“The Word of God is like a lion. You don’t have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself.”
Many places attribute this quotation to C. H. Spurgeon, and the great preacher did say something like it, but not this exactly. The Spurgeon Center has this and five other quotations in a post on things Spurgeon did not say. What he said was that we might imagine a caged lion and soldiers who have gathered to defend him. Why are they fighting for this powerful cat when the best approach is to let him out of his cage? “And the best ‘apology’ for the gospel is to let the gospel out.”
Also, “A lie travels around the globe while the truth is putting on its shoes.” That’s something Spurgeon said in an 1855 sermon, describing it as an old proverb. Other men, including Jonathan Swift, said it first, and it could have been a common saying when Spurgeon got around to it.
Did he say, “I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages”? Did he say, “I take my text and make a beeline to the cross”? Take a look.
Syrian travel has its interesting features, like travel in any other part of the world, and yet to break your leg or have the cholera adds a welcome variety to it.
The organizers of the “Great Pleasure Excursion,” which sailed from New York on the steamer Quaker City in 1867, must have come to regret their decision. I mean their decision to include in their party the journalist Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), who was traveling on assignment for a San Francisco newspaper. This was (I believe) one of the earliest international pleasure cruises in history – made possible by the capacity of a steam ship to travel on a more predictable schedule than a sailing ship. The notes Twain kept on that voyage would emerge as The Innocents Abroad, his most popular book during in his lifetime.
Although described as a pleasure excursion, the main purpose of the voyage was a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, then under Ottoman rule. Along the way, however, they would take in parts of North Africa, Spain, France, Italy, and Constantinople (still called by that name). On the way home they would see the sights of Egypt. It was quite a journey, and physically demanding by the standards of travel in our own day.
Mark Twain, only then becoming a celebrity, was prepared to
subject everything he beheld to a typically American scrutiny. It seemed to him
that in a lot of cases, when his fellow travelers exclaimed over the beauty or
wonder of some piece of art or scenic vista, they were only parroting the
responses their guide books had provided them. When Twain found something a
disappointment or a humbug he said so – and seems to have delighted in shocking
his fellow travelers. Which is not to say he lacked appreciation. When something
impresses him, he says it. At some points he grows almost reverent.
Twain divides his fellow travelers into two parties – the “sinners”
and the “pilgrims.” That doesn’t mean they broke up into cliques. He has a
group of friends he keeps company with, and some of them are pilgrims. He
confesses to admiring them in some respects. But when they appear hypocritical
to him (as when they lengthen their overland journeys on a couple of days in
order avoid traveling on the Sabbath, in spite of inconvenience to fellow
travelers and cruelty to their horses), he seems to take satisfaction in pointing
it out. The man is clearly keeping score. (He is also frustrated – rightly – by
members of the party who insist of chipping pieces off monuments as souvenirs.)
The Catholic Church comes in for a great deal of criticism – he is appalled by the display of wealth in cathedrals, contrasted with the miserable poverty he saw in European streets. However, when he observes real virtue displayed by churchmen, such as the Dominican monks who cared for the sick during a cholera epidemic, or the desert monks who gave his party hospitality in the Palestinian desert, he does it justice. It seems to me (and this is my take on him in general, though I’m not an expert) that he was a man who wrestled with God. He could not be an atheist (in part because he’d have no God to be angry at), but he considered himself too smart to be taken in by any revealed religion. A very American attitude, that, and one that would grow influential.
The humor of The Innocents Abroad arises partly from Twain’s characteristic style – flowery Victorian prose constantly stumbling into premeditated bathos – and his Missourian “show me” attitude. He is not much impressed, for instance, with the artistic works of the Old Masters, but grants that he may have simply been overwhelmed by the numbers of them in places like Rome and Florence. He loves to describe the filth of European cities and is positively scandalized by the tiny size of the Holy Land.
Almost any subject is interesting when described by an interesting man. An expedition like this one, full of material fascinating in itself, can hardly fail to engage the reader when a man like Mark Twain chronicles it. And that’s what we get with The Innocents Abroad.
I read The Innocents Abroad in the linked Kindle edition, which is not a particularly good one. Although it’s described as illustrated, the illustrations in this version are not the ones that properly go with the book. They are images of 19th Century paintings with no particular connection to the text, and even those only show up in the first section. Also there are no proper paragraph breaks.
[Sorry I didn’t post last night. I did a lecture, and when I came home I found this site unresponsive. Short report: I spoke to a Cub Scout pack, and they were a good audience.]
I am wondering how much my perceptions of the world are influenced by the aphorisms I’ve learned, more than actual experience.
This is what I mean: Some time ago, one of my brothers said, referring to a couple deaths in the autumn, “Well, Dad always used to say, ‘It’s fall – harvest time.’”
I actually have no memory of Dad ever saying this (not that I doubt my brother’s word – lots of things go over my head). But ever since then, when someone dies in the fall, I think about it, and respond (on some barely conscious level), “There it is. Fall, harvest time.”
Except I know it isn’t true. People die all year round. Dying in fall is just thematically harmonious.
That said, there’s been a lot of harvesting this fall, in my
world.
The first death was particularly sad. A lovely Christian couple I know, who live in another state, had a little son who suffered severe disability from birth. For the years of his short life they’ve done everything possible to care for him and cherish him. Love being true riches, that boy was richer than a king. But his small body finally wore out not long ago. I mourned with them in spirit.
Some weeks ago, I’ve just learned, my uncle died. We weren’t informed for a while because his widow (a lovely woman) has been too overwhelmed to handle the notifications. I don’t begrudge it. We all have to deal with these things the best we can.
He was the last survivor of my dad’s siblings, and one of my favorite relatives. He was the brother who made good – went to work for IBM and rose to an upper management position on the Saturn Project at Cape Canaveral.
And a friend’s mother died the other day. He’s not a close
friend, except in proximity. But his family has had a sad time watching their
parent fail for some time now. Ironically, this is the only memorial service of
the three I’ll be able to attend.
I reviewed the first book in Jason Richards’ Drew Patrick mystery series the other day. I told you I thought the book not well written, but that I appreciated the spirit of the thing. I liked the hero and his supporting cast, and the positive atmosphere.
So I invested in Shattered, the second book in the series. I hoped author Richards might have learned a little with the passage of time, or perhaps got an editor to help him.
Alas, there’s been no improvement on the writing front.
I like it that Drew has a traditional PI’s office above a Cambridge, Mass. city street. Such offices in hard-boiled mysteries always give me a warm, homey feeling – and it’s nice having Drew’s beagle mix, Dash, there to keep us company.
A couple named Jeffrey and Cynthia Holland are the clients
who come to the office this time out. Their daughter Ashley has disappeared,
and they’re concerned. They don’t want to go to the police, because they fear
publicity.
Alas, Ashley is dead already. Her murder seems to be tied to
the deaths of some other attractive young women – young women who, it turns
out, had been working for a high class escort service, and had been involved
with the same man – a high-powered Hollywood studio owner.
There’s not much mystery in this one; author Richards identifies
the guilty party early on, making the plot a race against the clock to prevent
the next murder.
It seemed to me a lot of opportunities to raise the dramatic tension were lost here. The guilty party could have been concealed, for one thing. And instead of the cops loving Drew and being happy to have him pitch in, they could have resented him and blocked his efforts, in the more plausible tradition of cops in the hard-boiled genre. There could have been conflict between Drew and his girlfriend Jessica.
Also, dramatic opportunities were lost. The character of
Cynthia Holland, Ashley’s mother, is intriguing, but we don’t get to know her very
well.
And there were lots of writing problems. Mistaken use of
homonyms. Spelling errors. Overwriting – Drew tells us more than we need to
know, and explains himself too much. A good editor would have cut this
manuscript down by thousands of words.
So my verdict remains the same. I salute and appreciate the
author’s effort. But he’s not writing very good books at this point. I hope he
ups his game.
If you listen to classical music radio, you’ve probably have heard of Smetana’s full orchestra piece on a river in his homeland, which the English call The Moldau. In this 2012 video, Valérie Milot interprets this symphonic poem for harp, and the result is magical. I liked the piece well enough before, but this is marvelous.
The other night, on a sudden whim, I went to YouTube and watched a film I’d only read about. It’s a 1935 English mystery called The Silent Passenger. It has the distinction of being the first cinematic depiction of Dorothy Sayers’ detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. Miss Sayers wrote the story especially for the film. Here it is, if you’re interested.
I’d heard bad things about this film, and it generally lived
down to its reputation.
Actually, that’s kind of unfair. For its time and
environment, it’s not a badly done film. It’s a clever, complicated story about
blackmail and mixed-up luggage. It’s atmospheric, and the final showdown in the
railroad repair facility is fairly exciting.
What’s wrong with it – and the reason Dorothy Sayers hated
it – is the portrayal of Lord Peter. Peter Haddon, a well-respected actor of
the day, seems appallingly miscast. He has a long nose – which is right – but
otherwise he’s too tall and too dark – and kind of oily, like a gigolo. Instead
of a monocle, he sports a repellant little mustache. And instead of playing Lord
Peter as we love him – as an affected, amusing twit in the tradition of the
Scarlet Pimpernel, he walks around with his mouth gaping open like the village
idiot.
Still, it has its place in history. You might find it
amusing.
It isn’t often I like a book without considering it well written. But that’s the case with Jason Richards’ novel Chasing Shadows, first in his Drew Patrick private eye series.
Drew Patrick works in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He gets hired by a single mother named Bonnie Ross, who is concerned about her teenaged daughter Tina’s relationship with a young man named Aaron. Aaron is a college student and a promising football player, but Bonnie doesn’t trust him, and Tina has changed and grown distant since they started dating.
There’s nothing criminal about that, but Drew agrees to
check the boy out. Turns out Bonnie’s concerns are justified. Aaron has been
working as a collector for a loan shark, and is being pressured to commit
murder. But Drew, assisted by his girlfriend Jessica (also a PI), a couple
friendly sheriff’s detectives, and his faithful beagle mix, Dash, will do his
best to get between the kids and disaster.
Okay, about this book. It’s not very well written. There are proofreading and spelling problems. The dialogue is often turgid – a lot more contractions could have been employed, for one thing. The author’s attempts at wit are hit and miss – more often than not he presses his jokes where a lighter touch would have been more effective.
But I appreciated what he seems to be doing here. He seems to be trying to recreate the magic of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser books – Spenser worked not far away in Boston. The Spenser books were refreshing in their time. Unlike past hard-boiled shamuses, Spenser was optimistic in attitude and took care of his health. He also had healthy relationships with women, and eventually connected with a regular girlfriend. I really liked those books until Parker allowed Spenser to become totally whipped.
Similarly, Drew Patrick is a positive guy with a healthy attitude. He is devoted to his girlfriend, cheerfully rejecting all passes from other women. He even has a dog – something often useful in breaking the ice with people, and (for most of us) a sign of good character. Also, perhaps, a nod to the Thin Man.
But he isn’t entirely believable. He doesn’t seem to care much
about paying the bills, and pursues “justice” even when not being paid. And the
regular cops seem happy to have him meddle in their investigations (something I
find hard to believe).
So I can’t give Chasing Shadows my highest recommendation. But I won’t deny I kind of enjoyed the book. You might too. Only mild cautions for adult content.
I’ve cut out buying the pricey books for the time being. But it turns out I’d pre-ordered Michael Connelly’s new Harry Bosch/Renee Ballard book, The Night Fire. So I read it, and now I’ll review it.
As you may recall if you’re following the books (not the Amazon
Plus TV show), Harry Bosch is pretty old now (about my age), and is retired as
an LAPD detective. But his old motto, “Everybody matters or nobody matters,”
still drives him, so he finds ways to keep involved. Mostly by providing help
(off the books) to the young detective Renee Ballard. Renee works the night
shift, which she likes, because it allows her to work alone. (She can generally
call on Harry if she needs backup.)
One night Renee gets called to a scene of death by fire. A homeless
man has burned to death in his tent. It looks like an accident, but
investigators say no. However, the case is assigned to Robbery-Homicide, and
Renee gets shut out. But she doesn’t forget about it.
Then Harry Bosch receives a surprising legacy. An old cop,
once his own mentor, died recently, and he left something behind for Harry. It’s
a “murder book” – a ring binder containing all the case notes for an old
homicide investigation. The thing was police property, and should not have left
police custody. The case involves the murder of a drug addict in his car in an
alley. For the life of him, Harry can’t figure why his old friend stole this
book, or kept it. There’s no sign he ever investigated it on his own.
What follows for both Renee and Harry is a case of what I call “retro-telescoping prioritization,” a situation where you set out to do one thing, but can’t do that until you do another thing, but there’s something else you have to do before you can do that. The plot of The Night Fire gets fairly complicated, and I lost track of a few threads now and then. But it all comes together in the end, and there’s a suitably suspenseful payoff.
The Night Fire was not the best book in the Harry Bosch saga, but it wasn’t bad. Cautions for language and adult situations, and a brief public service announcement about gay rights. Connelly fans will enjoy this new installment in the series.
I am concerned about Renee Ballard, though. She’s surviving
on a diet of coffee and surfing. If she doesn’t resolve some of her personal
issues, she’s gonna crash hard.
When noted speaker Paula White-Cain, “the spiritual advisor to President Donald Trump,” released a book several days ago, there were a number of endorsements from Baptist ministers and ministry leaders who, many of us thought, should have held their tongues. This is not a teacher promoted in orthodox churches. She is a heretic on the level of Benny Hinn; in fact, she allegedly had a relationship with him at one point. She’s also a pastor of her church, and female pastors are a point of heated argument among Southern Baptists this year. Why then would someone like the pastor of First Baptist in Dallas endorse her book as a refreshing story of God’s redemptive power (taken from his words printed in the book)?
Professors Leah Payne and Aaron Griffith say evangelical leaders have sided with their theological opponents for years. Many times these partnerships make sense; we join together as diverse citizen groups in support of a moral or community good. No one would balk at Christians and heretics building a playground together, but when Christian pastors endorse the books and teaching of a heretic, that’s when we have problems.
Payne and Griffith describe the lure of celebrity among most evangelicals and their tendency to use self-help arguments similar to those they condemn from White-Cain. They are “not that different from the soft prosperity exhortations of other evangelicals, including many in the SBC, who claim that following biblical principles improves marriages, lowers anxiety, and creates extraordinary lives of success and significance” (drawing again on words from the pastor of First Baptist Dallas).
That’s a broad explanation that doesn’t quite work for some of the endorsers of this book, so to fill it out a bit more we could say that a book endorsement is not an evaluation of its content. It’s more of a business move or pandering.
Maybe they’ve learned this lesson from White-Cain’s book: “Find your passion in life and figure out a way to make money.”
Having now become a pretty confirmed fan of Norman Green’s novels, I figured I’d try out his series character, Alessandra “Al” Martillo. As you know, I’m no big fan of hard-boiled female detectives, but I took a flyer on The Last Gig, the first book in the series.
I’ll give author Green credit for facing honestly some of
the inherent problems of the female action protagonist. “Al,” he informs us
along the way, is a sort of genetic anomaly – a throwback to more ancient
humanity. She’s stronger than most women and a lot of men, and she heals at an
astonishing rate.
She’s also – of course – gorgeous. But she’s as emotionally maladjusted
as she’s physically exceptional. Raised by an indifferent aunt after her mother’s
suicide, and then taken in by a sympathetic gay uncle, she keeps to herself and
pushes off every man who shows interest. She’s got a chip on her shoulder for
the whole world – especially her distant father, whose only contribution to her
upbringing was to teach her to fight.
She works for peanuts for a sleazy private eye, who keeps
trying to get into her pants. She can handle him, and she needs the work.
Then her boss gets approached by “Mickey” Caughlan, an Irish-American
gangster who has (he claims) gone straight. Somebody has been smuggling drug
components in Caughlan’s trucks, and he wants to find out who.
As Al investigates, she grows curious about a part of
Caughlan’s story that may or may not be related to the crime. Caughlan had a son
who was murdered, and he seems oddly unconcerned about it. Supposedly it’s
because the boy wanted to be a musician, a career choice Caughlan opposed. But
Al thinks there’s more to it.
So she jumps into the case with both feet. She will deliver
beat-downs and receive them, and be challenged to move outside her personal
comfort zone. Very dangerous people will threaten her, but Al is the most
dangerous character in the city.
I didn’t love this book as much as the previous Green books
I read. It wasn’t a bad book, but I didn’t identify with Al as I did with other
Green protagonists, and I didn’t find here the fine passages of writing I’ve so
enjoyed in the other books. A small public service announcement for gay
marriage was included in the plot, but there was nothing really unfair there.
I’d probably go on with the series, if the later books were
cheaper, but for now I’ll hold off. Moderately recommended, with cautions for
language, sexual situations, and mature themes.
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