Fiction, Reviews

‘Dark Ride,’ by Lou Berney

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My city is a midsized metropolitan area in the middle of the middle of the United States. It’s flat and sprawling and a lot like a lot of other places, with no distinguishing characteristics geographic or otherwise. If my city was a suspect in a crime, the eyewitnesses would have a tough time describing it. You could probably say the same thing about me.

Think of The Big Lebowski. But imagine it, not as a dark parody, but as a full-on, dead-serious 21st Century Noir novel. That’s more or less the ambience of Lou Berney’s Dark Ride.

I’ve reviewed a couple Lou Berney novels before, and I liked them very much. I haven’t read one in a while now because the publisher prices them high, but I got a deal on Dark Ride. And it’s very, very good.

Hardy “Hardly” Reed is a classic slacker. Long, shaggy hair, tee-shirts, board shorts, flip-flops. He holds a minimum wage job as a “frightener” at a horror-themed amusement park, and the rest of his time is spent playing video games and getting stoned with his slacker friends.

Until one particular day, when he’s at the Department of Motor Vehicles, getting an extension on a parking ticket. He notices a pair of small children sitting on a bench outside of an office. He’s puzzled by how quiet they are. They don’t laugh, they don’t play, they don’t talk. They just sit staring, like commuters on a bus. He approaches them to say hello, and then notices small, perfectly circular marks on their bodies. Someone has burned these children with cigarettes.

Something comes over Hardly then that he’s never experienced before. He discovers he cares. He tries to get help from a DMV worker, then from Child Protective Services. Nobody seems greatly concerned. The bureaucracy is snowed under with work. Hardly decides that if nobody else will help, he will. He can’t afford to hire a private detective, so he’ll learn to investigate on his own. Usually in his life, he’s given up on any task that seemed difficult or dangerous. But he can’t let go of this one.

Will Hardly, just this once in his life, be good enough?

I read Dark Ride almost in one sitting. It proved to be a grimmer story than I expected, but that only pulled me in. This is an excellent and original thriller. I recommend it. Cautions for language, sex, and drug use.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Ask the River,’ by Dan Wheatcroft

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Installment Two of Dan Wheatcroft’s “Leveller” series. I still haven’t entirely made up my mind what I think about Wheatcroft’s work, but I have to say I enjoyed reading Ask the River.

Like the previous volume, this books follows two different main characters – Inspector Thurstan Baddeley of the Liverpool police, and “Nicks,” the mysterious hit man who eliminates very bad criminals under the direction – and protection – of some shadowy, unnamed authority.

The main problem with Wheatcroft’s books is their complexity. No doubt this mirrors real police work where – in contrast to the average cop show – detectives work on many cases simultaneously. It does tax the reader’s memory at times, though.

There’s the case of an old man, a Polish Holocaust survivor, who dies in his bed, overdosed on sleeping pills – it might be natural causes, but Baddeley is suspicious. There’s a neighborhood terrorized by punks on motorcycles, whom the police can never catch or stop. There’s a crooked businessman found hanging from a bridge abutment. Among others.

Meanwhile, Nicks (he doesn’t really advance the plot much in this book) dispatches several monsters by untraceable means.

This book was ultimately something of a downer, though there’s a nice rescue scene toward the end. But – as I keep saying – I just like these characters and enjoy following them. (Also, the books are free on Kindle right now.)

As always, I have quibbles. Wheatcroft is not at his best with grammar. He uses the word “intercede” wrong, speaks of someone being “in the throws of” something, and has never figured out how to conjugate the verb “sat.”

He makes a firearms error when he assumes a revolver can be effectively silenced. He mentions some of the CIA’s more unsavory accomplishments, which might indicate a political sentiment – though, on the other side, numerous jabs are taken at political correctness.

In short, not a perfect book, but engrossing.

Authors, Non-fiction

Praise for Wildcat, a Biopic on Flannery O’Connor

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Author and professor Karen Swallow Prior reviews a new biopic film by Ethan Hawke about one of our favorite Southern authors, Flannery O’Connor.

“One of the film’s greatest feats is packing so many of O’Connor’s life experiences and thoughts—as expressed not only in her stories but also in her Prayer Journal, letters, essays, and lectures—into a dense, intricately woven film that runs under two hours. Hawke’s restraint reflects perfectly the restraint of the life O’Connor lived …”

Authors, The Press

I’m probably wrong

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Jon Fosse. Photo credit: Jarvin – Jarle Vines. Creative Commons Attribution, Share Alike 3.0

Our friend Dave Lull sent me a link to this article from Literary Hub. It’s about the work of Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse (whose Septology I reviewed for Ad Fontes). What particularly interests me about this article is that it’s written by a woman who has translated Fosse’s plays into “American” English.

I was particularly struck by the fact that Sarah Cameron Sunde, the author of the article, deals in particular with a translation issue on which I have views of my own. And her views are the opposite of mine. The difference hangs on how to translate a simple, two-letter word: “Ja.” (It means yes.) She writes:

One such word that appears again and again (over 150 times, in fact) in Natta Syng Sine Songar is “ja”—I had noticed that this repetition was missing in the British translation, and instead the translator had chosen to replace each “ja” with what he thought it meant in each given moment—which often meant “yes” and sometimes deleting it entirely, when it seemed like filler word. But the repetition felt critical to me for several reasons: 1) the everyday quality of the word as it is spoken, not written, 2) the way this “ja” could function to build tension between live performers, 3) and how it unites the characters despite the vast space between them.

In my Ad Fontes review of Septology (which was generally favorable to the translation by Damion Searls) I criticized his repeated use of the word “yes” to translate “ja” in the text. My own view is that the Norwegian “ja” serves multiple purposes in Fosse’s Nynorsk dialect. It can stand for “Well,” or “All right,” or “I don’t know,” plus a host of other expressions. For that reason, I felt it ought to be translated with several different everyday interjections. Sunde translates it “yeh” in every case, in her work. Perhaps that’s a good choice in the context of theatrical production, but I question it.

Nevertheless, Sunde’s article is an insightful and interesting one.

Fiction, Reviews

‘One is Evil,’ by Jeff Buick

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I had never heard of the Canadian author Jeff Buick before I picked up One is Evil, the first volume in a prospective series. I’m pleased to report that I was highly impressed.

Bobby Greco used to be an Orlando, Florida homicide cop. Set up by crooked vice cops, he got kicked off the force. But he had friends who owed him favors, and managed to snag a good job doing insurance investigations.

It’s in that capacity that he checks out a claim relating to Alexis Chamberlain, the wife of the highly respected head of a major aerospace technology firm. It’s just a routine job – the company is ready to pay off on the claim. But Bobby has a cop’s instincts, and those instincts tell him something is off about this woman. Looking into her life more deeply, he reaches a startling conclusion – this isn’t the same woman. Somehow, she’s been switched for a duplicate. Which puts an unknown entity within reach of some of the country’s most sensitive military secrets.

That spark sets off an avalanche of consequences. Bobby teams up with an attractive female NSA agent, and before long not only they but their families are under threat – even as the clock is running out for the real Alexis Chamberlain. The action will stretch from the American south to the French Riviera, and on to Siberia.

There were flaws in One is Evil. The Canadian author sometimes gets American diction wrong – the Girl Scouts become the Girl Guides, bars become pubs. Cookies, of course, become biscuits. The prose is effective but not elegant, and there’s an occasional spelling mistake.

But the plot is intricate and beautifully choreographed. The dramatic tension ratchets up mercilessly. Like any thriller, One is Evil was less than entirely plausible, but it was convincing, and I bought into it completely. I also liked and cared about the characters.

One is Evil is a winner, and Jeff Buick is an author worth following.

Music

Sunday Singing: All People That on Earth Do Dwell

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Today’s hymn comes from a man who is thought to have been one of the scholars behind the Geneva Bible of 1560. He lived for a time in Geneva (overlapping dates with the great John Calvin) and worked on 25 Psalm versifications for an English psalter. This one, derived from Ps. 100, has endured until today and found the most popularity. The tune also comes from Calvin’s service to the church, being attributed to his music director Louis Bourgeois.

“Know that the LORD, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” (Psalm 100:3 ESV)

1 All people that on earth do dwell,
sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
him serve with fear, his praise forth tell,
come ye before him and rejoice.

2 The Lord ye know is God indeed;
without our aid he did us make;
we are his folk, he doth us feed,
and for his sheep he doth us take.

3 O enter then his gates with praise,
approach with joy his courts unto;
praise, laud, and bless his name always,
for it is seemly so to do.

4 For why? The Lord our God is good,
his mercy is forever sure;
his truth at all times firmly stood,
and shall from age to age endure.

Music, Reading

Getting into Classical Music, Reading

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Speaking of Norway, when I began earning spending money in my late teens, I agreed to receive the initial offer from The Musical Heritage Society. You could receive the monthly featured album (tape or CD) very naturally (they would just assume you wanted it) or refuse it. They sent a small musical review to let you know what you would receive with plenty of time to opt out. That’s how I was introduced to Camille Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3 which added a pipe organ to orchestra. It’s how I fell in love with Dvorak’s Symphony No 9 (The New World Symphony) and judge every other recording of it by the one I played repeatedly in my 20s. I was familiar with “Flight of the Bumblebee” and Scheherazade from the radio, so I bought four tapes of Rimsky-Korsakov’s music, one with the Arabia Nights piece, the other three with several works I didn’t know, like the “Procession of the Nobles.”

The Musical Heritage Society is also how I purchased a tape of Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt, recorded with full choir for The Hall of the Mountain King and a gorgeous soprano for Solvieg’s Song. This recording, which I think only had voices in these two pieces,

I listened to this music so much, I engrained it in my mind. Later I forgot where certain familiar melodies (one or two) came from. I remembered them casually, almost as if I’d made them up, and lo, they were from Peer Gynt. Moments like that make me think I haven’t had an original thought in my life. Maybe all of my ideas are just a snatch of something I heard in the past, ripped from its context, its source forgotten.

Anyway, what else do we have today?

Reading: A video reflection on reading carefully and how you evaluate your speed.

Is it real or is it math? Patrick Kurp offers this post about math, sort of, and poetry. I feel too dim-witted to get it, at least at the moment.

Poetry: Take a moment for this poem, “Shiloh” by Alyssa Souza

Fleeing the war Refugee Letters: At the height of World War II, three women flee Europe with the Bruderhof community for a pioneer life in South America

We had realized for many months the insecurity of our position in England as there was so much hate growing in the hearts of the general populace. This could be understood because we had many German members; also the pacifism of our English members roused a bitter spirit in nationalistic minds.

Photo: Image by wal_172619 from Pixabay

Music, Uncategorized, Writing

17 May

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It is my custom, every May 17, to make some kind of mention of Norway’s Constitution Day, celebrated each year on this date. I’ve told the story of the holiday many times – this year I’ll restrict myself to saying that Norway celebrates its Constitution Day as its major national holiday because of a historical anomaly – we had a constitution for almost a century before we got independence. So Constitution Day became the traditional patriotic holiday.

The video above is rather nice – lots of natural beauty, in which Norway is excessively rich. If you’d like a translation of the lyrics, you can find it here.

The Syttende Mai present I received today was a good writing session. I actually gave myself the shivers reading the current draft of The Baldur Game. I suppose that’s insufferable, like comedians who laugh at their own jokes. But writing at my level offers few tangible rewards. And finding the same exhilaration in your own writing that you get from your favorite authors’ is as delicious as it is rare.

To make things even better, I had a thought today – not as common an occurrence as you might imagine. (G. B. Shaw once said that he’d made an international reputation by thinking once or twice a month.) I can’t remember what provoked the thought (perhaps it was the creative thrill I described above, but I’m not sure). But it suddenly appeared, fully formed in my head, and even after several hours I can find no fault with it. It goes like this:

No work of art is ever fully original, nor should it be. Art is a multimedia matrix of interactive themes and influences — all hyperlinked, in a sense. Taken all together, great art participates in an infinitely greater tapestry.

I think I’ll stand by that.

Have a good weekend.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dead Beat,’ by Micheal Maxwell

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Detective Comrade (seriously, that’s his name!) Flynt is part of the police force in a small, fictional California city. He is known to the other cops as “the leprechaun,” because he’s short, ugly, and his red hair is always unkempt. He was traumatized in a bad shooting some years ago, and his old partner covered for him ever since.

But his partner is dead now, and as Micheal Maxwell’s Dead Beat begins, Flynt is partnered with Lieutenant Noah Steele (Flynt and Steele, get it?). Steele is an up-and-comer, and their commander has tasked him, among other things, with finding a reason to fire Flynt, whom he considers (not without cause) dead weight.

But then they’re called to investigate the murder of a teenage drummer from a punk rock band, found stabbed to death with his drumsticks in a storage locker. As they proceed, Steele gradually discovers that, in spite of his partner’s eccentric and even repulsive personal habits, he has genuine gifts for investigation. And they start to form a bond.

When I find an ineptly written book these days, my inclination is to drop it quietly without ragging on the author. But author Micheal Maxwell describes himself as an “Amazon bestselling writer,” and that annoys me in a petty way. The fact that this kind of writing can generate bestsellers is painful to contemplate for someone who’s worked hard to improve his skills.

What was wrong with Dead Beat? Let me list some of the problems:

The prose was awkward – a representative line runs, “She was both maternal and attention-starved at the same time.” Or, “A mad array of pushing and shoving…”

In describing life in a Catholic orphanage, the author indulges in extreme stereotyping: All the nuns are cruel and abusive. Even as a Protestant and a well-known misogynist, I find that implausible. Women, in my experience, tend to be pretty sympathetic people – I find it hard to believe that, in any group of women, every single one could be a sadist.

In general, the writing here is amateurish. The author describes his characters to us (at excessive length), rather than revealing their personalities through their actions – and their actions, in fact, seem inconsistent and pretty much random.

I found an odd continuity problem in one particular scene, where the characters are described getting ready to sit down in a room, and then suddenly they are back in the hallway, walking toward the room.

Police procedures (I won’t describe them in detail) seemed implausible and unprofessional.

And finally, the big, brilliant deduction that impresses everybody at the climax turns out to involve a very obvious technical matter that I’m certain any crime scene technician would recognize in a minute.

In short, Dead Beat was a book that any pulp publisher back in my day would have shot back to the author before he’d finished reading the first page. I do not recommend it.

Religion

Conversions and reversions

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The Conversion of Saint Paul – painting by Spinello Aretino (Spinello di Luca Spinelli) (MET, 1975.1.11)

It is, I think, a function of my essential pessimism that I worry too much about celebrity conversions. Celebrity conversions, I’m sure, ought to be treated like any other conversions. Good news. Pray for them. But do not impute to them too much significance. In the parable of the sower, for instance (Matthew 13), only one seed out of four survives to bear fruit. And that, in my experience, is a pretty fair (possibly generous) rule of thumb.

The latest celebrity conversion I’ve been hearing about is the English actor, comedian, and media personality Russell Brand. I knew nothing about him before this news, aside from hearing his name and seeing his face online. He seems, according to Wikipedia, to have had a troubled life (imagine that – a comedian with a troubled life!), and has experienced drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and dabbling in various religions. But now he’s been baptized, and he claims to truly believe.

I’m all for him. Less promising converts have proved out to be great blessings. John Newton, for instance, was a foul slaver, insufferable even to other foul slavers. But God took hold of him, and he ended as a minister and a powerful abolitionist. He left us with the hymn, “Amazing Grace.”

I’ve reminisced about the 1970s before, the heady times we called the Jesus Movement. They made a movie about the Jesus Movement not long ago, starring Kelsey Grammar. I couldn’t get excited about it, though, because my memories of that time suffer in retrospect. Of all the people I prayed and evangelized with in those days, only one or two (out of my own circle) have persevered in anything that looks to me like the same faith.

As a cultural phenomenon, the Jesus Movement seems to me almost a complete bust. No doubt it suffered from the biblical illiteracy and theological ignorance of a bunch of young people gushing about their “experience.” In the long run, my perception is that the Jesus Movement simply got swallowed up in the wave of subjectivity that is still washing the pilings out from under our civilization.

In my mind, the Jesus Movement was too cool, too popular for a season. Luke 17:20 says that the Kingdom of God does not come in ways that can be observed. Which means (as I see it) that it doesn’t come in any way that we see coming. Jesus Himself didn’t come as expected. The stone that the builders rejected becomes the cornerstone (Psalm 118:22). God loves to blindside us.

I’ve seen lots of celebrity (and other) conversions in my time. The most promising often fell short. The least promising sometimes amazed us. Russell Brand could go either way. It’s not up to me, and it’s not my place to judge.

The most remarkable celebrity conversion I’ve observed was the one I expected the least from. I remember reading about Charles Colson’s conversion back in 1973, while I was in college. I think I read about it in Time Magazine. Congressman Albert Quie, who came from my home area and to whom I have family connections, helped lead him to Christ. Colson said reading C. S. Lewis had influenced him greatly.

“Oh great,” I said at the time. “That’s just who we need on our team. Colson.”

Chuck Colson was one of the most hated men in America in those days. Beyond the general contempt being rained on President Nixon, there was special derision for Colson, “Nixon’s hatchet man,” the guy who’d said he’d run over his grandmother for political advantage. I remember a college teacher bringing it up in a class, and I cringed on behalf of all Lewis fans.

But what do you know? Colson rang true. He served his sentence. He devoted himself thereafter to self-sacrificial ministry. He always spoke honestly, and he cared for the lost and the least.

There were plenty of people who never stopped hating him, of course, and he acquired new enemies as he went on. But he was a blessing, and he walked the walk.

In other words, let’s pray for Brand and wait and see.