Authors, Blogs, Socials

Revisiting Fascism, Dune, blogroll, and Family Bonds

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It’s full strength for fall colors in my area this week, at least on my morning commute when the sunlight is set to Golden Hour status. The same trees don’t look quite as vibrant at noon. I’ve taken a few short videos while driving to or from work and this morning when taking the trash to the dump. I’ve been recording second-long videos this year. It’s been fun, but I’m not sure I’ll do it again next year.

Today, November 13, is Felix Unger day.

Dune: Herbert uses a steady stream of inner dialogue throughout the two Dune novels I’ve read, which is one reason Dune may work better as a book than a movie.

From the new biography on Czesław Miłosz: “In immigrating to the United States, and specifically to California in 1960,” Haven writes, “he thought he was coming to the timeless world of nature. However, Berkeley was about to become a lightning rod for […] the world of change […] and he would be in the thick of it.” (via Books, Inq)

Gene Veith is revisiting his book on contemporary fascism: “The rise of Donald Trump has caused many people to worry about the emergence of a new fascism, but hardly anyone seems aware of what the fascists actually believed.”

Sophia Lee is a solid young reporter with World News Group. She got married during COVID restrictions, which they streamed over Zoom. A virtual wedding ceremony meant her parents met his parents for the first time in August. A month later, her mother-in-law died.

Chocolates and Caramels: With Christmas and other holidays coming up, allow me to link to Monastery Candy “by the contemplative nuns of Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey in Dubuque, Iowa.” They say their hazelnut meltaways are their favorites.

Photo: Diner (American and Korean food), Route 27, Columbus, Georgia 1982. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Fiction, Reviews

Who’s Afraid of Animal Farm?

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Finding herself unable to read more than individual letters, she fetched Muriel.

‘Muriel,’ she said, ‘read me the Fourth Commandment. Does it not say
something about never sleeping in a bed?’

With some difficulty Muriel spelt it out.

‘It says, ’No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets,” she announced finally.

I recently read George Orwell’s Animal Farm with some friends. We talked about it for a couple months. I didn’t know going in that I already knew the ending. That nonsense about equality (“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”) comes at the end with another scene I sort of remembered. I guess the lack of certainty kept me rooting for a better outcome.

Orwell wrote his fable in the early 40s with Stalin and Trotsky in mind. Trotsky was the Communist idealist who hoped for the workers revolution to sweep the whole world. Stalin was just a dictator. He would have been an abusive mid-level manager in corporate America if he had been born in the States.

In Orwell’s story, Stalin is the pig Napoleon; Trotsky is Snowball. Is Snowball meant to be as pure as the wind-driven snow? Does he have a chance of surviving farm hell? I don’t know. He is the smart one though. He’s the one with vision and plans. The rest of them are lying, thieving pigs who spend so much time gaslighting the other animals that they gaslight themselves.

What is the point of Napoleon telling everyone that one neighboring farmer can’t be trusted one day, the other farmer the next day, and that the traitor they exiled is in league with one or the other of the enemy men week after week? It is either his outsized paranoia, his deliberate gaslighting of everyone he can, or his capricious command and control.

Abusive people can be like that. They change their mind for any reason and force those around them to agree, even if the change makes little difference to anyone. The point isn’t understanding the truth but following the abuser in lockstep. The truth, of course, is whatever the abuser says it is.

How do they teach this book in school and still churn out soft-minded socialists? The animals yearn for freedom, praise themselves for owning their own labor, and yet become more enslaved under pig leadership than they were under human leadership. Maybe teachers join in the gaslighting when this book is discussed. Maybe they explain how Snowball would have been proven right if he had had the chance to succeed; if the animals had just stood up to Napoleon and the other pigs, they could have had their animal-owned and operated farm paradise.

More likely, teachers direct attention to a cult of personality and how Napoleon could be very much like someone else we all disapprove of. Who could that be, children? What larger-than-life personality is a stain to all right-thinking Americans?

A few years ago, a school district in Connecticut pulled Animal Farm from its 8th grade curriculum in strong, socialist style. They didn’t ban it, they said. They have only disapproved it for use. They beat Communist China to the ball by a year.

Uncategorized

Overview of Sola

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I have to attend a Sons of Norway meeting tonight, and I was asked to do a lecture. So I’m in haste. And I haven’t finished a book to review.

Hence, the video above. I was looking for one thing, but found it didn’t exist. Instead I accidentally found this video, which I think is kind of nice. This is Sola, Norway, where Erling Skjalgsson lived, in case you’d like my fictional descriptions improved on.

The circular stone array is some kind of ancient ceremonial spot. I think I used it in one of my books.

The stone church you see, with stones numbered and parts of the walls made of glass, is the “Sola Ruin Church.” It was mostly demolished during World War II, but someone thought to number the stones so they could be reassembled, which was done. I’ve been there. Picked up a small stone from the yard and took it home with me. I keep it at my elbow when I write.

This is a very old church – probably 12th Century – but not old enough to be Erling’s. In my novels, I assume Father Ailill’s church stood on the same spot.

Bookselling, Non-fiction, Publishing

Black Friday Sales and Wangerin First Editions

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Black Friday has become synonymous with the spirit of Thanksgiving and growing corn by planting fish in the ground. It’s as American as a payday.

The Rabbit Room is holding a Black Friday all month for the sheer joy of it. Of particular interest to our readers may be these first editions of author Walter Wangerin.

Not to be outdone by a warren of artists, Banner of Truth is offering good discounts on many Puritan paperbacks and other fine volumes.

Music

‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’

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For Veterans’ Day (as it closes; late to the party is how I roll), I looked for an arrangement of the American song, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” I wanted a live performance, but settled for the video above, a popular World War II version by the famous Andrews Sisters (Greek-Norwegian in ancestry, Lutheran in religion, all born in Minneapolis).

The song has an Irish tune, as so many great Civil War songs did. It was written by an Irish-American bandleader named Patrick Gilmore, who copyrighted it under the pseudonym “Louis Lambert” in 1863.

There’s a song called “Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye,” with the same tune, that’s far darker, about a soldier coming home from war maimed – “Ye haven’t an arm, and ye haven’t a leg. All ye can do is sit and beg….” I always assumed it was the original and that Americans altered it to make it suitable for recruiting rallies. However, according to Wikipedia, Gilmore’s song actually was published first, and “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye” had a different tune at first.

Most of the videos of this song I found on YouTube featured visuals that seemed to me somewhat ironic, as if to fulfill a moral obligation to remind everyone that war is terrible. Because, I suppose, we’re likely to forget about that.

I wanted to find an upbeat version. What this holiday is for, I think, is to affirm the soldier and the value of his sacrifices. We have another day for those who fell in war. Veteran’s Day is meant to be a day when the warriors in the hall can hear the skalds singing their courage and great deeds. That’s a necessary exercise, I think, and possibly more therapeutic than treating veterans like fragile, broken flowers.

Fiction, Reviews

‘When Christmas Comes,’ by Andrew Klavan

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“I have,” he told her mildly, “a strange habit of mind.”

“Oh?”

“I hear about things. Things people tell me. Stories in the news. Or I read about things online somewhere. And sometimes, I can think my way into them. Imagine my way into them, as if I’m there. And because of that, I begin to discern the causes of events when other people can’t.”

“You’re talking about…”

“Crimes mostly,” he said….

A new Andrew Klavan book is always cause for celebration. In this case, it’s a Christmas celebration. If Graham Greene had written A Christmas Carol, it might have turned out something like When Christmas Comes.

Cameron Winter claims to be, and actually is, an English professor at a midwestern University (apparently it’s in Indiana). But close examination, especially of his hands, indicates he’s something more. He used to be (and probably still is) some kind of a covert government operative. Yet he seems to have freedom to operate on his own.

The story of When Christmas Comes starts with three different narratives, their connections not initially apparent. A young military veteran in the idyllic town of Sweet Haven has confessed to murdering his wife, a school librarian who was universally loved and whom he adored. Cameron Winter, in a session with a psychologist, tells a long, poignant story about his first love, a girl with whom he spent many Christmases in the past. But her family had a dark history, devastating when revealed. And Cameron gets an appeal from a former lover, now married and a lawyer. She’s defending the accused veteran; she knows she can’t get an acquittal, but can Winter discover anything that might give the judge grounds for showing mercy?

As Winter pokes into the lives of the veteran and his victim, he uncovers more secrets. Dangerous ones. If he makes the wrong decisions, he may ruin lives and get people killed.

I loved this book. Wished it were twice as long. Nobody is better than Klavan at delivering, not only a riveting story, but living, breathing characters with palpable inner lives, all packed up in a bed of crystalline prose.

You should read this book. Can’t recommend it highly enough. I pray Cameron Winter will return for another story.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Pieces of Death,’ by Jack Lynch

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I continue reading through the late Jack Lynch’s Peter Bragg novels. Enjoyable, if not top rank. With the added charm of being written before the world went all PC.

In Pieces of Death, San Francisco PI Pete Bragg is hired by a friend in the newspaper business who wants him to bodyguard a friend of his own, coming in on a plane from the east. The guy doesn’t seem like someone who needs much protection, but they get along pretty well – until a couple gunmen show up and kill the protectee.

In spite of this failure, Pete’s client wants him to help him out with related work. The guy was coming in to participate in the assembly and sale of a fabulous historical treasure several people hadn’t even known they shared until recently. But will they manage to close the deal before a mysterious killer wipes them all out, one by one?

The whole thing’s kind of a riff on the classic Maltese Falcon scenario, and it was competently handled. I found the basic “Maguffin” somewhat far-fetched, though, and the story sort of meandered. Also, it still kind of annoys me that Pete never figures stuff out until it’s too late to avoid the shoot-out. Though I suppose the shoot-out’s the real point of the story.

But Bragg’s a likeable character, with a sense of honor that seems a little old-fashioned in this century. So I recommend it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Way of a Ship,’ by Derek Lundy

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Benjamin had found the work on a square-rigger hard and testing beyond anything he had imagined. Nevertheless, as the barque turned away from the gale to run fast to the south, not slogging into the eye of the wind or hove to, but for the first time truly sailing, he became aware of something else: fascination, and the rapture of a young man in glamorous jeopardy.

Among the many things I didn’t know before I read Derek Lundy’s The Way of a Ship was that, at the very end of the Age of Sail, during the late 19th Century, there was a time when the square-riggers served their own nemesis. It was apparent to all that the steamship was on its way to replacing wind-sailing ships. But those steamships needed coal to run on, and (for technical reasons having to do with engine efficiency and payload) at the time the cheapest way to transport coal was in sailing ships. So the sailors carried the fuel for their usurpers. These last sailing ships were not wooden, but iron, their rigging made of steel. The profit margin in this commerce was narrow, so the companies economized by keeping the crew sizes at a minimum. The food stores were minimal as well. Men died because of it, but that’s one of the costs of doing business.

Author Derek Lundy conceived an interest in a collateral ancestor of his, a young Irishman named Benjamin Lundy who sailed in a coal ship around the Horn in 1885. He hunted for information, and found it sparse. The old logs, and most of the old letters, had disappeared. The best he could do was learn what he could about the commerce in general, and then imagine a voyage for his ancestor, on a fictional ship, The Beara Head, with an imaginary captain and a (mostly) imaginary crew, and send them through a fairly typical voyage from Liverpool to Valparaiso, and then on to San Francisco.

It’s a harrowing journey. The book it most recalled to me was Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast. But Dana dwelt less on the horrors of the voyage (fewer sailors die in his book). Author Lundy did some sailing as part of his research, including time on a genuine square-rigger. Also he’s a superior wordsmith. Thus he’s able to convey some inkling of the kind of dangers and sufferings these sailors experienced. The oddest thing about it, when you think of it, was that all this was routine. People took it for granted. If you went through an adventure like this today, you’d be on television and get book deals. It’s as if we’re a whole different species from these men.

I found The Way of a Ship utterly engrossing and educational. I recommend it highly. The rare political asides seem pretty even-handed. Some profanity, which kind of goes with the territory.

Authors, Religion

Doug Wilson Has Been a Problem for a Long Time

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Pastor and author Douglas Wilson has spilled a lot of words over his lifetime. He has probably been blogging since the 90s, and even without that, he has preached and published bags and bags of words. You could probably pick up any of his solo-authored books and agree with most of it, as you would with many other Christian books.

But Wilson has taken a few hard stands over the years and expressed a few opinions in hard ways. He sees himself as a leader of culture warriors, an anchor point in the middle of a carnival of chaos, catching the wildness of our society and throwing wildness back at it.

According to his piece, I am a “provocateur,” but remember that we live in a time when trigger warnings about everything are most necessary, and this means that we are surrounded by people who are easily provoked. Maybe that’s the real issue. Provocateur, eh? I’ll show you provocateur. Ready? Bruno shouldn’t be allowed to shower with the junior high girls. Buster Keaton shouldn’t have been put in charge of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Men really shouldn’t have sex with unstable women. And there is plenty more where those came from.

Douglas Wilson, Theology Among the Deplorables | Blog & Mablog (dougwils.com), Oct. 13, 2021

I wouldn’t be writing about this if it weren’t for a piece that ran on September 28 on Vice.com. Vice isn’t my go-to for useful news or analysis, but there are too many details reported in this piece to dismiss it as creative writing. This isn’t a humanist simply finding ways to say how weird she finds those Moscow, Idaho-based Christians. This is a report of years of spiritual abuse by many members of Wilson’s congregation and affiliated networks.

In the blog post above, Wilson responds to some of it. He responded to at least one of the big stories in that article years ago; other issues are spelled out on a dedicated page. But these responses are beside the point.

If you read the Vice article–and I can’t recommend it because of the horrific details–you’ll see the problem is largely not Wilson’s particular actions but those of his congregants. Under his direction, they have left the Bride of Christ in the ditch in favor of a campaign against the lost and dying. They have become clanging symbols at best. At worst, they are going into the highways and byways not to invite whoever they find to the Master’s feast but to rob as highwaymen themselves.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Goofing

New Words, Smiles, Blogroll, and Our Man in Havana

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Merriam-Webster added 455 words to their dictionary last month, both new terms and new definitions. Because gets a new meaning as a preposition, “often used in a humorous way to convey vagueness about the exact reasons for something,” as in, “She drove all night because Daryl.” A new word is copypasta, something that has been spread around online.

Also new are deplatform, digital nomad, Oobleck, zero day, fluffernutter, and ghost kitchen. 

Michael De Sapio describes the moral imagination of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, a spy comedy. “Dana Gioia writes that Catholic fiction, contrary to what a secular reader might expect, ‘tends to be comic, rowdy, rude, and even violent.’ This is true of Our Man in Havana, which jostles us through brothels and nightclubs and striptease houses, conveying the dinginess of a decaying city side-by-side with the sanctity of the Church. The comic juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane points up the duality of human nature in the most visceral way possible.”

Speaking of Cuba, playwright Garcia Aguilera, who has been promoted by the government in the past, is now calling for political reform and peaceful protest. He has become what Cuban officials call a “counterrevolutionary.”

“In his Dictionary, Dr. Johnson defines smile as ‘a slight contraction of the face.'” Yeah, but there’s more to it than that.

Allergies of the Gondolier, as told by Damian Balassone
“From the monstrous canals of his nose
a tsunami of mucus arose.”

Marvin Olasky summarizes John Frame’s A History of Western Philosophy and Theology. “In discussing early Christian philosophers, Frame criticizes those who have an insufficient sense of antithesis between Christian and Greek philosophy. Frame states that ‘the attempt to make Christianity intellectually respectable, and therefore easy to believe, is one of the most common and deadly mistakes of Christian apologists and philosophers throughout history.'”

Photo: Texaco gas pumps, Milford, Illinois, 1977. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress.