Here’s another curious poem.
“Jesus Feeds the 5000 Using Various Cutting Edge Recipes from 1950s Magazines”
“So the disciples gorge themselves on honey dipped spam
crowned with the many crowns of identical pineapple rings
as they jostle for spots on the picnic blanket, and the children…”
Poet Scott Cairns has written some revealing, thoughtful reflections as psalms to the Lord. Clearly, these poems are written for people who are not as awesome as we are. We have claimed our blessing and walk as strong as the Nephilim. We don’t grovel before the Lord, like the man in this poem:
“Idiot Psalm 1”
O God Belovéd if obliquely so,
dimly apprehended in the midst
of this, the fraught obscuring fog
of my insufficiently capacious ken,
Ostensible Lover of our kind—while
apparently aloof—allow
that I might glimpse once more
Your shadow in the land, avail
for me, a second time, the sense
of dire Presence in the pulsing
hollow near the heart.
Once more, O Lord, from Your Enormity incline
your Face to shine upon Your servant, shy
of immolation, if You will.
I don’t do personal blogging as much as I used to (no need to thank me; your look of dewy-eyed gratitude is thanks enough). But I got medical news today which you have a right to know, since it’ll probably affect my posting.
I saw an orthopedist, and they did an MRI (just like on TV!). Turns out I have a condition called “osteonecrosis.” In other words, some of my bone, specifically the balls of my hip joints, is dying. This is a condition most common in people who’ve abused steroids, of whom I am most decidedly not one. At least one hip replacement appears to be in my immediate future. I’ll be seeing a surgeon soon.
Prayers appreciated.
Here are some questions Dean Koontz has answered in various forums:
You had an agent in your early years tell you that you’d never be a best-selling writer. Did that discourage you or make you more determined to succeed?
Koontz: I have more self-doubt than any writer I’ve ever known. That is one reason I revise every page to the point of absurdity! The positive aspect of self-doubt – if you can channel it into useful activity instead of being paralyzed by it – is that by the time you reach the end of a novel, you know precisely why you made every decision in the narrative, the multiple purposes of every metaphor and image. Having been your own hardest critic you still have dreams but not illusions. Consequently, thoughtless criticism or advice can’t long derail you. You become disappointed in an agent, in an editor, in a publisher, but never discouraged. If anyone in your publishing life were to argue against a particular book or a career aspiration for reasons you had not already pondered and rejected after careful analysis, if they dazzled you with brilliant new considerations, then you’d have to back off and revisit your decisions. But what I was told never dazzled me. For example, I was often advised, by different people, that my work would never gain a big audience because my vocabulary was too large.
Continue reading Dean Koontz on Self-Doubt, Story, and Abuse
By the time we heard the sirens, we were two blocks from the mall, in a cobbled backstreet as dark as a deer path in the woods under a half-moon. A sudden wind broomed the stillness of the night as the man I would eventually call Father hooked the disc of iron, lifted it, and set it aside. Piping across the hole where the iron had been, the wind played an oboe note, and I went down into that sound and into a world that I could never have imagined, where I would make a better life for myself.
One of the great problems in writing fiction – and I’ve written about this before – is the problem of the Good Character. Good characters in fiction, C. S. Lewis said somewhere (The Four Loves, I’m guessing offhand) “are the very devil.” They tend to be kind of dull, and they pale particularly in comparison to the villains. This is probably, I suspect, because most of us know evil better than we know good.
In his latest novel, Innocence, Dean Koontz approaches that problem in what I think is an entirely fresh way, and the result – in my opinion – is gloriously successful. Koontz just keeps getting better and better as a writer, both thematically and stylistically. He has his misfires, but when he succeeds the results are wondrous. And so it is with Innocence.
Addison Goodheart is a monster. All his life, anyone he has allowed to see his face has been overcome, not only with fear, but with hatred and a desire to do him harm. After his mother sent him out into the world alone, he found his way to an unnamed city, where a man he called Father gave him a home in the city’s tunnels, and taught him how to survive – because Father was another monster like Addison. After Father’s death, Addison survives alone until one night, wandering the city’s central library (which he knows how to enter secretly after hours) he sees a beautiful girl in Goth makeup being pursued by an attacker. After helping her escape, Addison makes the girl, Gwyneth, his friend, and they form an odd alliance. She suffers from a social phobia and won’t let him come near her, while he must keep his face covered. It works for them. She draws him into her struggle to save the life of a comatose little girl whom evil men are trying to kill. But, as they come to learn, that’s only a part of their challenge. Very big changes are coming about in the world, and Addison and Gwyneth are at the center of the greatest storm in history.
Innocence is, in my opinion, a masterpiece, one of Koontz’ best books. Right up there with the Odd Thomas stories. Beautiful, profound, moving, and (although not an explicitly Christian book) deeply informed by Christian truth. I give it my highest recommendation.
I’m reading Gladwell’s book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
Malcolm Gladwell: David and Goliath from Socrates in the City on Vimeo.
Gwen Burrow writes about the second Hobbit movie, which she didn’t totally hate:
In fact, the film’s worst faults are the very transgressions which Tolkien rebuked back in the 1950s when another maladroit tried to translate his books to screen. Some of these apply so well to Peter Jackson’s work, it’s downright eerie. I already mentioned a few of these in my critique of the first Hobbit, but here’s another flyby:
“The failure of poor films is often precisely in exaggeration, and in the intrusion of unwarranted matter owing to not perceiving where the core of the original lies”…
Rev. Andrew Damick spells out the theological dangers revealed in your coffee choices. “Your local coffeehouse may be a hotbed of heresy. Check the following list and see how yours measures up.
Last year, Digital Book World asked its Twitter crowd, “Do you read on your smartphone? Do you read on other devices, too?” They got 30 answers. About half said they read on multiple devices; the other half said they don’t read long works on their phones.
Now, 56% of Americans have smartphones, which are also called pocket reading devices. Some companies are marketing ebooks only to their pocket readers, like the Samsung Galaxy S4.
With some many mobile devices like this, publishers should consider them first when designing ebooks and ebook marketplaces.
This is the part I hate. I’m speaking, of course, of winter, the time after the Nativity festival, the White Witch season when it’s “always winter and never Christmas.”
My Christmas was fine, by the way, thank you very much. The Walkers gathered here on New Year’s Day, and revelry was unrestrained. Actually it was pretty darn restrained, but that’s how I like it.
However, we’re not entirely out of celebrations. Today is J. R. R. Tolkien’s birthday. It’s customary for Tolkien fans to do a rolling tribute, around the world. You bring out your preferred beverage at 8:00 p.m. local time, say, “The Professor!” and drink your toast.
Our friend Dale Nelson sends this link to an article, from Too Many Books and Never Enough, on Tolkien’s recordings of his own writings. I wasn’t aware that he did so many. One would think there’s an untapped market there, though Caedmon brought out a small collection some time back.
For a sample, here’s YouTube recording of the Professor reading “Riddles in the Dark.”