Big day. Put my clothes in the wash. Went to the gym. And when I got back from my grueling workout, I found translating work waiting for me. A nice large job, too. Better still, it’s a project about something that interests me – can’t tell you what, of course. Still, that means all my big plans for a wild Friday night on the town had to be put on hold. But my immunization will mature on Monday, and then all this pent-up social energy will burst forth upon the world. Look out, Robbinsdale.
Another gorgeous day, it was. Not as warm as some days we’ve had, but it was nice – the little time I spent outside. On the way home from the gym, I actually had the presence of mind to stop at the drug store and pick up the prescription that’s been waiting a couple days. At my age, that’s what they call, “He’s having one of his good days.”
I had a plan to call a guy to inquire about printing up a paper version of The Year of the Warrior (I have the rights for that), but I’ve been too busy translating to look into the details. I’ll keep you posted if it happens.
You’ve likely seen other bloggers writing about the first time they read Lord of the Rings. It seems appropriate to treat Dune the same way. With a new movie adaptation coming up (though I usually don’t see movies until months after they release, if then), I wanted to read the book that’s been sitting on my shelf a while.
I didn’t know anything about the world of Arrakis beyond a few images from the 1984 movie. Having reviewed a bit of the trailer from that movie, I don’t think I’ll spend any more time on it. I watched Zardoz as an impressionable youth. I don’t need anymore rank garbage like that.
I’ve just learned there are 19 books in the series and apparently more on the way, but only six of them are by original author Frank Herbert, so I doubt I’ll make it through even that many.
What I’ve read so far is book one of three in the original book. It’s a great part one, ending on a cliffhanger after all the foreshadowed conflict has crashed on the beach, leaving readers to wonder what happens next.
That foreshadowing though. Granny telling Little Red Riding Hood not to stray from the path easily sets up the idea that she will at least be tempted to stray. But Herbert doesn’t foreshadow as much as foretell. The narrative doesn’t stick to a single point of view but flits between characters, sometimes only for a moment, revealing their hidden motives. I thought I would hate it after a while, but I didn’t. Herbert’s style carries the story pretty well, but I have to wonder why he felt the need to quickly reveal this or that betrayal, when half the time it could have remained unsaid or supposed by one of the two especially perceptive characters.
“He nodded. ‘Of course.’ And he thought: If only there were some way not to do this thing that I must do.“
Well, for starters, you could consider avoiding loud whispering that everyone can hear.
That doesn’t touch on the quotations from backstory books that begin each chapter, saying one character is super, super bad or another one is going to die later on. No spoiler alert labels either. The main thing these quotations communicate is that Herbert is working on something of epic length. This won’t wrap up soon, gentle reader; note the gravitas of Princess Irulan’s history.
Despite this, I found book one to be compelling. The gifted, young Paul Atteides, only son of Duke Leto and his mistress Jessica, is remarkably perceptive, asking serious questions an adult should ask. His father works hard to gain and sustain loyal for his royal family, and he has a measure of success, but it becomes plain (that foretelling again) that the deck is stacked against him. A gifted observer or historian may be able to critic the Duke’s decisions and point to critical weaknesses or failures, but the story reveals a man who is trying to do his level best.
While reading, I thought I would see far more similarity to Star Wars, but so far the two stories are not alike. Paul is not some untrained kid hoping to get off his desert planet, and while the Empire is in the background and doesn’t look too good, it isn’t hunting down rebels. The story pits two ruling families against each other with a third, not-entirely-neutral party, a labor union that’s so large it could be an empire of its own. Add to this the free tribes of Arrakis, whom the Empire calls Sand Pirates (not at all like Sand People or Jawas).
I look forward to the rest of it and maybe even a sequel.
Harry Starke is a high-end private eye working in Chattanooga. (No doubt Phil Wade has run into him). Son of a successful personal injury lawyer, he works out of a nice office and owns a beautiful home. He’s dating a woman police detective. As Harry Starke, the first book in this series begins, he watches a beautiful young woman flee a couple of tough guys in a seedy bar, tries to rescue her as she flees over a bridge on the Tennessee River, and watches helplessly as she plunges to her death.
In the tradition of fictional private eyes, he immediately vows to find out who’s responsible for her death. The girl turns out to be the daughter of a prominent surgeon, who immediately hires him to investigate. With the help of his highly competent staff (though he does the dangerous stuff alone, of course), and in cooperation with Kate, his police squeeze, he follows the clues to the offices of a local drug dealer, who appears suddenly more prosperous than he should be, and a corrupt local politician. With occasional stops to investigate a secret sex club.
Harry Starke kept me reading to the end, but I didn’t really like it a lot. It seemed superficial to me, assembled from shiny parts like a TV series pilot, with nothing behind the facades on the set. I especially thought Harry’s relationship with Kate, the cop, was implausible. Would any real-life police department allow a private operator whom a detective was dating to consult on a case and run around with her, chasing suspects?
The language, I should note, was fairly clean for this kind of novel. There were several sexual encounters, but they weren’t described explicitly. However, there was one sexual moment that was just creepy for this reader. It was that creepy moment, though not that moment alone, that decided me that I probably won’t be investing in any more Harry Starke books.
Today was a rainy day. Not snowy, rainy. This is not unheard-of in March in Minnesota, but it’s far from the norm. My front yard is entirely free of snow – there’s a little left in back, where the stuff gets piled up at the northeast corner of the house, but even that may be gone now. I haven’t looked out there in a few hours.
The rain has been slow, drippy stuff through most of the day, but I’m hearing thunder now.
A wild surmise begins to burgeon in my heart – we may have seen the last of this winter. The forecast doesn’t show any cold weather or snow for a couple weeks. Of course, we can still get snow even in April, and often do. But the sunshine seems to have gained the upper hand at this point. If we get any more snow, it’s unlikely to establish a beachhead.
Work goes slowly on the new Erling book, but it does go. I’m mostly adding stuff at this point. I’ve got the armature of a book, but it needs fleshing out.
Just wrote a scene (meant to be funny) about haggis, because Macbeth is in the story. This sort of thing is a tad self-indulgent, and if I were a purer artist, I’d probably consider it beneath me. But in my experience, very little is beneath me.
Outside the car’s window Paris flashed by, the sluggish river Seine appearing and disappearing beside them, seeming to slow their progress with her magnetic pull, a seductress winking through the plane trees, teasing them with glimpses of her silvery skirts, and with the threat of more death, more bodies hidden within their deadly folds.
Along the river Seine in Paris, there is a class of booksellers known as bouquinistes, occupants of much-coveted stalls. Hugo Marston, head of security for the US embassy, is fond of browsing their offerings, and has made particular friends with an old man named Max. As The Bookseller opens, Hugo asks Max for something special, out of his private stock – a conciliatory gift for his girlfriend, who recently abandoned him and returned to the US. Max offers two rare books – an Agatha Christie first edition, and a rare copy of the poet Rimbaud. Before he leaves, Hugo witnesses Max being bullied by a thug, who forces him down to the river bank. Max is shoved onto a boat, and Hugo is unable to do anything to prevent it. When he reports the abduction to the police, they seem uninterested – and quickly drop the investigation.
Meanwhile, Hugo discovers that the Rimbaud book is an extremely rare signed copy, worth hundreds of thousands of euros. Why did he sell it to Hugo for less than a thousand? Was he trying to send a message, leave some kind of clue behind? When Hugo learns that Max was once a Nazi hunter, and when other bouquinistes start turning up dead in the river, Hugo begins his own independent investigation. His friend Tom, a CIA operative, comes along to watch his back and help out with the rough stuff. And Hugo meets a charming female journalist with a shocking secret.
The Bookseller was a first novel for author Mark Pryor, and for my money it was a home run. (Our commenter Paul alerted me to it.) The writing was superior, and I liked the characters very much. Hugo and Tom have great rapport, and they’re fun to watch in action. I look forward to reading the next books in the series.
The usual cautions for language are in order. Some time is spent on Hugo’s agnosticism, but he himself is forced to admit occasionally that it’s inconsistent with his actual life experience.
I was pretty happy with this book at the beginning – A Wolf At the Gate, by Lexie Conyngham, offered pretty good prose, along with evidence of some serious research on Viking Age life. But as I read on, I grew less happy with it.
Ketil, the apparent hero of the book, is in the service of Earl Thorfinn of Orkney (which sets the story in time a little later than my Erling books). Ketil generally operates outside of Orkney, and he’s about to sail away, but the earl calls him back to investigate a murder. Ketil solved a previous killing for the earl, so he’s assumed to be good at that sort of thing.
Secret murder is rare among the Norse, and this murder is all the more puzzling because the victim, a man in the earl’s service named Steinar (recently back from Colonia in Saxony, which I take to mean Cologne) seems to have been universally liked. He was a devout Christian, rather strict about church rules, but harsh only with himself. Someone split his skull with an axe in front of his own house.
I said that Ketil was the apparent hero of this book, because he is in fact just the Inspector Lestrade here. The real detective is a woman named Sigrid, a childhood friend of Ketil’s who now lives as a widow in Orkney. She was the one who actually solved the previous murder. Gradually she and Ketil renew their friendship – there’s some suppressed attraction there, but both of them deny it. Together they consider the multiple puzzles that face them – does the murder of a man just back from Colonia have anything to do with the fact that an abbot from Colonia is visiting the island? Does someone covet Steinar’s beautiful wife? Or was the killer Ketil’s follower Lambi, who seems to be a sneak thief?
The further I read in this book, the more disappointed I grew. First of all, the characterizations were fairly flat, especially the male characters. Author Conyngham seems to have a problem I’ve often noticed in books by women – she doesn’t get men at all. There’s a famous line (unjust but funny) in (I think) the movie, As Good As It Gets, where Jack Nicholson, asked how he writes women so well says, “I think of a man. And I take away reason and accountability.” Conyngham writes men by thinking of a woman, and taking away any clue.
Also, the story began to bore me. Although the plot gets sweetened by further murders, I never felt any sense of urgency, any idea that great things were at stake.
Also, the narrative falls into what I believe to be serious factual falsehoods about the Christian church. It’s not an anti-Christian book as such, since most of the serious Christians are depicted sympathetically. But the author states and reiterates – and this is a major plot element – that the Catholic church denied baptism to the children of slaves, and to deformed babies.
I had never heard of this before. It entirely contradicted my own understanding of the matter. Now maybe author Conyngham, whose biography says she’s a historian, knows something I don’t know. But my online searches find documentation directly contradicting these contentions.
On the issue of slaves, this article from Christianity Today, by Rodney Stark, is behind a paywall. But the passage I need is right there above the barrier — “That the Church willingly baptized slaves was claimed as proof that they had souls, and soon both kings and bishops—including William the Conqueror (1027-1087) and Saints Wulfstan (1009-1095) and Anselm (1033-1109)—forbade the enslavement of Christians.”
I also found numerous references online to the historical fact that the early Christians made it a practice to hunt through the dumping sites where the Romans – quite legally – habitually discarded their unwanted babies. The Christians would baptize these infants, adopt them, and raise them in the church. One of the primary excuses the Romans gave for “exposing” babies this way was that they were born deformed.
So in the end I was both bored and irritated by A Wolf At the Gates. Too bad. It showed promise.
Temperature around 50 today. This pleases me. I left the house three times – to the gym, to the grocery store, and to pick up pizza. All the trips were satisfactory, except for the grocery store, because I forgot to get pizza. Which isn’t so bad, because I’d planned to get carryout today anyway. I can get a large Domino’s for about nine bucks with a coupon, and I get four meals out of it. Which turns an indulgence into an economy.
Something about that scheme doesn’t seem right, though. I’m still waiting for the universe to rain justice down on me, for my hubris.
Watched an amusing old English movie this afternoon. Castle In the Air, from 1952. Based on a stage play. It’s slightly Wodehousian, in having a mix of classes, romantic misunderstandings, and competing prevarications.
The Earl of Locharne is played by David Tomlinson, who seems to American eyes a strange choice for a romantic lead (he’s best remembered for a later role, as the father in Mary Poppins). I have an idea that the British film industry was slightly short on talent in those days, and had to cast less-than-beautiful people just to fill the roles. The same is true – to an extent – of Helen Cherry (Mrs. Trevor Howard), who plays “Boss” Trent, the earl’s assistant and love interest. She’s just slightly less than beautiful, but I can easily imagine falling in love with her anyway.
In any case, the earl’s great cross to bear in life is the ownership of Locharne Castle, which is falling apart faster than he can afford to fix it. He operates it as a residential hotel, for tenants who constantly complain about the cold drafts and the lack of hot water. And oh yes – there’s a ghost, a beautiful phantom named Ermyntrude, who is actually good-natured and helpful. (Filmmakers loved superimposing ghost images in movies back then. It was a special effect that was easy, cheap, and didn’t look cheesy.)
A man from the National Coal Board arrives to assess the property. The board is considering acquiring the castle (by requisition, not purchase), so everyone is doing their best to impress him with the castle’s ruinous condition and unsuitability for habitation. But when a rich and beautiful American divorcee shows up, pondering buying the place for good money, he has to talk it up to her. Meanwhile, a genealogist with Jacobite sympathies (played by Margaret Rutherford) is on site, working out charts to prove that the earl is the rightful king of Scotland.
All very silly, and pleasant, and the ending’s happy. Enjoyable fluff, in the tradition of… did I mention Wodehouse? Cautions for sometimes incomprehensible Scottish accents.
Although made famous by his two political allegories, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell’s mastery of English prose shows best in his essays. In “A Hanging,” and “Shooting an Elephant,” Orwell produced little morality tales filled with vivid concrete images. . . . However, it was through his essays and his political journalism that Orwell left his most lasting mark. “Politics and the English Language” became a kind of Bible for a generation of political writers, with its simple rules for good writing.
Hemingway is largely unread today except for short stories, and he is easy to parody. In fact, in some ways he was parodying himself after World War II. His novel Across the River and Into the Trees—E.B. White spoofed it with “Across the Street and Into the Grill”—is an example of the worst excesses of Hemingway’s prose.
I remember thinking, as a young man, that my prose style was sparse like Hemingway’s, but it’s closer to the truth that my style is sparse as in lack of effort. And lest I slip into musing over my failures, let me ask what you’re read of Hemingway and Orwell. I remember reading a Hemingway’s short story in college and getting a lower grade on the analysis than I expected. I felt I had too little to go on to judge the meaning of the story. Still bitter about it.
I don’t think I’ve read anything by quotes by Orwell, though I may have seen an adaptation of Animal Farm.
False spring is what we call it. At least I think so. I’m not actually sure I’ve ever heard anyone say “false spring.” But if that’s not what they call it, they ought to. I’ll take full credit. Registered trademark.
Anyway, the sun shone, and the temperature got into the upper 40s (farenheit, for our European readers). The snow is more than half gone from my neighbors’ lawn to the east. It seems barely diminished on my neighbor’s lawn to the west. And I’m kind of in the middle. I supposed the inequity has to do with the angle of the sun. Or systemic sexism – but in that case, it favors the woman.
Anyway, it was so nice out I decided to go on the back porch this afternoon and work on the new Erling book. I’d been stalled in my revision; a timeline problem that overwhelmed me one evening a month ago. Since then I’ve been spooked about it, sure it was beyond my powers to solve. I decided I was in a rut and needed to change my writing environment, so I sat on the porch, rolled my pants up to get some sunlight, and gave it another look.
I think I solved the problem – which means there’s probably a couple loose threads I’ll still need to fix in a later revision. But anyway, I’m on the job again.
James Lileks complained (sort of) about this warm spell a few days back. He noted that it won’t last, that we’ll get more snow and all this warmth and sunlight will have been but a cruel tease.
I sympathize keenly with that sentiment. If there’s one thing I’m all about, it’s looking at the dark (and cold) side. But you know, the knowledge that more snow is coming doesn’t make today less sweet. The air was no less mild. The photons my legs absorbed were no less Vitamin D-incentive.
It’s not just about false spring, either. You’ve got to think that way every day, when you get to my age.
Interesting concept. Over the top execution. That’s how I’d describe Stuart Doughty’s The Art of Danger, first book in his John Kite series.
John Kite is a former London policeman, now working as an investigator for an insurance company that writes policies on objects of art. What no one knows is that John Kite is not his real name. He has a secret history, a former life from which he has cut himself off completely.
The theft of an obscure painting by a middling German Renaissance painter wouldn’t appear to offer any major challenges. But when John shows up with the ransom money to buy the painting back for its owner, no one meets him. Instead, someone gets killed, and John is plunged into a convoluted mystery involving Middle Eastern terrorists and an English public relations guru. John doesn’t know how a forgettable, not-at-all-priceless portrait could relate to the World Cup finals in Qatar. But he will learn the truth, even if it takes high-speed car chases and a helicopter pursuit.
John Kite is an interesting character, and art crime is an intriguing field for mystery fiction. John’s gradual revelations of his past, and the surprising things he himself learns, were strong plot elements. I felt the second half of the book lost credibility though, as the author resorted to high-speed chases right out of a Hollywood movie to tie up his story with a bang.
