Fiction, Reviews

‘The Empty Copper Sea,’ by John D. MacDonald

2 Comments

Meyer can suffer bores without pain. He finds them interesting. He says the knack of being able to bore almost anybody is a great art. He says he studies it.

Among all the riches of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series, The Empty Copper Sea holds a place all its own. Aside from being an artifact of MacDonald’s strongest period, it’s also the book where we get to see our hero most emphatically and ecstatically in love. Even willing to (drum roll, wait for it) commit.

McGee, semi-legal “salvage specialist,” is not at his best as the story begins. He’s just gotten home from a grueling voyage, undertaken as a favor for a friend. He just wants to relax a while. He’s tired; he’s feeling old. The world seems dull and full of irritations.

And along comes Van Harder, an old boating acquaintance. Van is a former drunk who’s now a born-again Christian, punctiliously maintaining his sobriety and rebuilding his life. He had been captaining a boat for a rich man up in the town of Timber Bay, when he suddenly got sick and lost consciousness. When he was awakened (by a kick from the sheriff’s boot) his boss had disappeared and he was being blamed for the disaster. The sheriff believes he had fallen off the wagon. Now no one will hire him.

Van says he knows that Trav recovers things for people, in return for half the value. He estimates the value of his personal reputation, he says, at twenty-thousand dollars. So he’ll pay Trav ten-thousand dollars to go up to Timber Bay and prove his innocence. To either find the boss’s body, or locate him wherever he’s run off to.

Trav and his economist friend Meyer travel to Timber Bay, to find that there’s a lot of speculation about the missing boss. The body was never recovered, and an increasing number of indications suggest he has absconded to Mexico with his Scandinavian mistress.

They encounter and interview a series of characters – all of them well-rounded and interesting. But Trav’s heart isn’t in it – he’s flirting with too many women and getting into too many bar fights.

Until he meets Gretel Tuckerman. Gretel is tall and healthy and beautiful, sister to the missing boss’s right-hand man, for whom she is caring, as he has suffered a brain injury. Some of John D. MacDonald’s most lyrical prose follows, as we watch Travis blissfully in love.

It’s doomed, of course, but that’s for another book (The Green Ripper).

Highly recommended, it goes without saying.

Music, Religion

‘O Love That Will Not Let Me Go’

Leave a comment

I’m not much good tonight, I fear. Got into a spot of pother over on Basefook, and it’s interfering with my concentration. I’ll tell you more later … or maybe not.

Anyway, here’s one of my favorite hymns — “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go,” by the blind pastor George Matheson, who has to be my favorite hymn writer (terrible admission for a Lutheran), because he has only 2 famous hymns, and both are at or near the top of my list.

Have a good evening, and pray for me if it crosses your mind.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Pain in the Belly: the Haugean Witness in American Lutheranism,’ by Thomas E. Jacobson

Leave a comment

This was quite a long book, but I read it pretty quickly. Because it fascinated me. I suspect it won’t be as fascinating to you (well-written though it is), because it’s about matters near to my own heart and history.

When the old Hauge’s Synod, a small Norwegian-Lutheran church group, entered into a merger with other Lutheran groups in 1917, someone expressed satisfaction that they’d be able to “gobble up” the Haugeans now through sheer weight of numbers. Someone replied that that might be so, but it was likely to give them pains in the belly. That’s the inspiration for the title of Pain in the Belly: The Haugean Witness in American Lutheranism, by Thomas E. Jacobson.

The Haugeans are my people, and I’ve written about them often here, so I won’t give a lot of background. The Haugeans were a movement of lay evangelism and pietism originating in Norway around the turn of the 19th Century. They never left the state church, but operated as an independent movement within it. When Norwegians began immigrating to America in the mid-1800s, the Haugeans, having no state church to react against, eventually organized themselves into a loosely organized church body of their own (the first Norwegian Lutheran church in America), which survived (with some splits) up until 1917, when they entered a merger with other Norwegian American Lutheran groups, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.

Author Jacobson spends about half his book explaining this story to the reader. The information is available elsewhere, but is necessary to set the stage. The other half of the book involves more original scholarship, as Jacobson has gone through (sometimes meager) records to provide an account of how the Haugeans returned, in a sense, to their original position, operating as an independent force within a larger church – preaching, teaching, doing good works, and agitating for a more devoted Christian life.

I read with great interest, as almost every page mentioned places I know and institutions I’m familiar with. Also people whose children I’ve met (or heard preaching); some of them I met personally over the years. (I myself am cited as a source, by virtue of a booklet I wrote for the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations.)

First of all, I want to say that the book is very well written. Thomas E. Jacobson has a clear, lively style, most welcome in a historian. He is also admirably even-handed in dealing with controversies, in spite of a tendency to refer to any preaching involving law and morality as “dark and legalistic.”

Pain in the Belly, alas, is probably unlikely to attract a large audience. Students of American church history will be interested, as well as anyone involved in the burgeoning field of Lars Walker studies.

Reading, Religion

Black-suited Pietist

Leave a comment
Photo credit: Yunus Tug for Unsplash+. Unsplash license.

Today, after much soul-searching and delay, I made up my mind to go to a certain well-known men’s clothier and buy a suit. More than that, I allowed myself to be talked into ordering what’s known as a “bespoke” suit – cut to my size and tailored for my peculiar personal form. The waiting time will be more than a month.

You see, I’ve got a little money coming in, and I’ve frequently felt the incongruity of the fact that, for all my talk about men dressing decently, my own (only) suit is rather shabby. It’s a point of traditional wisdom that a “decent” suit is not an extravagance. A man ought to be prepared to present himself respectably when it’s called for.

My suit will be a rich, elegant black, so that I can wear it with my customary black Victorian vests.

Black is the traditional color associated with Pietism and Puritanism (though the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony, generally depicted in illustrations in severe black suits, actually liked bright colors. And their hats were not tall and stiff, but soft).

I’ve been reading about my own Pietist roots, in Thomas E. Jacobson’s recent book, Pain In the Belly. It’s about the Norwegian pietist Haugean movement, especially its history in the United States. I’ll be reviewing it once I finish it, but one thing strikes me already:

Author Jacobson (who happens to be a friend of mine) likes to describe the conservatives, the party who wanted to follow the patterns of the old Norwegian state church, as “objective,” since they emphasized the efficacy of the sacraments, in which God does all the work and we are mere recipients of His grace.

My people, the pietist Haugeans, he describes as “subjective,” since we emphasized the necessity of a personal experience with Christ. We were suspicious of anyone who said their relationship with God was confined to receiving the sacraments. If faith is real, we argued, the individual will be transformed, and there will necessarily be an emotional component.

I’m not accustomed to thinking of us Haugeans as subjectivists. I’ve been a strong opponent of subjectivism in the church since college.

And yet the description is perfectly fair. I’m used to thinking of the subjective as just mushy emotionalism, but it doesn’t have to be. Real life is, in fact, a combination of the objective and the subjective, just as it involves the combination of the physical and the spiritual.

But this led to a further puzzling thought.

We Haugeans are often accused of Pharisaism, but Pharisaism is a defect of objective theology. The Pharisee makes a list of his duties, checks each item off the list, and considers himself square with God.

Haugeans are the opposite. We emphasize the passion of faith, total submission in all areas of life.

And yet, it’s not unfair to compare us to Pharisees. We do tend to get obsessed with lists of rules, as means of demonstrating our inner piety. I comment extensively on this characteristic in my novel, Troll Valley.

Perhaps the bottom line is that nothing human is entirely one thing or another.

Music

The Limeliters

1 Comment

I understand the old folk music craze is the subject of some current interest, on account of the new Bob Dylan movie. I hear it’s good, and have no plans to see it (despite Dylan/Zimmerman’s Minnesota roots), because Dylan has never done anything for me, personally. (I speak of entertainment, not failed attempts to borrow money. So don’t believe the rumors.)

The focus of the film, I understand, is Dylan’s break from the folk movement when he insisted on using electric guitars, to the horror of Pete Seeger, who operated as a sort of surrogate father and commissar for the Folkies. He was (as the movie does not make clear, I’m told) a fervent Communist and Stalinist. Many conservatives see Dylan’s adoption of electric music as some kind of affirmation of capitalism. Perhaps there’s something in it, though I never quite understood the rationale – you can be sure Dylan will never explain it.

I have always hoped – perhaps naively – that the really big, commercial folk groups of the day operated to some degree outside Seeger’s sphere of influence. Such groups as the Chad Mitchell Trio, the New Christy Minstrels, and the Limeliters.

The Limeliters were my favorite.

What set them apart was the vibrant edge Glenn Yarbrough’s tenor voice brought. After he left the group he had quite a successful solo career, and I was always a fan, though he was never a top seller.

Anyway, I remember the period well, and still like the music better than I like Dylan’s. Above, the Limeliters, in an uncharacteristically Christian moment, do “What Wondrous Love Is This?” and “Old Time Religion.”

Music

Sunday Singing: Keep Your Lamps!

Leave a comment

Today’s hymn continues our trend of traditional songs. “Keep Your Lamps!” is attributed to Blind Willie Johnson (1897–1945), an American gospel blues singer and guitarist, who was the first to record it in 1928. The performance above is by the choirs of Florida State University conducted by the composition’s arranger, André Thomas (1952- )

“Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” (Mt 25:13 ESV)

1 Keep your lamps trimmed and burning, (3x)
the day is drawing nigh.

Refrain:
Children, don’t get weary, (3x)
till your work is done.

2 Darker midnight lies before us, (3x)
the day is drawing nigh. [Refrain]

3 For the morning soon is breaking, (3x)
the day is drawing nigh. [Refrain]

4 Christian journey soon be over, (3x)
the day is drawing nigh. [Refrain]

Publishing

Call for consumer input

4 Comments
Photo credit: Jonathan Farber. Unsplash license.

This extra Friday post is for the purpose of picking your collective brains, O Esteemed Readership.

I’m looking at the prospect of producing audiobooks of my novels.

Generous friends provided me with equipment, and I think I’m near the point where I can make good enough quality recordings to satisfy ACX, the Amazon audiobook publishing arm.

My plan has been to start with the Erling books, but now I’m uncertain.

So I ask you – if you bought an audiobook where the narrator is declared to be an Irishman, would it bother you if the book was read in a Midwestern US accent?

I contemplated trying to master an Irish accent, but I’m pretty sure it would never be really right. I could probably carry the accent for a few paragraphs, but over many hours of reading, the illusion would wear off. I’d slip too often into flat Minnesota tones.

So now I’m considering hiring an Irishman to do the Erling books (if I can find one; you can hire narrators on a percentage-of-royalties basis) and just doing my Epsom books myself.

What do you think? Would it disappoint you if I had somebody else play Father Ailill?

Fiction, Reviews

‘Gallows Knot,’ by Giles Ekins

Leave a comment

I didn’t intend to review Giles Ekins’ Gallows Knot today. But I honestly got so caught up in it that I spent more time reading than I’d planned. It’s a flawed book, but compelling.

My original impression of the books in this Inspector Yarrow series was that they were rather quiet, almost on the cozy side. But gradually it became apparent that these are in fact very realistic, pretty troubling stories. There’s no sugar-coating here. It’s a truism among authors that you need to torture your characters – author Ekins does not spare his, especially his main character, Inspector Christopher Yarrow, who suffered horrific trauma at the end of the last book (which I won’t describe in this review).

But as Gallows Knot begins, Yarrow is back on the job. His town of West Garside, Yorkshire, is theoretically a quiet place, but before long there’s a new and horrific crime to investigate. A four-year-old girl has been abducted from the children’s ward of the local hospital. Not long after, she is found dead, raped and bludgeoned.

All resources are called out on this one, and we follow the police investigation as they examine the crime scene, interrogate possible witnesses, and even – in desperation – fingerprint the whole adult male population of the area.

Author Ekins is especially good with characters, good and bad, wise and foolish; they are treated justly and with sympathy. The prose isn’t bad, and occasionally the author can even sparkle, as when he coins the phrase, “the dark-murkled copse.”

As in the previous books, there are technical problems. These have improved from the first book, but the author still sometimes forgets his quotation marks or loses track whether he’s writing in the present or past tenses. He also (no doubt inadvertently) repeats a scene already used in one of the previous books. His authorial intrusions aren’t as blatant as in the first book, but sometimes he can’t resist breaking proscenium and commenting on the action from the perspective of the 21st Century.

This book finally gives Inspector Yarrow a romance, which is something we’ve all been waiting for. Personally, though, I have to admit I found it a little implausible (for reasons I’ll conceal to prevent spoilers.)

There’s also one important clue in the mystery that was not fully accounted for, unless I missed something.

Nevertheless, all things considered, I consider Gallows Walk and the whole three-book Inspector Yarrow series a highly entertaining reading experience. In a more just world, a good publisher would have taken this manuscript in hand and polished its rough edges.

Cautions for language and some deeply disturbing (though not too explicit) scenes of child abuse.

Uncategorized

Fossils congregate

1 Comment
This actually looks a little like Cahill’s. But it’s a photo by Pablo Merchan Montes. Unsplash license.

Somebody at the table brought up the subject of libraries, and I, of course, had a thing to say about that.

“The day is coming,” I opined, “when parents will be telling their kids, ‘You know, once upon a time libraries were places where people went to borrow books, not homeless shelters and day care centers.’”

I don’t know how impressed my friends were by this insight-slash-prophecy. How many things are there around us that started out as one thing and ended up as something else entirely? The theater began with morality plays during church festivals. Nascar began (I am informed) with bootleggers racing revenuers during Prohibition. Nokia started out as a wood pulp processing company in Finland.

There’s a group of my high school classmates – those who still live in the area, and who still live at all – who get together for lunch someplace every few months. This last Wednesday we went to the “new” restaurant in Kenyon, our home town – new in terms of management, though two previous owners have occupied the same commercial space. I might as well plug them – the manager was nice enough to send one of his staff up on a ladder to hang a shade to block the too-bright sunshine coming in through the south-facing windows. The place is called “Cahill’s,” which strikes me as an odd name for a Mexican fusion restaurant. But they were able to provide the stodgy anglo hamburger I required (really quite good). Also they had cloth napkins on the tables – I wonder how long it’s been since any eatery in Kenyon has boasted cloth napkins.

The conversation ran along customary retirees’ lines – where people take their vacations, how their kids and grandkids are doing (I had nothing to offer on that score), and our aches, pains, and medical procedures; I thought I had the prize for the most recent surgery, with my detached retina, but one of the “girls” had shoulder surgery just about simultaneously.

Afterward I filled up my gas tank (I like to support the local economy) at the Co-op gas station where my dad was a member, and headed back, past buildings that used to be something else, or the ghosts of buildings no longer standing. I had realized shortly after setting out that morning that I probably shouldn’t have gone at all – my left eye is still fuzzy; reading signs was a challenge, though I pretty much know the way without sign-reading. And the ride back was better; the sun was brighter and I remembered that I can see more clearly if I just close that bad eye.

Arrived home utterly exhausted from the rigorous exertion of ordinary human interaction; I was played out for the rest of the day.

Fiction

‘Gallows End,’ by Giles Ekins

Leave a comment

I was rather taken with Gallows Walk, the previous, first volume of Giles Ekins’ Inspector Yarrow series. The book showed signs of authorly inexperience, but it drew me in. There we met Inspector Christopher Yarrow of West Garside in Yorkshire, a former British pilot who lost the sight in one eye during the Battle of Britain. He’s intelligent and empathetic. In that story he hunted down and arrested a robber who had killed a payroll courier and (by vehicular accident) a little girl.

The main action of Gallows End, book two, takes a while getting going, as we begin by following the tragic aftermath of a secondary plot from the last book. But in time we join a group of golfers who discover the nude, strangled body of a young woman in the rough on the links. It takes some time to learn her identity, but she turns out to have been a young woman who was studying fashion design and working occasionally as a model. Her choices of work had not always been wise, but she was apparently liked by everyone who knew her.

The police procedural plot works itself out as Inspector Yarrow gradually sorts through a matrix of personal and professional resentments among a group of locals, until the true murderer is unmasked.

Author Ekins seems to like cliffhangers, and there’s a shocking one here. Cliffhangers are something I generally dislike, but in these cases the main mystery of the current novel is always cleared up first, so it’s all right.

The grammar and punctuation are better in this book than in the last one. Quotation marks, a problem before, have been fixed. There are also fewer confusions of tense. The text isn’t immaculate, but it’s much better.

If you like quiet, character-centered mysteries, I do recommend Gallows End. Mild cautions for disturbing situations and language.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture