are about. It’s a story that resonates.

Banned Books: It doesn’t resonate with everyone equally, though. In 2020, a mother had good reasons for complaining about her 14-year-old-son being required to read Fences in class as the only black student in eighth grade. She got a little too upset about it, but I think school officials proved to be the thin-skinned ones. They expelled him.

Thriller Writing: Here’s a cool discussion from 1958 between authors Ian Fleming and Raymond Chandler to honor the latter’s 70th birthday. Near the beginning, Fleming notes that he writes thrillers and Chandler does not.

Fleming: I don’t call yours thrillers. Yours are novels.
Chandler: A lot of people call them thrillers.
Fleming: I know. I think it’s wrong.

Memories: What brought life back to tired guitarist Doc Watson? The memory of a tube radio and listening to Louis Armstrong.

New from Bill Watterson: In case you missed the news two weeks ago, the beloved cartoonist Bill Watterson is releasing a new book — The Mysteries, a vibrantly illustrated “fable for grown-ups.”

“From Bill Watterson, bestselling creator of the beloved comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, and John Kascht, one of America’s most renowned caricaturists, comes a mysterious and beautifully illustrated fable about what lies beyond human understanding.”

Photo: Paul’s Market, Franklin, New York. 1976. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Non-fiction, Religion

The conservative resistance to Hitler

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My friend Gene Edward Veith has a review up at the Acton Institute. He reports on the book, White Knights in the Black Orchestra, by Tom Dunkel. Although the book is not primarily an examination of conservatives in wartime Germany, it does make it plain that the conservative conspiracy to kill Hitler was much bigger than Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his circle, and that German conservatives constituted a major, and serious, challenge to the Third Reich. He writes.

My impression had always been that Bonhoeffer was caught up in a quixotic and poorly planned attempt by a small group of German aristocrats and military officers at the very end of the war, and that his role was minimal, basically that of a courier. But Dunkel shows that the Black Orchestra conspiracy began in the earliest days of Hitler’s regime, that it penetrated to the highest levels of the German war machine, and that it carried out many anti-Nazi missions, some of which had an impact on the outcome of the war…..

Meanwhile, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was battling the so-called German Christians, who wished to Nazify the Protestant state church by turning Christianity into a cultural religion (as liberal theologians were already doing) and expunging its “Jewish elements” to the point of removing the Old Testament from the Bible altogether. (This, too, was made feasible by piggybacking on the work of generations of liberal Bible scholars who had succeeded in undermining biblical authority within the state church.)….

That National Socialism is thought of today as an extreme kind of conservatism is one of the biggest victories of Marxist propaganda. This book shows that Hitler and his followers were radical revolutionaries, who sought to liquidate—not conserve—the traditional Western values of faith, morality, and freedom.

Dunkel does not play up the conservative and Christian angle as such, beyond saying that the conspirators “tended to be politically conservative to the bone” and describing the key figures as devout Christians.

Read the whole thing here.
Authors, Uncategorized

To Bemidji and back

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Your humble servant, humbly lecturing.

Ah, the high adventure of the author/translator/lecturer’s life! I’m back from my travels, none the worse for wear in spite of age, infirmities, and my well-attested general incompetence.

I set out on Sunday morning, which was clear and cold. It’s about 3 and a half hours to Bemidji, a world-famous northern Minnesota center for winter sports and summer fishing. I arrived in plenty of time to get lunch at a restaurant – something I’ve done rarely of late, due to tight money. But I had prospects of income, and I counted my chickens before they hatched, eating some of them in the form of a turkey dinner. Even went crazy and had pie for desert, which is probably imprudent when you’re about to speak publicly. Living dangerously, however, has always been my style.

Trudy and me and Brad. Do I look like a statue in a wax museum to you? The thought crossed my mind…

I arrived at the church where the Sons of Norway meeting would be held, and met Brad and Trudy, my hosts, who’d thoughtfully dressed as Vikings to help me feel at home. (Actually, they’ve decided to push Viking themes in an effort to stir up interest in their lodge after the setbacks of the Covid lockdowns). They were very helpful and competent, and – to my amazement – my laptop hooked up seamlessly with the projector. I’ve learned to be highly pessimistic about such hookups based on my recent experiences, but this went like clockwork. Which filled me with a different foreboding. This foreboding, fortunately, proved unfounded.

At the appointed time I delivered my tried and true lecture on the book Viking Legacy (which, in case I haven’t mentioned it in the last few minutes, I translated). There were a couple glitches in my PowerPoint presentation, but those were due to human error (mine). By and large the lecture went extremely well. The Sons of Norway people had promoted the event extensively, and they were pleased with the turnout. I was pleased with the audience response, and (especially) by book sales.

After everything was over and we’d swept and garnished the room, Dan and Trudy took me to their home, where we’d agreed I’d spent the night. They gave me a lovely supper, and we talked till after 9:00 p.m., which was staying up pretty late for me that particular night (Brad is himself the author of a book, A Conversaunt Existence, on the existence of God). We were concerned about weather forecasts predicting dangerous driving conditions in the morning.

In the morning there was in fact a light mist falling, which froze on all surfaces. But when Brad left for a meeting, he called back to say the roads seemed all right. So I set out for home, driving a little under the speed limit until I got to the four-lane highway, where everything seemed clean and dry. I arrived at my destination safely, and my GPS will vouch for it.

Now I’m in pretty good spirits, but bone-weary in that way that only an introvert feels when he’s been through an explosion of socialization. I have, nonetheless, the satisfaction of coming home with a lighter load than I took out, as cash weighs a whole lot less than books.

The only way I can imagine in which the expedition could have gone better would have been if I’d found true love.

But I expect true love is heavier than either cash or books.

Authors, Bookselling, Uncategorized

Coming soon to Bemidji

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Any readers living in the Bemidji, Minnesota area may be interested to learn that I will be lecturing on Viking Legacy to the local Sons of Norway lodge this Sunday, Feb. 26 at 2:00 p.m. The location will be Calvary Lutheran Church, 2508 Washington Ave. SE.

Today I was interviewed on a local radio station, KB101 FM. Through the magic of modern technology, you can enjoy the interview right here, even if you’re not privileged to live in the Bemidji area.

Authors, Religion

Pray for Philip Yancey

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Image from Christianity Today, courtesy of Philip Yancey

A Facebook friend alerted me to this article in Christianity Today by Philip Yancey, in which he announces his diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease.

I have to admit I don’t think I’ve read any of Yancey’s books — which makes me nearly unique, I think, in my generation of Christians. But I know nothing but good of him, and I know he’s been a tremendous blessing to many over the years. He’s one of the good guys, not afraid to face the hard questions. And he does not disappoint us in his article:

In my writing career, I have interviewed US presidents, rock stars, professional athletes, actors, and other celebrities. I have also profiled leprosy patients in India, pastors imprisoned for their faith in China, women rescued from sex trafficking, parents of children with rare genetic disorders, and many who suffer from diseases far more debilitating than Parkinson’s.

Reflecting on the two groups, here’s what stands out: With some exceptions, those who live with pain and failure tend to be better stewards of their life circumstances than those who live with success and pleasure. Pain redeemed impresses me much more than pain removed.

Authors, Fiction, Writing

Jonathan Kellerman interview

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Tonight I’m giving one of my lectures, and it’s turning into an adventure (and not in a good way). So this post is scheduled ahead of time, and I’ll tell you all about my travails tomorrow.

Above, a short clip of an interview with Jonathan Kellerman, whose Unnatural History I praised the other day. Enjoy.

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Writing

Games Tell Stories Too, Some Author’s Birthday, and Who Needs Editors?

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Games can hit all the marks of story, even when it isn’t a storytelling game. The basic conflict between sporting teams can feel like a good story without the themes and only light characterizations. A good ball game can be more epic than the average thriller.

History-based board games can give you the feel of playing within a historic novel. I enjoyed putting several hours into Avalon Hill’s Kingmaker, an old game set in England during the War of Roses. The pathos you feel in a game like that could be a spark of humanity or megalomania.

I’m thinking about this because on Thursday I finished playing for the second time Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It’s a compelling, open world adventure that gets close to having an epic feel, but doesn’t have the depth of character for that. The gameplay is a ton of fun. The environment and main characters are marvelous. It’s comparable to your favorite light-weight fantasy novel with that immersive quality of moving the story forward by your own efforts.

But enough about me. What else do we have?

Translation: A plug for the English translation of a couple more authors.

Political Divide: “Stories are critical starting points for civility. If we understand one another, we are more likely to see each other as fellow human beings and fellow citizens rather than opponents or even worse, enemies. If we know each other’s stories we are more likely to trust one another.” (via RealClearBooks)

Happy Birthday: Charles Dickens (1812-1870) has a Toronto-based fan club that has been celebrating his birthday (February 7) since 1905. They also hold a Dickens-themed Christmas tea. “This is not a scholarly society.” (via ArtsJournal)

Video: How would each of the Southern states prepare a meal for you?

Editors: Do copy editors crush young words beneath plodding feet? “One man’s infelicity is another man’s favored choice of expression. And there’s neither romance nor adventure without some inconsistency.”

Image by Edwin Francisco from Pixabay