“Some years ago,” writes John Wilson, “I described the novelist and poet Marly Youmans as “the best-kept secret among contemporary American writers.” That’s still true today (so I think), and if you haven’t tried Youmans yet, her new novel, Glimmerglass, is a very good place to start.” (via Prufrock)
Faber’s Book of Loss and Strange New Things
Michel Faber has a fascinating story behind his novel, The Book of Strange New Things
Steve Paulson of TTBOOK interviews Faber here as part of a show on science fiction.
‘Joy Cometh with the Mourning,’ by Dave Freer
Dave Freer is best known as a science fiction writer. I don’t know him personally, but we have several mutual friends. One of those friends sent me a free copy of Joy Cometh with the Mourning for review.
Reviewing this book is problematical for me, because of fundamental presuppositions. The main character is a female pastor, and most of you know I consider that unscriptural. Still, I read the book and found it appealing on its own terms.
Rev. Joy Norton, the protagonist, is a young pastor newly installed in a remote parish in Australia. She’s insecure about the call, as she’s never served in a rural church before, or on her own. The situation is complicated by the fact that her much-loved predecessor’s cause of death is unknown. What makes it worse is that she begins to suspect that there were improprieties in his conduct, which might have given one of her parishioners a motive to murder him.
Unlike the mysteries I usually review, Joy Cometh with the Mourning is a “cozy” mystery. Instead of turning over spiritual rocks and discovering evil, Rev. Joy looks into human hearts and finds goodness there. Even that particularly maligned species of humanity, the Church Lady, is treated with respect and affection in this story.
I enjoyed reading Joy Cometh with the Mourning. If you’re more tolerant than I am of egalitarianism in the church, you’ll probably enjoy it very much.
The Reason Lecrae Changed His Tune
Musician Lacrae has taken some heat for switching from writing explicitly Christian songs to writing songs on themes with broader appeal. He has appeared with artists and on shows that have drawn criticism from those who think the right thing to do is stick with people who claim to follow Christ.
But Lacrae says another believer, Andy Crouch, changed his mind a few years ago. Jemar Tisby explains, “Crouch says in his book, Culture Making, ‘If culture is to change, it will be because of some new tangible (or audible or visible or olfactory) thing is presented to a wide enough public that it begins to reshape their world.’ He proposes that instead of condemning, critiquing, copying, or uncritically consuming culture, something new has to displace the old. It appears Lecrae has been making new music in an attempt to do just that.”
The tension point for this idea will be at the place where those who want to change people apply their cultural creations. I’m sure many will continue to create things that won’t get anywhere near the people they want to influence, and they will say they are making new culture, but it isn’t changing anyone. They’re making Halloween candy in hopes of changing Christmas.
Le Guin: ‘Resistance and Change Often Begin in the Art of Words’
Author Ursula Le Guin received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at this week’s National Book Awards and inspired the crowd by holding up freedom as an author’s best prize. “We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.”
She said many things needed to change, and that change often begins in art, specifically the art of words. Writing books according to marketing formulas for corporate profit is a rotten idea, she said. We need artists.
Her speech was short, so you can easily watch the whole thing here.
In an interview, Le Guin said, “If you’re going to create a world out of whole cloth, that is to say, out of words, then you better get the words right.” You can read about her and her many books in The Guardian.
Behind the Scenes of “The Princess Bride”
Cary Elwes, whom you may know as Pierre Despereaux from Psyche, has written a book on his experiences making the film The Princess Bride. The book, As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride
Fox bought the movie rights to the book as soon as it was published in 1973, but it was 1987 when it finally played in theaters. In the meantime, many directors wanted to do it, including Robert Redford. Can you imagine Redford as The Dread Pirate Roberts (if he cast himself in his own film)?
Author William Goldman had seen many of his screenplays produced before The Princess Bride, but he was unprepared for the filming of this one. He freaked out on the first day when they were filming the scene in the fire swamp. “As soon as the gas geyser lit up her dress, Goldman burst out screaming, ‘OH, MY GOD! HER DRESS IS ON FIRE! SHE’S ON FIRE!!!’ Later, he scolded Reiner: ‘You’re setting fire to Robin on the first day?! What are you, nuts? It’s not like we can replace her!'”
There’s a word for that reaction, if I could only think of it.
Celebrity Coffee Labels
Would you buy coffee from Joey Kramer of Aerosmith? How about Grace Hightower’s Coffee of Rwanda, sold at Bed, Bath, and Beyond? Maybe Laughing Man coffee from Hugh Jackman, which gives all of its proceeds to charity? Apparently, they aren’t bad.
Also from our coffee connoisseur desk, confessions from baristas.
The Jack Stratton novels, by Christopher Greyson
It’s a rare treat to discover an author and a series of books I enjoy very much, and which I can recommend to our readers almost without reservation. But that’s the case with Christopher Greyson and his Jack Stratton novels.
Jack Stratton, the hero of the series, is a cop in a South Carolina town. He’s a good man, but wound tight. As a boy he was abandoned by his prostitute mother, but found refuge in a loving mixed race foster home before being adopted by a good family. As a young man he served in Iraq beside one of his foster brothers, Chandler. He saw Chandler die, and because of survivor’s guilt he hasn’t contacted his foster family since.
That’s until Replacement invades his life. “Replacement” is the nickname of a young woman who grew up in his old foster home, though after his time there. She shows up in his apartment and tells him Michelle, a foster sister to whom he was always close, has disappeared. She’d been studying in a local college, but supposedly transferred to a California school. Only she hasn’t gotten in touch with her family, and she wouldn’t do that.
With Replacement as his uninvited assistant, he starts looking into Michelle’s life, and discovers troubling things. Continue reading The Jack Stratton novels, by Christopher Greyson
Points on Interstellar
Jeffrey Overstreet reviews Interstellar, whose trailer really draws me but I gather the movie may not get me singing. I haven’t seen it read, nor have I read all of Jeff’s review. Still, I’m sure it’s good, so I wanted to link to it.
Our friend Hunter Baker says I enjoyed the film, but could not swallow a major plot rationale. Have you seen it? What do you think?
The Autobiography of a Pioneer Girl
Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her autobiography before her Little House Series
Wilder places the story of the schoolteacher and his improvised igloo in the winter of 1884–1885, but the setup is strongly reminiscent of the “children’s blizzard,” a storm that struck without warning on a warm day in January 1888 and killed more than a hundred schoolchildren as they struggled to get home. Wilder did not always remember events in their true chronological order, and it seemed likely that she misplaced this one. But she does not give the teacher’s name, and the Kingsbury County newspapers that could complete the story have been lost, so there, it appeared, the matter would rest.