Uncategorized, Writing

Superfluous is suspicious

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Raymond Burr as Perry Mason, and Barbara Hale as Della Street, in Perry Mason.

Just yesterday I was talking to someone about recent reports that the most popular content on video streaming services is old, not new entertainment. This article from Screenrant lists 7 suggested reasons for this phenomenon. All of them may have validity, but I wonder if there might be one more – the fact that the older the show, the less woke it’s likely to be. The less likely it will be to try to stuff some fashionable new moral imperative down the viewer’s throat.

In my own case, I’ve been spending my evenings of late with Amazon Prime, working my way through the Perry Mason series (1957-1966). There’s some irony in this – next to Lawrence Welk, there was no show I hated more than Perry Mason when I was a kid. I found it dull – few fisticuffs or gunfights, and half the show was people blabbing in a courtroom. But my mother loved it. Today, there’s almost nothing on television I enjoy watching more than Perry Mason. I guess that means that – despite all appearances – I may have matured a little.

Something else that’s changed about me is that I’ve become a writer. Therefore, I watch for plot mechanisms. And I’ve noticed something – something that’s probably been obvious to more perceptive viewers for a long time.

I’ve figured out how to guess whodunnit in a lot of the episodes – not all of them, but many.

Watch for the superfluous character.

The thing to bear in mind is that – especially in television – especially in the old days – budgets were tight. The revision process in script development often involved finding ways to cut locations (if you can find a way to repeat shooting locations and sets you can save a lot of money) and cut characters (speaking actors are an expense. Make two characters into one whenever you can.)

So if you’re watching an episode of an old series like Perry Mason (or Murder She Wrote, or Columbo, etc.), and you notice a character who has lines (not a non-speaking extra) but seems to be there for no other reason than to make conversation, they’re not there by accident. If you can think of no other reason for the producers to pay them, they’re probably the murderer.

This goes double if the superfluous character is a familiar actor whom you’re used to seeing in bigger roles.

Written fiction is easier. You can deploy a cast of thousands at no additional cost.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The First Death of Winter,’ by Kevin Wignall

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The Senior Year Hiking Club of the exclusive Altdorf residential high school in Switzerland is on a mountain trek when a blizzard blows up. The teacher in charge makes the calculated decision –the right one, as it turns out – to return to the hotel at the cable car station rather than proceeding to their planned base camp. When they get back to the hotel, all the other tourists on the mountain have departed, and the weather makes it impossible to send another car down. But the night caretaker, a young American named Matty Burkhalter, opens the hotel for them so they can wait the storm out.

But that night, one of the students, a young woman, is stabbed to death. It’s The First Death of Winter. Matty Burkhalter finds himself responsible for preserving the evidence and (on the telephoned instructions of the police) interviewing the surviving students, now all suspects. Everybody has secrets, but Matty has a secret of his own – he’s wanted for murder in the US, and the less attention he gets from the police, the happier he’ll be.

Kevin Wignall is a reliable writer. Thrillers are his usual genre, but this one is more of a mystery, with echoes of Agatha Christie. He’s not the fanciest prose stylist out there, but his work is professional. The First Death of Winter was a low-key, satisfying mystery story. There’s a Christian character featured, who’s a little weird but sympathetic overall.

Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Long Time Dead,’ by J. M. Dalgliesh

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The other day I reviewed a book by William MacIlvanney, considered a founder of the Scottish “Tartan Noir” school of detective fiction. I disagreed with some of the attitudes he expressed, but was highly impressed with his writing. Now I’ve read a book by one of MacIlvanney’s successors, J. M. Dalgliesh – A Long Time Dead. The writing was good in general (though a misplaced modifier sneaked past the editors), but the world view here was even less to my taste.

Duncan McAdam grew up on the Isle of Skye, but fled family tensions as soon as he could. Now he’s a police detective in Glasgow, but he’s unpopular both with his colleagues and his bosses. When they get a call that a young woman’s body has been found on Skye, buried and preserved in peat, they send Duncan off to investigate. He has no wish to go – his mother has dementia and is confined to a home there, and he doesn’t get along well with his sister. But go he must.

The dead girl has been easily identified – she is Isla Matheson, who vanished about twenty years ago and was assumed to have been a runaway. Her body shows no sign of violence. And she seems to have been a popular girl – no motive for her murder is apparent. Duncan’s investigation will delve deeply into the dark side of island life, uncovering secrets  that, like the body, have been long concealed.

J. M. Dalgliesh is a good writer. He paints his characters well and crafts effective dialogue. I quite enjoyed reading A Long Time Dead – right up until the solution appeared.

Discussing that solution involves dropping a spoiler into this review – I’ll try to conceal it, but it won’t be hard to guess. The murderer’s identity and the motive hinge, as in so many modern stories, on the guilt of the one subculture in our society that it’s still OK to stigmatize. Crazy nonconformists who haven’t evolved with the times, who don’t even merit sympathy. Know what I mean?

Anyway, A Long Time Dead was a pretty good mystery, but I’m done with J. M. Dalgliesh.

Music

Sunday Singing: O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High!

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Our Palm Sunday hymn this year is “O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High!” attributed to the great German scholar Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471). Originally in Latin, Benjamin Webb (1819-1885) was the first to translate it into English as a hymn. The tune is a traditional ballad from the 15th century known as Deo Gracias or the Agincourt Hymn.

“It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” (Romans 4:24–25 ESV)

1 Oh, love, how deep, how broad, how high,
Beyond all thought and fantasy,
That God, the Son of God, should take
Our mortal form for mortals’ sake!

2 He sent no angel to our race,
Of higher or of lower place,
But wore the robe of human frame,
And to this world himself he came.

3 For us baptized, for us he bore
His holy fast and hungered sore;
For us temptation sharp he knew;
For us the tempter overthrew.

4 For us he prayed; for us he taught;
For us his daily works he wrought,
By words and signs and actions thus
Still seeking not himself but us.

5 For us by wickedness betrayed,
For us, in crown of thorns arrayed,
He bore the shameful cross and death;
For us he gave his dying breath.

6 For us he rose from death again;
For us he went on high to reign;
For us he sent his Spirit here
To guide, to strengthen, and to cheer.

7 All glory to our Lord and God
For love so deep, so high, so broad;
The Trinity whom we adore
Forever and forevermore.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction

The Progressive Era Didn’t End Well and Alban Buns

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Last week, I told I was almost done with Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and couldn’t talk about it in full yet. Now that I’ve finished it, I can say I appreciate it overall and it won’t make any list of recommended reading from me. It was a little long-winded, unevenly humorous, and the point driven home at the end is an ugly one.

Twain’s Yankee engineer is an ideal man, in a sense, and very lucky. He applies knowledge to a variety of fortunate occurrences and builds a brilliant reputation for himself. He quickly earns the loyalty of people who pull him through other scrapes, even to when he takes full credit for all actions afterward. He can practically create the entire nineteenth century in Medieval England on his own. And at the height of it, when Camelot falls apart as it does in the historic legend, he says, now we must push to destroy the Catholic Church and the order of chivalry. The final chapters depict this push with horrific bloodshed that could be taken as comic if there weren’t so many bodies on the ground.

Aside: I was offended by Merlin’s stunt at the very end, because when has he demonstrated any skill of this kind before? Is or is he not a charlatan?

What should readers take away from this application of Progressive ideals on the medieval world? Does the Yankee triumph? Does he accomplish his goals?

A Connecticut Yankee was published in 1889, the end of a pretty good decade in the United States. That was before the Spanish-American War for Cuban independence, the Philippine-American War against Filippino independence, the Russo-Japanese War in which the US worked for a balance of powers, and conflicts over the building of the Panama Canal. Theodore Roosevelt was a player in all of these. After these came World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, so one would understand if viewers came away with the impression that the great Progressive Era ushered mankind into the position he’s always wanted–to play God. If the Yankee’s ideas would not be accepted by rubes too thick to see the wisdom of them, then the rubes could die, and should die to out of the way of progress, and would die in front of the Yankee’s superior technology.

Twain was a member of the Anti-Imperialist League that opposed the U.S. war effort against the Philippines and various conflicts that gave a sense of an expanding American empire. Twain may have asked, if we were a free nation, why would we fight to subjugate other nations? Which is the very thing the Connecticut Yankee attempts in the end. He presses his ideals into tryanny and in a manner of speaking murders everyone. Maybe that was Twain’s point.

Anyway, let me share a few links before I let you go for the day.

More on Connecticut Yankee: James Turner has a long piece on Medievelists.net. “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court found some of its greatest and most engaged champions with Soviet artists, perhaps unsurprisingly when you consider the novel two-pronged critique of both the inherent corruption and excesses of aristocratic society and its cautious approach to the cold heart and supposedly self-defeating exploitation of workers under the capitalist system.”

Recommended changes: Agrarian author Wendell Berry offers revisions to the Marvel cinematic universe in this piece by Jeff King. “The villains have just not been believable. Why a squinting, purple monster looking to eliminate half of life in the universe when the strip mining industry is right there?”

Hot Cross Buns: Alban Buns (the precursor to our Hot Cross Buns) were first baked in 1361 and given to the poor on Good Friday. This and more history of one of my favorite rolls from Richard Baxter.

Role Models: With Purim starting, Mijal Bitton suggests American Jews look to Esther as a role model. “Esther symbolizes the way too many Jews feel today — confronted by rising hatred against their Judaism.”

Good Fun: A little love for Don Quixote. “Cervantes is ingenious.”

Uncategorized, Writing

King Knut and the tide

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I wracked the aging remnants of my brain tonight to think of something to post. Oh, how I’d like to be one of those writers who can turn up topics to riff off at the shortest notice. James Lileks writes 5 blog posts a week, plus several columns, at the least. I can only gape like the village idiot.

Anyway, I finally found the little clip above. It comes from the BBC, and a documentary done by the Icelandic/British scholar Magnus Magnusson in 1980. It’s about the famous story of King Canute (or Cnut, or Knut) and the tides. It’s often been remembered as an example of royal hubris, but Magnusson explains the context. In the original story, it was Canute’s (or Cnut’s, or Knut’s) purpose to teach humility to his courtiers, who’d been flattering him excessively.

I personally doubt the whole story, especially the part at the end where Canute (or Cnut, or… oh, forget it) gives up wearing a crown.

Canute plays a significant role in The Baldur Game, my work in progress, and the picture I get of him from the sagas doesn’t at all comport with a story like that. I actually tried to like Canute, since he was one of the most successful Vikings ever, and ruled England quite effectively by all accounts.

But the man was treacherous. Not somebody to turn your back on.

I hope that’s not too much of a spoiler for the book.

Have a good weekend, and leave the tides alone, unless you’re surfing.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Strange Loyalties,’ by William McIlvanney

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While we waited for Jan, Brian asked me about Ena and the children. I had seen them the day before; Sunday: the day of the child, the new agnostic sabbath when all over the western world diffident fathers turned up to catch a glimpse of the only things they still believed in from their marriage. They brought gifts of ill-fitting clothes and books that would never be read and membership-cards for leisure centres.

Usually, when a writer is expressly liberal in his opinions, I’ll drop him quietly, because we’re just not compatible. But I enjoyed William McIlvanney’s Strange Loyalties too much to do that. I may even spring for the previous two books in this series. This novel was written back in the 1970s, and the liberalism expressed is similar to the naïve kind I myself espoused back in those days. McIlvanney is remembered as a founding father of the “Tartan Noir” school of detective writing, but I doubt very much that any of his successors ever surpassed him. This is a bona fide work of literature, genre or not.

Jack Laidlaw is a Glasgow detective. In the honorable tradition of hard-boiled policemen’s lives, his is going to pieces. He’s divorced, and his relationship with his new girlfriend is on the rocks. When his brother Scott is hit by a car and killed in their home town, Jack is gripped by an existential compulsion – he needs to know why. The death isn’t legally suspicious – the driver was with his family, and Scott was unquestionably drunk. But why had Scott’s life gone awry in the first place? Once he was a talented artist with a bright future, but somehow he’d lost his reason for living.

The investigation will lead to Scott’s ex-wife and her social circle, and to his old friends. Jack will uncover corruption, which will tie in with a case his partners are working on back in Glasgow. And he will learn, in the end, his brother’s dark secret.

First of all, I have to say that the prose in Strange Loyalties was as good as I’ve ever read. Anywhere. McIlvanney was a brilliant stylist. Great lines abound: “A kitchen in the morning: it can be a garden of the senses. The sunlight is shafting in through the window, as if William Blake had been given the commission today and is announcing the sacredness of everyday.” “There are few sounds more forlorn than the phone of someone you love ringing out with no one to answer.”

Also (and maybe this is a function of the cultural period), even though there’s plenty of darkness and cynicism in this book, it wasn’t nihilistic. There were hopeful moments. There was even an obscure biblical reference, a mention of the “Rechabites.” (But that was also the name of a temperance society, so maybe it was they the author had in mind.)

I relished Strange Loyalties. It was as smooth as top-shelf, single malt whisky (not that I’ve ever tasted that). Highly recommended.

Writing

Writer’s journal: Spring freeze edition

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Crocuses. Photo credit alesmaze. Unsplash license.

It’s a very Minnesota thing, actually. Yesterday was the first day of spring, so the temperature, which had been flirting with a springlike 60 degrees for weeks, plunged promptly to freezing. And that makes sense, in its way. One consistent thing about our winters is that, however mild they may have gotten, a final blast must infallibly come after the spring equinox. One last hard freeze. Maybe one last blizzard. Like a kid being wakened for school, who whines for just a few more minutes in bed.

We might get snow over the weekend. Quite a lot, even. Don’t put that snow blower away yet, neighbors.

You want spring in this state, you gots to pay your dues. Even if it’s been spring most of the winter.

How is the book coming? The Baldur Game is coming together. I finished another revision and sent it off to beta readers. Once they get back to me, pointing out my howling howlers and shrieking sins of omission, I’ll do some more work on it and – I imagine – get it up on Amazon.

I took a peek at the first few paragraphs after I sent it to the readers – which is cheating according to my personal protocols. This is the time to wipe my brain clean, forget everything about it, so I can come back and view the thing with semi-unbiased eyes.

But that peek told me I’ll probably need to polish it a little more. I may have actually sabotaged myself at some points. I have this quirk I employ, especially in the Erling books. I try for an antique effect by altering my verbs. Instead of writing, “I haven’t got any bread,” I’ll write, “I’ve no bread.” Sounds vaguely Irish, which fits Father Ailill. But my peek suggested that maybe I overdid it. Made the prose difficult to read. I’ll have to check for that.

But not now. Don’t think about it now. For the time being, I’m working my way up to my audio book version of The Year of the Warrior. Very preliminary. Learning stages. The technology scares me, but some people helped me out generously with equipment, and I need to master this stuff. Small steps, ascending learning curve, in the Jordan Peterson style.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Surf City Acid Drop,’ by Craig Terlson

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“Trust a guy like you to drive this far. What’s wrong with Minnesota?”

“Too many Scandinavians.”

Craig Terlson’s entertaining Luke Fischer mysteries began with Surf City Acid Drop, which I’ve finally gotten around to. I had assumed, on the basis of the title, that we’d find about our hero’s background as a surfer, but in fact it’s just a metaphor. The “acid drop” is a phenomenon where a wave drops out from under a surfer; Luke (who has never surfed) gets the water pulled out from under his feet, so to speak, more than once in this story.

Luke Fischer is a Canadian expatriate slacker living near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. He insists (often) that he’s not a private detective, but occasionally people ask him to look for things. His new client is a slightly shady woman who tells him she wants him to find her brother, who has disappeared and gone on the road.

Thus Luke sets out on a road trip that will take him through the American West and Midwest. Along the way he’ll encounter an eccentric hit man he calls Mostly Harold, who will become his problematic ally – if Harold doesn’t decide to kill him instead. All in a quest for a much-coveted bag full of rocks (not diamonds).

As always, Craig Terlson’s quirky characters and socko prose are what made the book. I found this one a little more cohesive than the one I read previously, but still I think Luke’s great weakness as a main character is his lack of fire in the belly. He doesn’t seem to care much about anything, and even his fear of death seems muted. Which doesn’t mean he isn’t still fun to spend time with. But it did make some stretches of the book a little slow. The humor, though often dark, helps pass the time.

All in all, I quite enjoyed Surf City Acid Drop, and recommend it. Cautions for language and violence.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘All Hands On Deck,’ by Will Sofrin

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…being aloft in that storm made me appreciate all I was learning. We were on only day four of our passage, had traveled only one-tenth of the distance to our destination, and I had already seen more than I could have imagined or planned for. There was no off switch, no time-out, no opportunity to stop and take a break. That moment forever changed my understanding of how to handle adversity. The only way out was through.

Like many other people of taste, I have a great fondness for the 2003 move, Master and Commander, starring Russell Crowe. I find sailing fascinating (though I have almost no experience with it), and have enjoyed reading both the Horatio Hornblower and the Aubrey/Matchurin classic novel series. The movie was a box-office disappointment, but has acquired a well-deserved popularity in the ensuing years.

But one thing it never occurred to me to wonder about was where they got the ship that served as the HMS Surprise in the movie. Turns out it was originally called the Rose (after the historical HMS Rose of the British Navy), and had had a lackluster career as a museum ship and tourist attraction on the US East Coast. When the movie studio decided to buy it, it was docked at Newport, Rhode Island. That was where Will Sofrin, a somewhat rudderless young boat bum, joined the crew. He and a motley, coed group of sailors took the ship (which turned out to be poorly built, badly maintained, and leaky) through the Panama Canal to San Diego, surviving a hurricane, a dismasting, and various interpersonal conflicts along the way. The final result is the book, All Hands On Deck: A Modern-Day High Seas Adventure to the Far Side of the World.

I always enjoy a good sea story, and Sofrin does an excellent job telling the tale of this voyage. He works in a lot of background about how the British Navy operated in the Age of Sail, as well as more detail than most of us will probably ever need about sailing techniques and technical terms. This information will be of great benefit to fans of Patrick O’Brian’s novels.

The human drama that went on among the crew, particularly when it comes to sexual relations between members of a mixed-sex crew, sometimes offered more information than I wanted. But the story as a whole was human and relatable, and the lessons the author learned were exemplary. He also writes pretty well.

I enjoyed reading All Hands On Deck, and recommend it, especially for O’Brian fans.