Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction, Reviews

‘Laughing Gas,’ by P. G. Wodehouse

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‘The Hitlers and Mussolinis of the picture world,’ said George, ‘What do they do? They ship these assortments of New York playwrights and English novelists out here and leave it all to them. Outside talent don’t get a chance.’

The quote above is self-referential. P. G. Wodehouse was both a New York playwright (in the musical comedy line) and an English novelist, and he had, indeed, been imported to Hollywood in 1929 to work on scripts for a while. He didn’t fit in and left little visible trace on celluloid, but he did mine the experience for comedy in his novels and stories. One of his most explicit Hollywood novels is Laughing Gas (which doesn’t seem to be available as an e-book, or even as a reasonably priced paperback, right now. But the link will take you to an audible book).

Reggie Swithin has recently inherited the title of Earl of Havershot, but he still hasn’t accustomed himself to that status. So he hasn’t the resistance to refuse the family solicitor’s request that he travel to Hollywood, California to disentangle his cousin Egmont from some American girl (who certainly must be inappropriate) to whom he’s gotten engaged.

On the train trip across the American continent, Reggie meets the beautiful April June, a famous movie star, who confides to him that she hates her life of glamor and longs for a simple home where she can be with her books and her flowers and her cooking… why, Reggie’s ancestral manor sounds like just the place!

Reggie is working up his nerve to propose to her as he arrives in Hollywood, where he meets the girl Cousin Eggy is engaged to – awkwardly, she turns out to be Ann Bannister, to whom Reggie himself was once briefly engaged. Then Reggie has an attack of toothache. In the dentist’s office, he finds that another Hollywood star, little Joey Cooley (“Idol of American motherhood”) is having the same procedure done by the dentist’s partner. As they are both under the influence of laughing gas at the same time, some sort of mix-up occurs (“probably in the fourth dimension,” Reggie thinks) and the soul of each transmigrates to the body of the other. Thus Reggie wakes to find himself very small, dressed in knickerbockers, and sporting long golden curls. He’s going to have to figure out how to live a child star’s life – which is made no easier by his guardian, a formidable woman who limits him to a diet based on prunes, to maintain his weight.

We only learn through hearsay what’s happening with Joey, in Reggie’s body, but the boy seems to have a good time. He can get all the sweets he wants now, and there are a lot of people he’s been dreaming of boffing on the nose; Reggie has a healthy young body with a good right arm and boxing training.

And so the story proceeds. Reggie will learn to view April June from a whole new perspective, and will also learn to appreciate ice cream and breakfast sausage in a whole new way. In the end, of course, everything will turn out for the best.

I have to admit I didn’t enjoy Laughing Gas as much as I remembered from my first reading, long ago. It’s not because the story is a poor one; it’s not. It’s just that, for personal reasons, I have trouble with stories about kids in general. It was interesting, though, to see how Wodehouse looked at Hollywood from personal experience.

Recommended, if you can find a copy.

Fiction, Publishing

Major publishing announcement

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I am delighted to be able to announce that King of Rogaland, the sixth book in the Saga of Erling Skjalgsson, is available for Kindle download as of today. Makes a great Christmas present for Kindle readers.

Get your copy here.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Carry On, Jeeves,’ by P. G. Wodehouse

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‘I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I’ve got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the light of love in her eyes. I don’t know how to account for it, but it is so.’

I am at one of those points in life where I find it prudent to re-read beloved books from my past, rather than spend money on new ones. Having made that determination, it was but the work of a moment for me to ankle off to the bookshelf and pull a book out of my P. G. Wodehouse shelf. And so I offer my review of Carry On, Jeeves.

The characters of Bertie and Jeeves first appear in a story called “Extricating Young Gussie”, (not in this collection) which was published in 1915. In it, Bertie is dispatched to New York by his formidable Aunt Agatha, because his cousin Gussie has formed an ill-advised attachment to a vaudeville performer. Bertie crosses the Atlantic on this mission, but in the end the whole thing is resolved through a farcical coincidence.

What’s rummy about this story (as Wodehouse himself would have put it) is that, first of all, we’re never told Bertie’s last name (it appears, in fact, to be Mannering-Phipps). Also, Jeeves does nothing brainy at all. He answers doors and takes people’s hats. That’s it. This is a nascent Jeeves and Wooster story. The concept remains in embryo.

It wasn’t until the next story, “The Artistic Career of Corky” (1916), that Wodehouse faced the challenge of solving a plot problem without letting Bertie do anything smart, which would violate his character. It was then that he hit on the idea of making Jeeves a super-intellect. And a wonderful phenomenon came into being.

“The Artistic Career of Corky” is included in the collection, Carry On, Jeeves. But its first story is “Jeeves Takes Charge” (also published in 1916). Here we get the origin story, as “rebooted” (as they say of movie franchises) by Wodehouse himself. The story opens with a wonderful scene in which Bertie, hung-over and temporarily valet-less, opens his door to “a kind of darkish sort of respectful Johnny” who immediately diagnoses his complaint and mixes up his proprietary anti-hangover concoction. Bertie engages him on the spot, and as the story continues, Jeeves contrives to disentangle him from an ill-advised engagement to Florence Cray (“seen sideways, most awfully good-looking”), who had a plan for “making something of him.”

And so it goes on through ten wonderful stories. Sometimes Bertie helps a friend out with a spot of matrimonial trouble. Sometimes Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia enlists him in an insane quest to steal some ridiculous object. It’s all light, implausible, and hilarious.

As I read, I couldn’t help thinking about Heaven (see my review on the book about Near Death Experiences, a few inches below). I think Heaven may turn out to be a lot like a Wodehouse story. We never grow old, and the world never changes (Wodehouse attempts to keep up with the times in a couple stories, but they jar). And above all stands the great God of whom Jeeves is a symbol, who (in this life, anyway) allows us to go our wayward ways, knowing that in the end we have no resource but Him, and no one who cares more for our welfare.

Anyway, highly recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Beach Girls,’ by John D. MacDonald

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The breeze died. The high white sun leaned its tropic weight on the gaudy vacation strip of Florida’s East Coast, so that it lay sunstruck, lazy and humid and garish, like a long brown sweaty woman stretched out in sequins and costume jewelry.

Another classic John D. MacDonald book, non-Travis McGee variety, from The Murder Room. The Beach Girls is an interesting, often impressive tale stressing humans and society more than crime (though there’s some crime). These old paperbacks were intended for a male audience, so there’s also quite a lot of sex, though it’s not explicit. Very little monogamy is on display.

Stebbins’ Marina in Elihu Beach, Florida is a marginal operation. Its owner, an amiable widow, can’t afford to maintain it properly, and local interests are pressuring her to sell it to developers.

But the marina is home to a motley group of boat owners – local fishermen, poor boat bums and rich yacht owners. There are a couple stinkers among them, but most of them get along happily in a live-and-let-live way.

When Leo Rice shows up looking for work, something seems off about him. He’s nice enough, and he’s willing to learn and to work hard. There’s no arrogance about him. But he doesn’t seem to match the story he tells about himself. He has the look of a man used to bigger things, greater responsibilities.

Leo has a secret. He’s got an issue with one of the residents, one of the bad types nobody likes. He came for revenge, but now he can see that he’s not tough enough for that job. And he’s suddenly interested in Christy, one of the marina residents, a girl who’s been damaged in the past and put on a clown’s persona. Is he willing to die trying to get justice, or does he have a future with Christy?

The Beach Girls offers a very fine author’s human insight, empathy, and powers of observation. The mores of the time it describes are very different from ours, and will probably disturb conservatives and liberals alike. The sex is pretty free and easy in this little community, but there’s also a passage that seems to defend wife-beating (in an extreme case). Approach such passages with your sense of history in place.

Otherwise, recommended.

Authors, Fiction, Writing

Klavan on storytelling

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I was busy translating today, and then I was busy catching up on things I neglected so I could do the translating. So what to post tonight?

My latest default seems to be finding Andrew Klavan videos, because nobody does the writing job better in our time.

The clip above concerns his novel Another Kingdom, so it’s a few years old. I remember the period when he was writing it particularly, because at the time I was enjoying a brief period of personal contact with him. I’d written a glowing review of the Weiss-Bishop novels for The American Spectator, and he e-mailed me to thank me. About the same time he made a request, on the blog he was doing at the time, for recommendations on good Christian fantasies to read, saying he was writing his own first Christian fantasy and wanted to check the field out. I sent him a file of my e-book, Troll Valley.

I never heard another word from him. Ah, well. Maybe I should have sent him Death’s Doors. Or The Year of the Warrior. Or just kept silent. One never knows.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Kiss My Assassin’ by Dave Sinclair

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The blurb says, “You’ve never met a spy like this before!” That’s false advertising. Charles Bishop, hero of Kiss My Assassin (apologies for the title), is almost indistinguishable from James Bond. He does the same job, has the same way with women, and gets into the same kind of scrapes as Bond (at least the movie Bond). I suppose the author’s attempts at witty dialogue are intended to make the atmosphere a little lighter than a Bond story, but I didn’t find the wit very sharp, myself.

When the Turkish ambassador to Great Britain is arrested on Westminster Bridge after a naked male body flies out of his car trunk, Bishop is sent to talk to him at his residence (diplomatic complications have delayed his being detained by police). The ambassador tells Bishop that it doesn’t matter what he does – he’s going to be dead by the end of the day. He says he got an opportunity to participate in a highly secret illegal arms auction, but since the dead man, the sellers’ agent, died – accidentally – the arms brokers, who are not understanding sorts, will certainly kill him and his family.

Fireworks ensue, and soon Bishop is off to Marrakech, where he meets a seductive woman and a brutish Russian agent, who turns into an unlikely ally. In the honored tradition of movie action heroes, Bishop will kill an improbable number of enemy agents, and though he’ll suffer several traumatic injuries, including gunshot wounds, he’ll still drag himself out his hospital bed to give it one more go.

I’ve read a lot of improbable action thrillers, so I could have gone happily along for the ride if I’d liked the main character. But I took a dislike to Charles Bishop almost from the start. The dialogue, I think, was meant to be clever, but it didn’t amuse me. An attempt at one point to make Bishop sensitive to male sexism struck me as both false and a little prissy.

The writing isn’t awful, but I don’t recommend Kiss My Assassin. As you might expect, there was quite a lot of sex, some of it pretty kinky.

Bookselling, Fiction, Publishing, Reading

What Everyone Should Read, Thanksgiving Americans, and Swordplay

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I’m almost done reading Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, and last night I thought, “Everyone should read this. They should assign it in schools or colleges. It should be something that young people should be expected to read before they are thirty.” Hundreds of churches would benefit from reading of the unmerited grace God shows the whisky priest, his duty and that of the lieutenant, and sparks of faith you can see here and there. It would stir up the pious in a way they need to be stirred.

Patrick Kurp’s son may have a better idea. He suggests making The Gulag Archipelago required reading in high school. Kurp replies, “This simple idea is too commonsensical ever to be adopted. The historical memory of many Americans has almost evaporated, leaving it eminently inflatable with hogwash.” Education, he says, is being trivialized.

Thanksgiving: In Barry Levinson’s Avalon (1990), Titus Techera writes, “Thanksgiving has a double character. On the one hand, it’s a kind of nonreligious expression of gratitude—ultimately, a form of patriotism. These are not religious people, and it seems that, without religion, Americans don’t know who is especially deserving of their thanks. They love America, but it seems no different than loving themselves. . . . On the other hand, Thanksgiving is supposed to save Americans from this individualism by forcing them at least to stop busybodying and rekindling the love of their own family.”

Paperbacks: “Around about the 1950s, the American literary establishment—never exactly nimble on its feet—noticed its world had changed a decade earlier.” And somewhat related, here are 30 fantasy book series with brief introductions.

Rings of Power: Still joking about convoluted story mess in the first season of Rings of Power. There’s a lot of material there. I’ve watched several of Ryan George’s Pitch Meetings skits and feel there’s a cumulative effect to several of the jokes. If this is the first one you see, you may that watching a few more adds to the humor of the whole.

Swords: A swordsman reviews his blade, one styled after a 14th century bastard sword.

Faithful: Pastors remain in Ukraine, leaning on the Almighty every day.

In the second tweet, Lee writes, “The 5th day, he woke up alone in bed at 5 am, and began weeping for an hour, for no obvious reason other than a sudden realization of his new reality. 9 months have passed. What did he learn? ‘God is good, all the time. It’s not just a slogan for me— it’s a deep conviction.'”

God have mercy on us and string Ukrainian streets with peace.

Fiction, Reviews

For your Spectation

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I continue to yammer to all and sundry about the novel The Last of the Vikings. Today The American Spectator printed a second review by me.

There’s a fascinating section in The Last of the Vikings where the fishermen ask Lars to read to them from A Happy Boy, and they’re all transported by the story: “It had never struck them before that a house and land can be so beautiful despite their being small. They did not know that poor people could have so much sunshine.”

And then another fisherman comes in carrying a radical newspaper called the Dawn. He’s been bringing copies in periodically for Lars to read aloud, and they’ve all enjoyed reviling the greedy capitalists. But now the fishermen’s attitude has changed. They tell the agitator, to his shock, to get out and take his paper with him…

Read it all here.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Comes the Dark Stranger,’ by Jack Higgins

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Back in the late Jack Higgins’ heyday, I used to buy all his novels as they appeared, because he wrote a tight, compelling story, and when Christianity came up it was generally treated respectfully. As time went on I got the feeling he was starting to phone it in, telling the same story over and over with different settings and only superficially different characters.

But it had been a while since I’d read a Higgins, so I took advantage of a bargain on one of his early books, Comes the Dark Stranger. I don’t think he’d found his stride yet at this point in his career, but the book was entertaining.

Martin Shane shows up in the English town of Burnham, looking for an old army buddy. But not in a good way. He’d been with a commando group in Korea, all from the same town, and he and his friends were taken prisoner and tortured. One of them, under threat of execution, had broken and given the interrogator what he wanted. Then Martin’s best friend was executed. Martin vowed revenge, but then suffered a brain injury that kept him hospitalized for eight years. Recently he got his memory back. He needs brain surgery to remove shrapnel before it kills him, but before he goes under the knife, Martin is going to identify the Judas and kill him.

Of course, it isn’t as easy as that. Everyone has a story. Somebody’s lying. As Martin endures recurring, crippling headaches, he questions and threatens and gets people angry, hoping the culprit will give something away. At some points, he’s not even sure the things he remembers actually happened. In the end, he’ll get an answer he doesn’t want.

Comes the Dark Stranger touched all the bases as far as thriller plotting is concerned. My problem with the book is that I didn’t really believe in the characters. I didn’t think some of them were responding naturally, but were just doing what was necessary to advance the plot.

Still, the book wasn’t bad. Moderately recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Hidden Voices,’ by Dan Willis

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I’ve been following Dan Willis’ Arcane Casebook series about hardboiled runewright/detective Alex Lockerby for some time. The books aren’t high literature, but they’re a rare example of modern urban fantasy that I find entertaining. The latest book is Hidden Voices.

Alex Lockerby is thrust into the turmoil of European affairs when William Donovan, creator of the OSS, asks him to transport to Austria and rescue an alchemist who possesses a valuable secret formula the Nazis want. The job – of course – turns out to be more dangerous than expected, but Alex manages to bring the alchemist home. And then it goes wrong on this end.

Meanwhile, he’s also hired to investigate the murder of a famous vaudeville musician, beaten to death with his own mandolin.

Supported and assisted by his girlfriend, the sorceress Sorsha, Alex comes through (even battling the Aryan Superman) to champion the cause of freedom and identify the guilty.

I wish the author had worked harder to master 1930s diction – he thinks, for instance, that Alex would have called the “#” symbol a “pound sign” rather than a hash mark. But most people can’t remember how they talked in the old days anymore, so I suppose it’s not important. The story was fun and there was no objectionable material. Recommended.