Fiction, Reviews

‘A Fatal Glass of Beer,’ by Stuart M. Kaminsky

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“I find his movies deeply sad,” Jeremy said as we were driving.

“I don’t think he’d be happy to hear that,” I said. “He thinks they’re comedies.”

“Comedy does not mean we must laugh,” said Jeremy. “It is the reverse of tragedy. It suggests that life can continue without hope.”

The late Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Toby Peters novels are amusing reads, and they take a high road. I mean by that that a novelist, when producing stories about old Hollywood stars, would naturally be inclined to give the public what they want – sleaze and scandal. But Kaminsky (who was, I think, a very decent man), chose to handle them lightly, in comic stories. We get to see the stars at their best and most sympathetic.

The challenge of that approach seems to have been considerable in A Fatal Glass of Beer, in which Toby’s client is W. C. Fields. It’s hard to make Fields a likeable character, but Kaminsky does manage to make him a sympathetic one.

It’s 1943. Toby Peters, who for comic purposes persists as a low-rent PI, in spite of all the celebrity clients he’s served over the years, is facing some changes in his life. His ex-wife, for whom he’s carried a torch for years, is getting married to a movie star. He consoles himself, however, with a new girlfriend. He’s considering moving out of his broom closet office in a dentist’s office, due to a conflict with the dentist’s wife. And he’s reached a truce with his estranged brother, the cop, now that his sister-in-law has cancer.

W. C. Fields shows up with a problem that could have happened only to him. Over the years, during his vaudeville days, he put his financial eggs in many baskets by opening savings accounts, under assumed names, in various banks across the US. Now someone has stolen a number of his bank books, and is going around to the banks and withdrawing the funds. Fields wants Toby to accompany him on a road trip, to hunt the scoundrel down and recover the bank books and stolen money. Toby can use the business, though Fields is a challenging travel companion. Toby enlists his midget friend Gunther to serve as driver, and they set out on their transcontinental odyssey in Field’s Cadillac, fully equipped with a built-in bar and a stock of liquor in the trunk.

The hunt is a slapstick affair, until people start getting killed. Secrets are revealed, leading to further secrets. And W. C. Fields comes through it all unfazed, insensitive to others’ needs, dependent on alcohol, securely anchored in the persona he has created for himself, though we perceive more and more that in his heart he’s deeply lonely and sad. That Kaminsky succeeds in making us care about him is a testimony to his characterization skill.

I’d describe A Fatal Glass of Beer as one of the best entries in this classic series.

Music

Sunday Singing: Let Thy Blood in Mercy Poured

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Today’s hymn, “Let Thy Blood in Mercy Poured,” comes from the Greek tradition, and maybe if I could type Greek, I could search for the title on Greek pages. But the sources I’ve seen give no date for that version of the hymn, only that is came into English via Glasgow native and Free Church minister John Brownlie (1857-1925). The tune is much older, written by Lutheran cantor at Berlin’s St. Nicholas Church, Johann Crüger (1598-1662).

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1 ESV).

1 Let thy blood in mercy poured,
let thy gracious body broken,
be to me, O gracious Lord,
of thy boundless love the token.

Refrain:
Thou didst give thyself for me,
now I give myself to thee.

2 Thou didst die that I might live;
blessed Lord, thou cam’st to save me;
all that love of God could give
Jesus by his sorrows gave me. [Refrain]

3 By the thorns that crowned thy brow,
by the spear wound and the nailing,
by the pain and death, I now
claim, O Christ, thy love unfailing. [Refrain]

4 Wilt thou own the gift I bring?
All my penitence I give thee;
thou art my exalted King,
of thy matchless love forgive me. [Refrain]

Poetry, Uncategorized

On the Discovery of Old Things

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To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.

Matthew Arnold, “Growing Old”

Matthew Arnold captures something in his 1867 poem “Growing Old.” I don’t know what is exactly. Seems a bit obtuse to a spry Gen-Xer like me. But I was thinking of old things today, because I’ve caught wind of many recent archeological finds and thought I’d share them with you today.

Vikings: Let’s start with the unearthing of over a couple thousand fragments of combs and brooches, some “carved from the antlers of red deer, and a few were made of bones from animals like whales.”

Ice Skating: Archeologists with the Comenius Museum in Přerov, the Czech Republic’s Moravia region, discovered a 1,000-year-old ice skate. “It dates back to the time when there was a very important fortress in the area of the Upper Square. It served as a stronghold for Polish King Boleslav the Brave, who occupied Moravia at the time and had his soldiers stationed there.”

Greeks and Romans: Pompeii got even more impressive with the discovery of gorgeous frescos depicting Helen of Troy and Cassandra

Caesar: A team from the University of Tokyo have found an ancient villa that they believe to have been owned by Caesar Augustus.

And researchers working in the area of Rome’s Colosseum have uncovered a home with an exceptional mural showing “weapons and musical instruments as well as ships and tridents.” The director general of museums at the Italian culture ministry said, “There is nothing else like it from this period in Rome. There is nothing like it even at Pompeii.”

Swedish Longsword: And finally, the grave of a tall Swedish man with an impressive longsword was violated by the Halland Cultural Environment in their unrestrained excavations of the Franciscan friary in Halmstad. I fear for the townspeople who will be troubled by his vengeful ghost.

Writing

‘Writing’ update: Old dog, new tricks

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This happens to be the exact microphone I am using, a Blue Yeti, a gift from a friend. Photo credit Chris Yang, chrisyangchrisfilm. Unsplash license.

Landmark achieved. Another step climbed. Pardon me for talking myself up tonight, but I actually accomplished something that had daunted me, and I need to try to overcome my reflexive tendency to downplay it.

So this is the situation – I have “mastered” the Audacity recording application. Audacity is a free app that’s probably the most common one used by at-home voiceover artists and narrators. I’ve been wrestling with it for some time now. Has it been months? I’d have to look it up, which seems like a lot of trouble.

In any case, you need to understand my history with recording engineering. (I mentioned this the last time I gave you an update.) I went to radio broadcast school and hold a (entirely undeserved, and I null and void now, I think) Radiotelegraph Engineer’s license. But I always struggled with the technical stuff. Working with Audacity, is of course, very different from what I fumbled around with in radio back in the 1980s, but I find it equally challenging. Audacity (not really a complicated app) combines the challenges of radio with the challenges of digital technology. For a child of the analogue age, a “digital immigrant” as they call us, it was less than comfortable.

But – and this is what gives me a small amount of satisfaction – I went to work at it systematically. During my morning writing session each day (except that I skip Sundays) I would set up my recording space (like many home voice artists, I employ my closet) and worked at learning Audacity. I watched a lot of how-to videos on YouTube. I studied the instruction book I bought. And I practiced. Cautiously, and with trepidation.

I decided that, due to the considerable stress unfamiliar technology causes me (I actually woke up from a dream one night, my heart pounding), I needed to take it in small steps. I tackled one challenge at a time, researching and practicing one single operation, one skill, at a time. Once I’d gotten the new thing down, I stopped. The Voices in my Head called me lazy. Said I should do something more now, not waste time. But I had decided that sufficient unto the day was the stress of that one step.

I repeated this program day after day. Some days I got nothing done. I hadn’t yet solved the problem. But I figured I’d accumulated sufficient stress for the present.

And gradually, I figured stuff out. The last step stumped me for a couple days – the operation of cutting and pasting, to make corrections on a track already recorded. My instruction book was unclear, and so were several videos I viewed.

This morning I sat down and just played with the app. Viewed a new video, which helped a little. Finally, I tried something that worked. I had it. I’m not a master of Audacity by any means, but I understand the basic operations, I think, that I need.

Of course, now I’m going to drop it completely for a while. It’s time to get back to The Baldur Game, my work in progress. That’s part of the overall plan.  Now that I’ve heard back from my beta readers, I need to evaluate their suggestions and get the book into final shape.

Then there’ll be the process of publishing the thing through Amazon, another technical challenge I’m uncomfortable with, but I imagine I can figure it out.

And when that’s done, the plan is to start recording The Year of the Warrior.

I do not lack things to occupy me, for the immediate future.

Something else happened today too. I was messing with another piece of new software, a publishing program I have to use for a side gig. And I figured something out on that too.

And I had another (fleeting) moment of satisfaction.

I then had an odd, unusual (for me) thought. I thought, “It’s kind of nice that I’m poor in my old age. If I were rich right now, I’d be vegetating, sitting on a lounge chair somewhere where it’s warm, letting my body run down. I know myself. I never move too far out of my comfort zone unless I’m forced to.”

Instead, in my 70s, I’m learning new stuff, expanding my skills. Keeping young (in a sense), in spite of myself.

God, the Author, seems to be at work plotting again. And plotting, as I’ve often said, means torturing your characters.

So be it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Death of a Minor Character,’ by E. X. Ferrars

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I’m not sure how I came to do it again. I bought a mystery written by E. X. Ferrars, an author who uses initials instead of a first name, which is usually a sign of a female writer. I tend to find mysteries by women a little alien, but somehow I ended up with this one. I assume I must have gotten it for free. And, as with the similarly named author M. K. Farrar a few days back, I found the book surprisingly enjoyable. For the most part.

E. X. Ferrars was a British author, born Morna Doris MacTaggert. She had a long and successful career. Among her series characters were Virginia and Felix Freer, the protagonists of Death of a Minor Character, published in 1983.

Virginia Freer is a physical therapist living and working in a town some distance from London. A young friend is planning to return home to Australia, and asks her to a farewell party at her flat – in the same London building that’s home to her ex-husband (separated) Felix, with whom she’s still friendly. A fairly mismatched group, including Felix, show up for the party, including a jewelry artist and an old lady who lives in the building.

Not long after, a shopkeeper in Virginia’s town, a casual friend of hers, is murdered, as well the old lady from the party. What ties them together seems to be the dragon-motif silver jewelry the artist designs. Felix is moved  to investigate – not so much for the sake of the shopkeeper as for the old lady, whom he compares to one of those minor characters who get killed in books and movies without anybody giving a second thought to them.

E. X. Ferrars was a lively and original writer. What makes this book work is the characters of Virginia and Felix – especially Felix, who is a constant surprise. He is, we are told, a liar and a petty thief, always on the edge of legality. He doesn’t seem to really grasp ordinary moral concepts. But underneath he has a deep sense of justice.

I enjoyed the book, but I have to say I never really believed in Felix. I suspect the author (who was an atheist and a leftist) wanted to open people’s minds to the idea that there were more ways of being a good person than the stuffy old mores we grew up with.

I reject that. Liars and thieves are not “morally creative” (as I put it in my novel, Wolf Time), but people who lack a moral core. The way you do little things is the way you do big things. Dishonesty is, at bottom, just another kind of cowardice.

But I can’t deny that Death of a Minor Character was an entertaining and well-written novel. The conclusion, though, was a little anticlimactic.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Arms and White Samite,’ by B. A. Patty

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What Arthur saw was nothing like what Moren saw. He saw no silver trees, nor the shining suns of souls, nor the blue glow of possibility, of hope, or of longing. Arthur saw before him the legends, rising up in shapes like griffins and dragons, growing about him in the way that lilies grow up like miracles in a forest where once stood some forgotten cottage. They stole his breath, and for a time it was so quiet in his tent that even the roar of celebration outside seemed to vanish away.

B. A. Patty blogs at Grim’s Hall, one of the blogs I’ve been following for years. He’s a reader of my novels too. But he’s even less aggressive about marketing his novel, Arms and White Samite, than I am in regard to mine. In fact, I’d forgotten he had one until he offered a deal recently, and I picked it up. It’s an impressive book, one that deserves greater recognition than it’s received.

Our hero is Moren, a warrior of Arthur’s Company of the Wall (the book is set in “King” Arthur’s original historical context, with certain supernatural intrusions). One day a lady dressed in white rides into Arthur’s hall, pursued by a great, fearsome knight armored in black. In spite of Arthur’s men’s attempts to protect her, the knight carries her off. Moren takes upon himself the quest of rescuing the lady. He follows her through a forest, where he rescues another lady who becomes his companion, and later into a fortress, where he is taken prisoner. A group of his brothers follow to help – or rescue – him. Meanwhile, the Saxons are harrying the land, and Arthur faces the challenges and sacrifices of total war against an enemy led by a king who is more than human.

For me, the greatest appeal of the Arthurian stories has always been, more than the tales of chivalry and valor, the hints of mystery behind it all – ancient names of places lost to history, shadowy characters who seem not quite human in some undefined way. Arms and White Samite is rich in those elements. It’s actually as much about the realms of faery as about this world (though the battle scenes are excellent, and seem historically plausible).

Quite a lot of time is spent in discussions about the intersection of this world and the Otherworld, and the nature of life and eternity. Questions of theodicy (the problem of evil) are central. Although the matrix of the philosophy seems Christian, there are elements that seem Buddhist and syncretist. This left me puzzled, but I’m not sure I understood it well enough to judge.

There were a couple typos (at least I think they were typos; perhaps I misunderstood the antique diction), and on very rare occasions the author made the questionable artistic choice of using exclamation points in exposition.

Still, all in all, I think Arms and White Samite is the kind of book C. S. Lewis would have liked very much.

Authors, Poetry, Reading

What’s in an Oscar?

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Tonight, because such exercises please me, I wish to discuss (which means I write, you read) the history of a name. The name is Oscar. Not a terribly common name, but it shows up now and then in unexpected places. Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple. Eddie Murphy’s character in Beverly Hills Cop. Sylvester Stallone did a film called Oscar. And of course – speaking of films – there’s the famous statuette of the Academy Awards – said to have been informally named by Academy librarian and historian Margaret Herrick, who remarked that it reminded her of her uncle Oscar.

Also Oscar the Grouch.

The book I reviewed yesterday, Armored, featured a Mexican character named Oscar. But I think of it primarily as a Scandinavian name. So I wondered, where did it come from and what does it mean?

My finely honed librarian’s skills led me to an arcane scholarly source known to insiders as Wikipedia. There I learned the story of the name, which is not without points of interest.

What does Oscar mean? It actually comes (purely by chance) from two different languages. In Old English, it means “Spear of the Gods” (cognate with the Norse name Asgeir).

But its modern use springs from Old Irish, where it means “One Who Loves Deer.”

The name was one of those indigenous ones that turned out insufficiently popular to survive the coming of Christianity, with its multitude of saints’ names to hang on babies. So it went out of use and was largely forgotten.

Then along came a man named James MacPherson (1736-1796), a Scottish writer, politician, and all-around scoundrel. Though he sprang from an old Jacobite (Stuart-supporting) family, he jumped wholeheartedly over to the Hanoverians (the English conquerors) and profited thereby. He also participated in the Highland Clearances, evicting poor cotters from their homes so their lands could be repurposed for sheep grazing. Countless Scots were made homeless by this treacherous betrayal of ancient trust.

But McPherson is best remembered for a series of poems called the Ossian Cycle, which he claimed he collected from ancient Scottish lays he learned from simple bards. Most scholars and critics have long agreed that McPherson wrote them himself, throwing in a few borrowings from Scottish and Irish folklore.

Whatever their source, the published poems were a huge success with the reading public. The Romantic Movement was blossoming just then, and people were hungry for tales of high adventure in ancient times – tales that came from somewhere further north than Rome or Athens. I’ve written here before about the popularity of Tegner’s Saga of Frithjof. The Lay of the Nibelungs and the Icelandic sagas were also objects of fascination. The Ossian Cycle fit right in.

Three of the main characters in the Ossian poems are Fingal, the great hero, Ossian, his son, who is supposed to be the poet, and his son Oscar, now dead.

Among McPherson’s many admirers was no less a figure than Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France. He hung the name on his godson, Joseph Bernadotte, son of his marshal Charles Jean Bernadotte. Charles Jean would go on to become king of Sweden (later of Norway too), and Joseph was eventually crowned King Oscar I. Thus did Oscar become a popular name with Scandinavians.

So hail to you, if your name is Oscar. Or if you live in Ossian, Iowa (nice town; I’ ve been there).

The Press

NPR Editor Speaks Out, Gets Suspended

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Uri Berliner, a senior editor of NPR business news, a 25-year veteran of America’s iconic radio network, got an article published earlier this month in The Free Press, saying the news network was far more balanced than it is today.

“It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.”

Until 2016. After that watermark year in which nothing remotely remarkable happened, NPR has driven down the hill of leftist ideology and lost the faith of American listeners.

In February, our audience insights team sent an email proudly announcing that we had a higher trustworthy score than CNN or The New York Times. But the research from Harris Poll is hardly reassuring. It found that “3-in-10 audience members familiar with NPR said they associate NPR with the characteristic ‘trustworthy.’ ” Only in a world where media credibility has completely imploded would a 3-in-10 trustworthy score be something to boast about. 

Today, NPR reports they suspended Berliner without pay for the last five days because he did not get approval to release an article to The Free Press. They said could be fired if he does this again.

Berliner said he had been trying to his concerned heard for a few years without success. Going public was a way to get heard.

Update: Berliner resigned today, calling NPR “a great American institution” and not for defunding it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Armored,’ by Mark Greaney

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Mark Greaney is the author of the very impressive Gray Man thriller series. I’ve enjoyed them, though I haven’t kept up with them recently. But I saw he’d started a new series, about security specialist Josh Duffy. I got a deal on Armored, so I checked it out. Greaney still knows how to write a gripping story.

Joshua Duffy, private security operative, lost a leg in Beirut, in a heroic action to protect a client’s wife. This left him in the humiliating position of being unable to find any job better than mall cop. Even more embarrassing, his wife is working nights cleaning offices – and making more money than he is.

So when he runs into an old buddy at the mall, and learns that he’s been hired for a job protecting a UN delegation tasked with making peace between drug cartels in Mexico, he asks the friend to get him in. He does not tell him about his missing leg. To his surprise, he gets the job, and soon he’s flying south of the border with a ragtag collection of bottom-of-the-barrel bodyguards – the company they’re working for doesn’t have the best reputation.

Theirs is a mission marked for disaster – and not by chance. Josh and his new buddies turn out to be nothing more than counters in a big game being played by high-level players, who have no plans to let any of them go home alive.

Plotting a story like this one has to be a daunting task – I’m not sure I could do it. The action tends toward what I like to call the “cinematic” – the kind you believe when you see it on a theater screen, but which seems less plausible when reading. That fortune which proverbially favors the bold requires some pretty intricate choreography of events to achieve in a story where every bend of the road brings a daunting new setback. I never entirely believed this story, but it was just believably enough – and exciting enough – to keep me riveted.

I enjoyed Armored immensely, and recommend it without reservation. Cautions for language and violence. References to Christian faith are uniformly respectful.

Music

Sunday Singing: Deck Thyself, My Soul, with Gladness

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Here’s a devotional hymn from German poet Johann Franck (1618-1677), translated into English by scholar Catherine Winkworth (1827-1878).

I will greatly rejoice in the LORD;
my soul shall exult in my God,
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. (Isaiah 61:10 ESV)

1 Deck thyself, my soul, with gladness,
leave the gloomy haunts of sadness;
come into the daylight’s splendour,
there with joy thy praises render
unto him whose grace unbounded
hath this wondrous banquet founded:
high o’er all the heavens he reigneth,
yet to dwell with thee he deigneth.

2 Now I sink before thee lowly,
filled with joy most deep and holy,
as with trembling awe and wonder
on thy mighty works I ponder:
how, by mystery surrounded,
depth no mortal ever sounded,
none may dare to pierce unbidden
secrets that with thee are hidden.

3 Sun, who all my life dost brighten,
light, who dost my soul enlighten,
joy, the sweetest heart e’er knoweth,
fount, whence all my being floweth,
at thy feet I cry, my Maker,
let me be a fit partaker
of this blessed food from heaven,
for our good, thy glory, given.

4 Jesus, Bread of Life, I pray thee,
let me gladly here obey thee;
never to my hurt invited,
be thy love with love requited:
from this banquet let me measure,
Lord, how vast and deep its treasure;
through the gifts thou here dost give me,
as thy guest in heaven receive me.