Authors, Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Poetry

A Fictional Lewis, Miłosz in California, and Blogroll

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Gina Dalfonzo reviews Once Upon a Wardrobe, the second book from author Patti Callahan with a fictional story that draws in many actual details of C.S. Lewis’s life and habitat.

Czesław Miłosz, born in Šeteniai, Lithuania, 1911, spent 40 years in California before his death in 2004. Cynthia Haven has labored over a book on this great poet of last century and Czesław Miłosz: A California Life released this month.

“The Nobel poet spent more time in California than any other place during his long 93-year life,” Haven writes. “He wrote poems about the California landscape, engaged with our culture, and taught generations of students at UC-Berkeley. Some of those students became eminent translators of his work.”

David Zucker has written some pretty funny scripts, which cross the line too often for my taste. In Commentary, he writes about an opinion he often hears from fans: “You couldn’t do that scene today.” (Via Books inq)

Humor happens when you go against what’s expected and surprise people with something they’re not anticipating, like the New York Jets winning a game. But to find this surprise funny, people have to be willing to suppress the literal interpretations of jokes. In Airplane!, Lloyd Bridges’s character tries to quit smoking, drinking, amphetamines, and sniffing glue. If his “addictions” were to be taken literally, there would be no laughs. Many of today’s studio executives seem to believe that audiences can no longer look past the literal interpretations of jokes.

Dracula: How did Bram Stoker’s novel become a pop-fiction hit?

Malcolm Muggeridge: “If it should prove to be the case that Western man has now rejected these origins of his civilization, persuading himself that he can be master of his own destiny, that he can shape his own life and chart his own future, then assuredly he and his way of life and all he has stood and stands for must infallibly perish.”

To close, here are a few words plucked from Miłosz’s “City Without a Name,” written in California, 1968.

The Earth, neither compassionate nor evil, neither beautiful nor atrocious, persisted, innocent, open to pain and desire.

And the gift was useless, if, later on, in the flarings of distant nights,
there was not less bitterness but more.

If I cannot so exhaust my life and their life that the bygone crying is
transformed, at last, into harmony.

Like a Noble Jan Dęboróg in the Straszun’s secondhand-book shop, I am put to rest forever between two familiar names.

Photo: George Joe Restaurant, La Mesa, California, 1977, John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress.

Authors, The Press

Mindy Belz to Leave World News Group

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Veteran reporter Mindy Belz is leaving World News Group after thirty years. She brought news from Syria and the Middle East over the last decade, the kind of reporting that lead to her 2016 book, They Say We Are Infidels: On the Run from ISIS with Persecuted Christians in the Middle East.

“The fuel to carry on through these decades isn’t found in viewpoint journalism left or right,” she says. “It’s found in promises of hope beyond our circumstances.”

We need reporters like her to bring us the real story from difficult areas in the world, because we won’t get it from other major news sources. They continue to drop reporters into foreign circumstances, have them put together a story that looks whole on paper and that the editors prejudicially approve, and call it good. Journalistic integrity doesn’t sell.

All the best on the next season, Mindy.

Authors, Fiction, Reading, The Press

Not 1, but 2, Scandinavian stories

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My own photo of the reconstructed Viking houses at L’Anse Aux Meadows, some years back.

File this under “News That Surprised Absolutely Nobody:”

Counting tree rings reveals that wooden objects previously found at an archaeological site on Newfoundland’s northern peninsula were made from trees felled in the year 1021. That’s the oldest precise date for Europeans in the Americas and the only one from before Christopher Columbus’ voyages in 1492, geoscientists Margot Kuitems and Michael Dee and colleagues report October 20 in Nature.

You can read the rest here at Sciencenews.org.

1021 is actually fairly late in the game, if you give the sagas any credence. But most of us believe the Greenlanders were here for quite a few years. The sagas describe three expeditions in detail, and it seems probable that the Greenlanders would have exploited American resources (especially lumber) for quite a long time, even after they gave up on the idea of a colony.

I hold to the widely-held theory that the L’Anse Aux Meadows site in Newfoundland is not the entire Norse American enterprise, but merely a station – possibly a pretty insignificant one. The only real activity we can identify there from the archaeology is boat repair and its ancillary crafts.

Our good friend Dave Lull sent me this article from The American Conservative: A Norwegian American Journey, by Sam Sweeney.

Growing up in rural Montana, I was a bit removed from the Norwegian enclave in western North Dakota that my mom’s family is from. We ate lefse at Thanksgiving, but other than that, compared to my cousins I was not particularly in touch with my Norwegian heritage. I never felt a particular connection to Norway as a country, but do mention my heritage to Norwegians I meet, as there are a surprisingly high number of them in the Middle East, where I’ve spent much of the last decade. Reading Giants in the Earth, however, was an enlightening experience, and it brought to life the journey that my ancestors took from Norway to the Dakotas.

After reading O. E. Rolvaag’s Giants in the Earth and Peder Victorious, the writer goes on to ponder Scandinavian cinema (I myself have seen The Last King and The King’s Choice, but none of the other films he describes). The article is interesting, though I was wondering by the end what its point was.

I personally am not a fan of much Scandinavian literature or film, as I expect I’ve made pretty clear. I read Giants In the Earth in college, and my major take-away was what a depressing book it was. I never read the sequel, Peder Victorious, but a friend described it to me, and the description didn’t appeal much (here’s a hint – the name “Victorious” [Norwegian Seier] is darkly ironic). The same friend described other books by Rolvaag, like The Boat of Longing, and that sounded even worse. I do not recommend reading Rolvaag if you struggle with suicidal ideation.

Scandinavians have a bent for looking at things coldly and in a brutal, unsentimental light. When the Scandinavians were Christian, I think, they found ways to mitigate that brutal honesty. Now that they’ve mostly “transcended” Christian faith, they seem to have settled on a glum fatalism, like those dogs in the famous Learned Helplessness experiments.

I think that probably explains most of their current social policies.

Reading, Writing

Epic writing update

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Still got some reading to do before my next book review. Picked up yet another book about Wyatt Earp and the OK Corral. I don’t know why I keep reading these things. Officially, I’m a Wild Bill Hickok partisan, but there aren’t as many books being written about the Prince of Pistoleers (got to check if there’s anything new out there). But that OK Corral business just keeps fascinating people. The book I’m working on seems promising, in terms of fresh information.

That put me in the mood to watch “Tombstone” again. Like all Earp movies, it falsifies all sorts of stuff, but it works so well as a film – and they did make the effort to make it look authentic. Love those costumes.

And it has some great epic moments. I so love epic moments, where your heart soars a few yards, like Soti in The Year of the Warrior. Made me wish I could write some of my own.

And what do you know? I have some to write! A Work In Progress nearing completion, just needing a few more edits to steer it the tradition of Cecil B. DeMille. Or Sergio Leone. Or whoever directed “Tombstone.” (I forget.)

I finished another draft of King of Rogaland last night. Then this morning as I got up, I thought of a few lines I needed to add, to contribute to the general transcendence of the epic as a whole. Tonight, I start another read-through. I’m close now, I think. This book seems to have more moving, intersecting parts than anything I’ve written before. I think I’ve got most of my ravens in a row now – I’m only aware of one point I’m still not sure about.

Of course, you never know what self-inflicted follies, of my own creation, still lie in wait for me. That’s all part of the (epic) process.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Saint on the Spanish Main,’ by Leslie Charteris

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Besides, a flurry of that kind was practically an obligatory incident at a certain stage of any good pirate-treasure story, and the Saint was rather a traditionalist about his stories. He liked to feel that all the time-honored trimmings were in their proper place. It encouraged a kind of light-hearted certainty that virtue, which of course he represented, would be triumphant in the end.

I think I’m going to have to re-think my opinion of Simon Templar, the Saint, Leslie Charteris’ famous thriller (I won’t say detective) hero. When I was a boy, Roger Moore represented the Saint, and I’ve never much cared for Roger Moore. Always found him unaccountably lightweight. Still not sure why. But a Kindle edition of the story collection, The Saint on the Spanish Main, came up at a cheap price, and I read it and quite enjoyed it.

The Saint on the Spanish Main is a collection of six short stories, all set in the Caribbean. Most of them were written in the period 1952-1953, when author Leslie Charteris had recently married his fourth wife. He was aging by then and had largely given up on writing, but the relationship seemed to invigorate him. The couple traveled much in the Islands, inspiring these stories. By and large they are well-written, efficient, and tight, with plausible characters and a strong sense of justice motivating the hero. The Saint was originally conceived as a kind of puckish trickster, but gradually developed into something smoother and darker. He’s often described as a Robin Hood character – he seems to have plenty of money that enables him to travel, so he mostly waits for Fate to throw some evil in his path. Then he does something about it. Very often, these are “sting” stories. Unlike your average police detective or private eye, the Saint does not hesitate to take justice – even capital punishment – into his own hands.

It seems that whenever you review old books, you have to provide warnings about treatment of race. There are cringe moments in this book, as you’d expect considering the time and locale, but I think it’s educational to understand how people talked in those days. Also, it should be noted that author Charteris was himself Chinese-English, and had grown up ostracized due to racial prejudice, a circumstance that turned him into a reader. (He had a brother, by the way, Roy Henry Bowyer-Yin, who was an Anglican priest and hymn writer.) Simon Templar has a habit of referring to villains as “the ungodly,” but religion is generally avoided, except in the final story, which deals with voodoo. A notable moment of implausibility in another tale involves a giant octopus, which doesn’t stand up in light of what we’ve since learned about those shy cephalopods.

I need to read some more books in the Saint series. This was fun.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Dead Never Forget, by Jack Lynch

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I had never heard of the author Jack Lynch, or his private eye character Pete Bragg, who flourished in the ‘60s and ‘70s, roughly contemporary with John D. MacDonald and the Travis McGee books. But The Complete Bragg compendium (final collection in a series reprint) became available at a low price, and I downloaded it to my Kindle. I was pleasantly surprised. The first book in this volume is The Dead Never Forget.

Pete Bragg was once a newspaper man in Seattle, but now he’s a private eye in San Francisco. When a large, dangerous-looking man comes to invite him to talk to Armando Barker, a retired mobster now gone legit (or so he claims), he can’t afford to turn down profitable work.

Barker explains that he’s been getting cards threatening him and his employees. He wouldn’t worry about that, but now they’ve threatened his 11-year-old stepdaughter, whom he’s maintaining in an expensive private school. Bragg takes the job, and then one of Barker’s employees is murdered, raising the stakes considerably. Bragg is certain the background of the threats must be hidden in the casino town of Sand Valley, Nevada, where Barker used to operate. Barker doubts that, but Bragg follows his instincts and visits the town.

Homages to Akira Kurosawa’s film “Yojimbo” are almost a subgenre in several different storytelling genres. Most famous of the homages is probably the film, “A Fistful of Dollars.” But (or so I’ve read) the original inspiration for that movie was Dashiell Hammet’s novel, Red Harvest. So mystery homages are a kind of closing of the circle. I saw a lot of “Yojimbo” in this book, where the criminals who run The Truck Stop whorehouse at one end of town go to war with the criminals who run the Sky Lodge casino at the other end, and the bullets fly fast and thick enough to call down government intervention. And in the middle is Bragg, trying to make sense of who’s actually profiting from all the chaos. Deduction is not Bragg’s strong point – he’ll only figure it all out when it’s pretty much laid out for him by the last person he suspected.

The Dead Never Forget was a lot of fun to read, for this reader. Uncomplicated by political correctness, with an engaging narrator and lots of action (and sex, though it’s not explicit), it was pretty much exactly what the doctor ordered. Reminiscent of MacDonald, but a little shallower, I think. My only grumble is that I learned at the end that Bragg’s a casual pot smoker. I always dislike that in my heroes. But I paid for the whole collection, so I expect I’ll read the rest, and even have a good time.

Blogs, Socials, Bookselling

A Closed Bookstore, Blogroll, and Love for Eastern Lit or No?

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I’ve mentioned before that this blog shares a name with a bookstore but no other relationship. Brandywine Books of Winter Park, Florida, was a cute seller of used and well-kept book. The owner knew about our blog and I believe delighted in its existence. I know this because my sister stopped by a few years ago. The shop closed within the past two years.

Japanese readers are hooked on the belief that bestselling author Haruki Murakami should have won the Nobel for literature by now. The Japan Times claims Murakami is “best known for his 1987 bestseller Norwegian Wood,” but he has many other titles and presumably outpaces all other Japanese authors in sheer Nobel potential. The article notes a few reasons why he could contend for the prize and a few reasons he might not win it. (via Literary Saloon)

South Korea has been successfully exporting K-pop and K-drama for several years, but K-lit has not found a similar place. Perhaps the time for Korean literature has come. (via Literary Saloon)

Did Ernest Hemingway actually say, “The rain WILL stop, the night WILL end, the hurt WILL fade. Hope is never so lost that it can’t be found”? The Quote Investigator looks into it.

Author Glynn Young reviews the second Will Benson thriller, Blind Defence by John Fairfax, “so engrossing that the reader finds himself on the edge of his seat.”

The Cambridge Dictionary offers up a few new terms: nanolearning, cradle-to-career, and  panic master’s.

Photo: Power’s Hamburgers, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1993. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.Purchase; John Margolies 2015 (DLC/PP-2015:142).

Fiction, Reviews

‘Unnatural Death,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers

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Miss Climpson was one of those people who say: “I am not the kind of person who reads other people’s postcards.” This is clear notice to all and sundry that they are, precisely, that kind of person. They are not untruthful; the delusion is real to them. It is merely that Providence has provided them with a warning rattle, like that of the rattle-snake. After that, if you are so foolish as to leave your correspondence in their way, it is your own affair.

In the third volume of Dorothy Sayer’s Lord Peter Wimsey series, Unnatural Death, the mystery comes along by accident. Lord Peter is having lunch with his friend and future brother-in-law, Inspector Parker, when the man at the next table interrupts their conversation, prompted by an overheard comment. He says he’s a doctor, and he knows of a situation that might have been murder, but he can’t prove it. An old woman under his care, who was living with her grandniece and heir, died suddenly, and something about the circumstances just strikes him as wrong. The old woman was dying of cancer, and had shown great reluctance to making a will. But he considers her death suspicious, though he can’t prove foul play. And he can’t imagine a motive, since the intended heir inherited as planned.

Insp. Parker isn’t much impressed, but Lord Peter is intrigued by the whole thing. He dispatches his faithful agent, the admirable spinster Miss Climpson, to ensconce herself in the town and learn what she can by way of gossip. Very gradually, a ruthless plot will be revealed. (Also, this may possibly be the first appearance in literature of a manner of secret murder that’s since become a cliché. But I’m not sure.)

Having read all these books before, I find Unnatural Death the one that left the least impression on me. I believe the problem was that the book is so slow-moving and talky. Everything gets talked over thoroughly in between actual events in the story, which are brutal but rare. It was, frankly, surprisingly dull work from a writer of Dorothy Sayers’ skill. Though the “moral” of the exercise was a good done.

Also, a warning needs to be added that 1920s attitudes toward race are on display here. By the standards of the time, I think Miss Sayers handled the black character in the story pretty well, making him a decent and sympathetic man. But her descriptions and language don’t fly well with the modern reader. There’s also a passing Jewish slur, unnecessary to the plot.

I recommend all the Lord Peter Wimsey books, but I suspect you’ll love Unnatural Death less than the others.

Uncategorized

Rant on Podcasts That Talk too Much

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Can I share my thoughts on podcasts for a minute? Are you okay with that? I mean, I can just share a few thoughts about a problem or two that I have with some podcasts—maybe two problems, I don’t know, I’m just thinking out loud here.

If everyone’s okay with that, I’ll just share, and you don’t have to read it. I’m not saying you have to read anything I write here. That’s silly.

So, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll share a few thoughts on podcasts and then we’ll move on to regular blogging. Okay? Okay.

When Rush Limbaugh died earlier this year, I didn’t know what to say about him. I listened to his show for a several years in the 90s and 00s. He was a top-notch professional who put together the best talk show on radio. There were times I got tired of it (political news can drag somedays), but the other shows couldn’t keep up. I heard a bit from Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, but they just couldn’t fill the hour like Rush could.

I’m going blame him for training my ears to good radio. Now, I have a hard time listening to the way some people talk on air. Some podcast hosts just talk to much. That’s probably a common complaint. A couple podcasts I like say their listeners complain about too much friendly banter, saying they want solid conversation only. That’s not my complaint. Friends talking cheerily isn’t something I get often.

My complaint is something I’m calling structural talk or talking about talking. The best example of this is killing a joke with explanation. Some people can’t let a quip or witty remark go by naturally. They have to gut it and pull out its heart to diagram the funny.

A more common example of structural talk is what I demonstrated at the beginning of this post. When podcast episodes are an hour or longer and several minutes are burned with talking about what they’re going to talk about, I can’t continue to listen. Closely related to this are the hosts who explain their point into the ground. In both cases, the talkers are thinking with their mouths without empathy for their long-suffering listeners.

Brevity, you may have heard–I mean, you know this right? Stop me if you know this already–is the soul or heart or core, the important part is what I’m getting at–the central part of whit. That’s what brevity is.

Let me say this again /cut/

Authors, Religion

Keep Pilgrim’s Progress Humble

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Patrick Kurp notes that poet Charles Lamb wasn’t necessarily a fan of new, polished editions of Pilgrim’s Progress. At least, he said he wasn’t.

Bunyan’s book, for Lamb, is a model of Christian humility, not to be decked out in finery. Instead, Lamb would “. . . reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The Vanity Fair, and the pilgrims there—the silly soothness in his setting out countenance—the Christian idiocy (in a good sense) of his admiration of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains . . .”