Reading, Religion, Writing

Chronicle of a writer’s day

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“Daffodils and Glastonbury Tor.” Photo credit: Glastomichelle. Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons license.

What’s on tonight? Hey, how about a pointless account of my day? What could be more fun than that?

Last night my men’s Bible study group re-convened after several weeks of preemptions. I continue to be astonished how much these meetings nourish and uplift me. I feel an actual physical easing. I’ve been a solitary for so many years, getting by without close Christian fellowship. I knew that was the wrong way to do it, but I was hemmed in by… well, fear, to be honest.

I don’t think these guys will ever realize what they’re doing for me.

This morning I drove to the gym, and while I was inside, beavering away at my Sysiphian labors, a freezing rain came down, which covered my car windows in a matrix of icy pearls and made the road treacherous going home.

I worried about driving this afternoon, as I had a doctor’s appointment. But by the time I had to pull out again, the moisture had all melted and (mostly) dried off. I was able to reassure a technician, who took samples of my blood, on that point.

(No big deal on the doctor’s appointment, by the way. I wanted him to check something out, and he ordered tests, but didn’t seem greatly concerned. This stuff is just S.O.P. when you achieve venerability.)

Right now I’m re-reading two different books I read as a teenager, both of which deal with medieval Glastonbury. Because I’m writing a book about King Haakon the Good, and he grew up in England, and there’s good reason to think he might have spent time at that ancient site of monasticism and pilgrimage.

The first book is The Hidden Treasure of Glaston, by Eleanore M. Jewett. This is a book aimed at teenagers, and I remember that it surprised me when I read it (as a teenager), since I had known nothing about Glastonbury or the grave of King Arthur up to then. So far, I think it stands up pretty well. Entirely credulous about the legends, but well done withal. I’ll review it when I finish it.

The other book is Avalon, by Anya Seton, which I’ll also review. I read this as a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book (remember those?) back when it was new. It was quite a thrill for me, back in 1965 or 66, to discover any novel involving Vikings. I’m enjoying this book too, though I detect some historical errors. It’s set slightly before my Erling books.

What do I envy most in other historical writers’ works? The ability to describe geography, plants, and wildlife. I struggle with that stuff. “What kind of flowers would be blooming in an English marsh in Somerset in April, 980 AD, and how would they smell?” Would it be the same varieties they have now? How much have things changed in a thousand years? How much guessing do the authors do? Sigrid Undset was great at that stuff, but she was an amateur expert in botany.

What comforts me most? Finding mistakes. If successful novelists can screw up on details, maybe I can get away with a few howlers too. Because I know they’re there, like Communists under the beds (who were also actually there, as it happened).

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Lies We Tell Ourselves,’ by Steve Higgs

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I reviewed Shadow of a Lie,  the first book in Steve Higgs’s Det. Tony Heaton Trilogy, a few days ago. The second book is The Lies We Tell Ourselves.

A little orientation: Tony Heaton is a detective in English Kent. He had intended to just coast as he approached retirement, but was assigned to a new Cold Case squad headed by a hotshot young detective, Ashley Long.

Tony finds his own long-dormant passion for his job reviving as they dig into old puzzles, but that new enthusiasm is tempered by fear – fear that they will investigate one murder about which he has personal knowledge – knowledge he’s been covering up for many years.

In The Lies We Tell Ourselves, they examine a couple more cold murders, which turn out to be connected. The victories are sweet, but Tony’s guilty uneasiness is growing.

I noticed more typos in this book than in the first one. Also, one of the murder victims is a Frenchman named Michelle – except that’s the female spelling. I’m pretty sure it should have been Michel. This isn’t arcane knowledge; somebody should have noticed in the editing process.

These books are fairly well written, but Tony can be an irritating hero/narrator. Especially due to his blatant hypocrisy when he describes his contempt for people who conceal knowledge of murder, while he himself remains guilty of the same thing.

But that’s character complexity. I imagine it’s working up to a big crisis in the third book.

Fiction, Reviews

Rise of the Merlin: The Darkness Within

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A lot of foreshadowing preceded episode six of Rise of the Merlin. We’ve seen a woman watching Merlin and riding beside him in his imagination, and in the last episode we learned she was King Custennin’s daughter, Ganieda. But what happened to her? Why did Custennin accuse Merlin of refusing to save her?

Now we know the intense story that provoked the legendary mage to run from civilization when we first met him. After leaving his tutelage with the Hill Folk, he meets a woman who’s hunting a boar, follows her to her fortified city, and learns she’s the king’s daughter. He also learns the people are Atlantean whose boats had been separated from King Avallach and thought to be lost. Both groups thought they were the only ones to survive the ruining of Atlantis.

Did I mention Ganieda is adorable? A year later, she and Merlin are married, and they live happily ever after, which is enough to drive any man mad. (I was going to leave it at that to avoid spoiling the story, but I’ll go ahead and say it. Bad things happen, and Ganieda dies. I’ll get to Merlin’s reaction in a minute.)

Ganieda is a figure from the old Welsh stories, but she isn’t described there as Merlin’s wife. She’s his sister or even his twin. In one story, she’s the wife of a Scottish lord who battles and kills Merlin’s patron. In another account, the Scotsman and patron fight together. Either way, the patron dies and Merlin is distraught, while Ganieda is an observer either grieving or reacting to her brother. Lawhead makes this relationship more personal and so the tragedy that pushes Merlin to madness makes more sense.

At the end of episode two, we meet Merlin under a rock in the pouring rain. This was his response not only to losing his wife (who was with child) but also to his reaction to that loss. We see a moment of that reaction in the trailer. We hear about it when he returns to Maridunum the first time. In two different battles, Merlin falls into a battle trace. The first wins him the throne of Maridunum for his defense of the king and the people. The second is his merciless rage over the death of Ganieda, when the barbarian raiders return to the scene of their crime. Dozens of barbarians charge one admittedly intimidating young man and none survive. Even after they realize they’re getting slaughtered and begin to run, Merlin pulls them back to gut them. It’s this and one more outburst that drives him to renounce his life for many years to follow.

With the finale coming in two weeks, viewers have at least one question to consider, and it’s raised by Charis (in episode four, I think). Though Merlin has refused to take up Avallach’s sword for fear of his battle rage, Charis asks whether the salvation of Britain will require it. When the Saxon hoards are crushed, as surely they must be, will it be the people led by High King Aurellius or Merlin on their behalf? And what terror will Morgian accomplish?

Goofing

Grandiose Friday

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I think you’ve seen this picture before. It was taken at Norsk Høstfest in Minot several years back, when they did a promotion deal with the History Channel, and brought in some costumed models to sully our camp’s authenticity with base sex appeal.

I didn’t really mind.

Today I checked out the new AI function of Duck Duck Go, my favorite search engine. I found a utility for enhancing photos, and so I plugged that photo in and asked for the style of Frank Frazetta. Here’s the result:

Say what you will about me — that I’m old, and poor, and alone, and obscure, and ugly, and… well, there’s no dearth of material.

But I’ve had some great photos taken over the years, and some of them clean up pretty good.

Have a good weekend.

Music, Religion

‘Behold a Host, Arrayed in White’

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I recall sitting in my office one day (I think it was a Saturday; I had to work Saturdays at the time) back when I lived in Florida, listening to the local Christian station on my radio. Suddenly I heard the strains of “Behold a Host, Arrayed in White,” (an English translation is at this link) and was astonished. This is not a hymn much known outside Scandinavian Lutheran circles, and down among the gators a lot of people had no idea what a Lutheran was, let alone a Scandinavian Lutheran.

The reason the radio station had that song, I later learned, was that they leased music from the University of Northwestern (St. Paul) radio network’s licensing library, and Scandinavian Lutheranism is pretty well known up in these parts.

In my mind, at least, “Behold a Host” is the preeminent Scandinavian choral hymn. My dad and my grandparents loved it. This recording has the Norwegian lyrics, whose first lines actually go “This great, white host we see, like a thousand mountains full of snow, before the Throne – who are they?”

It’s a reference to Revelation 7:13-17:

 13Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, “These who are clothed in the white robes, who are they, and where have they come from?” 14I said to him, “My lord, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15“For this reason, they are before the throne of God; and they serve Him day and night in His temple; and He who sits on the throne will spread His tabernacle over them. 16“They will hunger no longer, nor thirst anymore; nor will the sun beat down on them, nor any heat; 17for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”

The text was written by Hans Adolph Brorson, a much-loved Danish pastor and hymn writer. The tune is, I believe, traditional, but this arrangement is by none other than Edvard Grieg.

This particular recording is of the choir of Augsburg College, Minneapolis, which happens to be my alma mater, though this performance was around 1945, somewhat before my time.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder at Blind Beck,’ by Bruce Beckham

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I found that I had missed one of the recent novels in Bruce Beckham’s Inspector Skelgill series. So I purchased Murder at Blind Beck. Once I was reading it, I wondered if I might have skipped it on purpose, for reasons I’ll explain. But I carried on, and had a generally good reading experience.

In this installment, Inspector Skelgill, who operates in England’s Lake District, along with his team, has been assigned to assist a group of documentarians in examining a historical murder case from the town of Kendal, in their stomping grounds. Back in the mid-19th Century, a young, deaf-mute servant woman was convicted of the double crime of attempting to drown her illegitimate baby, and murdering the philanthropist nobleman who employed her. She was sentenced to be “transported” (along with the baby) to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). Their reexamination of the evidence has been prompted by the discovery of a locket belonging to the woman, along with a cryptic note in her handwriting. Inspector Skelgill’s intimate knowledge of the local waterways proves useful in determining facts not until now understood.

Meanwhile, the team is also looking into the affairs of the murdered nobleman’s current heir, whose business operations are starting to smell bad. It looks increasingly as if he’s involved in human trafficking and slave labor.

Much of action centers on Sgt. Jones, who as an attractive young female finds doors opened to her, both among local women and with a lecherous property manager.

The problematic part of the story – for me – is the involvement of a group of local witches (though they do not call themselves that). I’m on record as saying I don’t believe in witches, either in the ancient or in the modern senses of the term. I don’t believe in magic (fantasy writer though I am). And I also don’t believe that there is an ancient, secret order of women who’ve passed the religion of Wicca down through the centuries. I believe modern Wicca is a romantic movement invented in the early 20th Century. This book did not take that view.

Still, I suppose I could take that as a fantasy element in Murder at Blind Beck. It was a good read otherwise.

Uncategorized

In memoriam, Robert Duvall

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This day sort of didn’t happen for me, in some sense. Yesterday I did a lecture which involved a long drive, and today I was just wiped out. Slept late, accomplished little in the writing realm except for some research-related reading.

Robert Duvall has died. I don’t know if he was my favorite actor; I just don’t think in those terms. But I think he was the actor I trusted most.

He came up in the same generation as Pacino and Hackman, but he identified better than any other actor with the common people of America. Speaking as a farmer’s son, I believed him utterly when he presented himself as a redneck. His contemporaries didn’t have that touch, and (I suspect) didn’t even want it.

I became a Duvall fan, I think, when I read him quoted in a newspaper, many years ago. I don’t remember the words exactly, of course, but it went something like this – “Southern governors ought to place roadblocks at their state lines, and turn back every Hollywood film crew that tries to cross. ‘We know what you want to do here,’ they should say, ‘and we’re not putting up with it.’”

His performance as Robert E. Lee in “Gods and Generals” was the only portrayal of the man that ever satisfied me.

His actual origins were privileged and pure California. His father was an admiral, his mother an actress. He was raised as a Christian Scientist, though he later said he didn’t attend church at all.

And yet, in “Tender Mercies” (clip above) and “The Apostle” he gave portrayals of born-again Christians that rang true as a solid gold dollar in a collection plate.

R.I.P., Robert Selden Duvall. Well done.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Shadow of a Lie,’ by Steve Higgs

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English author Steve Higgs has written a trilogy about an aging police detective named Tony Heaton, of which Shadow of a Lie is the first volume. It didn’t blow me away, but it was well-written and intriguing in its way.

Tony Heaton often thinks about the movie cliché where a cop gets killed just as he’s coming up on retirement. He’s coming up on retirement himself, but has no intention of putting himself anywhere near harm’s way. He serves in a small, quiet community in Kent, and though he was a hotshot up-and-comer when young, his career foundered following a mistake, and he’s been coasting ever since.

Then his commander (who loathes him) tells him he’s been assigned to a special project, investigating cold cases. He’s partnered with a young detective named Ashley (male) Long. Ashley is the kind of rising star Tony used to be, and a martial artist to boot. In spite of seniority, Ashley is put in charge of the project, and he steers them to the disappearance, several years before, of a young man in another small town. No body was ever found, so it’s technically a missing person’s case, but Ashley has a feeling about it.

There are, in fact, people out there who know what became of the missing boy, and they will go to any lengths to muddy up the trail. The action will pass beyond raised voices and threats to actual physical battery and shots fired. Tony will find himself closer than he ever imagined to that movie-cliché ending he used to laugh about.

And when the case is solved, a plot twist will arise, impelling the reader to move on to the series’ second book.

Pretty good. I thought some of the action in Shadow of a Lie was a little implausible; on the other hand I never realized before how useful zip ties could be in a fight.

Not a great mystery, but pretty good. A professional job of work. I don’t recall any content that calls for special cautions.

Fiction, Reviews

Rise of the Merlin: Who Is High King?

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The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin continues grim and sober in episode five. Last time, Merlin met two of the lesser kings and persuaded them to pledge loyalty to Aurellius, or at least think about it. This time, he rides into The Old North to urge Custennin and the Northern kings to join. Tension has been building since he left Ynys Avallach. None of the kings have welcomed the prospect of fighting the Saxons, seeming to prefer keeping their heads down until the fight comes to them.

Custennin doesn’t welcome Merlin either, but for different reasons. They have history, which has been described and hinted at. In fact, everyone who remembers him knows of these dark deeds. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen a key moment that has defined Merlin’s present-day character but has yet to be explored for viewers. I think we’re going to get that in episode six. I’ll let you know.

This episode is entitled “The Price of Failure,” which is how Merlin approaches the anger he gets from Custennin. He believes he failed. On the other side of Britain, Uther explores his failures by continuing to bark at the lesser kings when he should be building their confidence in their cause and Aurellius as the High King. He’s not working with soldiers; he’s working with proud men who are used to commanding those around them. Scottish actor Chick Allan (shown above) plays the proud, but sensible, King Gorlas, who may be the strongest warlord among them. Will he submit to Aurellius’s leadership?

As you can tell, the series plot isn’t galloping along. It’s walking at a good pace, focusing on the main characters. This ep. relieved a little tension with two climatic scenes near the end, but the main wire that’s been taut for so long doesn’t slack. The brief scene at the close had me asking, “What?” aloud, because I thought that’s what we were getting this time. Now, I have to wait a week.

I’ve read comments from people who aren’t watching the series complaining about the Christian themes they’ve seen or heard about. It’s lightly handed (is that a phrase?). It’s more demonstrative in this ep. than the fourth and is perhaps most in the foreground in the second, but it comes to mind now because even this light theme gives everything the depth of interest it needs. A story needs a soul, a hearty soul that breathes life into every details. Kudos to the showrunners and writers for having the depth of soul to craft a good story.

Music, Religion

‘O Love That Will Not Let Me Go”

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A hymn tonight, as is so often my lazy default on Fridays. I’ve posted a different version of the one before, but it never gets old. I can’t find a composition or publication date for “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go, ” but Wikipedia reports that its author, Rev. George Matheson, wrote it on the evening of his sister’s wedding.  It must have been a poignant moment for him, as he’d gone blind as a young man, and his sister had been his caretaker since then.

He wrote, “I am quite sure that the whole work was completed in five minutes, and equally sure that it never received at my hands any retouching or correction. I have no natural gift of rhythm. All the other verses I have ever written are manufactured articles; this came like a dayspring from on high.”

He himself had been engaged to be married once, but his fiancée broke it off when she learned he was losing his sight. In spite of his handicap, he became a very successful minister in the Scottish Presbyterian Church and a respected scholar, publishing several books and earning an LL.D. degree.

Matheson is also the author of my favorite hymn, “Make Me a Captive, Lord,” which I hardly ever sing anymore, because my church doesn’t seem to know about it, and everybody but me sings it wrong anyway.

Have a blessed weekend.