Come and Get It, by Edna Ferber

When I read We, the Drowned, which I reviewed the other day, I was making one of my attempts to connect with the lives of my ancestors, in that case my Danish forebears.

I’ve written before in this space about my mother’s mother’s family, who lived in Hurley, Wisconsin, generally considered the wickedest town in the north. So when I learned that a novel had been written (at least in part) about Hurley (renamed “Iron Ridge”) by an estimable American novelist, I had to read that too.

Come and Get It is one of Edna Ferber’s big American books. In novels like Showboat, So Big, and Cimarron, she attempted to capture the essence of her own country as expressed in the life of various regions. Come and Get It is her northern novel. It’s worth reading, though it hasn’t kept as well as its early fans hoped it would (it was even made into a movie with Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Joel McCrae, and Frances Farmer, but judging by the clips I’ve seen they made major alterations). Continue reading Come and Get It, by Edna Ferber

Netflix review: “Foyle’s War”

Since the Foyle’s War mystery series has been broadcast in this country on PBS, all of you probably enjoyed it long before I did. But in case I’m not the last person in America to catch this excellent program, I’ll give my own viewer’s response here.

Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle (splendidly underplayed by Michael Kitchen) is chief detective in Hastings, England, during World War II. A sort of running joke in the series is that he desperately wants to do something “more important” for the war effort, but again and again is denied the chance, sometimes because there’s a case he feels he needs to see through to the end, and sometimes because his stubborn integrity makes him enemies in high places. Later on, when the war is winding down, he just wants to retire, but keeps getting pulled back in.

Foyle is a smallish, unprepossessing man, but steely in his character. He’s the kind of superior officer who can flay a subordinate alive without raising his voice. Nevertheless he’s very popular with his underlings, and has a sly, dry, sense of humor.

He is assisted in his inquiries by two regular supporting characters—Samantha “Sam” Stuart, his military driver (played by an actress actually named Honeysuckle Weeks, who’s not conventionally pretty but is nevertheless entirely adorable), and Detective Sergeant Paul Milner (Anthony Howell), an early war casualty with an artificial leg. Together they investigate at least one murder each episode, often connected to war profiteering, espionage, and military secrets. Foyle isn’t always able to arrest the sometimes well-protected culprits, but he does all he can and never gives up under any pressure less than direct orders. In such cases, he never leaves the stage without laying out the moral case. Continue reading Netflix review: “Foyle’s War”

Mythical Maps


Caricature Map of Europe 1914 by ~Keithwormwood on deviantART

The artist of this map says it’s “a political caricature map depicting different nations in the alternate world history of the book Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld.” I’ve begun to believe that most of the really good books out there are the ones with maps in the front, and these are just the type of maps I’m talking about.

We, the Drowned, by Carsten Jensen


We said goodbye to our mothers. They’d been around all our lives, but we’d never properly seen them. They’d been bent over washing tubs or cooking pots, their faces red and swollen from heat and steam, holding everything together while our fathers were away at sea, and nodding off every night in the kitchen chair, with a darning needle in hand. It was their endurance and exhaustion we knew, rather than them. And we never asked them for anything because we didn’t want to bother them.

That was how we showed our love. With silence.

…Our mother sticks a knife in our heart when we say goodbye on the wharf. And we stick a knife in hers when we go. And that’s how we’re connected: through the hurt we inflict on one another.

I really didn’t have much choice about buying Danish author Carsten Jensen’s We, the Drowned. I’ve been telling you how much I like sea stories, and this is a sea epic. One quarter of my ancestors were Danes, and this is the story of a small maritime village on a Danish island, not all that far from where my people came from (though mine were farmers, as far as I know. My sailing ancestors were Norwegian. Close enough).

We, the Drowned is a long book, and strange. It starts out in an almost whimsical faction, telling us of Lauritz Madsen of the town of Marstal, who started a war with Germany singlehanded, and was blown up over the mainsail, saw St. Peter’s backside, and landed on his feet back on deck to tell the tale.

But that’s pretty much the end of the whimsy. Author Jensen quickly falls into the fatalistic tone so common in Scandinavian literature. Things get grim, and they stay grim by and large. There are fantastical, magical realism elements to the book, but they mostly follow sailors’ superstitions—visions and omens and objects carrying bad luck. Continue reading We, the Drowned, by Carsten Jensen

“Forgive us our boo-boos”

Our friend Anthony Sacramone of Strange Herring posted a rare serious article today, expressing his dismay over recent statements by Father Benedict Groeschel, with whom he’s personally acquainted. Father Groeschel told the National Catholic Register that victims of child sexual abuse—as young as 14—are often “the seducer.”

Mr. Sacramone says:

I have no great need to defend Catholic clergy or (heaven help up) the bishops (whose skulls, as John Chrysostom stated, pave the floor of hell). I’m not on the road to Rome, despite the best efforts of some very smart, devout, and good men. Nor do I think the sheer awfulness of what Groeschel said in this one interview should be defended in any way, shape, or form. But the man is 79 years old. Take the “excuse” about his recently hitting his head for what it’s worth (I do wonder why he would agree to an interview at all if he was not himself). About eight years ago, he was hit by a car and almost died; before that, he suffered a serious heart attack. In other words, this is a man no longer playing at the top of his game.

I don’t have anything more to add on that subject. But I note that one of Father Groeschel’s lifelong vocations has been counseling. That’s a valuable calling, but it seems to me it has its inherent dangers. The French proverb, “To understand all is to forgive all,” may work very well in ordinary situations. But not in every situation. Christians need to understand that there is such a thing as evil. Continue reading “Forgive us our boo-boos”

Down on the dumps



“Hillside Dump,” Gene Daniels, Photographer.

As you’ve probably noted, I’ve read a number of novels by obscure writers in the last year or so, when they became available free or very cheap for Kindle. I think such reading is actually beneficial for a writer, because it teaches vicariously, through others’ mistakes.

The previous paragraph, by the way, can be described as exposition. Exposition tells back story, sets up the situation, and prepares the reader for what is to come.

And what is to come is a post about exposition.

The dreaded Info Dump is one of the most common mistakes I observe among fledgling novelists. You’ve probably run across it yourself. The characters are going along, doing whatever it is they do, and then the author stops everything to

a)Tell you the back story of the characters, or the country, or the world, in his own voice, or

b)Have one of the characters do it.

In general, option b is better than option a, but either can annoy the heck out of your readers if done clumsily.

There’s a particular fantasy writer, of whose books I have read one and a half. In the second book I tackled, his main character rode into a new country about half way through the story, and everything stopped while the author delivered an extended lecture on the whole history of that country. I dropped the book and never tried another of his.

Now this author is far more successful than I am, so he probably possesses many virtues I lack. But I still say there was no warrant for that kind of info dump.

There are good ways to give your reader the same information, without braking to a full stop.

One of the best is simply to introduce a character who’s a stranger, and get somebody (or several people) to explain things to him. That’s why so many good books center on strangers going to new places.

(By the way, the information doesn’t have to be dispensed all at once. You can introduce it bit by bit, as the story warrants. The stranger character asks, and he gets his answers. It’s natural and true to life, and pretty painless for the reader. It’s also not necessary to satisfy the stranger’s curiosity right away. Let him be mystified for a while. The reader will share his mystification, and it will add to the intrigue of the story.)

One caveat — For heaven’s sake, have the person who is informed be someone who needs informing. Nothing destroys a story’s credibility like the dreaded “As you know,” speech, such as, “As you know, Fred, I am your elder brother.”

If you have to do an info dump, for heaven’s sake break it up a little. In Wolf Time, my main character is a college instructor who gives a lecture on Norwegian history that provides background for the supernatural occurrences to come. But I don’t just transcribe his lecture text. I have students interrupt and argue with him. This allows us to get to know him better, to see what kind of man he is, even while information is being imparted. People tell me that worked pretty well.

You can always “show, don’t tell,” too. Instead of having somebody explain how your character’s grandfather came to possess the Mystic Snoose Tin of Wanamingo, you can add a vignette, perhaps (but not necessarily) at the beginning of the story, presenting that discovery as a self-contained story within the narrative.

Those are a couple of techniques for exposition that come to mind offhand. There are probably more, and I’ll share them if I think of any.

I, for one, welcome our new digital overlords

Over at I Saw Lightning Fall, our friend Loren Eaton links to a Wall Street Journal article by Joshua Fruhlinger, in which he explains why he gave up on e-book readers and went back to dead tree tomes.

I BROKE UP WITH E-BOOKS last year after a flight from Los Angeles to New York. My first-generation Kindle and I had been together for five years, but I knew we’d have to go our separate ways when, an hour into the journey, it completely shut me out. Or rather, it shut down. I’d forgotten to charge the device before I left.

Upon arrival in New York, I coolly walked into a bookstore and bought a paperback version of the book my Kindle wouldn’t let me read in the air. It felt good to be back on paper, turning real pages. I realized then: E-readers are needy, but a paperback will always be there for you.

Here I find myself in the awkward and almost existentially self-contradictory position of being on the side of progress as over against tradition. Before I owned a Kindle I had all the standard Luddite objections—I loved the smell and feel of books¹, I did not want to be dependent on an electronic device that might fail or get damaged at any time, and by thunder, paper books were good enough for my grandmother, and they’re good enough for me!

But as you know if you’ve been following this blog, those objections evaporated as soon as Hunter Baker (author of Political Thought: A Student’s Guide) gave me a Kindle 3 in a random act of kindness. I very shortly made some surprising discoveries.

The most surprising was that I don’t love the feel and smell of paper books nearly as much as I thought I did. In fact I’m able now to admit my secret shame for many years—that I’ve always had trouble holding books open (I’m not a breaker of spines), and had found it somewhat tiring, in long reading sessions, to hold a book open at a convenient angle. An e-book doesn’t have a facing page to curl back, and its lightness makes it ideal for reading in comfortable situations, like when I’m stretched out on the couch. For ease of use, the Kindle has paper books beat in almost every situation. Continue reading I, for one, welcome our new digital overlords

Patience and Perseverance

John Vorhaus writes about writing:

So that would seem to leave us with a pretty clear choice, wouldn’t it? Write, and improve; or don’t write, and don’t improve.

Why is it not that simple?

Because the forces of evil are arrayed against the desire to write. And the biggest evil of all is the need to be good. Burdened by the unrealistic expectation of all quality all the time, we often find that we just can’t write at all.

Risking our lives



“Card Players,” by Theodoor Rombouts (1597-1637)

One reason why my job is better than yours is that when we have meetings I sometimes come away with spiritual insights. When we got together yesterday, for instance, somebody (I actually forget who) said something (I actually forget precisely what) about living by faith, and it sparked the following thought in me.

I’ve always been a little troubled by the resemblance between faith and gambling. I’ve been uncomfortable with the fact that (generally) we condemn gambling, while we encourage people to act in a very gambling-like way in their Christian lives—“Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Luke 17:33).

In fact, I understand a movie was made on that very subject some years back. It was about some kind of pastor, a missionary, I think, who plays cards all the time and justifies it on the grounds that gambling is just part of the life of faith.

He’s right in terms of analogy. But I think I see the difference.

Gambling as we think of it—games of chance—involves risking those things that a) are least significant in the spiritual life, and b) we are obligated to husband responsibly, remembering to assist the poor and the Lord’s work. I think if the Lord were to speak to that gambling pastor, He’d tell him that there’s a better way to throw his wealth away—give it directly to the poor. That would free him from greedy motives, benefit people who really need his money, and permit him to trust the Lord for his daily bread.

The problem with gambling for money, I think, is that it’s not risky enough. Gamblers are really playing for matchsticks, even when great sums change hands. Those who walk with Christ risk their very lives, and all the false gods that provide security in ordinary life go into the pot.

Today’s orthodonture “Fail”

Here, at last, is the photograph of me that I promised you a few days ago, courtesy of the photographer, Stephan Faerber of Minneapolis.

Aside from being an attractive image of a highly unattractive subject, like those images where photographers get interesting shots out of garbage dumps or decaying buildings through framing, composition, and lighting, this is an unusual photograph in that it shows me smiling. I’ve mentioned before that I generally avoid smiling, because it does no good either for me or for the person on whom I inflict it (P.G. Wodehouse wrote an amusing story on a similar theme). But Faerber seems to be capable of such alchemy, and more power to him.

He gave me permission to use it promotionally, with attribution.

Which is what this post is, I guess.