Authors

Tolkien, in his own words

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I found the above video on YouTube, and as you can see it’s entitled, “There’s no way Tolkien was speaking English here.”

This is fascinating. If you’ve read biographies of Tolkien, you’ll have read about the fact that his speech in conversation tended to be garbled. (He’s said to have blamed it on an injury to his tongue, though that’s disputed.) The most famous recording of his voice, where he reads short excerpts from The Lord of the Rings, is not hard to understand — and that isn’t surprising, since everyone agreed that when he was lecturing he was always loud and clear.

But here we hear him casually enthusing about one of his favorite topics — trees, and he’s babbling away pretty incomprehensibly.

So now we can share the confusion. I’m gratified.

Fiction, Reviews

‘You’ll Get Yours,’ by Gerald Hansen

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Good characters do a lot to make a book work. But now that I’ve finished You’ll Get Yours, by Gerald Hansen, I think it’s possible to overdo it.

In the city of Derry, Ireland, a middle-aged woman’s body is found, dressed only in sexy underwear, on top of a cannon on the old city wall, her thumb superglued inside her mouth. As Detective Inspector Liam McLaughlin begins investigating, they find the woman hard to identify. No one seems to have known her. And when she finally is identified, as a woman who worked as a stocker at a nearby supermarket, it turns out she’s still a bit of a mystery. She seems to have no family, and there’s no record of her existence prior to four years ago.

In time it’s revealed that she’s been living under a false identity. She was once – briefly – famous, as a member of a Spice Girls-type girl band that had a few hits in the ‘90s. None of the other old group members are living in hiding, though, so what was she afraid of?

And the cops’ work won’t be made any easier by the almost universal hatred for the police that lingers in Derry, a residue from “the Troubles” of the old IRA years. In the end the solution will take them back to an old crime that time can’t bury and no one could possibly guess.

The emphasis in You’ll Get Yours is vivid characterization, and frankly I thought it was a little overdone. DI McLaughlin is a slob who’s always getting interrupted in the middle of eating a sandwich. His subordinates include a feminist detective with OCD, a fashion-plate womanizer, an over-eager rookie detective, and a female computer nerd. I think I was supposed to be amused by their interactions and frictions, but I found it all a little overdone and unconvincing.

The book wasn’t really that bad, plot-wise, and the solution was horrific and moving. But I couldn’t help being annoying by the comic book characterizations.

I should note, however, that references to religion were mostly respectful, and the author took trouble to avoid cursing.

You might enjoy it.

Music

Sunday Singing: O Lord, by Grace Delivered

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Noel tune by Arthur Sullivan

Today’s hymn of God’s sustaining faithfulness is an adaptation of Psalm 30 from The Psalter (1912). The Trinity Hymnal arranges the text to a tune by the great Irish-Italian composer Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900). It may be more commonly sung to another tune by Arthur Sullivan, but I stuck with the hymnal beside me and found the tune performed in the video here.

“I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up
and have not let my foes rejoice over me” (Ps. 30:1 ESV).

1 O Lord, by grace delivered,
I now with songs extol;
my foes you have not suffered
to glory o’er my fall.
O Lord, my God, I sought you,
and you did heal and save;
you, Lord, from death did ransom
and keep me from the grave.

2 His holy name remember;
you saints, Jehovah praise;
his anger lasts a moment,
his favor all our days;
for sorrow, like a pilgrim,
may tarry for a night,
but joy the heart will gladden
when dawns the morning light.

3 In prosp’rous days I boasted;
unmoved I shall remain;
for, Lord, by your good favor
my cause you did maintain;
I soon was sorely troubled,
for you did hide your face;
I cried to you, Jehovah,
I sought Jehovah’s grace.

4 What profit if I perish,
if life you do not spare?
Shall dust repeat your praises,
shall it your truth declare?
O Lord, on me have mercy,
and my petition hear;
that you may be my helper,
in mercy, Lord, appear.

5 My grief is turned to gladness,
to you my thanks I raise,
who have removed my sorrow
and girded me with praise;
and now, no longer silent,
my heart your praise will sing;
O Lord, my God, forever
my thanks to you I bring.

Blogs, Socials, Bookselling, Writing

The Rise of Christmas Books in Britain

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Giving books at Christmas has been a long tradition with readers. In the early 19th century, plenty of books sold in the weeks preceding Christmas, but none of them were published for the season. Often people bought attractively bound collections of essays, poems, or classic novels that they knew they would enjoy.

In one of his books on the industry, publisher Joseph Shaylor writes, “Between 1820 and 1830 there came into existence a series of Annuals which caused quite a revolution in the sale of books for Christmas.” British bookman Rudolf Ackermann came up with the idea, publishing Forget-Me-Not: A Christmas and New Years Present for 1823. They were published every year through 1848, having a circulation of 18,000 at the height of its popularity.

Cover of 1823 annual, titled "Forget Me Not"

Another publisher released Friendship’s Offering in 1824, which found its way to America some years later as knockoff copies. Apparently, many volumes were hacked this way in America, even lesser works rebound and distributed under new popular titles (which sounds like clickbait to me). Friendship’s Offering may have published some higher quality literature than most. For example, Thomas Babbington Macaulay’s poem “The Armada” was printed in the 1833 edition. It ran until 1844.

Engraver Charles Heath launched multiple annuals, “such as the Picturesque Annual, in a guinea volume which contained engravings from the best landscape painters of the day,” and The Book of Beauty, edited by Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington and Irish novelist in her own right. Her social influence drew attention from many literary stars and would-be stars, including Disreali.

“The rise of the Annuals appears to have diffused a fashion for artistic and elegant pursuits, and helped to evolve a taste for literature and the fine arts. They were the principal publications of the year, and much time and consideration were given to their production.”

Booksellers have tried to inspire an Easter season of book-giving to no avail.

All right. What else we got?

Literary Translation: Joel Miller talks to Russian translator Lisa C. Hayden about the art of moving a novel into another language.

When it comes to translation choices, there’s not always a “right” choice, just the choice that seems best. How does literary intuition play into your work?

I rely a lot on intuition. It particularly kicks in when I’m reading the manuscript out loud. I’m listening for lots of things but particularly want to feel that there’s an ease to the reading and a rhythm to the writing. I know when they feel right but rarely know how to explain why they feel right.

Secular Morals: Seth Mandel writes the former director of Human Rights Watch “is what you’d get if Soviet ‘whataboutism’ were a person, a golem manifested by the chantings of Oberlin freshmen. . . . HRW and Amnesty International both had no idea how to handle a post-9/11 world because terrorism didn’t really fit into their worldview.”

Writing: “True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.”

Books: “Books are men of higher stature, And the only men that peak aloud for future times to hear.” – Elizabeth B. Browning, “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship”

Reviews

Netflix review: ‘The Pale Blue Eye’

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I don’t watch a lot of movies anymore, even on home streaming. (A miniseries I worked on, by the way, Gangs of Oslo, is now on Netflix. I haven’t gotten around to watching it yet.) But for some reason I was flipping through the offerings on that same provider a few days ago, and I came on a film I’d never heard of, The Pale Blue Eye, based on a novel by Louis Bayard. In spite of its title, it’s not a Travis McGee story, but a period piece set at West Point in 1830, featuring Edgar Allan Poe. I was intrigued.

Retired detective Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) is summoned to meet the commandant of West Point Military Academy, to investigate the death of a cadet. The young man was found hanged to death, but – bizarrely – his heart was cut out of his body. As Landor begins asking questions, he’s approached by a cadet named Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling), who has unique insights and soon proves himself an invaluable assistant. Landor’s suspicions begin to focus on the family of Dr. Marquis, who did the initial autopsy, as Poe begins falling in love with the doctor’s lovely daughter, who is subject to seizures.

The internet tells me that response to this film has been mixed, but I must say I found it fascinating and effective. It’s beautifully photographed, and the costumes look very authentic to my eye (I’d have to check with my costume historian friend Kelsey to know for sure). Christian Bale does his usual superior work as an alcoholic investigator with a secret sorrow. Harry Melling is absolutely splendid as Poe. First of all, he looks like the guy in the photos. I have no way of knowing if the real Poe had the same kind of nervous tics in real life, but Melling sells it – I believed him entirely.

Robert Duvall also appears, and I didn’t recognize him at all (which is praise for an actor).

Also, witchcraft is treated as a negative thing, which is both historically accurate and gratifying. The ending, with its twist in an epilogue, is a bit confusing, but I’ll buy it.

I recommend The Pale Blue Eye, for grownups. Cautions for mature situations.

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

Are We or Will We Ever Be Free at Last?

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Time has vindicated Dr. King. Ultimately it is not Black versus White. It is justice versus injustice, haves versus have-nots. As long as Dr. King talked only about African-Americans he was relatively safe, but when he began to pull poor Whites and poor Blacks together he became a threat to the power and wealth elite. If he had been allowed to live, he might have even been able to articulate the frustrations of today’s shrinking middle class. Thus Brother Martin could have been a prophet of a sizable slice of America. This would have been a formidable challenge, but it was never allowed to materialize.

One of Jesus’s points in the Sermon on the Mount was to seek the kingdom of God first and allow all other worries and legitimate concerns to follow it. Such a kingdom-focus doesn’t sit well with us. We would rather have seeking the kingdom as a consumer spending habit or path to political goals. We would rather settle on being in the best church, denomination, or path (Me against the World) in contrast to others of the same type, even if our path is the one constantly thumping how everyone should just get along. A Christianized humanism may be more comfortable to us than the gospel of Christ’s kingdom.

That’s where this book, Free at Last? The Gospel in the African American Experience, stands. It’s too biblical, too focused on Christ’s kingdom to light the torches of those looking to build a kingdom of their own.

In 1983, Dr. Carl Ellis wrote a book for an African American audience on the state of the church, the history of various Black movements, and how we can move forward. He revised and republished it in 1996 and it was republished as a special edition classic in 2020, which is the edition I read.

Ellis spends most of the book on overviews of different movements and cultural arguments Black leaders have made, both within and without the church, to recognize and defend the honor of African Americans. It offers a high-level framework for understanding decades of history. He gives the most attention to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, who disagreed on how to raise the dignity of Black families in a country that wants to either melt away their distinctions or marginalize them.

No one escape Ellis’s criticism because mistakes and bad actors have cropped up on all sides. Some Black leaders have painted Christianity as a White man’s religion, but Ellis separates civil religion and White-centered humanism from the biblical faith and traces these sinful influences through to today. White humanism he defines as a belief that White people and standards are the ultimate references for truth and values, White people being generally unaffected by sin. Many African Americans have adapted this view into a Black humanism, which again, for the churched and unchurched, is not Christianity.

Anything can become an idol, even, perhaps especially, good things. “Afrocentrism is truly magnificent, but it is not magnificent as an absolute. As an absolute, it will infect us with the kind of bigotry we’ve struggled against in others for centuries.”

Ellis notes a point in history when the solution to gaining dignity in American life was the melting pot, everyone blending into the surrounding culture, but the dominant culture rejected African Americans subtly and overtly. If they were to blend in, they would have to be subservient to Whites. That actually didn’t sit well with anyone but the abusers. America isn’t a country that can tolerate a permanent servant class for long. We tell ourselves we are the land of the free and the brave, created equal by the Almighty. Americans of any color won’t be content to stand in the alleyways and watch others parade by.

There are many ideas holding us back. In one chapter, Ellis describes “four prisons of paganism” found in many corners of the world:

  1. Suicidal religion, which attempts to deny reality or numb ourselves to it through various means (sometimes with a “militant shallowness”);
  2. God-bribing religion, which is any manner of attempting to curry favor with the Almighty;
  3. Peekaboo religion, which hides God behind other people or things so our allegiance and obedience can be focused on the other thing and not the Almighty;
  4. Theicidal religion, which includes all attempts to reject God’s existence.

Ellis states Peekaboo religion is a dangerous trend in the Black church for its tendency to revere the pastor (and his wife) more than they should. I’d say many independent White churches do the same thing, but the percentage would be smaller.

To rise above these errors, Ellis calls for creative preaching and church practices. He calls it being a jazz theologian, one who improvises on melodies in performing the truth for contemporary congregations and find new ways to reach our increasingly secular neighbors. His call might have more resonance if he pointed to a new application of truth and history that is working, but he may have wanted to avoid that specifically because he isn’t trying to start a new thing for others to copy. He wants us to know the Lord and His Word and look for ways the people in our area will hear them.

It’s not in the book, but I know Ellis is the head of The Makazi Institute in Virginia, a type of L’Abri fellowship for cultural understanding and engagement. That would be his take as a jazz theologian, not something just anyone could do.

One value of Free at Last? is a 60-page glossary covering many topics referred to in the book as well as many contextual topics not mentioned. I wrote a post about content from this section before.

Photo by Samuel Martins on Unsplash

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Blood Strand,’ by Chris Ould

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I spent the day balancing the pains in my ribs, shoulder and head with painkillers and doing a passable impression of Elizabeth Barrett Browning on the sofa.

I knew nothing of Chris Ould or his Faeroes mystery series before I bought The Blood Strand. But I got a deal on it, and it was set in the Faeroes, a Nordic community I’d never visited fictionally (or in real life) before. I’m used to being depressed by Scandinavian Noir stories, but this one turned out to be a pleasant surprise.

Jan Reyna is an English police detective. He was born in the Faeroes, but his mother divorced his father and took him away when he was very young. Then she died, leaving him to be raised by relatives in England. He only met his father once, and then they got into a fistfight. But now the old man is hospitalized in the Faeroes following an accident and a stroke, and Jan succumbs to his aunt’s pressure to go and see his father while he’s still alive.

Arriving in the Faeroes, whose language he’s entirely forgotten, he finds his father (who turns out to be rich) unable to communicate. He meets his two half-brothers, one openly hostile, the other friendly. He also meets a local detective, Hjalte Hentze, who’s trying to figure out why Jan’s father was found in his car with a shotgun in the footwell, blood on the door, and a briefcase full of money in the trunk. That curiosity only increases when a young man’s body is found washed up on the shore with shotgun wounds. When he asks Jan to help out, Jan has nothing better to do… except for trying to find out why his mother left his father all those years ago.

I liked Jan Reyna and the other characters in The Blood Strand. The descriptions of Faeroese culture and scenery were interesting, and the unfolding mystery kept me fascinated. Though set in a historically Scandinavian setting, this book was not actually written by a Scandinavian, which may explain why it didn’t try to depress me to death. I had a good time reading it, and I look forward to the sequels.

Recommended. Not much offensive content either. References to Christianity (the Faeroese seem to be pretty religious) were mostly respectful.

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Saga reading report: Tales of Three Thorsteins

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King Olaf Trygvesson, as painted by my friend (okay, my acquaintance) Anders Kvaale Rue. I’ve never asked him why he pictures Olaf with a haircut documented as being popular with Danes.

Tonight, three more tales from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. Oddly, they’re all about guys named Thorstein. Perhaps the name was a statistical favorite among Icelanders. Or perhaps the name was becoming a go-to for storytellers, like “Jack” in so many British folk tales.

First, there’s “The Tale of Thorstein of the East Fjords.” We’re told that he was “young and fleet of foot,” though those qualities don’t really figure in the story. He is on a pilgrimage to Rome, and while traveling through Norway he comes upon a richly dressed young man defending himself against four attackers. Thorstein decides to intervene and kills three of the attackers. The young man he rescued tells him that once he gets back from Rome, he should go to King Magnus’s (Magnus the Good, I assume) court and see him. Just ask for Styrbjorn. (Styrbjorn was the name of a famous Swedish hero. I don’t know of more than one man who bore that name, and he was long dead by this time.)

One assumes that Thorstein goes to Rome and returns to Norway, though the saga writer fails to mention that. The next scene shows Thorstein showing up at the king’s hall, where he sends a message in, asking for Styrbjorn. All the kings’ men have a good laugh at somebody asking for Styrbjorn (like somebody today asking for Eliot Ness or Frank Sinatra, I suppose), but eventually the king himself silences them, explaining that he himself is this “Styrbjorn.” Thorstein ends up going home to Iceland with a lot of money.

The second tale is “The Tale of Thorstein the Curious.” This Thorstein went to Norway and joined the court of King Harald (Hardrada, I suppose). One day the king assigns him to watch his clothing while he’s taking a bath, and Thorstein can’t resist looking into his bag. There he sees a couple knife handles made from a strange, golden wood. When the king comes out of the bath, he intuits that Thorstein has peeked. Displeased, he demands that Thorstein fulfill a quest or lose his favor. He must fetch the king two more knife handles of the same wood – but he won’t give him a clue as to where such trees grow (considering Harald Hardrada’s history, it might have been anywhere in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, or Scandinavia). Thorstein eventually fulfills the quest, but only by way of escaping a giant serpent. In an oddly prosaic epilogue, we’re informed that this Thorstein died with Harald in England.

Finally we encounter “The Tale of Thorstein Shiver.” This Thorstein has joined the household of King Olaf (at first I assumed this would be Saint Olaf, but by the end it’s clear that it’s Olaf Trygvesson). One night the king gives a command (for no apparent reason) that no man is to go out to the privy without a buddy. Thorstein wakes in the middle of the night and is reluctant to wake anyone else, so he sneaks out alone. In the privy he encounters a demon. Then follows a sequence in which he asks the demon three times about which damned souls scream the loudest in Hell. The demon tells him about three famous Nordic heroes, describing their sufferings in the fires of perdition, and (at Thorstein’s request) each time screaming in imitation of that hero. Meanwhile, with each question the demon inches closer to Thorstein. But just before the demon can grab him, the church bells start ringing, and the demon flees back where he came from.

In the morning, the king asks how everyone slept. Thorstein confesses his disobedience, but King Olaf isn’t much bothered over that. He explains that he heard the diabolical screaming, and therefore ordered the bells rung, saving Thorstein from Hell.

There’s an interesting addendum. The king asks Thorstein if he felt frightened at any point, and Thorstein says he doesn’t know what fear feels like, though he shivered a little during the demon’s final scream.

This seems to anticipate a motif we find in several Scandinavian folk tales catalogued in the 19th Century – “The Boy Who Did Not Know Fear.” It seems to me that what we’re observing in these stories is a stage in the evolution of the folk tale – the point where stories are still connected to actual historical figures (likely the storytellers’ ancestors), but are growing increasingly extravagant and fabulous in the process of retelling.

Non-fiction, Reviews

Reading report: ‘The Vikings in Britain,’ by Henry Loyn

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When commenting on a book not easily available to readers in this country (I ordered my copy from England), it’s probably appropriate to call my review a reading report. Posting this does you no particular good, but I’ve spent a couple days reading the book (which I wanted for research on my Work In Progress), and I’m gonna get a review out of it, by thunder.

The Vikings in Britain by Henry Loyn was published back in 1995, which is a while ago, I must admit, especially in a rapidly expanding field of knowledge. No doubt much of the research in the book has been superseded, but in aggregate it seems to give a pretty good overview.

In fact, what The Vikings in Britain appears to be is a textbook, designed as a broad introduction. Just the facts, so to speak (so far as they can be determined). The material is presented through a combination of chronological and geographic perspectives, which seemed to me a little confusing. The book is, apparently, part of a series entailing certain format constraints, including length, so the prose is pretty dense.

My sad final impression after reading is that it wasn’t much fun. That makes it ideal for the textbook market, I suppose, but in my opinion there’s no excuse for a book about Vikings being boring. (Look at Viking Legacy for a sterling example of engaging historiography and [cough] translation.) If you happen on a copy of The Vikings in Britain, and want to mainline a lot of information in a minimal number of reading hours, this book might be right for you.

Religion

Being a captive ring

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The video above is one I found in my aimless wanderings on YouTube. The thing to bear in mind, if you watch it through (it’s not long) is that while I was watching it the first time, I had no idea what the artisan’s intention was. I thought at first the goal was a kind of Chippendale chair rail, and I simply found it visually engrossing, the same way I used to watch my Windows computer defrag.

And then it became “captive rings” (something I’d never heard of before), and I was astonished. What a wonderful thing, I thought.

And then it came into my mind –

[Let me just break in here with a disclaimer. I think I’ve made it clear before that I don’t believe in extra-biblical revelations, in the sense of treating them as the words of God. If I, or an angel from Heaven, tell you, “I have a new revelation from God for you,” run away.

On the other hand, I don’t doubt that God sometimes speaks to us personally, to encourage or even guide us. This may be a case of that. Or not. Remains to be seen. But I like it enough to share it here.]

So it came into my mind that maybe I’m like that piece of wood.

I’ve probably mentioned, in one or more of my too frequent navel-gazing posts, that the personality I possess now is not the one I was born with. I have it on good authority, from uncles and aunts, that when I was a little boy I was outgoing and friendly. These traits were knocked out of me in my upbringing, leaving me desperately shy and socially awkward.

To make it worse, all my life I’ve been informed by a series of employers (often while they were firing me) that it was precisely those personality traits (the ones I lost) that they wanted and didn’t get from me.

But looking at that woodturning video, it occurred to me, “Maybe I’m like that piece of wood. It didn’t start out to be a set of captive rings. It started out as a perfectly good, useful tree branch. First it was cut off, then it was dried in a kiln, then it was put in a lathe and subjected to a series of cuts and gouges which I can’t help anthropomorphizing as extremely painful.

But the result is something that delighted me. The captive ring piece is, to me, for want of a better word, wonderful.

Just possibly (I thought) I was put through all the stuff I’ve been through to make something wonderful out of me. (My guess would be my books, but who knows? Maybe I said the right words to somebody thirty years ago, and I’ve been riding on that one good act ever since.) I’m reminded of the potter in Jeremiah 18.

Of course, being me, I can’t resist looking at the question from the other side too. One should never forget the wisdom of this old internet meme: