Fiction, Reviews

‘Thrones, Dominations,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers & Jill Patton Walsh

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“It is perfectly possible, I suppose,” said Lord Peter to his wife, over breakfast, “for someone to be murdered while doing something she does not usually do, or behaving in a way unaccustomed to her. But it is an affront to the natural feelings of a criminologist, all the same.”

I was aware that Dorothy L. Sayers had begun a Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane novel back in the 1930s and abandoned it, leaving behind some isolated scenes and a tentative outline. And that the late author Jill Patton Walsh had completed the novel, Thrones, Dominations, which was published in 1999. But I hadn’t taken the trouble to read it. I feared that history would have contaminated it, especially in terms of feminism. Miss Sayers was certainly a feminist in her time, but the world has changed, and modern readers (we are told) demand certain thematic adjustments. I apply the same avoidance to the contemporary Battle of the Sexes as I do to the challenges of modern dating.

But a deal on Thrones, Dominations showed up, and I bought it. And by and large I was very pleased.

The story begins not long after the end of Busman’s Honeymoon. Lord Peter and Harriet are in Paris, still on their honeymoon. There in a restaurant they encounter a couple of other newlyweds, the London theatrical investor (“angel”) Laurence Harwell and his wife Rosamund. Rosamund is the daughter of a convicted embezzler who spent time in prison, but has overcome that social handicap through the sheer power of her ethereal beauty.

Then the story shifts to London, and I must admit it drags a bit in terms of plot. We spend a lot of time satisfying fans’ curiosity about how Lord Peter and Harriet will organize their new household. Interesting for that group (of which I am one), but I think it makes for a slow dramatic start. However, eventually a murder does happen, and the logical suspect has a solid alibi, while another fellow looks pretty guilty but Lord Peter has his doubts. It all leads to one of those alibi-breaking puzzles that’s so characteristic of Miss Sayers’ work, which was very gratifying. The conclusion was tragic and touching.

I saw occasional traces of a modern sensibility in the story, but all in all, Jill Patton Walsh did a very good job writing the kind of story Miss Sayers would have produced if she hadn’t lost interest. There were moments when the characters reminded me why I love them, and that made for delightful reading.

I don’t generally like the Wimsey/Vane novels as well as the earlier stories, because I find Harriet a little dull. She’s essentially the author without her Christian faith, and Sayers without God would be a kind of a bore, in my opinion.

But that’s just me.

The only serious error I noticed was that one major character changed hair color over the course of the story (unless I got them confused with someone else).

Thrones, Dominations is, overall, a highly successful literary experiment, and is recommended, especially for Wimsey fans.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Lonely Silver Rain,’ by John D. MacDonald

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So we went to take a look. It took an hour and forty minutes to get there, first south and then west. A lonely road on the edge of the Glades. Lumpy asphalt running string-straight through wetlands past wooded hammocks where the white birds sat on bare trees like Christmas doodads, thinking white bird thoughts.

As I think I may possibly have mentioned before, I’m a hopeless fan of John D. MacDonald, and especially his Travis McGee novels, about a Florida boat bum and “salvage specialist” who recovers people’s stolen property and keeps half the value as his fee.  The Lonely Silver Rain holds a special place in the series, as its 21st and final installment. It was published in 1985, and the author died the following year.

Trav gets a call from Billy Ingraham, an old friend who’s a millionaire and a widower, who recently retired, acquired a trophy wife, and had a yacht custom-built to his specifications. The boat had barely gotten in the water when somebody stole it. Billy has heard that Trav once found somebody else’s stolen yacht. Could he do the same for him? Trav explains that the first recovery was kind of a fluke, but Billy promises a generous finder’s fee. Helped by his best friend, the economist Myer, Trav makes a plan to use aerial photography and systematic analysis to try to find the needle in the haystack. And, to his own surprise, he does find it.

But when he boards the yacht, now abandoned in an isolated bay in the Keys, he finds it trashed, with three corpses inside. A young man and two young women have been tortured and murdered here. Trav recognizes the signs – this is a drug deal gone bad. This is nothing for outsiders to mess with.

Trav backs out carefully, covering his tracks, and phones the Coast Guard anonymously to alert them. Then he tells Billy to forget he was ever involved.

Too late, it turns out. One of the dead women was the daughter of a high-level Peruvian gangster. Someone has decided that somebody must be made to pay for the murders, and somehow they’ve identified Travis McGee as the scapegoat. He’ll have to either handle the problem or find a way to disappear forever.

I remember that, when this book came out, some reviewers commented on what they saw as a weary, graying quality. The author’s chronological plan was for Travis McGee to age at a somewhat slower rate than people in the real world. Under that plan, McGee was now middle-aged, but still had good years in him (though he worries now and then about losing a half-step). But MacDonald was approaching 70 himself at the time (which even I admit is old, though I’m older than that now), and he was clearly experiencing intimations of mortality. There’s even a fleeting moment in this book, a sort of throwaway scene, where Trav acknowledges the possibility of the Great Beyond sending us messages.

The Lonely Silver Rain may not be the top entry in the Travis McGee series, but it’s written with all the skill and craft of a consummate professional. Plus, as a special bonus, there’s an episode at the end that adds a (possibly unintentional but touching ) coda that rounds out a classic detective series rather nicely.

Music

Sunday Singing: Sometimes a Light Surprises

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Sung by the congregation of Metropolitan Tabernacle, London

For November, our hymn theme will be the comforting grace and faithfulness of our Lord. Today’s hymn is from Englishman William Cowper (who got a mention in yesterday’s post), published 1779. This is probably one of the top forgotten hymns everyone should know.

“But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.” (Malachi 4:2 ESV)

1 Sometimes a light surprises
the Christian while he sings;
it is the Lord who rises
with healing in His wings;
when comforts are declining,
He grants the soul again
a season of clear shining,
to cheer it after rain.

2 In holy contemplation,
we sweetly then pursue
the theme of God’s salvation,
and find it ever new.
Set free from present sorrow,
we cheerfully can say,
“E’en let the unknown morrow
bring with it what it may.”

3 “It can bring with it nothing,
but He will bear us through;
who gives the lilies clothing
will clothe His people, too;
beneath the spreading heavens
no creature but is fed;
and He who feeds the ravens
will give His children bread.”

4 Though vine nor fig tree neither
their wonted fruit should bear,
though all the field should wither,
nor flocks nor herds be there,
yet God the same abiding,
His praise shall tune my voice;
for while in Him confiding,
I cannot but rejoice.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, The Press

What Should a Scholar Do When Civilization Topples?

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Clive James’s book of essays called Cultural Amnesia offers a take on a German medieval scholar who wrote influentially on literature and Western civilization. As the Nazi party began to gain power, Ernst Robert Curtius warned of danger to come, but when it did come, Curtius retreated into his scholarly study and said no more. He didn’t directly support the Nazis, but with his silence, one has to wonder where his loyalties settled.

James says many German and French intellectuals prior to WWII wanted to believe they could forge wonderful, cultural bonds high above the dirty politics of their day. He calls this a “wishful, wistful thought.”

Most of our wishful thinking is about what we love. . . . But if we are to learn anything from catastrophe, it is wise to remember what some of the men who shared our passions once forgot. Curtius forgot that continuity is not in itself an inspiration for culture, merely a description of it.

Curtius thought he was doing his humble part to preserve civilization, and it wasn’t worthless work, but the hard chore of cultural preservation was being accomplished by the men in bombers, parachutes, and fatigues. It wasn’t the time to discern the patterns of principles in the past; it was the time to fight for the morals they already had.

Curtius the universal scholar is left looking depressingly restricted, and humanism is left with its besetting weakness on display—the temptation it carries within it to reduce the real world to a fantasy even while presuming to comprehend everything that the world creates.

Clive James, Cultural Amnesia, p. 159

It’s been another week, hasn’t it? Here are some links to consider.

Legacy Press: Are there any good journalists working for the biggest names in news? “These seven failures from the past few weeks should dispel any benefit of the doubt you have left for the corporate media’s honesty.“

Russia: A new book exposes a movement I wish American opinionmakers understood. “Russia is systematically and deliberately instilling in its children hatred, vengefulness, and the desire to kill.“

Poetry: William Cowper said, “Despair made amusements necessary, and I found poetry the most agreeable amusement.”

Dostoevsky: John Stamps praises the Michael R. Katz translation of The Brothers Karamazov, calling it thrilling and lively. Katz doesn’t attempt a literal translation but adapts the work to English ears by simplifying the naming convention, cutting back some repetition, and using footnotes instead of endnotes.

Woodlands: Two forest lovers, ages 10 and 8, “have hiked every trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park”—900 miles of hiking.

Photo by David Hawkes on Unsplash

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Shining,’ by Jon Fosse

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I had probably never done anything much worse than this, first getting my car stuck and then walking into the forest to look for help, really, what could have made me think I’d be able to find help in the forest, in the dark woods…

I’m working on a review of Jon Fosse’s Septology for… another outlet. As you may recall, Fosse is the latest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Like Sigrid Undset, he’s a Norwegian author who converted to Roman Catholicism, though his writing is nothing like Undset’s. I got his recent novella, A Shining, too, and there’s nothing stopping my reviewing that one here.

The first peculiarity one notices when reading Septology (of which this is not a review) is that the entire book – and it’s a long one – is one sentence. Not a single period there for the reader to rest on, like a swimmer at sea looking for an island. A Shining is less radical in that regard – it does have sentences, but there are no paragraphs. It’s a stream of consciousness story, in which we follow the unnamed narrator on a dream-like journey, to a destination about which we can only speculate.

The narrator describes how he drives his car out into the country, and then, on a whim, into the forest, where the vehicle gets stuck on a dirt road just as snow begins to fall. Incredibly, he decides to look for help by walking up a forest path, and before long he’s utterly lost. Then he encounters a shining “presence” whom he does not understand (but the reader can guess), followed by other apparitions.

One does not read a Fosse story for the plot. It’s all character, in a very immersive way. The narrator, wise or foolish, shares his every thought – sometimes to the reader’s frustration. The mystery of the story is what the narrator actually wants (he doesn’t know), and where he’s going (which he also doesn’t know).

The Christianity of A Shining is obscure and far from explicit, but the trip is absorbing if you give it a chance. Not light reading, but worth it if this kind of story intrigues you.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The House of Love and Death,’ by Andrew Klavan

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A young woman, slender as cigarette smoke, drifted toward him across the lawn. A breeze blew, bearing the first biting chill of winter. An armada of cumulous clouds sailed across the blue sky. Winter could picture the smoke-thin girl borne away on the breeze and vanishing. Yet on she came.

I’ve reached a strange point in my strange life when I no longer get Christmas presents. And yet I do get Christmas a present each year, ever since Andrew Klavan started writing his Cameron Winter books. These are my Christmas presents (a little early), even if I do have to buy them myself, and I await them with under-the-tree anticipation.

Klavan does the thing he does, perhaps, better than anyone alive. And it all comes together seamlessly in this idiosyncratic series of novels about a former government black-ops assassin, retired to teach English at a small midwestern college, but occasionally intruding himself into a murder investigation. Because he has a “strange habit of mind,” an instinctive ability to project himself into crimes, analyzing motives and methods.

In The House of Love and Death, the third in the series, Cam reads a news story about a multiple murder in Maidenvale, a small town not far from Chicago. In a mansion in a gated community, three members of a wealthy family were gunned down, along with their nanny. The police suspect the slain daughter’s boyfriend, a Mexican-American boy who attended her private school. But Cam senses a hidden logic in the crime, a logic he can’t yet put his finger on. So he drives to Maidenvale to ask questions. He finds the local police detective hostile, and adamant the boyfriend is innocent. A female security guard at the gated community is certain the boy did it. But Cam isn’t convinced either way. Before he gets to the truth, he’ll face threats from the police, the local drug gangs, and the family of one of the victims.

In a way, though, this is all a kind of distraction. Cam has reached a crisis point in his sessions with his psychologist, Margaret. He’s preparing to open up to her at a new level – to reveal to her the worst thing he ever did in his life as an assassin. Something that’s closed his heart off and prevented his forming romantic connections in all the years since. But will the truth be too much for even her to accept?

Another interesting plot thread is an ongoing subplot about Lori, a “diversity” officer at the college, who’s made it her mission to get Cam fired, not realizing that her inquiries are raising red flags in Washington. If she only knew it, Cam is the only thing standing between her and deniable liquidation.

I wish I could have brought myself to read The House of Love and Death more slowly. I’ll probably read it again.  I can’t imagine how it could have been better.

Fiction, Reviews

‘My Life As a Dixie Darling,’ by Mark Goldblatt

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When it comes to living our lives, I’m sure that the vast majority of us are making it up as we go along. “Lunatics, lovers, and poets.” …of the people I’ve known, they are the only ones who are certain about what they’re doing. But with all due respect to Shakespeare, I wouldn’t trust any of them to babysit my kid.

Occasionally I refer to the late D. Keith Mano, a somewhat tragic author who tried to write fiction about sex from a Christian perspective. I think he deserves a better posterity than he’s enjoyed so far, but I’m also not sure he ever really hit his target. I heard a critic say once that almost every great filmmaker tries to do a movie about sex at some point, to infallibly fail miserably. My friend Mark Goldblatt has written a novel about softcore porn in My Life As a Dixie Darling, and I think it mostly works.

The year is 2007. Doreen Martinelli is a very pretty wife and mother living in Shreveport, Louisiana. She’s married to Bobby, a fairly feckless man-boy who works on and off as a car salesman. They’re just getting by financially, and Doreen worries about how they’ll eventually pay for their young daughter Arielle’s college education.

Then Bobby has a brainstorm. There’s a porn site called “Dixie Darlings.” It runs on (I assume; I have no personal experience here) the same general principles as OnlyFans – a woman posts her pictures and film clips, and subscribers pay to see her nude in the member’s section.

Doreen is, of course, shocked and offended. At first. But Bobby is persistent. She isn’t a prude, is she? She’s a beautiful woman. He’s not jealous. And they could make enough money to send Arielle to Harvard, potentially.

That’s what gets to Doreen. She’d be doing it for Arielle. Who would it hurt?

Little does she know. She adopts the name “Dee-Dee” and posts some photos. The response is astonishing. Before long she’s the second-most popular Darling, and rising fast. But that means competition with the Alpha Darling. Plus the constant risk of the neighbors finding out. And Arielle getting teased at school. And Bobby becoming a seduction target for other women.

…As well as a weird flirtation with the boss’s son, an intelligent, well-educated dwarf.

The overall theme in My Life As a Dixie Darling seems to be materialism – the American tendency to justify any moral compromise – even when it leads us to neglect our children – so long as we can tell ourselves it’s for the children’s sakes. I also appreciated the unexpected complexity of the characters. This is one of those stories where there are no real villains, though many of the characters certainly do wrong.

I wasn’t entirely sure about the ending. I guess it should be seen as a peculiarly American kind of tragedy, but in a light-hearted way.

Recommended. Cautions (surprise!) for adult situations.

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Saga reading report: ‘Thorarin Nefjolfsson’s Tale’

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Illustration by Christian Krohg of the tale of Thorarin Nefjolfsson’s foot. This is not the tale we’re considering in this post.

I’ve got another saga tale for you tonight, from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. This one presented certain problems for me as a reader. In the first place, I found it poorly written (I’m blaming the original saga writer, not the translator) and rather hard to follow (all the saga writers couldn’t be geniuses). Secondly, it told me new things about a character I thought I knew pretty well, which didn’t quite fit my picture of him (can’t have original sources contradicting my assumptions!).

This one is “Thorarin Nefjolfsson’s Tale.” At first glance, anybody fairly familiar with saga literature will assume he knows what the story will be. I recounted it myself, in The Elder King (or was it King of Rogaland? Can’t keep my own books straight). It’s the story of how King Olaf caught a glimpse of Thorarin’s ugly foot in the morning light (illustration above), and bet him that there wasn’t an uglier foot in town. Then how Thorarin showed him an uglier foot, but got suckered anyway. It’s a great story. But this isn’t it.

Or then there’s the story I used for the climax of King of Rogaland, where Thorarin helps Erling Skjalgsson and his son Aslak (I think it was Aslak) to save Asbjorn Seal’s-bane from hanging. Also a great story. But this one isn’t that one either.

The somewhat disjoined story we’re dealing with here starts with Thorarin at the court of King Knut of Denmark (I didn’t know he ever went there), where he makes friends with a fellow named Thorstein. They agree to always stay in the same lodgings whenever they find themselves in the same country. As a result, they eventually join King (Saint) Olaf Haraldsson’s court in Norway together. There they are accused by jealous companions of treason against Olaf, and they have to go through the iron ordeal (which I’ve mentioned a couple times in my books) to prove their good faith. Thorstein turns out to have a miraculous mark on his palm which vindicates them.

I’m not sure what to think about this story. It’s not very plausible in its details, though I suppose it could have a core of fact, plus (as I mentioned) it’s kind of hard to follow.

What bothers me most, though, is the statement at the end that Thorarin died in battle alongside Olaf at Stiklestad. I always imagined Thorarin surviving to old age in Iceland, telling his grandchildren the marvelous stories of his life that eventually would be included in sagas. Also, I find it hard to imagine that Thorarin would have been allowed to stay in Olaf’s court after the fast one he pulled in the matter of Asbjorn Seal’s-bane.

Still, I suppose even a minor saga writer would have information about how Thorarin died. Now I’m hunting for more data, but the internet (even the Norway part of it) doesn’t have much to say.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Another Girl,’ by Peter Grainger

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I have, as I have frequently expressed, a great fondness for Peter Grainger’s DC Smith novels, police procedurals set in the fictional Kings Lake, Norfolk. Author Grainger has spun off another, not quite separate, series through retiring Detective Inspector Smith and continuing to follow his old squad, now dubbed the Murder Squad, under its new commander, a female inspector named Cara Freeman. I’ve generally ignored this “King’s Lake Mystery” series, but I figured I’d give it a chance with the recently released Another Girl.

Verdict: It’s not bad of its sort, but I just find these books hard to enjoy. On the other hand, they’re in the latest fashion – driven by female characters – so I’m probably in the minority.

One of the star detectives on the King’s Lake squad is Serena Butler, a young policewoman who started her career in a shaky way but has since demonstrated great talent and drive. In Another Girl she’s working undercover. Her assignment is simply to get into a private club where, it’s suspected, drug business is being done. She manages that, but then one of the proprietors offers her a job as a courier. That opportunity to get on the inside is too tempting to resist.

Meanwhile, the body of an Asian man is found smashed up on a highway. Though at first it looks like a hit and run case, the medical examiner finds indications that the man was beaten to death, then dumped. Clues lead to suspicions of human trafficking and drugs… and eventually this case will hook up with Serena’s, which will contribute to her finding herself in mortal danger and out of communication…

My big problem with this whole new fashion of female-driven police novels is that I am not – and I’m pretty sure I’ll never be – comfortable with putting women in harm’s way. Here we have Serena fighting for her life, while her male colleagues sit back at the office, worrying and vowing revenge if anything happens to her. The author even makes so bold, toward the end, as to raise the Awful Question – Is it possible that men and women are different?

Anyway, Another Girl was an okay read, well-written and compelling like all Peter Grainger’s books. But personally I think I’ll wait for another DC Smith book.

Music

Sunday Singing: Jerusalem the Golden

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The last hymn of the month was written by Bernard of Cluny (12th century), who is thought to be French born to English parents. He is most known for this poetic work De contemptu mundi (“On Condemning the World”), written ~1140 and dedicated to the abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable. Englishman John Mason Neale (1818-1866) gave us this translation.

“Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. (Rev. 21:9-11 ESV)

1 Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest,
beneath your contemplation sink heart and voice oppressed.
I know not, O I know not, what joys await us there;
what radiancy of glory, what bliss beyond compare.

2 They stand, those halls of Zion, all jubilant with song,
and bright with many an angel, and all the martyr throng.
The Prince is ever in them, the daylight is serene;
the pastures of the blessed are decked in glorious sheen.

3 There is the throne of David; and there, from care released,
the song of them that triumph, the shout of them that feast;
and they who with their Leader have conquered in the fight,
forever and forever are clad in robes of white.

4 O sweet and blessed country, the home of God’s elect!
O sweet and blessed country, that eager hearts expect!
Jesus, in mercy bring us to that dear land of rest;
who art, with God the Father and Spirit, ever blest.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture