Because you doubtless need more American folk music in your life, here’s a choral arrangement of an 1852 hymn, “The Eternal Gates,” by Cecil Frances Alexander.
Gone before my time
Ah the adventurous life I live! And mostly from correcting my own mistakes.
I had it on my calendar that I was speaking to a meeting in Madison, Wisconsin on Saturday. I made plans and booked a hotel room. Then I happened to look at the scheduling information this morning, and discovered I’m not speaking on Saturday, but on Friday. This required moving my travel plans up, and changing my hotel reservation. And everything I’d planned to do in a leisurely fashion, I must now rush so I can leave tomorrow morning.
I’m an obsessive, so I’m obsessing about all this a little.
Okay, I’m obsessing a lot.
Surprisingly (even to me), I’m not lecturing on Vikings this time. I’m lecturing on my home church. I’ll tell you about it on Monday.
Meanwhile, note to potential burglars: My house will not be empty. My renter will be here. They used to call him Psycho, in the joint.
Vested interest
Had lunch at the Country Kitchen restaurant today, as is my custom on Tuesdays. I don’t know why I allow myself to fall into these little routines. It only makes it easier for international assassins to track me down.
Anyway, I walked in and was conducted to a booth. After I sat down, I was approached by a bearded young man wearing a crucifix and a bolo tie (other things as well, of course, but those were what I noted). He complimented me on the way I was dressed, and asked if I rode a Harley. I thanked him and said no, I’ve never ridden a Harley.
(I pause briefly here to describe what I was wearing. I had on my usual outfit for when I leave the house – a collarless dress shirt under a Victorian vest with lapels. Black jeans and shoes. On my head, a classic Panama hat, like Charlie Chan wore.)
Was this young man “hitting on me” as they say? No, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t. He was, in fact, pretty obviously emotionally disturbed. Someone had taken him out for a treat, or for social mainstreaming purposes.
Still, I appreciated the compliment. In fact, I see it as a promising sign.
I think it’s fairly obvious that the world today is run by people who don’t have both oars in the water. Clearly this is true in the world of fashion. So for all I know, this young man is a major influencer in regard to men’s clothing.
I fully expect we will quickly notice that men are dressing in a Victorian style again.
And, since clothes make the man, society must rapidly turn around. Civilization will be saved from barbarism.
All thanks to me and my vest.
‘The Man by the Sea,’ by Jack Benton
First, an update on my car. The part arrived. They tried to put it in. It turned out to be defective. They’ll order another. Estimated time window: about a month.
You probably won’t be surprised by now to know that I wasn’t surprised at all by this. I was expecting it to be the wrong part, but otherwise this was the scenario I fully anticipated.
Anyway, on to my book review. The Man By the Sea by Jack Benton.
John “Slim” Hardy is a private eye in Lancashire, England. He is a failed soldier and a serious alcoholic. He’s been hired by a woman to follow her husband, whom she suspects of having an affair.
He’s not having an affair. Slim has discovered that the man is going once a week to a secluded cove known for dangerous rip tides, where he stands reading out loud from a book. What he’s reading, Slim discovers (I forget how), is a Latin incantation to the dead.
Instead of reporting the good news to the wife and closing the case, Slim gets obsessed with the husband’s reasons for this behavior, and starts looking into his past, and into local history. Not neglecting to turn the situation fully ironic by having an affair with the wife.
If this summary sounds improbable, the rest of the book is even less plausible.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel so detached from genuine human motivations and behavior. At every juncture, the characters fail to do what a normal person would do, but instead act in some hysterical way. They respond operatically, or perhaps more aptly, soap-operatically.
And our hero is not just a maintenance alcoholic, like your run of the mill literary private eye. Slim Hardy is a full-fledged dipsomaniac, subject to black-outs and car accidents and completely out of control. He needs to be locked up for the protection of himself and others.
The story was sad, the narrative frustrating to read. I do not recommend The Man By the Sea.
Resting in Peace: Walter Wangerin, Jr.
A great, godly author died yesterday.
Walter Wangerin, Jr. dealt with lung cancer for the last several years and has finally succumbed to it. He wrote many award-winning books, including the popular The Book of the Dun Cow. He was the speaker for the Lutheran Vespers radio program for about ten years (1994-2005). More recently, he was Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University.
Image Journal shares Wangerin’s short story “Moravia” from Issue 82.
Pete Peterson says Wangerin cast a long shadow. “The proof of that shadow’s reach, perhaps, is that a few weeks ago when I sat down to write a short story for a forthcoming book called The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad, the tale that came out was, unexpectedly, about Walt.”
I’ve been referring to Wangerin in the past tense, but realistically, Christianly, he continues to live, even more full than he has on earth. We would say he was a good man because we approved of his life. He is a good man, even today, because of Christ. But today, I doubt he or anyone around him would refer to him or each other as good.
Who is good but God, after all?
R.I.P., Walter Wangerin, 1944-2021
The Rabbit Room has announced that the great Walter Wangerin, Jr. passed into glory yesterday, after a long battle with cancer. Article here; I haven’t been able to find much other information.
In my humble opinion, Wangerin’s The Book of the Dun Cow is one of the truly great works, not only of Christian fantasy, but of any fiction of any kind. I never loved any of Wangerin’s other works as well as I loved TBOTDC, but that book is so wonderful all by itself that it ought to secure its author’s standing as a great master until Our Lord returns.
He was a Lutheran, by the way.
‘The Off-Islander.’ by Peter Colt
Andy Roark, the hero of Peter Colt’s The Off-Islander, is a Boston private eye with a middling business and a drinking problem. He suffers from the after-effects of combat in Vietnam (this story is set in 1982), and from regrets following a break-up with his girlfriend. He grew up in the depressed Southie section of town, and his best childhood friend is Danny Sullivan, now a lawyer who works for the mob, but who dreams of respectability.
Danny hires Andy to do an investigation for a beautiful, rich woman whose husband has political aspirations. Her father disappeared when she was a girl, she tells them, and she’s worried he might have gotten involved in something since that time that would cause a scandal. They’ve already paid the Pinkerton Agency to run down leads on the West Coast, without any luck. They want Andy to check out the East Coast. Andy visits an address the man used in Hyannis, which leads him to a property on Nantucket Island. There the clues he follows will lead him to layers of lies and a violent challenge that will suddenly transform his greatest handicap – his PTSD – into the strength he needs to survive a threat unlike any he’s faced since the war.
I wasn’t sure at first whether I liked Andy Roark as a hero. His first-person narration is intentionally reminiscent of Philip Marlowe in a Chandler novel, though author Colt isn’t as lyrical a writer (and for some reason he often avoids contractions in dialogue). Often Andy seemed self-sabotaging, which was annoying, and there were a couple instances of casual marijuana use, which always annoys me in a character. However, the pot leads to nothing good, and I really appreciated the power of the final, dramatic denouement. The book ended very strong, leaving an extremely good impression on this reader. I think I’m going to read the next book in the series.
Recommended, for adults.
Dispatch from the sickbed
I am not well.
This goes without saying when it comes to my emotional health, but the malaise has spread to my mortal coil.
I’m at an age when digestive complaints are more the rule than the exception. But when my latest discomfort turned out to be the equal and opposite problem from my usual torments, I grew concerned. Once I’d dosed myself and, shall we say, eliminated the problem, I was left utterly enervated. No energy. Even more alarmingly, I had little appetite.
I did a web search for DELTA VARIANT SYMPTOMS, of course. But whatever I’ve got doesn’t sound like that. I’m hoping things will be better tomorrow. I had a reasonable supper tonight, and enjoyed it, but found in my heart no desire for further snacks. That’s not normal. I’m running out of groceries and need to go to the store, but I lack motivation.
It would be nice if the indifference to food lingered on, became my new normal. As long as the stomach cramps don’t come back.
I’ve shared the clip above before. It’s Motown group The Toys, singing A Lover’s Concerto, from 1965. I just like it. Driving around in my loaner car, which has no working radio, I’ve been reduced to singing to myself for entertainment. Last Sunday on the trip to Kenyon, I was working on this one. I’ve always been good at remembering song lyrics and poems, but if I neglect them for a while, bits of the lines slough off. But I went over them enough times to reconstruct them, pretty close. It gave me something to do besides pondering my mortality.
‘MindWar,’ by Andrew Klavan
I’m probably too much of a snob to properly appreciate young adult novels, even ones by the great Andrew Klavan. But to the extent that I can imagine what a book like MindWar (and its two sequels – they’re a trilogy) would mean to its audience (young gamer males, I imagine) I would say the book is excellent value for money.
Rick Dial used to be a high school football hero. But then came a terrible year, when his father left him, his mother, and his brother behind to run off with his old girlfriend, and Rick himself was crippled in a car accident. Now he spends his time alone in his room, playing video games. He’s living without hope, but he’s become very good at the games.
And that gets noticed. Suddenly he’s abducted by government agents, who tell him a maniacal scientist has constructed a digital world called the Realm. Using the power of the Realm, this man has the ability to begin a campaign to undermine and destroy the one entity he hates most in the world – the United States.
They have the technology to inject Rick into the Realm – a place where his body is whole and strong again. They need him to use his gaming skills to destroy the Realm and save America.
Nothing here we haven’t seen before, in books like Ender’s Game and Ready Player One. But Andrew Klavan applies his seasoned storytelling skills to ramp the stakes up and raise the tension to almost excruciating levels. The main lesson, as with all Klavan’s young adult books, is to persevere, to never despair.
And that’s a pretty good lesson.
Recommended, mostly for members of the Gamer demographic.
‘Lincoln’s Melancholy,’ by Joshua Wolf Shenk
The hope is not that suffering will go away, for with Lincoln it did not ever go away. The hope is that suffering, plainly acknowledged and endured, can fit us for the surprising challenges that await.
I grew up on a farm, as I may have mentioned before. And I often got into trouble because I preferred reading books to doing my chores. When I read about a great president who grew up on a farm and also got into trouble for reading when he should have been working, I felt an immediately bond. That president, of course, was Abraham Lincoln.
Later I learned that Lincoln suffered from “melancholy” (the 19th Century term for chronic depression) all his life. This also led me to feel close to him.
I’ve learned more recently that a collateral ancestor of mine, my great-great grandfather’s half-brother, a Norwegian pioneer in Illinois, knew Lincoln through Republican Party activities. This ancestor does not appear in the book, Lincoln’s Melancholy, by Joshua Wolf Shenk (I didn’t expect him to), but I enjoyed imagining him as one of the extras in the background.
Lincoln’s Melancholy is a fascinating book for the history buff and the Lincoln fan. There are plenty of Lincoln haters out there too, and I imagine they can find fuel for their position here too, but for this reader the story was one I can empathize with. And it had a surprisingly faith-friendly conclusion.
It’s common for chronic depression to run in families, and author Shenk documents how the limited information we have on this fairly obscure clan indicates that not only depression, but plain insanity was common among the Lincolns. Young Abraham suffered the traumatic loss of his mother at a young age, but seems to have been a fairly cheerful person until his 30s, when he had two suicidal “breakdowns” in a row in 1840 and 1841. (One of these may or may not have been related to the death of the fabled Ann Rutledge.) After that he withdrew into himself; his closest friends – and certainly his wife – never felt that he entirely opened up to them. But they all agreed that he suffered from long spells of melancholy. Then he would shake himself, so to speak, and start telling jokes. Or go to work. He had found a way to manage his depression; to use it as a spur to achievement. Having given up on personal happiness, he aimed for significance. He came to believe that God had destined him for some great purpose; his challenge in life was to make himself worthy of that purpose.
Which brings us to his religious beliefs. I’ve heard more than one atheist quote Lincoln triumphantly, as a patron saint of their un-faith. But as Shenk documents, it’s more complicated than that. Raised in a fire-and-brimstone sect (unusually condemnatory even among Calvinists), Lincoln abandoned Christianity as he understood it. But years later, after his breakdowns, he went to Louisville to visit the family of his friend Joshua Speed. There Speed’s mother (a Unitarian) placed a Bible in his hands and told him gently that he’d find comfort there if he read it correctly. And by all accounts he did just that. He became a regular reader of the Bible, and it seemed to help him with his depression, though It’s impossible to know exactly what his theological beliefs were:
The Lincolns later rented a pew at Smith’s First Presbyterian Church—which reserved them space for services but did not bind them to accept the church’s creed, as membership would. This arrangement, which Lincoln repeated in Washington, nicely represented his relationship with traditional religion in his mature years. He visited, but he didn’t move in.
I found Lincoln’s Melancholy fascinating, moving, and helpful in my personal situation. I recommend it highly.