You’ll forgive me, won’t you, if I don’t post anything tonight (except this)? I went home early from work today on account of sickness, and I’m interested to see what all this unpleasantness will develop into. I appreciate it, and thank you for patronizing Brandywine Books.
"Paperman"
There’s a good chance you’ve seen this short film already. Paperman is a black-and-white, almost silent production done by Disney animators using only traditional (non-computer) animation techniques. Everybody loves it, and with good reason.
I have to admit that, being me, I had a mixed reaction at first. Then I realized I was wrong. I want to explain why, because it has to do with the nature of Story.
(Spoilers below. Do not read until you’ve watched the film through.)
My initial, self-oriented response was to say, “Life isn’t like that. The Universe does not step in to make your dreams come true.”
Then I saw that I’d missed the point. The point is that when the Universe took a hand in this couple’s story, it was only after the young man had done everything he could from his own end. He’d made his boss mad, and may have sacrificed his job, for the girl. It’s a little like the merchant in Jesus’ parable, who sold all he had in order to purchase the Pearl of Great Price.
If you’re writing a story, you can permit a Deus Ex Machina (I’ve written about this before), but only after you’ve let the character suffer and fail a whole lot. If the audience feels he’s tried his best, and not gotten the reward he deserves, then you can bring the Cosmic Hand in to set things right at the end. If you handle it carefully.
That’s a narrative principle only, by the way. It’s not theological, or only partly theological. Christianity does not teach that you gain God’s acceptance through trying your hardest, followed by God’s pleased intervention to finish the job for you. In Christianity it’s all grace from first to last.
Still, from the experiential point of view, the two things are hard to tell apart. The moment of grace is when the merchant falls in love with the Pearl, when the young man falls in love with the girl. All their efforts afterward are not actually their own accomplishments but entirely the work of God’s grace within, doing business as Love.
It’s a mystery.
Everything is.
Animation: The Maker
Here’s a remarkable short animation from Zealous Creative.
Quiet Ops, by Bob Burton & L. J. Martin
What this country needs, in my opinion, is more cheerful tough guys. Probably in real life, certainly in literature. Much fine work has been done in the realm of the grim and tragic hard-boiled mystery, but there’s no actual law that says a detective who can handle himself in a fight has to be an emotional wreck. Robert B. Parker’s Spenser was a happy exception (for a while, anyway), and Bob Burton’s (with L. J. Martin) bounty hunter hero Brad Benedict is another. Quiet Ops is the first novel I’ve read from this team (Bob Burton is a real life bounty hunter), but I want to read more.
Brad Benedict is a man with a good life, and he enjoys it. He makes a nice income as a high-end skip tracer, enough to have a comfortable life, a nice office, a couple of expensive cars, and a succession of beautiful girlfriends. With the help of his regular associates Cocoa and T-Rex, and the lovely Monique who runs his east coast office in Florida, he goes after rapper Jo Jo Bling, who has drugged and kidnapped the twin daughters of Florida billionaire Grenwald Stanton. The girls are restored to their family, and their father (not to Brad’s surprise) balks at paying the fee, but before Brad can begin applying pressure (something he knows how to do, even with billionaires), Stanton himself is kidnapped, and Brad and company go to work again – though Brad still finds time to romance a pretty female cop.
There’s a sunny quality to this book that surprised and pleased me. Brad doesn’t waste our time bellyaching about past traumas and existential guilt. He’s also an actual nice guy – capable of making a genuine gesture of grace to a former enemy at one point. (His giant associate Cocoa, by the way, is described without irony or sarcasm as a church-going Congregationalist who doesn’t stand for foul language. Brad notes that he himself doesn’t swear much, which is generally true.)
There are weaknesses in the book. The spelling and grammar sometimes could use correction, and I thought the plot was unnecessarily complicated. But I came away from Quiet Ops feeling good. That’s pretty rare in my reading.
Cautions for language (there’s some rough language in spite of what I said above), violence (not over the top) and adult themes (but nothing explicit). Recommended.
Cold comfort
I was going to celebrate a pretty good day by posting some kind of YouTube video associated with Vikings. I don’t know what. Just something. But YouTube doesn’t seem to be functioning tonight. So I chose the painting above, The Ravager by John Charles Dollman (ca. 1909). Because it’s cold and snowing up here, and it seemed appropriate. Even with the stupid winged helmets.
But it’s still a good day, never mind the weather. Or the wings. Did a reading of one of my theological translations for the Georg Sverdrup Society at the seminary this morning. That went well.
Also signed the contract for my book translation with Saga Publishers International. That means a direct connection between the wealth of Norway and my personal bank account. Also the tremendous respect that being a certified professional scholarly translator brings. And the groupies, of course.
Not coincidentally, I sent the completed first draft of the translation to Saga.
I even got a good parking place at the grocery store – one of those where I could pull forward into the next slot and so leave without backing up.
I should have asked some random woman on a date. But there are limits to a good day.
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to choose
I got to thinking about freedom today. Specifically, about why it is that the Left hates freedom.
Oh, I know Leftists will say they don’t hate freedom. They love freedom, from their own point of view. Don’t they support freedom of sexual expression, and freedom from traditional social norms, and freedom to do whatever you want (unless you want to do something traditionally socially normative, of course)?
But in my view that’s not freedom, that’s distraction. That’s a three-year-old’s idea of freedom. When the Founding Fathers created our country – and even when European radicals first tried to establish communes and revolutionary governments in the 19th Century – the last thing they had in mind was the freedom to have sex with whatever gender, number, and species you like, or to run around naked in a public park shouting dirty words.
They wanted freedom to talk about important things. To hold a conviction and express it without fear of government reprisal. To do your best to make yourself wealthy (in America, at least) without a lot of busybodies telling you “You’re not permitted to do that.”
When it comes to things like that, wherever the Left rules, freedom gets reduced. Freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of the press – those must be subordinated to “sensitivity.” If you express the wrong ideas, it’s “bullying” and “hate speech,” and you have to be gotten out of the way. For the sake of the children, you understand.
That brings me to the second part of the meditation. Here’s why the Left actually hates and fears freedom.
It’s because their entire program is built on a falsehood, a lie about human nature. Ever since Rousseau they have believed that people are basically good. That if you just fine-tune the laws to provide the right environment, their virtue will blossom naturally.
This, of course, does not happen. It never happens. Because people are not in fact good.
The only way to avoid facing that truth is to clamp down on the people so tightly that they can’t actually express their true nature.
So freedom has to go. And it always does.
When you reach a fork in the beard, take it.
Today somebody on Facebook referred me to a new blog which will have, I expect, a selective appeal – Sveyn Forkblog. The author, an Englishman named Chris Tuckley, has decided to start a blog to celebrate the millennium of one of England’s most obscure kings – Sveyn (or Svein, or Sven, or Svend – the options are many) Forkbeard, the Viking Dane who conquered England, then promptly died, leaving the whole thing for his son Canute the Great to conquer over again.
This interests me, of course, because it’s in my line and precisely in my period. Svein was an ally of King Olaf Tryggveson of Norway, whom you’ll remember from The Year of the Warrior, but turned against him (actually it was more the other way around; Olaf switched sides on Svein) and led the coalition that defeated and killed Olaf at the Battle of Svold.
If you read West Oversea, you’ll recall how news came of the massacre of the Danes in England by King Aethelred the Unrede. One of the victims was said to be Svein’s own sister, which gave him both a personal reason and a political excuse for returning to England with fire and sword, and subduing the whole place.
He also appears in the classic novel The Long Ships (not the movie), but does not come off very well there.
Nothing to say, How about a free book?
Here I am, it’s approaching 7:00 p.m. I need to get to translating, and I have nothing to blog about. Today’s big challenge at work was starting the training of my newest assistant, a young man from Haiti. I shouldn’t have to train new assistants at this time of year, as the ones I trained in the fall aren’t supposed to have expired yet. But I’ve been running through assistants a little more rapidly than usual of late. One would almost think there was something wrong with my management style… No, no, that’s ridiculous.
Anyway, I praised Robert Mullin’s space fantasy novel Bid the Gods Arise a while back, and for a very short time you can get the Kindle version free here. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Sixteen tons
Jean-Francois Millet, Man With a Hoe, ca. 1860
I appear to have experienced a new “going out and coming in” (to put it in biblical terms) in my life. I have gone out of the age of leisure, and come into the age of workoholism.
For the time being, anyway.
“Workoholic” is one of those terms, like “plutocrat” and “spelunker” that I never expected to apply to myself. Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you that one of Walker’s essential characteristics is languor. When the call goes out for hardy souls to lend a hand and see the thing through, I can usually be found somewhere in the vicinity of the donut table.
But here I am, in my sixth decade, living a life essentially divided up between work and sleep, with a few brief intervals for eating. Continue reading Sixteen tons
The age of the Amazon
The Nuremberg Chronicles, 1493.
What’s my reaction to the Defense Department’s decision to permit women in combat?
I was surprised at how little it roused me. Not because I’ve changed my complementarian views, you understand. It’s just that in the climate we’ve entered into – in light of all the other outrages I see around me – this is neither surprising or especially notable. I’m reminded of a guy I used to know – a self-proclaimed heathen – who used to say (I’m pretty sure he was quoting someone), “I feel so much better now that I’ve given up all hope.”
I’ve achieved the serenity of realizing that the American experiment is over and (with sadness) accepting that fact. The people who look at what is not and say, “Why not?” (insufferable busybodies all) have won the upper hand, and they’re not likely to give it up.
Can we argue back, make our case? I doubt it. I could point out, among other things, that although this probably only means a few of the beefier feminists in the armed forces getting the chance to get their legs blown off in the short run, it will not end with that. Those who believe in absolute equality won’t be satisfied until 50% of the military is female, even if they have to lower the physical standards radically in order to achieve that. Not today. Not tomorrow. But eventually. And what happens if we have a national emergency and reinstate the draft? How can the egalitarians justify a draft for males and not for females? No, your daughters – even the small, gentle ones who get sick at the sight of blood – will have to be drafted on the same basis as men. Eventually.
We can’t make our case anymore, because cases don’t get made anymore. Anywhere. In any area of life. I’ve had the experience more and more frequently with the years (I expect you’ve had the same) that when you try to make a point in an argument with someone, their response is not, “You’re wrong and here’s why,” but “Why do you hate me?”
It’s all about feelings in the world now. A vast, bottomless sea of raging emotions, where every soul battles to dominate all the others by appealing to the unassailable superiority of its own feelings over everybody else’s feelings. Our world is ruled by passions; we have become like the dumb beasts that know only what they feel. The ancient Stoics, without the benefit of Jewish or Christian Scriptures, realized that the happy life is the life not ruled by passion.
I expect a lot of blood will flow before we learn that lesson over again.