Poetry

There was a DISTINGUISHED Old Fellow

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May 12th is Limerick Day, perhaps for the arbitrary reason any day is a national day of some kind. May 9th is Lost Sock Memorial Day as well as National Sleepover Day. May 17th is Cherry Cobbler Day, which must not be allowed to carryover into May 18th, because that, honey child, is Cheese Soufflé Day. There are so many of commemorative days for every day of the year it’s no wonder Congress can’t get anything passed between the cobbler and soufflé.

But I was talking about limericks, being an apt subject for the distinguished readers of this blog.

The form of the limerick is believed to have been created as a party or festival song that invited participants to spin their own verse of the marvelous attractions or mishaps of Limerick, Ireland. Each verse would be capped by a chorus inviting everyone up to Limerick. I get this from The Complete Limerick Book by Langford Reed, published in 1925.

Reed notes the artist and author Edward Lear is the name many people associate with limericks and could easily believe to be the one who created them whole clothe. Of all that he accomplished in his life, his Book of Nonsense is the main thing for which he is famous. Reed offers these lines on the subject of fame:

A goddess, capricious, is Fame;
You may strive to make noted your name
But she either neglects you
Or coolly selects you
For laurels distinct from your aim.

In honor of the day, let me repeat one of the most excellent of tongue-twisters, this one from Ogden Nash:

A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, “let us flee!”
“Let us fly!” said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

Publishing, Uncategorized

Sweet and sour times

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As we enjoy the collapse of Western Civilization, there are at least a few consolations to be found in the gradual reduction of lockdown restrictions. In Minnesota, our venerable governor has graciously eliminated occupancy limits in restaurants, and allowed us to go maskless out of doors, as long as we aren’t too friendly about it.

So I went crazy on Saturday and ate at a Chinese buffet for the first time since the Troubles began. Chinese buffets had come to occupy a disproportionate portion of my consciousness, such as it is. Many had already closed even before the pandemic; I feared the lockdown had wiped them out completely. I have an idea the place I went to had been open for a while, actually. But one of my great horrors is having someone tell me, “You’re not allowed in here,” so I waited until I was fairly sure it was OK now. (If you’re in the area and wondering where I went, it was Ocean Buffet in Brooklyn Center. In my experience, the majority of their customers are always Chinese. I tell myself this means something.)

And it was good. Not as good as one imagines after a year of abstinence, but good. I had to wear plastic gloves, provided at the door, at the steaming tables – the cheap kind of gloves made of the same plastic they use for produce bags in the grocery store. Prices have gone up, of course, but that’s a given. I felt a sense of closure. (Or anticlimax. I always get those two confused.)

Reduced restrictions means it looks like there should be some Viking events this summer. I need to take final action on getting my dead tree edition of The Year of the Warrior printed. The printer was going to get back to me, and hasn’t so far. I suppose I’ll have to call him. That book is loooooooong, you know, like something out of 19th Century Russia. It will be expensive to print.

My great fear is that I’ll sink a bunch of my savings into a stock of books, and then the lockdown will return and all my venues will vanish. And I’ll be left with a basement full of stock.

And my basement leaks a little.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Blood Relation,’ by Dan Willis

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As you know, I’ve been working my way through Dan Willis’s enjoyable urban fantasy series about New York Private Detective/Runewright Alex Lockerby in the 1930s. Book 6 is Blood Relation.

In this one, we find our hero definitely rising in the world. Instead of his seedy old office, he is now installed in luxury space in the Empire State Building, thanks to being on retainer to the Lightning Lord, the sorcerer who provides the city with electricity. Which means he keeps getting interrupted by problems at the transmitter, as breakers at the new Brooklyn station keep tripping for no known reason.

Meanwhile a woman mathematician has been found murdered, with clues leading to foreign espionage. And prostitutes are being murdered, their blood used in some kind of ritual Alex has never seen before. Plus, a mysterious wizard is playing a game of wits with Alex.

All in a day’s work. What I like about the series is its interesting characters and cheerful mood (in spite of the occasional horror). Theological objections are neutralized by the fact that Alex is a practicing Catholic. I could criticize the prose, which is pedestrian at best, and full of neologisms. No effort is made to evoke mannerisms from the period. And I’m less than enamored with Alex’s sweetheart, the powerful sorceress Sorsha Kincaid. She’s as strong a female character as any feminist could want, but she ends up being mad at Alex for one reason or another most of the time. I like a little more tenderness in relationships (probably one of the reasons I don’t have one of my own).

But the books are entertaining and undemanding. I’m staying with them.

Religion

How Does God Treat His Friends?

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Many months ago, I wrote a few blog posts about the book of Job because I had studied it while leaning on Christopher Ash’s excellent commentary in the Preaching the Word commentary series from Crossway. He has revisited that content for a new book no doubt aimed at a general readership.

The new book is called Trusting God in the Darkness. He answers a few questions about Job on the Crossway blog.

The central character, Job himself, is not just everyman, a human being in general. No, he is most emphatically a man who is “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1). The narrator tells us this in the first verse and God says it twice more (Job 1:8; 2:3). That is to say, Job is a believer walking through life with a clear conscience. The book of Job is—to quote the title of a book that first helped me get into studying Job—about how God treats his friends. It is about the struggles of a suffering and yet innocent believer.

How should we understand Job’s comforters? “Much of what they say seems to make a lot of sense,” but God rejects their words in the end.

When we read their speeches we need to think carefully. Sometimes they say things that are true but that don’t fit Job. They accuse him of being an unforgiven sinner, and he isn’t. Most seriously, there is no place in their thinking for innocent suffering (e.g., Job 4:7), which means that, in the end, there is no place in their theology for the cross of Christ.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Ocean Prey,’ by John Sandford

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Novel title "Ocean Prey" distorted by water

“Is this gonna ruin my career?” Devlin asked.

“No, you’re too obscure to ruin. Get a few more years under your belt and a little more status, get closer to a pension, then you’ll be worth ruining. Ruining you now would be like shooting a squirrel and mounting its head. Nobody would be impressed.”

Lucas Davenport returns for the umpteenth time in yet another Prey novel, Ocean Prey. John Sandford’s hero is a millionaire, a former cop, a former agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and now a US Marshal. We’re told he’s fifty-two, but I’m pretty sure that means some time compression has happened – as is allowed in the world of fictional serial heroes. I think John D. MacDonald said he aged Travis McGee one year for every three in the real world.

In the ocean off Miami, the crew of a speedboat, interrupted while collecting something unknown from the ocean bottom, gets into a fire fight with the Coast Guard, killing two officers before escaping. They disappear without a trace, and police divers aren’t able to locate whatever it was they were looking for underwater. The case goes to the FBI, and when they can’t find any clues, they go to the US Marshals and their agency gunslinger – Marshal Lucas Davenport.

Lucas starts poking around, along with Bob, one of his regular partners. They begin making some connections, and then things go very bad.

That’s when Lucas calls in the big gun – his Minnesota friend Virgil Flowers (who doesn’t actually use guns much). Virgil is the perfect guy to go in undercover, after a crash course in deep ocean diving.

The Prey books pretty much guarantee a good read, and Ocean Prey did not disappoint. The characters are always intriguing, and nobody writes cop banter better than Sandford. Lots of action and suspense, with both heavy and light moments.

Recommended, with cautions for frank dialogue.

Uncategorized

Lag-rolling

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Old stone church with three side windows

If you’re looking for harbingers of a possible better summer this year, in terms of the lockdown, here’s one – I’m booked for my first lecture of 2021.

The location is Madison, Wisconsin – a bit of a drive, but if I sell books like I did the last time I spoke to these people, the Tre Lag Stevne, it will be worth it in book sales. The Tre Lag Stevne is a gathering of organizations of descendants of immigrants from particular regions of Norway.

They told me they wanted me to do a presentation on the Old Stone Church (pictured above), which I’ve written about here before. It’s the original building of my home congregation, Hauge Lutheran in Kenyon, Minnesota; it’s on the National Register of Historic Places.

My natural grandiosity took over, of course, the moment I accepted the invitation. I rapidly prepared a comprehensive presentation on the whole Haugean movement – about which I’ve also written here before. The Haugeans were a pietistic Lutheran lay movement that began in Norway in the early 1800s. I prepared a brilliant PowerPoint (tastefully illustrated), about not only the Old Stone Church, but the entire history of the Haugean movement in Norway and America. Not neglecting the sociological and political antecedents and consequences. I have many insightful things to say on this subject.

Then I asked, and learned that they already have an expert (some guy with a Ph.D, as if that impressed anybody) coming to talk about all that stuff. What they want from me is the story of my own church.

I’m not sure I’m as well qualified to do that.

But I’ve got till August. I’ll come up with something.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Truth,’ by Peter Grainger

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Cover of "The Truth" novel. White man's hand raised to shake hands with someone.

DC Smith is back. This is very good news. The hero of Peter Grainger’s low-key police novels, an inspector in a fictional town in Northumberlandshire, England, Smith was badly wounded a couple books ago. The series focus turned to younger detectives in a reorganized team. The next books were all right, but they weren’t Smith stories. Smith has retired now, but he’s fully recovered and starting to chafe at the inactivity. Even his live-in partner, Jo, thinks he needs to find something to do.

In The Truth, Anthony Hills, real estate broker son of Smith’s old desk sergeant, Charlie Hills, has been arrested. He bought a share in a luxury yacht, which turned out to be used for drug smuggling. Charlie retains a law firm to defend him, and they mention he might want to talk to a local private detective agency. That agency usually does cyber-investigation, but they’ve been thinking of taking on some shoe leather cases. And who better to handle such an investigation – just as a one-time shot – than DC Smith?

Private inquiry is a whole new world for our hero. He misses having police authority backing him up, but on the other hand he’s less tied down by regulations and paperwork. The case will involve a trip to Amsterdam entailing genuine danger of death, but in the end Smith will make the case. With a couple big surprises at the wrap-up.

Smith’s a great character, kind of a less scruffy Columbo. Small in stature and unprepossessing, he is in fact wicked smart and dangerous in a fight. He’s been one of my favorite fictional heroes for some time now, and it was a pure delight to see him back in action.

Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Win,’ by Harlan Coben

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Cover of "Win" novel with sticker "From the creator of the hit Netflix drama The Stranger"

I realize that impersonating an officer is breaking the law, but here is the thing about being rich: You don’t go to jail for crimes like this. The rich hire a bunch of attorneys who will twist reality in a thousand different ways until reality is made irrelevant.

I like Harlan Coben (generally) as an author, and my perception of his Myron Bolitar novels was that I liked them too – though looking at my old reviews, I see that I cooled toward the later books. Too much political correctness had crept in. It looks like the Bolitar series is finished now (I’d forgotten that Coben married the character off in the last volume), but instead we’ve got a new series about his friend Win Lockhart. I’ve never liked Win much as a character, but for odd reasons I enjoyed the novel, Win quite a lot. And the nature of the main character kept the PC suppressed a bit.

Win Lockhart used to fill the niche in the Bolitar books that I’ve designated the “psycho killer friend.” In many mystery series, your rational, decent hero has a very dangerous friend he can call on when the bad guys threaten and the odds get long. Win was an eccentric example of the PKF. Born to an elite family, exclusively educated, small and effete-appearing, he is nevertheless a master of unarmed and armed combat, the kind of guy who can kill a man twice his size quickly, with his bare hands. I always found Win implausible and affected. But he worked better here, in the first person.

The police call Win to an exclusive Upper West Side apartment building, to a penthouse tower apartment. There, in a room with a murdered man, they have found two items long missing – a Vermeer painting that was stolen from Win’s family years ago, and a custom-made suitcase that once belonged to Win himself. How does Win account for that?

Win knows nothing about how the painting got there, but he had given the suitcase to Patricia, a female cousin of whom he is very fond. He doesn’t believe she murdered this man – whoever he was – but he’s not going to tell the police about it. He’ll investigate the matter himself.

His investigation will take him into a maze of old secrets, secrets related to radical antiwar violence of the days of Vietnam, and dark family secrets that Win thinks he knows about – but does not. Yet.

In the Bolitar books, Win was always presented as a kind of psychopath whose only true relationship was with his friend Myron . Which I found unpersuasive. In Win, presented in the first person, we get further inside him. He proves to be a man of (relatively) normal empathies who was traumatized as a child and whose emotional energy has been diverted into strange channels. This works better for me, though I’m still not sure it’s entirely plausible.

The plot has multiple resolutions, some of them morally problematic. But they satisfied me as a reader.

Also, the author had a chance to trash evangelical Christians, and chose not to. I always appreciate that.

Cautions for the usual stuff.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Old Norse for Modern Times,’ by Ian Stuart Sharpe

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Cover of "Old Norse for Modern Times" with Norse figure illustrations

For some of our readers, this will be the book you’ve been waiting for.

Ian Stuart Sharpe has produced an eccentric but highly amusing little book for the Viking fancier. Old Norse for Modern Times is not a language course or a dictionary, but a fun collection of modern phrases rendered into the language of the Vikings. The utility of this book will probably be limited, but it is a lot of fun, especially for reenactors, saga nerds, and Viking buffs.

Ever want to say, “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse” in Old Norse?

“Gøra mun ed hom boð slike, es hann getr eigi hafnat.”

Since Hamlet was in fact an old Viking (or pre-Viking) himself, he might actually have said, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark:

“Eigi mun alt dælt I Danmǫrku.”

There’s also useful stuff for the contemporary berserker: “If I die in battle today, please delete my browser history.”

“Ef ek skylda falla i þessi orrustu, fyrirkom þú þá vefsǫgu minni.”

I must admit to some surprise in reading this book, in spite of all the knowledge I like to pretend I have. It generally takes more words to say stuff in Old Norse than in English – as a writer composing Viking dialogue, I’ve always thought of the Vikings as terse in speech. That’s probably just a function of English saga translations, it would appear.

A lot of us have pondered learning Old Norse at one time or another (I know I have, but I have trouble keeping track of just two languages). If you’re one of those people, Old Norse for Modern Times may serve as a good introduction.

Or you may want to read it just because it’s funny.

Fiction

Stay Safe, Okay? Safer than You Are Now

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In First Things, Sohrab Ahmari describes a 1995 movie that looks like a commentary on 2020.

Safe with Julianne Moore and Xander Berkeley tells the story of a woman who has closed herself off from those around her. She comes to believe she is allergic to the modern world and, if not already, at least on the verge of becoming desperately ill. She takes refuge in a kind of spiritual camp in the desert to help keep the world away.

Ahmari describes the message of the camp: “Things are getting better out there in the dangerous outside world, thanks to ‘workplace sensitivity training’ and ‘multiculturalism,’ but meanwhile, the patients must avoid all risk, must remain at the center, and must avoid negative thoughts.”

Because we can control our world, if we only remain aware of it and ourselves. We can survive by receiving positivity and blocking out germs and whatever else the environment has to kill us.

Carol begins the movie in an alienating gated community—and ends it even more alienated, eventually in a literal safety pod. Rather than face the social-structural crises head-on—crises rooted in our modern obsession with individual mastery and autonomy—the safetyist “cure” requires an even more aggressively individualistic vision. As [Director] Haynes himself told an interviewer in 2015, “isolation becomes the problem and the answer to the problem.” 

Book Reviews, Creative Culture