Big news for discriminating fans of historical drama – Atlantic Crossing, the Norwegian miniseries that ran on PBS Masterpiece last spring, and which (I think I’ve mentioned) I worked extensively on as a script translator, won the International Emmy Award for the best TV film or miniseries. The ceremony was last night. I am moderately elevated about this. My boss, Linda May Kallestein, who was a co-writer as well as translator, sent me a photo of herself holding the coveted statuette.
I wasn’t aware of it, but you can order it on DVD now – and it’s not prohibitively expensive.
The fourth novel in Jack Lynch’s Pete Bragg series, about a private detective in San Francisco in the 1980s, is Wake Up and Die. It started a little slow, I thought, but finished strong.
Pete gets a client referral to a prosperous local bookie. The man has received some photographs of his daughter. She’s naked with a man in the pictures, and they look like stills from some kind of professional film. When Pete suggests the man just ask his daughter about them, he refuses. He doesn’t even want Pete to talk to her himself. Instead he needs to nose around among her circle of acquaintances and find out what’s gone wrong. Pete thinks that’s insane, but families are what they are and the client knows best.
He learns, to his surprise, that the daughter is actually doing pretty well. She’s engaged to the heir of a wealthy property developer. But as Pete noses around that family’s business, he learns that they’re involved in a major oceanside development project. And that project has attracted some pretty shady partners, who are making unexpected and puzzling changes in the plans. People Pete very much wants to talk to all seem to have gone on vacations, or are just strangely unreachable.
Soon there will be murder, and arson, and major battery against someone Pete cares about. And now that he’s mad, the gloves will come off.
I thought Wake Up and Die meandered somewhat in the first half, but once things started happening, it grabbed me but good. The language isn’t bad (the rules were a little different as recently as this), and though the sexual bits were such as I can’t approve of, they’re almost quaint (like ’80s San Francisco itself ) by 21st Century standards. I liked Wake Up and Die, and continue to enjoy the series.
“We Gather Together,” 1625, author unknown, translated from Dutch “Wilt heden nu treden” by Theodore Baker.
We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing; He chastens and hastens his will to make known; The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing. Sing praises to his name; he forgets not his own.
Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining, Ordaining, maintaining his kingdom divine; So from the beginning the fight we were winning; Thou, Lord, wast at our side; all glory be thine!
We all do extol thee, thou leader triumphant, And pray that thou still our defender wilt be. Let thy congregation escape tribulation; Thy name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!
Micah Mattix is back with the new Prufrock newsletter. Subscribe and read higher. Today’s email links to an essay about trauma being a product of our modern age. From that essay, “Furthermore, I will argue that trauma is so widespread precisely because of the ubiquity of traumatogenic technologies in our societies: those of specularity and acceleration, which render us simultaneously unreflective and frenetic. On this analysis, the symptoms deemed evidence of PTSD are in fact only an extreme version of a distinctively modern consciousness.”
Hierarchies in Space: Alexander Hellene writes about boring, fantasy bureaucracies in science fiction. “Captain Kirk is the ultimate pulp hero, a man of action and passion who takes his duty to his crew so seriously he is consistently willing to die for them. Does this sound like a guy who could function on the society of the future dreamed up by Gene Rodenberry, et al.? No wonder Kirk wants to be in space all the time.”
Snapping is crazy fast, researchers at Georgia Tech have concluded, and that means Thanos could never have done that snappy thing he did. Fact-checkers for the win!
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French poem “The Song of Roland” on BBC4’s In Our Time.
Photo: Modern Diner on Dexter Avenue, Pawtucket, Rhode Island. 1978. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
The new movie adaption of Dune has been available for a month, and many people have observed, as if factual, that only the strong fans have read more than the first novel. The publisher claims millions of original series books have sold. The current bestselling paperback list from the Washington Post has Dune leading both fiction and mass market categories, Dune Messiah being second for mass market.
It’s a good story, more sedate than the first one since Paul Atreides is a galactic emperor defending himself against usurpers rather than being a usurper himself. It’s twelve years after the close of Dune. Paul’s beloved wife, Chani, has not been able to bear a child, and his political wife, Irulan, has increased pressure to have the opportunity to bear a child herself. Despite hating the idea, Chani begins to think having any heir is better than none.
But Paul has seen many futures and many shadows he may not be able to avoid. Which path of pain and death will support the most life?
Paul and his teenaged sister, Alia, have prescient abilities, because of the complex eugenic program that preceded their birth and their consumption of melange, the valuable spice of that planet. Their powers of foresight are unmatched by anyone else with prescient talent. The spice awakens all who get enough of it in the right context. But the future is not strictly prophetic nor does their vision catch everything that could be seen, so in some way they see paths and consequences and choose between likely risks and rewards.
That’s the rationale Paul offers for allowing interstellar jihad in his name and his deification by the Freman, even though he distains religion. He knows he is not a god and doesn’t seem tempted to become one. He thinks about the coming jihad in the first book and rants about its work privately in the second book, but the bottom line seems to be a better life for everyone if he accepts their worship and doesn’t shut down their holy war. Countless lives wasted, he says. The blood of millions shed in his name, he says, but what else could he do? This cynical view of religion dilutes all holy things to cultural tradition and zeal to simple-mindedness. I would think a gifted leader could redirection such zeal, but no, war was unavoidable.
Am I right to read this secular outlook as hopeless? Is that the reason I doubt I’ll read the third book?
Today, of course, I worked at translation. Made good progress, too, and I’ll put some more time in tonight. I’ve got personal business to handle as well, but everything’s in hand.
Started reading a book by an unfamiliar author the other day. A bargain book for Kindle. According to the description it’s a Christian book, and it has a lot of good reviews.
Alas, so often the descriptor “Christian” indicates poor craftsmanship. So it was here.
I won’t tell you the author’s name or the book’s title. They might be favorites of yours. Many people better than me in almost every respect enjoy – or even write – books that don’t please me. It’s not for me to look down my nose at them. I know I’m turning into a literary snob in my dotage.
The author just hadn’t mastered the craft. The story may have been good – I tried to hang with it, to see if the plot grabbed me when the prose didn’t – but in the end I couldn’t hack it. I was opening it out of duty rather than anticipation.
So much in writing depends (as in jazz) on the notes you don’t play. There are lots of things you don’t need to tell the reader, if you can suggest them – through word choice, rhythm, juxtaposition. When the reader expects you to say something and you don’t, that makes him guess at your reasons. Such things make the reading experience a collaborative one, a kind of dance. It draws the reader in.
This author knew nothing of these things. He may learn the craft in time. You’ve got to start somewhere. I wish him well.
Above, a video of The Dragon Harald Fairhair, the largest Viking ship replica ever built. She was constructed in Haugesund, Norway, and I hoped to see her back in 2016, when she was supposed to come to Duluth. But that was prevented by maritime regulations. She’s been sitting in Mystic Harbor, CT for a couple years now, and I wonder what her future will be.
Anyway, this is a cool video, mixing comments by crew members with epic sailing footage. I believe I haven’t seen it before, which means somebody probably sent me the link once, and I was too busy to look at it.
Got up, dim and early, to be in place to deliver my PowerPoint lectures on the 793 AD Viking raid on Lindisfarne, and on the conversion of Norway. I spoke to a small class of seminary students. They did not break into uproarious laughter at my jokes, nor did they weep at the profundity of my wisdom. But they didn’t laugh me out of the room, either. Which is something, in the greater scheme of things.
A nice thing that happened was that, as I was lecturing, I suddenly discovered connections between the two lectures I’d never noticed before. These talks were conceived separately, but I found previously unnoticed ways they fit together.
I love it when ideas fit together.
Of course, that’s also to be expected when you’re a monomaniac.
Just before I left for the seminary, I got an email telling me I’d gotten the translation job from the filmmaker to whom I’d been referred recently. The referral came from someone to whom I’d previously been referred. So now I’ve got referrals at two removes. I think that qualifies as word of mouth. Some measure of business success.
The job isn’t huge, but it has a more imminent deadline than I’d expected. I’ve still got plenty of time to finish it, but this adds an element of dramatic tension to my days. And I suppose that’s not a bad thing, for a phlegmatic guy.
Some months ago, I shared with you my thoughts on reading Dune for the first time. You can find those posts by selecting the Dune content tag or asking your erudite. I’ve been reading the second book, Dune Messiah, and I’d like to say a couple things about it.
Herbert’s world appears to be a very modern one. Anything can be engineered to a desired end. Complicated languages and systems have been created and can produce remarkable results–maybe not perfect results according to the grand engineers longing for some utopia, but results that go a long way down that road. You see this in many conversations between characters.
“An attack on my father carries dangers other than the obvious military ones,” Irulan said. “People are beginning to look back on his reign with a certain nostalgia.”
“You’ll go too far one day,” Chani said in her deadly serious Freman voice.
“Enough!” Paul ordered.
Chani isn’t speaking in a serious tone as any of us might, nor is this saying her voice is regularly as serious as death. She’s using a unique Freman manner of speaking that conveys the super seriousness of her intent. Apparently, one never tells a joke in this deadly serious voice–if Freman joke at all–because using this tone ironically could get you killed.
In fact, I don’t think any of the main characters joke. There is a bard-type in the first book who could make people laugh and sing. He doesn’t return in second book. There’s only a dwarf that speaks in riddles half the time–not quite a joker.
The highly scripted use of language parallels the Bene Gesserit technique called the Voice. By pitching their tone of voice and perhaps using select words, the Bene Gesserit are able to verbally strong-arm people. It’s quasi-mystical like many elements of the Dune universe, but it’s also quasi-scientific in a modernist way. Everyone is merely a product of their genetic material, so if you can get a read on them, you can influence them like a punch to the face.
Equal to the mysticism of Dune is the emphasis on eugenics. Paul Atreides himself is the product of generations of genetic engineering designed to produce the Kwisatz Haderach, a gifted ruler who would take control of the empire on behalf of the Bene Gesserit who engineered him. The fact that Paul doesn’t hand them any imperial power angers them and sends them back to their eugenic hope that the next generation will be the one they’ve been waiting for.
Realistically, it’s perverted. The universe isn’t so strictly ordered as modernists want it to be. Many organisms cannot be reduced to ingredients and rearranged to produce the strengths you want. This steps into the territory of conspiracy theorists, where everything can be foreseen and constructed no matter the complexity. It’s jarringly otherworldly.
I wonder if this is the main appeal to Dune fans, this highly ordered, godless universe with a chemical stream of mysticism running through it.
“Give me good food and a little air to breathe and I will caper, goat-like, to a dishonourable old age. People will point me out, as I creep, bald and yellow and supported by discreet corsetry, into the night-clubs of my great-grandchildren, and they’ll say, ‘Look darling! That’s the wicked Lord Peter, celebrated for never having said a reasonable word for the last ninety-six years. He was the only aristocrat who escaped the guillotine in the revolution of 1960. We keep him as a pet for the children.’ And I shall wag my head and display my up-to-date dentures and say, ‘Ah ha! They don’t have the fun we used to have in my young days, the poor, well-regulated creatures!’”
I’m pretty old myself, and I realize it’s been nearly 50 years since I first read the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. I’d forgotten enough of Strong Poison to be mystified by the mystery, which made it extra fun. On top of that, I think author Dorothy L. Sayers was at the apex of her powers in this one.
Mystery novelist Harriet Vane is in the dock, on trial for her life. She had entered into an “irregular” domestic relationship with the writer Philip Boyes. When he finally suggested getting married, she took it as an insult and broke up with him. Soon after, he was dead, poisoned with arsenic. Miss Vane was discovered to have purchased arsenic in the recent past (as part of research for a novel), and no one else can be found who could possibly have administered the poison to him.
Up leaps Lord Peter Wimsey, who has fallen deeply in love with this woman, whom most people don’t find very attractive. He has somehow inserted his employee Miss Climpson into the jury, and she deadlocks them, making a second trial necessary. In the time thus gained, Lord Peter will deploy Miss Climpson to cultivate the acquaintance of a rich, dying old lady’s nurse (impersonating a medium to do so) and send another female agent to infiltrate a suspect’s office staff. In his spare time, he’ll light a fire under his friend Chief Inspector Parker, to get him to propose to his sister, Lady Mary Wimsey.
In terms of word count, I’d say the reader spends more time in this book with the female “covert agents” than with Lord Peter himself. But when he’s on stage, Wimsey’s at his best. What author Sayers is actually doing here, it seems to me, is pioneering (not by herself, of course) the female-centered mysteries that have since become such a huge industry. But I enjoyed the book anyway, because it was just such fun. And the solution is very clever.
No translation work today. But no book review either. Maybe tomorrow. Today I’ve been preparing a couple lectures I’ll be delivering to a class at our seminary on Thursday. I’ll talk about the Viking raid at Lindisfarne and the conversion of Norway. I have Things to Say on both subjects, springing from my ever-ready stock of opinions, based on life-long study and my association with a certain independent-minded scholar.
I always try to make it clear that the theories I talk about are theories only. “Don’t look at me! I’m just the errand boy!”
The book I’m reading right now is Dorothy Sayers’ Strong Poison. It’s a landmark volume in the series, because it’s here that Lord Peter Wimsey first meets the novelist Harriet Vane. She’s on trial for murder, and he makes up his mind to save her, largely because he’s fallen in love with her and can’t conceive of the woman he loves being a murderess.
It was adapted for TV back in 1987, with Harriet Walter as Harriet Vane, and Edward Petherbridge as Lord Peter. I quite liked Miss Walter in her role. Petherbridge I found less successful. He looked more like the character than Ian Carmichael in his classic performance (though too tall), but I didn’t like his portrayal. It had a strong basis – the author’s own statements that Lord Peter was basically depressed due to being shell-shocked in the Great War and disappointed in love. His Wodehouseian persona was an act. But Petherbridge played him as a sort of mope who cracked jokes. I think Lord Peter carried the thing off rather more elegantly than that.
Anyway, Strong Poison includes one of my favorite Sayers characters – “Blindfold Bill” Rumm, the reformed safecracker. Bill is a man of no great intelligence or sophistication, but is an absolute master at the art of lock-picking. He turned from that life after Lord Peter caught him breaking into his own safe one night, and pumped him for knowledge rather than turning him in. Soon after he was converted to Evangelicalism (there’s a suggestion that it might have been through Chief Inspector Parker, who’s an evangelical), and now he pastors a house church. However, when Lord Peter needs his help in training someone to crack a lock, Blindfold Bill happily assists. He believes (erroneously) that Lord Peter is also a believer, and (correctly) that all he does is in the service of good.
Dorothy Sayers was a well-known Church of England believer (not an evangelical), who wrote brilliant apologetics. Yet she wrote her mystery stories for the publisher Victor Gollancz, who was an influential Communist. The idea of writing a story in the C.S. Lewis vein, with an evangelical lesson, would have repelled her. And by her own account, she took offense when people suggested she’d make Lord Peter a believer eventually (“Keep your hands off my character!”). I find that perfectly understandable as a novelist, and rather sad as a Christian.
But Blindfold Bill shows how she did include Christian themes in her work, consistent with her views of art. Bill is no Christian Mary Sue, no fantasy-fulfillment character for the Christian reader. He’s remarkable only for two things – his skill (however illicit) as a craftsman, and his unashamed (even awkward) gospel witness. His testimony isn’t intellectually compelling or very appealing. But it’s sincere, and one feels his heart is good.
In short, Blindfold Bill is a realistic Christian character. We’re allowed to laugh at him a little, but he leaves a strong positive impression. I think that’s a subtle kind of apologetics.
