Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction, Reviews

Last Call for Blackford Oakes, by William F. Buckley

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It’s been longer than I thought since I’ve read a Blackford Oakes novel. Stuff has happened in Blackie’s life that I wasn’t aware of, and I fear some of the information I gained in Last Call for Blackford Oakes will take away some of the suspense when I read the ones I’ve missed.

On the other hand, I’ll probably forget.

I wrote a few days back that the late William F. Buckley’s novels are a quiet pleasure for me. The Oakes books are my favorites in that group. It’s nice to read about a spy who knows which side he’s on, and isn’t tortured by doubts about whether democracy or a police state are superior systems. And instead of shadowy puppetmasters in darkened rooms, Oakes’ bosses are the actual, historical people who ran the CIA. A number of other historical figures also make appearances.

Chief among these are the British defector Kim Philby, about whose character Buckley (and Oakes) is/are in no doubt. There is no romance in Buckley’s portrait of Philby.

In this final book of the series, Oakes is a senior agent, something of a legend in the CIA. In the first chapter, in December, 1987, he’s called in to meet with President Ronald Reagan. There are rumors of an attempt to assassinate Soviet Prime Minister Gorbachev, and Reagan wants Oakes to look into it. Continue reading Last Call for Blackford Oakes, by William F. Buckley →

Fiction

Meeting Long John

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From chapter 8 of Treasure Island:

When I had done breakfasting the squire gave me a note addressed to John Silver, at the sign of the Spy-glass, and told me I should easily find the place by following the line of the docks and keeping a bright lookout for a little tavern with a large brass telescope for sign. I set off, overjoyed at this opportunity to see some more of the ships and seamen, and picked my way among a great crowd of people and carts and bales, for the dock was now at its busiest, until I found the tavern in question.

It was a bright enough little place of entertainment. The sign was newly painted; the windows had neat red curtains; the floor was cleanly sanded. There was a street on each side and an open door on both, which made the large, low room pretty clear to see in, in spite of clouds of tobacco smoke.

The customers were mostly seafaring men, and they talked so loudly that I hung at the door, almost afraid to enter.

As I was waiting, a man came out of a side room, and at a glance I was sure he must be Long John. His left leg was cut off close by the hip, and under the left shoulder he carried a crutch, which he managed with wonderful dexterity, hopping about upon it like a bird. He was very tall and strong, with a face as big as a ham–plain and pale, but intelligent and smiling. Indeed, he seemed in the most cheerful spirits, whistling as he moved about among the tables, with a merry word or a slap on the shoulder for the more favoured of his guests.

Now, to tell you the truth, from the very first mention of Long John in Squire Trelawney’s letter I had taken a fear in my mind that he might prove to be the very one-legged sailor whom I had watched for so long at the old Benbow. Continue reading Meeting Long John →

Fiction, Reviews

Nuremberg: The Reckoning, by William F. Buckley

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William F. Buckley’s novels have always been a quiet, minor pleasure, at least for me. Buckley wasn’t a great novelist. He was a fine writer, and his books are well-researched and informative. But they lack strong characters, and everybody in them talks like William F. Buckley. Not a bad thing in itself, but it plays hob with T.W.S.O.D.*

I learned interesting things about the Nuremberg Tribunals in the reading, but I never worked up a whole lot of personal concern for the characters.

The main character in Nuremberg: The Reckoning is Sebastian Reinhard, a young German-born American. The book opens with a prequel, showing Sebastian’s father, an architect, as he works desperately to get his wife and son out of Germany. He succeeds, but fails to escape himself. Some time later he is reported dead.

Sebastian reaches draft age just as the war is winding down. Instead of seeing combat, he is assigned to serve as an interpreter in Nuremberg, assisting in the prosecution of a fictional war criminal named Gen. Amadeus. Through Sebastian’s eyes we are able to observe the struggles of life in postwar Germany, and the complicated legal and diplomatic maneuvers involved in conducting a series of trials for which there was no historic precedent. Most of the cast of characters are people who actually lived, and there is much to learn for those who (like me) hadn’t studied the trials (or even seen the movie).

Yet somehow, when it was done, it felt unfinished to me. Perhaps that was Buckley’s intention, in view of the moral ambivalencies of the whole project, the impossibility of making the criminals suffer proportionately to the sufferings they’d inflicted; the hypocrisy of allowing the Soviets to sit in gleeful judgment on monsters not appreciably worse than themselves.

But one way or another, there wasn’t a whole lot of satisfaction here.

*The Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

Fiction

Footnote Evangelism

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Tony Woodlief writes about Penguin Classics.

It struck me recently, however, that the editors at Penguin assume—most likely with good reason—that their readers have virtually no biblical knowledge. Thus when the Count says, in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, “But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one,” the editor dutifully provides a footnote to explain that this alludes to the book of Exodus. . . . maybe this will prove to be a postmodern form of evangelism. We can’t get most intellectuals within spitting distance of a church any more, but maybe we can reach them through footnotes.

Fiction

Dark Horse, A Political Thriller

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In Dark Horse, political strategist and author Ralph Reed included the first African-American presidential nominee in history, a controversial black pastor that stirs up the presidential race, and a GOP nominee with strong national security credentials who has problems with conservatives in his own party. Many commentators and reviewers have noted the eerie similarities to the 2008 campaign. With the selection of Sarah Palin to be John McCain’s running mate, Dark Horse has now correctly predicted the selection of only the second woman as a running mate in American history. In the book, the character is Betsy Hafer, who like Palin had been a governor for less than two years.

The book has been out since June 3, and it appears to be a winner. I heard Reed say that if you want to know what really goes on in the back rooms of a presidential campaign, read Dark Horse.

Authors, Fiction

Marilynne Robinson Talks About Home

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Marilynne Robinson has another novel, Home, and talks about it with Newsweek.

The new book seems less like a sequel than a sort of Faulknerian return to Gilead. How conscious were you of the notion that the town itself is a central character to the story? Was that the intention?

To me it seems true that towns are always characters and that landscapes are as well. Gilead has resonance for me as a repository of a certain history, and as the kind of commonplace, self-forgetful little town you might find anywhere and not even bother to wonder about. These places are full of history and full of meaning. I am not particularly interested in creating my own Yoknapatawpha, but Gilead is where these characters live, and that was the reason I returned there.

The New York Sun’s Benjamin Lytal reviews Home here, opening his article with this: “Marilynne Robinson is an anomaly in the great tradition of American literature. One of our few novelists at peace with religion, she isn’t interested in the post-Puritanical game of unmasking hypocrisy, of entering into darkness.”

Fiction

Paul of Dune

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Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic, Dune, ends with young Paul Muad’Dib having beaten Voldemort, keeping from him the stone of life, and when the next book opens he is taking exams at Hogwarts several years later. Fans have been wondering what happened in the meantime.

Well wait no more. Authors Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson who have written several stories in the world of Dune are taking up the action at the close of the first book and asking probing questions about Paul Muad’Dib’s moral core in the book, Paul of Dune, available later this month.

Fiction, Reviews

Review: So Brave, Young, and Handsome, by Leif Enger

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From what I’ve seen of readers’ reactions to So Brave, Young, and Handsome, Leif Enger’s second novel, I think most people liked it, but found it a little less wonderful than his first book, Peace Like a River.

It seems to me it should be noted that trying to write a better book than Peace Like a River is a little like trying to produce a better flavor than milk chocolate.

If Peace had never been written, I think readers would hail this book as the work of a masterful new novelist, and it would immediately go on many favorites lists.

It’s not so much a fantasy as Peace was. I think there are fantasy elements, but they’re buried, running beneath the surface like secret rivers. There’s symbolism in plenty, and the gospel permeates every chapter.

Intriguingly, the second book question is really central to the story. I think Enger’s use of it in the narrative enriches the whole project. Continue reading Review: So Brave, Young, and Handsome, by Leif Enger →

Fiction, Publishing, Writing

Announcement

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A while ago I told you I’d come to an agreement with a publisher, and promised more details to come. Since then I’ve been silent on the subject, and you’ve doubtless assumed that a) I’m delusional, or b) the deal had fallen through.

In fact it simply took a while to work out the details.

Yesterday I signed a contract with Nordskog Publishing of Ventura, California to publish the next volume in the Saga of Erling Skjalgsson. The book is titled (for now) West Oversea, and it ought to be released in very early 2009.

Nordskog is a new publishing house with only a handful of books on its list so far. I’ll be one of its first fiction authors. I hope that this will enable them to give my book more attention in terms of promotion and distribution than has sometimes been my experience in the past.

I’ll keep you posted as the process continues.