Dave Long tells a little story for an important question: are you the right author for your book?
Mantis, by Richard LaPlante
One of the benefits of the e-book revolution for authors is the opportunity it gives them to bring out-of-print books to the public again, and wring a little new income (and attention) out of works the publishers have abandoned, sometimes for fairly shortsighted reasons.
That seems to be the case with Richard LaPlante’s 1993 novel, Mantis, which launched a series starring Philadelphia police detective Bill Fogarty and forensic scientist (and martial arts expert) Josef Tanaka.
The set-up is interesting. Fogarty and Tanaka, though different in ages and cultural heritages, have many similarities. Fogarty is burdened with guilt over the deaths of his wife and daughter in an auto accident when he was driving—an accident which left him with burn scars on his face. Tanaka is haunted by the memory of permanently paralyzing his older brother, whom he idolized, in a tournament competition. They are drawn together in the hunt for a serial killer—a deeply twisted martial arts expert who believes himself to be guided by the spirit of the praying mantis.
The writing is good, the characters strong. Author LaPlante seems to be attempting to do the Hannibal Lector thing here, creating a villain at once evil and sympathetic. Frankly, that part didn’t really work for me. I felt sorry for what I read of the killer’s childhood sufferings, but his cruelty was so perverse, his inhumanity so profound, that I lost interest in him.
There was also an element rare in conventional thrillers—a supernatural, psychic side to the story. I’m old-fashioned enough about my mystery stories to generally resent the introduction of the supernatural. If I want magic, I’ll go to the fantasy aisle.
On the other hand, the story has a fairly strong moral center. It is made clear that both Fogarty and Tanaka go wrong when they allow their passions to push them over the line of legality in their investigation. Though that line gets crossed again, come to think of it, in the story’s climax.
To wrap it up, I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I hoped to, and wished it over well before the end. I wouldn’t call it a waste of your money at the price, but I can’t recommend it wholeheartedly. Cautions for language, sex, and deep perversion.
Rainy Norway
Been there and back again, by which I mean my trip to Norway, Michigan for the Leif Erikson festival. I scrounged a ride with my friends Ragnar and Helen once more, not being entirely sanguine about taking Mrs. Hermanson on long trips just now. I got up at 5:00 a.m. on Friday to be ready to be picked up. The weather was beautiful, the state of Wisconsin still retaining some of its autumn glory.
It was obvious from the start that the organizers had learned from their first year experience, and were doing an even better job of organizing their festival. We participated in a “Viking Funeral Feast” in a school gymnasium Friday evening, where we were more or less the guests of honor (in costume, of course).
The funeral was purportedly for some guy name Eldywick (don’t ask me where the name came from; it was new to me). Before the program the planner showed Denny a sheet of Viking riddles she’d like somebody to read, and Denny immediately passed it to me, knowing where the ham was to be found amidst the eggs.
My piece was supposedly a speech by “Tor,” Eldywick’s friend. I was to reminisce on how much he’d enjoyed riddles, and then pose four (most of them real Viking riddles, a la Tolkien) to the assembled diners.
With the instinct of the born show-off, I immediately knew exactly how to do this part. I adopted a serious Scandinavian accent (as opposed to the burlesque accent I use when I tell Ole and Lena jokes), and spoke in sonorous, overdramatic tones with broad gestures. The audience ate it up, and I got a good dose of that crowd feedback that is an actor’s meat and drink. Continue reading Rainy Norway
New Cartoonist Award
Slate Book Review and The Center for Cartoon Studies has announced a new award for excellence in cartooning. Get the goods here.
Of the Books Written on Lincoln There Shall Be No End
To illustrate the volume of existing Lincoln works, the Ford’s Theatre Center for Education and Leadership in Washington created a three-story, 34-foot tower sculpture out of Lincoln titles, meant to “symbolize that the last word about this great man will never be written,” according to the center.
Perhaps I should start writing a series of short volumes on the ignored presidents, like Polk, Hayes, Tyler, and Garfield. I could call them Thrilling Histories, e.g. The Thrilling History of James K. Polk. Or maybe they should be called the Presidential Insider’s Guides. Or maybe the What You Didn’t Learn series. (via Frank Wilson)
To See With, Not Through, a Giant Eyeball
In other news, a giant eyeball was found on Pompano Beach, Florida. Experts believe it’s probably from a large fish, not a squid. Here’s a photo.
I’m going to Norway… Michigan!
Rasmus B. Anderson
Happy Sequence Day. I don’t know whether anyone else calls it that, but what do you call a day when month, day, and year are in sequence (ten-eleven-twelve)? This doesn’t work if you’re in Europe, of course, where they practice a far more logical dating system that proceeds from smaller to larger – day, month, year. I’d defend the American system with blustering chauvinism and outrage, except that I can’t actually think of an argument for it.
I won’t be posting again until Monday, Lord willing. Tomorrow I’m on the road to Norway, Michigan for the Leif Eriksson festival again, riding along with Ragnar and his wife. Early departure. No doubt I will not sleep tonight.
There’s a weird criss-cross sort of thing going on with this event. Leif Eriksson Day is actually Oct. 9, but we’re celebrating it on the weekend of the 12th, which is actually Columbus Day. Rasmus B. Anderson and his co-conspirators, who invented the Leif celebration, purposely located it a few days before the 12th to steal a march on the Italians. But they celebrated on Monday.
I heard a lecture on Anderson during the Chicago Vinland seminar a couple years back. A Norwegian-American author, educator, and diplomat, he worked tirelessly to raise consciousness of Leif Eriksson, and spearheaded the effort to get Oct. 9 made a national holiday, which only happened long after his death.
Oddly for a Norwegian-American (cough, cough), Anderson had some difficulty getting along with other people, eventually getting himself shunned by pretty much all his hyphenated countrymen. So he transferred his enthusiasm to Iceland, which worked even better for the Leif Eriksson stuff, because Leif was actually born there. Probably.
Leif Eriksson Day is an odd festival in any case. The weakness of the argument for Leif’s importance, historically, was always his relative unimportance. Leif came and went almost without leaving a trace. Columbus came and completely redecorated the place.
But nowadays Leif enthusiasts make that into a virtue! “Look at us! We’re not like those other Europeans! We don’t do anything! It’s as if we were never here!”
Anyway, have a good weekend.
Two kinds of atrocity: an ethical thought experiment
Here’s what I’m doing. I’m thinking “on paper” here. Trying to work out a moral equation. If my conclusion satisfies me, and if your comments don’t demolish it, I’ll probably cross-post it over at Mere Comments.
How many times have you gotten into the Body Count argument? You know what I mean. Somebody brings up the tired canard that “most wars are caused by religion,” or “religion has killed more people than any other cause.”
It’s good to note that, at least according to one study, that’s simply not true.
And when they bring up the Spanish Inquisition (you know they will), the most efficient answer is to point out that it took the Inquisition nearly a century and a half to kill 3-5,000 people while the atheistic Reign of Terror under the French Revolution murdered about 40,000 in less than a year.
Still, at least for me, that’s not entirely satisfactory. Saying, “We’re not as bad as you guys,” isn’t quite enough when you’re talking about killing people in the name of Christ, whether in the Inquisition, or during the Crusades, or under a pogrom. The deeper problem, in my view, is how to think about Christians who act like the worst kind of atheists (for of course most atheists are perfectly decent people), and how to judge their acts.
It seems to me that, from a moral point of view, there are two kinds of atrocity. One is the utilitarian atrocity, which is hideously evil. The other is the “spiritual” atrocity, which is infinitely worse—but only in one sense. Continue reading Two kinds of atrocity: an ethical thought experiment
Picking Up on an Author’s Worldview
Lavonne Neff says that despite the slow burn on J.K. Rowling’s new novel, The Casual Vacancy, the story builds out of what she believes is a “profoundly biblical worldview.” The story is one of a small English town, clearly described as post-Christian, and when the most Christian man around dies, a large body of characters step up to reveal themselves as the hypocrites they are. Neff says the story is bleak, but possibly noteworthy.
Leif Eriksson: Not a man on a mission
A very bad old picture of Leif Eriksson, posted here for your derision.
Today, as you’ve doubtless gathered from all the parades and celebrations in your neighborhood, is Leif Eriksson Day in the United States. Its date was chosen, not to commemorate the actual calendar date of Leif’s landing in Newfoundland (a friend tells me it seems to have happened in September on the basis of internal evidence in the saga), but in order to sneak in a couple days before Columbus Day and steal some of the Genoan’s thunder. Which the international Italian Conspiracy managed to thwart this year by arranging to have Columbus Day officially celebrated yesterday.
One aspect of Leif’s story which you used to hear about a lot, but much less nowadays, is his efforts as a missionary. According to Eirik’s Saga, one of the two classic saga accounts of the Vinland (America) voyages, Leif spent time at the court of King Olaf Trygvesson in Norway, where the king “bestowed great honor on him” (note what I said about such Icelandic visits to the court in yesterday’s post), and asked him “Are you intending to sail to Greenland this summer?”
“Yes,” replied Leif, “if you approve.”
“I think it would be a good idea,” said the king. “You are to go there with a mission from me, to preach Christianity in Greenland.” (The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America, trans. by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson, 1965, Penguin Books.)
This Leif did, to the great annoyance of his father Erik the Red, because Thjodhild, Erik’s wife and Leif’s mother, refused to cohabit with her husband after her conversion (this is questionable behavior under canon law, I believe, as it directly contradicts the teaching of St. Paul. I’m sure Father Ailill would have advised her otherwise). In the 19th and 20th centuries, when Christianity was more popular than it is now, many Leif enthusiasts looked on his voyage to Vinland as an extension of this mission, making him the first missionary to America. However, the sagas say nothing of that, nor of any attempt on his part to preach the gospel to the Skraelings (Indians).
In any case, scholars today are pretty sure the Olaf Trygvesson mission never happened. The story seems to have been introduced into the saga manuscripts fairly late. Early sources say that Olaf converted “five lands” to Christianity, but later writings credit him with “six lands.” The sixth land is Greenland, which the earlier writers hadn’t heard about, probably because it never happened.
I don’t think many historians seriously doubt that Leif was a Christian himself. The family gossip about religious conflict in his family has the ring of truth to it, and archaeologists have excavated a small church at his farm that matches the saga description of one Thjodhild built. But he wasn’t a government employee.
If you’ve read my Viking novels, you know that that was the Viking way.