Fiction, Reviews

Unlimited, by Davis Bunn

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Simon Orwell is a bartender who used to be an electrical engineer. When we first encounter him in Davis Bunn’s novel Unlimited, he’s in a Mexican ditch, fleeing an assassin, trying to protect a device he helped invent.

Simon had a promising career before he self-destructed and betrayed his closest friend, a professor from Mexico. Professor Vasquez’s great dream was to find a way to salvage the energy wasted in electric generation and transmission, to provide cheap energy for the poor. Now he’s been e-mailing Simon, telling him he’s made a breakthrough and wants him to come and join him with his version of the device.

Simon was eager to come. Not so much for the project, though that interests him, but for a more personal reason. To ask Vasquez’s forgiveness.

When he finally reaches his goal, the village of Ojinaga just south of a desolate stretch of the border, he finds that Prof. Vasquez has been murdered. Injured and still pursued by the assassin, he finds refuge in a Christian orphanage, where the director, Harold Finch, a former NASA scientist, has drained his personal fortune caring for the children. He’d like to see Prof. Vasquez’s dream realized as a way to subsidize the orphans’ care. But as much as that, he’d like to see Simon find the answer to his personal torment.

Simon is also befriended by two of Harold’s co-workers, Pedro and Sofia, both of whom grew up in the orphanage. Pedro is assistant to the town mayor, a rising politician who is dating Sofia. Sofia feels obligated to marry the man for the sake of the good he can do the orphanage. But she doesn’t love him, and gradually – against her will – she finds herself drawn to Simon, whom she doesn’t even trust.

Meanwhile drug cartels are interested in Prof. Vasquez’s device for some reason. Simon finds himself in a cross-fire, terrified that he’s bringing danger on the first people to care about him in a long time. And he’s not even sure he wants to go on living, bearing the weight of guilt and self-loathing. His new friends offer an answer, but could there really be a power so unlimited?

Unlimited genuinely moved me. The story, if you accept its science fiction premise (which is not that outlandish), is believable, and the characters live and breathe. I wouldn’t rank Bunn in the top tier as a stylist. It seemed to me that time and again he chooses almost the right word, rather than the right word that would really have sung. But your taste may differ. I also suspect that Mexican government corruption, though certainly addressed in the story, is underestimated.

Recommended. Unlimited will go on sale September 1. (A movie of the same title, starring Fred Thompson, is scheduled for release in October.)

Full disclosure: I received a free advance review copy of Unlimited.

Religion

The case for Chesterton

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Michael Coren, at Catholic World Report, comments on the case for G. K. Chesterton as a saint. I as a Protestant don’t have a dogma in this fight, but it’s a great piece, in particular because Coren, as a man of Jewish ancestry, addresses the issue of antisemitism (which I’ve written about here, but with less expertise).

He did make some hurtful and thoughtless comments, in particular after his brother’s death, but when the testing time came—the rise of the Nazis—he was as active as he was angry. While many on the left were unsure how to respond to Hitler’s pagan racism, and some even sympathetic, Chesterton demanded that the Jewish people be protected and rescued. He was vehemently anti-Nazi before it was fashionable and before it was safe.

Tip: Daniel Crandall.

Uncategorized

"No Ice Cream, No Key"

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The Ancient Keys - #247 So some friends are role-playing a fantasy game, arguing about how to get into a temple in the middle of a wasteland, and the game master’s daughter walks in from another room: “I’ve got the key I can sell you.”

The father writes: Now, most groups would probably drop out of “game mode” at this point, humor her, and get back to playing. I don’t play with most groups.

The player says to her (still in character) “What do you want for it?”

“Five thousand gold” she replies, “and an ice cream cone.”

“An ice cream cone?! What’s that? More to the point, where do I find one.”

Read the rest on this forum.

Religion

"The Old Widow in the Smokey Cottage"

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By “Th. F.”

I translated the article below from Norwegian for my uncle, who told me about his great-granddaughter, who was named “Sophie” after my grandmother, his mother. He tells me she takes after her namesake in several ways. This reminded me of this article, taken from a Norwegian-language almanac published in Minneapolis. The distant relation who sent it to me told me that the subject of the article was a mutual ancestor, also named “Sofie.” Judging the description, my grandmother was one in a line of godly Sophies.

(From Folke Calender 1932, ed. by D. C. Jordahl, published by Augsburg Publishing House. I have translated the word røkstue as “smoky cottage.” In old times in Norway, it was common for people to live in houses with a fireplace built into a corner, but no chimney. The smoke would simply vent out into the room, and escape through a hole in the roof. lw)

Deep among the many miles of fjords in the southern part of the Bergen diocese, there lies a pretty little farming community. Here there is an inlet on one bank of the fjord, and in the curve of the bay is a ring of beautiful farms on either side of a frothy river that descends from the mighty mountain in the background. Just at the mouth of the river may be seen the white-painted local store building, and a little further up on a terraced hillside stands the church, whose spire points to heaven, speaking silent words to the residents round about, reminding them now and then, amid the business of the day, to turn their thoughts to higher things. But when Sunday comes it seems that it cannot be content with this silent witness – the bells begin “calling the young and old to rest, but above all the soul distressed, longing for rest everlasting.”

It was in my younger days that I first came as a school teacher to this beautiful little community. The schoolhouse stood on a farm called Vika, a farm which, with its many residents, all of whom followed the old custom and usage of building their houses close together, looked almost like a little village. In the midst of this cluster of houses stood a small cottage with a turf roof. Its door was so low that one had to bend to go inside, and its window was so small that the light of day could hardly force its way in. This was a “smoky cottage” (røkstue) in the genuine old style. The ceiling and the wainscotting within were black as coal from smoke and soot, but the upper areas of the walls all around had been coated with a kind of clay or chalk compound, whose gray-white color was intended to make things brighter and more cheerful inside the cottage. On the lower part of the white area a number of decorations had been drawn, consisting of triangular figures, dots, and flourishes, all made of that same chalky compound. It did not look so terribly bad, and was at least a testimony to how the desire for beauty, inborn in every person, must be expressed, even through the most primitive means.

Unprepossessing and small as the cottage was, for me holy and precious memories are bound up with it. It was a little “Bethel,” a house of God, for in it dwelt one of “the quiet in the land,” a widow of more than sixty years of age, a true Anna who “never ceased to serve God night and day.” Sofie was her name, and although in all probability she did not herself know that her name meant “Wisdom,” she nonetheless answered well to it. Indeed, seldom has a name better suited the person who bore it. For God’s wisdom dwelt, in rich measure, in that simple old Christian soul. Continue reading "The Old Widow in the Smokey Cottage" →

Authors, Poetry

Arron Belz: Poet for Hire

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Craigslist Ad: “Poet available to begin work immediately. Capable in rhyme and meter, fluent in traditional and contemporary forms. Quotidian observations available at standard rate of $15/hour; occasional verse at slightly higher rate of $17/hour. Incomprehensible garbage $25/hour. Angst extra.”

It’s funny, but he isn’t joking. He is writing poems on request, even to insult the requester, ala Lane Severson. Observe:

“Now a mere pawn in the house of bishops

He can manage neither a coherent theology

Nor back-to-back-to-back pushups,

Having spent the past eight years

Generating five poorly behaved children

With one wife who, worn out, loathes him

And can’t stop staring at his poorly combed hair.”

That’s only a bit of it, but the point is Lane paid for that abuse.

Fiction, Reviews

Last Chance Lassiter, by Paul Levine

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I’ve reviewed one or two of Paul Levine’s Jake Lassiter novels before. The books irritate me a little, but they also entertain me a great deal, and I generally recommend them.

Last Chance Lassiter is a prequel. It goes back to tell the story of how Miami lawyer Jake Lassiter came to be in practice on his own.

When the book begins, he’s a round peg in a square hole. A former pro football player whose lasting fame comes from making a wrong-way run on national TV, he’s earned his law degree and joined a high-priced firm, which values him primarily for his contributions to its touch football team. He refuses to dress like a lawyer, refuses to decorate his office like a lawyer, and is not beyond getting physical with a prospective client who offends him.

Soon he’s no longer working for that firm.

So he sets up in a tiny, windowless office in a parking ramp, and screens a string of unpromising clients. Then a woman comes in, the granddaughter of a famous but impoverished blues singer, asking him to help them sue a rap star who seems to have plagiarized one of the old man’s songs. This is a case Jake believes in and he throws himself into it, even though he’ll be up against his old employers, and knows them to be smart, ruthless, and very well capitalized, unlike himself. Jakes first case just might be his last.

Last Chance Lassiter was a fast read, and I enjoyed it a lot, even though I wanted to slap Jake upside the head occasionally. His “loose cannon, plays by his own rules” act has been done a thousand times, and I grew bored with it long ago. Jake even sets it up as his professional motto: “I live by no laws but my own.” This is moral hooey. It never seems to occur to him that his corrupt former employers live by exactly the same motto.

Still, plenty of fun, and lots of fighting for the underdog. Cautions for language and sexual situations.

Authors

No, not that Lewis

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Photo credit: Library of Congress.

Dale Nelson sends this link from Sacnoth’s Scriptorium, discussing J. R. R. Tolkien’s familiarity with, and appreciation of, Minnesota-born author Sinclair Lewis. “…Tolkien immediately segues into saying that he is now inclined to think that the word hobbit owes something to Lewis’s BABBITT.”

Minnesota — an inexhaustible font of inspiration.

Authors

Murder Cop and How the South Was Ruint

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Betsy Childs says Mark Bertrand (who does not go by Russell, if you happened to pick up that nasty rumor) doesn’t write Christian Fiction. “Bertrand’s allegiance is to his genre, characters, and plot, not to a fictional conversion narrative or religious epiphany. He’s just writing good crime fiction.”

That very author is taking issue with another author, Mark Twain, who charges Sir Walter Scott with laying the groundwork for the American Civil War. “… when Twain decided to take up the mantle of Cervantes and skewer medieval chivalry, it was a Connecticut Yankee and not a Southern Gentleman he had to send back in time. The Southerner, presumably, would have been right at home and all too pleased to leave things as he found them.”

That seems simplistic to me, but books do condition minds. Perhaps Twain’s argument is a good one to some extent. Many other ideas bore their fruit in this time as well. Scott didn’t dehumanize people, did he? That idea came from outside Ivanhoe.

Non-fiction, Reviews

The Vikings: A History, by Robert Ferguson

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But, while all of these [various morally relative assessments of the Viking Age] are entirely valid perspectives, the pendulum may have swung too far: as one modern historian puts it, the revisionist view has come close to giving us an image of the Vikings as a group of ‘long-haired tourists who roughed up the locals a bit.’ Among the aims of this book is to restore the violence to the Viking Age, and to try to show why our understanding is incomplete without it.

I’ve already referred to Robert Ferguson’s The Vikings: A History twice on this blog, here and here, having found it an informative and instructive book. If I’d been disappointed or offended, I’d have more to say. As it is, I’ll offer a short review of quite a good general history of the Viking Age.
Why a new history of the Vikings? Because we keep learning stuff. You’ve got to run to keep pace with our knowledge of the early middle ages nowadays. People like me, especially, who take it upon ourselves to lecture on the subject, need to take the initiative to keep our reading up. I thought what I learned about the Oseberg ship, linked above, was worth the price in itself.
Author Ferguson makes the considerable contribution of including something I’ve written about here before, and which was perhaps introduced in English-language history books by my friend Prof. Torgrim Titlestad, in a work that didn’t get the attention it should have – the new (actually old) theory that the Viking raids were initially sparked by Charlemagne’s brutalities against the Saxons. Having shared that useful idea, Ferguson does little more with it, which I think is appropriate. It seems to me that, even if the original spark was religious, the Viking raids continued for plain reasons of profit. There are no images of peace-loving, put-upon Viking victims here, and that suits me just fine.
Ferguson spends what seems to me adequate time, within the limits of a single (if long) volume, following the activities of the Norse through all their major fields of activity around the world, and through the three centuries of that activity. I caught one or two small errors of fact, ones I knew to be fact, but that’s inevitable in a work of this scope.
Highly recommended for all who are interested in the subject, and especially for curious newcomers.

Authors

E.B. White on Charlotte's Web

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E.B. White explains to his publisher why he wrote his book, Charlotte’s Web. In short, he likes animals. It’s amazing that he did something like what he describes in the book with a spider’s egg sac. He discovered it, watched it, and when he had to return to New York, he cut it all down and took it with him in a candy box. The baby spiders emerged and spread out on his NY apartment dresser!

Spider's Nursery