Much noted, long remembered



One of three known photographs of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, taken by David Bachrach.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

It was on this day 150 years ago that Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the battlefield cemetery. The words have become part of our national canon, and not without reason. Lincoln had the rare qualities of having both a first class mind and a masterful prose style. This is particularly interesting when we remember that he had about the least formal education of any American president. If he had not existed, it would have been impossible to invent him.

Do We Need Another C.S. Lewis?

People have often suggested a popular Christian fantasy author is the next C.S. Lewis. I don’t think that’s an appropriate question. Few people strikes us as the same as another person only better, so why should we look for a living author to replace a dead one? That would make the dead one mostly obsolete, wouldn’t it?
Steve Harrell doesn’t think so. He says we need a new Lewis. “When we try to insert Lewis’ cultural observations into our culture today,” he writes, “we become like Indiana Jones—still fighting the Nazis through the 1980s. The Modernist war between reason and theology is over…. We live in a postmodern, post-secular age that doesn’t respond well to the intellectual arm-twisting and large-scale historical criticism that Lewis excelled at.”
Joel Miller argues Harrell is missing the point. “A vibrant intellectual life includes thoughts that span millennia. They’re not so foreign as some insist, and their differences might just keep us from going off the rails.”
Rowan Williams, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, notes Lewis’s blessing to us is “in what you might call pastoral theology: as an interpreter of people’s moral and spiritual crises; as somebody who is a brilliant diagnostician of self-deception; and somebody who, in his own book on bereavement after his wife’s death, really pushes the envelope – giving permission, I suppose, to people to articulate their anger and resentment about a God who apparently takes your loved ones away from you.”
In related a post, Jeremy Lott notes the angst many have had over Susan’s absence from The Last Battle. Many readers think Lewis condemns her life choices by appearing to keep her out of Narnia when everything comes falling down, but Lott quotes from Lewis’ letters to show that the author simply believed Susan’s story was longer and more adult than the one he wanted to tell. “Why not try it yourself?” Lewis asked a reader, to which Lott replies, “Who has tried to tell Susan’s story?” He hopes someone will attempt to pick up the life of Susan Pevensie and finish at least part of her story.

Storm Front, by John Sandford

Another Virgil Flowers novel from John Sandford. The Flowers books are generally lighter than the Prey novels starring Virgil’s boss Lucas Davenport, but Storm Front actually veers off into farce territory. And it was OK. I enjoyed it generally, though it irritated me in places.

The story starts in Israel, where Rev. Elijah Jones of Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota (a real place) is involved in an archaeological dig. One morning he gets up early, breaks into a storage locker, steals a newly discovered artifact, steals a car, and sets off for home. Soon the Israelis are after him, and that’s where Virgil Flowers, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension officer in southern Minnesota, comes into it. He’s already happily occupied with investigating an improbably attractive redneck mother of five, whom he suspects of petty crime activity, when he’s ordered to pick up an Israeli Antiquities agent at the airport. Soon he can hardly turn around without bumping into Israeli agents, Hezbollah agents, Turkish agents, cable TV show stars, and ordinary reporters, all intent on getting credit for recovering a stone that—if genuine—could discredit the Old Testament and rock the faith of millions of Christians and Jews.

It’s mostly played for laughs, and nobody gets killed—which is a major change for a John Sandford book. People stumble over each other, pass each other ignorantly in the dark, and pass the stone back and forth—sometimes unwittingly—in something like a Keystone Kops scenario.

I suppose this is Sandford’s way of dealing with controversial material. Aside from the religious issues, there are Israelis and jihadis here. Sandford tries (and frankly it bugs me) to be evenhanded. The Hezbollah characters never get a chance to do their worst, and a ruthless Israeli agent is the real bad guy of the story. A couple of the Muslim characters, with terrorist associations, are seen to be essentially harmless and in love with western decadence. Which strikes me as wishful thinking, if it’s meant to be taken as typical.

But the book was amusing. Minor spoiler: Don’t worry about the threat to the Bible at the heart of the story. Mild violence, some sex, rough language. But, as mentioned, the violence level is pretty low, which may make this book more appealing to some than most of Sandford’s work.

Book Lists: Forgotten and Dystopian

For your reading pleasure (or possible displeasure):

10 Great Forgotten Books, such as The Castle of Otranto and the “unnecessarily tedious” Ravenshoe. (via Relief Journal)

15 Works of Dystopian Fiction Everyone Should Read, such as Invitation to a Beheading and The Stars, My Destination.

In other news, a sequel, “It’s A Wonderful Life: The Rest of the Story,” is in the works. The story shows Karolyn Grimes, who played Zuzu from the original movie, is an angel who visits George Bailey’s irritable cuss of a grandson, named George Bailey, to show him how much better the world would be without him. Grimes says she has seen many scripts for Wonderful Life sequels, and this one actually brings the juice. (via S. Greydanus)

Castle-of-Otranto

Coming attractions

Floyd at Threedonia posted this trailer for an upcoming movie from Randall Wallace, to be released next Easter. What troubles me is that it actually looks kind of good. You all know the general rule about religious-themed movies: If the theology’s good, the movie’s probably bad, and if the theology’s bad, the movie’s probably bad anyway. But this almost looks like it could work.

Which would be a miracle. And that would prove God’s existence, right?

The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane, by Robert E. Howard

Far back in Kane’s gloomy eyes, a scintillant light had begun to glimmer, like a witch’s torch glinting under fathoms of cold gray ice. His blood quickened. Adventure! The lure of life-risk and battle! The thrill of breathtaking, touch-and-go drama! Not that Kane recognized his sensations as such. He sincerely considered that he voiced his real feelings when he said:
“These things be deeds of some power of evil. The lords of darkness have laid a curse upon the country. A strong man is needed to combat Satan and his might. Therefore I go, who have defied him many a time.”

After viewing the not-bad movie Solomon Kane, which I reviewed recently, I decided to see whether there were any Kane stories I’d missed. I’d read one collection before, and thought that was all there was. But in fact, I discovered, Robert E. Howard wrote a number of Solomon Kane stories, enough to fill a book of reasonable length if you include the unfinished fragments, and that is what The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane is.
The stories start in Kane’s English homeland, where he battles various dark forces, but soon Howard takes him to continental Europe and then to Africa, where he stays for the rest of the book, except for a “homecoming” poem that rounds the collection out.
As you can judge from the snippet at the top of this post, Robert E. Howard was not a writer of elegance. His prose can clunk from time to time. But I have to say that I didn’t care. The man was unmatched in his ability to paint a weird scene, draw you into it, and engage you at every level. I read the book in great chunks, with immense visceral pleasure.
One surprising fact, which I learned in the excellent biographical sketch on Howard by Rusty Burke which is appended to the book, was that Howard was a fan of G. K. Chesterton. It’s apparent, though, that it wasn’t Chesterton’s theological writings that he liked, but his poetry, especially “The Ballad of the White Horse,” which he actually quotes at the section breaks in the story “The Moon of Skulls.” Despite being identified as a Puritan, Solomon Kane doesn’t actually think about theology much. He is even willing to use (though gingerly at first) a “ju-ju stick” given to him by an African witch doctor, though Howard softens the unorthodoxy of that choice later on by identifying the stick as being both the rod of Aaron and the staff of Solomon. In short, don’t look for Christian lessons here. This is pulp fiction from the 1930s, albeit top of the line pulp fiction.
Something should probably be said about Howard’s handling of race. Solomon Kane is not hostile to the black people he encounters. In fact he often acts as their protector, flying into volcanic rage over injustices and violence visited upon them. But he is patronizing in the extreme. The author’s view seems to be that Africans are a lower evolutionary form of human being, soon destined for extinction, and that it’s the duty of superior whites to look after them.
Lots of violence. The language was pretty mild, in the style of the times. And lots less sexual suggestiveness than in the Conan stories.
I should also mention that Gary Gianni’s illustrations for this book are simply wonderful – skillful line drawings in the old style of Howard Pyle and N. C. Wyeth. They are fully worthy of the material and add immensely to the effect of the prose.
Highly recommended, as pure entertainment.

11 Characteristics of Evil

  1. Evil intersperses cruelty with kindness.
  2. Evil assumes other people are as fake as It is.
  3. Evil likes to toy with other people’s boundaries.
  4. Evil takes a victim stance.
  5. Evil would rather kill the person doing the questioning than take a realistic look at itself.
  6. Evil does it for kicks.
  7. At it’s heart, Evil is parasitic.
  8. Evil is smooth-talking and impulsive.
  9. Evil, it would seem, reduces living things to commodities, especially those foolish enough to lick its knee.
  10. Evil ruins childhood and refuses kids the tools to grow up.
  11. Evil is mindless suffering and a blind compulsion to act out a painful past.

Koren Zailckas, who has written a novel about a smooth-talking, evil woman, gives us this list of Evil’s characteristics as seen in characters from 11 novels.

Star Wars as an Icelandic saga, and other matters

First, a brief commercial message. Due to a momentary technical lag in our diabolical plan to raise the prices on my two self-published e-books, Troll Valley remains for sale for the old $2.99 price at the time of this posting. I have no idea how long this will last, so if you want it at the old, low-self-esteem price, get it now.

Author Michael Z. Williamson sent me this link to a remarkable piece of writing by Jackson Crawford, who teaches Norse and Norwegian languages at UCLA. It’s a retelling of the Star Wars story as an Icelandic saga, and to my ear it seems letter-perfect. Also better than the movies.

But Lúkr took Artú’s bloody cape and there found the message written by Princess Leia. He began to read it. “I am no runemaster,” he said, “But these words say, ‘Help me, Víga-Óbívan Kvæggansson; you alone would dare to avenge me.’ I don’t know how to read any more words, because they are written poorly and hastily. What is this?”

Artú pretended not to speak Norse, and asked in Irish, “What is what?”

“What is what?” responded Thrípíó, “That was a question. What was written on that message which Princess Leia gave you?”

“That’s nothing,” said Artú, “An old message. I think that Princess Leia is long dead.” Thrípíó translated his words into Norse.

“Who is Princess Leia?” asked Lúkr, “What family is she from?”

Book Reviews, Creative Culture