Blogs, Socials, Non-fiction, Religion, Uncategorized, Writing

What Is the Essence of Story?

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The essence of a story is conflict. We may think the essence as theme and remember some stories for a moment of discovery or clarity that moves us, but that moment must come through conflict to carry meaning.

In a 1959 text called Understanding Fiction, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren write, “A story is a movement through complexity to unity, through complication to simplicity, through confusion to order.” Both adventures and mysteries follow this path. You begin with many questions and maybe competing statements of fact. The confusion may be as simple as being lost, and finding the way out takes a lot of problem solving. When order or simplicity is found, when the events finally make some sense, then you have a story.

There are many types of conflict, Brooks and Warren note, but an account of “purely physical conflict” can’t be called fiction. Motives and ideas are necessary. We need characters, not just actors. A writer needs to “investigate motives” and “imply sympathy or antipathy” for the characters involved. Dr. Jones wants to preserve the ark or save Marion and himself. Belloq wants to use the ark to conquer the world. (And there are layers of conflict despite what fan critics have said.)

In another Saturday post, I said games and sports could hit the points of story, and I think motives and character is what I was talking about. The conflict is there, and if you impute evil intent onto the other team, you’ve got something that smells like a story.

What else have we got?

Book Banning: The ALA asks us to believe “2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship” in mostly “school libraries, classroom libraries, or school curricula” in 2022. That’s a 38 percent increase over 2021. Though you may suspect the ALA of cooking the books to raise this number, a glance at the top 13 most challenged books shows “claimed to be sexually explicit” on every title. Why are any of these recommended in schools?

Faithfulness: A new book tells the stories of Lutherans under Stalin.

But the Communist Party sought also to erase Christian ethics. “Love your neighbor” violated the Marxist principle of “class struggle.” Thus, pastors could be charged with “preaching class peace.” Lutherans had an extensive network to help the poor and the disabled, but this was held to compete with the state and to keep the deprived “in thrall to their exploiters.” Consequently, the church was defined as an enemy of the state. One of the Lutheran bishops summed up the goal: “Everything that is connected to the Christian faith or reminds one of it must disappear from the life of the people and its individual citizens.”

Ukraine: “[Victoria] Amelina is one of Ukraine’s most celebrated young literary figures and a common presence at literary festivals both in Ukraine and abroad.” Now, she researches war crimes, starting with what happened to children’s literature writer Volodymyr Vakulenko.

Reader Reviews: A writer gets angry that ARC readers aren’t leaving reviews.

Grassroots Hatred: Will anti-Semitism ever die?

Music

One of my stupider posts…

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Which is saying a lot.

I’m just getting going on a reeeeeally long book to review, so I’ll be posting oddments here for a few days. And Friday is a day I often do musical posts.

But I didn’t have this in mind, I swear to you. I was looking for some kind of hymn in Old Norse, and stumbled on this… thing.

I guess it’s kind of amusing. In Simon & Garfunkle style, they tell how the Vikings settled in Britain and assimilated. And they list some of the Viking contributions to British culture. I got a giggle or two out of it.

You’ll notice, if you’ve read my novel The Elder King, that they repeat the story that the nursery rhyme, “London Bridge Is Falling Down” refers to King Olaf Haraldsson (later Saint Olaf) pulling down London Bridge during his time as a mercenary in England. I use that legend in my book, but integrity forced me to confess in the Afterword that there’s no genuine historical basis for it. One translation of Heimskringla includes a skaldic poem with the lines, “London bridge is falling down / Gold is won and bright renown.” But that line was a whimsy of the translator’s. It doesn’t appear that way in the original poem. Scholars are confident that the nursery rhyme commemorates a much later occurrence.

Have a good weekend, if you can handle that disappointment.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dead of Night,’ by Robert McNeill

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Maurice Hillard is a French scholar teaching at the University of Edinburgh. He has a reputation as a ladies’ man, not discriminating between his own students and other men’s wives. So there’s no lack of suspects when he’s found dead in the Union canal, his neck broken. But all the chief suspects seem to have good alibis. Meanwhile, Inspector Jack Knox is under pressure from his superiors to solve the crime quickly, without scandal.

Meanwhile, his colleague and fiancée (how do they work that out?) Yvonne Mason is bedeviled by someone vandalizing her car and apartment door. Little does she know that this harassment is just part of a plot by a clever criminal, for whom she’s a means to a sinister end.

I’ve read previous volumes in the Jack Knox series. I like them but don’t love them; they’re well written.

What I personally disliked in this book was a very modern view of marriage. A highly nasty character invokes the Christian view of matrimony for evil purposes (though nothing is actually said about Christianity per se), and divorce is treated lightly – as it tends to be in any book written nowadays. And, of course, the Scottish Presbyterians have a history of easy divorce, as is well known from British history.

But these matters aren’t actually harped on. Dead of Night was professionally written and enjoyable to read. Moderately recommended.

Coffee, Tea, Drinks, Uncategorized

When Did Biscuits Become Light and Fluffy?

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A visiting preacher from England spoke out our church last year, and he share what he was offered for breakfast by his host on his first morning in our city. There may have been more to the offer, but he focused on his initial take on being offered biscuits and strawberry jelly. He knows how Americans use English differently than he does, but he couldn’t help reacting to the thought of having cookies and strawberry Jell-O for breakfast, because that’s the British use biscuits and jelly. For the actual food he was being offered, he would have said scones and jam.

The American Encyclopaedic Dictionary of 1896 defines biscuit first in this way: “Thin flour-cake which has been baked in the oven until it is highly dried. . . . Plain biscuits are more nutritious than an equal weight in bread, but owing to their hardness and dryness, they should be more thoroughly masticated to insure their easy digestion.” Among other explanations, the writers warn that toasted biscuit crumbs have been used to “adulterate coffee” grounds (which is far preferable to sheep dung, if adulterated coffee is all they have at the market). They also allow that some biscuits are “raised” with shortening or “lightened” with baking powder and perhaps known to be dunked in coffee, but this definition doesn’t carry the weight of authority of the first one does.

Look at the etymology of the word, and you see what our forefather’s bit into. Biscuit comes through the French from the Medieval Latin biscoctum, which means “twice-baked.” It’s something of a fraternal word to biscotto, which is actually baked twice and dunked in 99.97% pure coffee.

So, how did twice-baked flour discs become comforting bundles of all that’s right with the world?

Shawn Chavis of How Stuff Works attributes it to improved flour coming out of Midwestern mills and the invention of baking soda in the 19th century. In these early days, risen biscuits were called “soda biscuits” by some to distinguish them from the regular kind.

Fluffy biscuits rose in the South for a variety of reasons. Debra Freeman writing for King Arthur Flour notes regional biases sidelined this quick bread in the North and allowed it to flourish in the South. Mix in particular creativity from various African Americans, and Southern biscuits were popping out of American ovens from coast to coast.

Photo by Stephen McFadden on Unsplash

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Preacher’s First Murder,’ by K. P. Gresham

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Pastor Matt Hayden of Wilks, Texas is a new creation in more than the spiritual sense. Once a Miami police detective, the hero of The Preacher’s First Murder entered the federal witness relocation program after a horrible day in which his brother and father, both cops, were killed. He changed his name, went to Lutheran seminary, and then the church sent him here. He has learned that the town and the church have their own strict rules of behavior. One of those is that the pastor needs to stay away from the Fire and Ice House, the bar just across the river from his church. It’s run by the beautiful Angie, daughter of Maeve, the owner, who suffers from Alzheimer’s.

Maeve goes missing, and Matt recruits some church members to help with the search – to the outrage of the Wilks family, which owns the town and runs the church. Their matriarch nurses a particular hatred for Maeve, but Matt feels a responsibility as a Christian.

When Maeve turns up dead, shot by a stupid Yankee hunter farther out of town than she should have been able to walk on her own, Matt’s old cop instincts tell him something’s fishy. And when the sleazy local gas station owner is murdered and Angie is arrested for it, Matt has no choice but to start his own investigation. Especially because he’s Angie’s alibi, and she refuses to let him reveal it, for the sake of his reputation in the church.

I’ve often said that I avoid novels written by women; my experience is that they tend to write their male characters poorly. I didn’t realize that author K. P. Gresham was a woman when I read this book, but I’m forced to admit – much against my will – that she didn’t do a bad job. And the writing in general was well done, which counts for a lot in the depressed world of Christian fiction.

I did have a few problems with the story, though. The picture of the Lutheran church in the book was surprisingly negative – the domination of church business by women was certainly realistic, but (although I grew up in a very puritanical church) I never encountered a church as judgmental as this one. We always understood that you can’t ostracize sinners – you have to reach out to them.

Also, I was a little puzzled by the theology. This does seem to be a Christian novel (the complete lack of dirty words is kind of a tip-off), but I wasn’t sure what theology was being promoted. Pastor Matt’s concern with doing good to others was perfectly consistent with Christian morality. But Christian morality seemed to be all he had. There was no mention of God’s grace or of the cross. A reader might get the impression that good deeds are all the Faith is about.

Still, The Preacher’s First Murder was pretty good, all in all. I might be persuaded to read the second book in the series.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Killing Game,’ by Jeff Buick

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Curtis Westcott is Chief of Homicide in Boston in A Killling Game, first book in a series by Jeff Buick. In this story, a rich and powerful man’s daughter is kidnapped by a criminal who doesn’t want money, but revenge. And to show the police how smart he is.

As the story proceeds, Curtis realizes that the killer is leaving a series of messages for him. These messages contain hidden riddles which – if he can solve them – will make it possible for him to stop the murder.

That’s really all I think I’m going to tell you about the plot. Because frankly, I don’t think this book deserves a lot of description.

It follows a formula you see often in thrillers – the super-smart criminal mastermind plays a game with the police, confident that his superior intelligence makes him unassailable, but longing at the same time for “a worthy adversary.”

I’m pretty sure this never happens in real life. A writer can make it work, but it takes a lot of skill.

Also, the plot involves a trail of obscure brain puzzles, which the detectives have to solve before the clock runs out.

I’m confident that this never, ever happens in real life. I did not believe this aspect of the story for a single moment.

Also, it struck me as ironic that the plot calls for the interpretation of ridiculously obscure verbal clues, while the author himself didn’t trust the reader to understand his plain words – the book is in fact overwritten. It would benefit from a great deal of cutting.

This happens when an author assumes his audience is too stupid to understand him, or when he doubts his own narrative power, so he reiterates everything he says.

[Here’s a Deathless Principle from Walker’s School of Writing: Good writing is like leading a friend along a path to see a beautiful vista. Once you’ve led him to the ridge where he can look out and see it, don’t keep informing him what he’s seeing. If you led him to the right spot he’ll see for himself.]

So I didn’t care much for A Killing Game. Though I have to admit I powered through to the end, just to see how it came out. Which, I suppose, means the author actually did his job, even if he didn’t do it the way I’d have liked.

Fiction, Reviews

‘City of Angles,’ by Jonathan Leaf

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During this time, he had prepared his own lengthy speech, a philippic the equal of Cato’s addresses against Carthage. Everything about her was fake and phony. She was a cheat and a liar and a bad woman. She was a threat to goodness, and, inasmuch as silicone was made from sand, she was a menace to the continued existence of the world’s beaches.

[Disclaimer: The book under consideration here, City of Angles, was referred to me by a friend, and I received a free review copy from the author.]

Billy Rosenberg is a struggling Hollywood writer. On the strength of one successful novel he moved to California to work in the movies. But his career is struggling. He’s painfully aware, in a town where presentation is everything, of the impression he makes with his cheap shoes and rattletrap car.

So he’s surprised when beautiful, surgically-enhanced actress Vincenza Morgan (originally Kelli Haines of Eagan, Minnesota) sits down at his table in a coffee shop and talks to him. Vincenza is, in fact, scared. Her career had seemed about to take off, thanks to an indie film she just helped produce. She’d gotten A-list star Tom Selva to star in it, thanks to their mutual membership in the International Church of Life (think Scientology), the most powerful force in town. Everything looked great, until she opened her car trunk and found Selva’s corpse stuffed inside.

She knew she ought to call the police, but she was on her way to an audition, and the First and Greatest Law of Hollywood is you never blow off an audition; being dead would only be a marginal excuse. And now she thinks she’s being tailed by agents of the Church in a van. She could really use a place to stay tonight…

City of Angles is a comedy of manners – but it’s dark comedy, and the manners are Hollywood manners. The chief thing one learns in this story is that nobody ever says what they mean. Candor is kryptonite. One honest word might undermine the whole town and slide it into the ocean. The plot works out happily, though – depending on what you mean by “happily.” Which leaves the reader with things to consider.

I’m a sucker for a Hollywood tale – I’ve felt the city’s attraction but am very far from having the nerve to challenge it face to face. So I enjoyed City of Angles, which was expertly written and packed with sharp innuendo. [One technical error I noted was that the author places Burnsville High School in Eagan, Minnesota rather than in Burnsville where it belongs both in logic and fact. I can only assume that locations have been changed to protect the innocent.]

Recommended, with cautions for grownup stuff.

Music

Sunday Singing: That Easter Day with Joy Was Bright

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“That Easter Day with Joy Was Bright” performed by The Westminster Choir of Westminster Presbyterian of Buffalo, New York, follow by an improvisation on the hymn’s Latin melody

It’s still Easter this month for our Sunday Singing posts. This hymn was translated from a longer Latin verse, once attributed to St. Ambrose, and now believed to have been written by a sixth or seventh century Gaul. The text copied here was translated by Englishman John Mason Neale in 1861 and altered by the editors of the Trinity Hymnal.

Though the hymn is short enough, I feel it could be sung about 1.5x faster. In the video, the choir above does not sing all of these words and the organist improvises on the tune for a few minutes afterward.

1 That Easter day with joy was bright:
the sun shone out with fairer light
when to their longing eyes restored,
th’apostles saw their risen Lord.

2 His risen flesh with radiance glowed,
his wounded hands and feet he showed;
those scars their solemn witness gave
that Christ was risen from the grave.

3 O Jesus, King of gentleness,
do thou thyself our hearts possess,
that we may give thee all our days
the willing tribute of our praise.

4 O Lord of all, with us abide
in this, our joyful Easter-tide;
from ev’ry weapon death can wield
thine own redeemed forever shield.

Fiction, Goofing

The Sound of Words Change, Reading Courage, and Jargon Demo

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It doesn’t take much to raise questions about the English language that the casual user can’t answer. Why do we pronounce bury and berry the same way? Fury and jury look like the way they sound, but not bury.

In Old English, the word for bury was byrgan, and that “y” was pronounced like a short “oo” or “ew” as in took and few. Many other words used “y” and were converted to an “i” spelling. Bridge and kiss are two examples, but bury didn’t follow the normal route and retains, I gather, something of its historic sound. I suppose berry from Old English berie always sounded like we pronounce it today with bright and shallow 21st century American accents.

I learned another thing while looking this up. No, two things. First, the Internet isn’t great at teaching you how to pronounce certain types of words. Ask it how you pronounce the Old English gecyþnisse, and you’ll get this link, which is good. Ask it how to pronounce dryhten. Oh, it’s “driç.ten.” But I want to hear it, not read another spelling of it. And what about the “oo” sound for y’s?

Second, the words apple and berry are the original words for fruit. If the fruit in your hand isn’t a berry, it’s an apple, even as late as Middle English. Bananas in Middle English were “apples of paradise.” Dates to “finger-apples.” Cucumbers were “earth-apples,” and, yes, cucumbers are fruit. Melon developed in Greek from a word meaning “goard-apple” and was used generally for fruit.

Anyway, what else we got?

Crime Novel: A new comedic crime novel is “morbidly funny” and “lighthearted literary entertainment at its best.” City of Angles is playwright Johnathan Leaf’s first novel. You’ll be reading more about it in days to come.

Downgrading Education: “What worries today’s administrators about [great books] is not their purported irrelevance, nor the allegedly harmful language or controversial arguments they contain. It is rather the example they provide of characters like Huck Finn, who preferred eternal damnation to snitching on his friend Jim.”

Favorite Novel: “Simply put, Tristram Shandy is a novel I love, one I’ve reread more often than almost any other. It never wears out . . .” I remember one of my English professors loving it too.

And finally, a brief presentation of Rockwell Automation’s retro encabulator in easy to understand, common sense jargon.

Breaking News: A sequel demo was released last year, “living proof that leveraging existing assets is not plagiarism.”

Photo: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Uncategorized

My ancestors in the news

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Avaldsnes Church on Karmoy island. Picture by me June, 2022.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking this blog hasn’t been providing enough Viking News lately. Why would anyone come to a book blog, except to read about Viking News? Sure, I’ve given you a few saga reviews in recent weeks, but what you want (I have no doubt) is the kind of breaking, “you read it here first” information for which my name is, perhaps not renowned, but definitely -nowned.

Well, I’ve got one today. Not only is it a major archaeological story, but there’s a personal connection to me – which makes all the difference, I know.

The story was announced yesterday, but I waited till an English version appeared today to share it. Because I hate translating for free.

This from Sciencenorway.no: New Discovery of a Viking Ship in Norway

Just over a hundred years ago, the archaeologist Haakon Shetelig was incredibly disappointed when he did not find a Viking ship during an excavation of the Salhushaugen gravemound in Karmøy in Western Norway.

Shetelig had previously excavated a rich Viking ship grave just nearby, where Grønhaugskipet was found, as well as excavated the famous Oseberg ship – the world’s largest and most well-preserved surviving Viking ship – in 1904. At Salshaugen he only found 15 wooden spades and some arrowheads.

“He was incredibly disappointed, and nothing more was done with this mound,” says Håkon Reiersen, an archaeologist at the Museum of Archaeology at the University of Stavanger.

It turns out, however, that Shetelig simply did not dig deep enough.

About a year ago, in June 2022, archaeologists decided to search the area using ground-penetrating radar or georadar – a device that uses radio waves to map out what lies below the surface of the ground.

Now if you’ve been following this blog, you know that I have a personal connection to Karmøy island. My great-grandfather Walker was born there (under another last name, naturally), and baptized at Avaldsnes Church (pictured above). The three mounds described in this article are a short distance north of the church, and I don’t believe I’ve actually ever seen them.

Still, I was at Avaldsnes last June, precisely when they were doing the georadar surveys. That pleases me immensely. I was On the Scene – if clueless as usual.