Mike Hall, over at The American Culture (where I am also known to post now and then) offers a flattering review of my novel, Troll Valley.
In all of his novels, Lars Walker has managed to combine realism with wild fantasy, producing a fascinating hybrid genre that makes for compelling reading. As an artist, he has arrived, and he just keeps getting better and better.
Guys who wear porkpie hats are always, in my experience, up to no good—and pleased about it. Whether that style of headwear turns previously benign men into sociopaths or whether men who are already sociopaths are drawn to that style is one of those mysteries that will never be solved, though the Department of Justice has probably funded a score of scientific studies of the issue.
Another Odd Thomas novel from Dean Koontz, another home run. I won’t say Odd Apocalypse is my favorite in the series—I won’t even say I’m sure I liked it better than the previous novella, Odd Interlude, which I reviewed recently. But all these books are so far superior to anything else being done in the genre (assuming I know what the genre is) that you know going in that you’re in for a delight. And you are not disappointed.
Odd Thomas is the simplest of men, with the simplest of desires. All he wants is a quiet life, and to love a girl who is gone. But he’s been entrusted with gifts—the ability to see the “undeparted dead,” and a sort of psychic GPS that helps him find people he’s looking for. Because he’s faithful to God, he employs these gifts for the good of others, which leads him into great danger time and time again. Continue reading Odd Apocalypse, by Dean Koontz
What to say about the third book in Jeffrey Overstreet’s The Auralia Thread fantasy series, Raven’s Ladder? It’s difficult to decide, really, because these books are in a class by themselves, unlike anything you’ve ever read. Most fantasies are derivative to one degree or another. The Auralia Thread is a thing unto itself. It reminds me a little of Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan books, but the resemblances are remote, and very few of you will have read them anyway.
Although the story isn’t locked into one location, the bulk of Raven’s Ladder takes place in the city-state of Bel Amica, which we’ve known only by reputation in the previous books. Since most of the Bel Amicans we’ve met already were favorable characters, one is inclined to think well of the place. But the rottenness in sophisticated, luxurious Bel Amica is as serious as was the rottenness in the ruined kingdom of Abascar. It’s just a decay of a different kind. Continue reading Raven’s Ladder, by Jeffrey Overstreet
I have another article up at The American Spectator Online today. It’s about the problem of how young people are to understand the thinking of their ancestors, especially on issues like slavery.
And then, this morning, James Lileks pointed me to an article from io9 that perfectly illustrates the problem. This writer talks about the “mysterious” culture of the Incas, which “had no markets.”
The secret of the Inca’s great wealth may have been their unusual tax system. Instead of paying taxes in money, every Incan was required to provide labor to the state. In exchange for this labor, they were given the necessities of life.
Of course, not everybody had to pay labor tax. Nobles and their courts were exempt, as were other prominent members of Incan society….
Only someone who has completely failed to understand history, in the sense about which I write for the Spectator, could fail to recognize the actual nature of Incan civilization. The common people were all slaves.
Last night as I was getting ready to turn in, I turned on Dennis Miller’s talk show, which is delay-broadcast here. A married couple was sitting in for him (I forget their names), and they announced that their next guest would be their friend Dean Koontz, to talk about his new novel, Odd Apocalypse.
I listened to the interview and took the book’s release date, my birthday, as a sign from heaven that I was meant to buy it now, and not wait for a lower price when the paperback comes out.
I’ll review it soon.
In other literary news, Gore Vidal has died.
They say you should speak no ill of the dead.
I have nothing more to say.
Today, by coincidence, is my birthday. Oddly enough, it fell on the exact same date last year. I wonder if that qualifies me for a Guinness World Record.
A dear friend bought me a steak dinner after work. Unfortunately, that dear friend was myself, but we didn’t let that spoil the festivities.
I came up with a question in my Bible reading the other day, and wondered if any of our erudite readers know the answer to it.
I was reading the account of the Resurrection in Luke 24:10, where it talks about the women who went to the tomb on Sunday morning, found it empty, and reported it to the disciples. “It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.”
There’s a parallel passage in Mark 16:1: “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body.”
There’s also an earlier reference to this woman in Mark 15:40: “Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.”
So here’s what I’m wondering. Scholars have pondered this previously unmentioned Mary, one among so many Marys who keep popping up in the gospels. Has it ever occurred to anybody to argue that this Mary might actually be Mary the mother of the Lord?
We know that the Lord had a brother named James, who became the head of the Jerusalem church. And an otherwise unmentioned brother named Joses (perhaps named after his father Joseph) isn’t unthinkable. If you’re Catholic you’d insist that the Virgin Mary wasn’t the mother of James, but the stepmother. But she could still be called his mother informally.
Why doesn’t it say, “Mary, the mother of the Lord?” I don’t know. Modesty? Fear of the authorities?
Another objection would be that James, the Lord’s brother, has traditionally been called James the Elder (I think) rather than James the Younger. My theory would require that tradition to be wrong.
Catholics probably wouldn’t take to this idea, though I might point out that it would give a biblical foundation to all those “Pieta” statues.
But my main question is, has anyone suggested this before? Or is it too dumb for anyone to have suggested before?
What to do? What to do? I’m torn as to what my attitude should be toward The Dark Knight Rises, the new Batman movie. I haven’t seen it, mind you. But as an internationally respected blogger, I think I’m obligated to have an opinion. The question is, what opinion should I parrot? Two of my favorite bloggers have taken totally contradictory views.
First of all, Andrew Klavan praised it to the skies in a column for the Wall Street Journal, which he links here.
The movie is a bold apologia for free-market capitalism; a graphic depiction of the tyranny and violence inherent in every radical leftist movement from the French Revolution to Occupy Wall Street; and a tribute to those who find redemption in the harsh circumstances of their lives rather than allow those circumstances to mire them in resentment.
Sounds great.
In the other corner, in the white trunks, Anthony Sacramone at Strange Herring hated it. Continue reading Dark Knight of the soul
You can generally tell when my budget situation is getting tight by the way I start reviewing “classic” books, downloaded for free to my Kindle. And so we come to one of the first English mystery novels, Wilkie Collins’s 1859 book, The Woman in White.
I enjoyed The Woman in White, but found it frustrating at the same time. The story’s compelling, the characters wonderful, but (although I think I’m better suited to handle old fiction than most readers today) I found the Victorian conventions aggravating. Also, like any pioneering work in a genre, the author isn’t entirely sure how to handle his material, and does things which later writers, working in an established tradition, would never waste time on.
The Woman in White centers on two women who physically resemble each other, leading to tragic consequences. The first is Anne Catherick, who, when the hero, artist Walter Hartright, first encounters her, has recently escaped from an insane asylum. Hartright, unaware of this, chivalrously helps her find her way in London. The second woman is Laura Fairlie, a prospective heiress for whom Walter is soon hired to be drawing tutor. He falls in love with her without delay. But Laura is betrothed to a man of “her own class,” who eventually turns out to be an utter scoundrel. And so the foundation is laid for a diabolical plot to deprive her of her fortune and (perhaps) her life. Continue reading The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
From the pulse-pounding world of statistical research, we have a story that says the Iliad and Beowulf and the Irish epic Tain Bo Cualinge are all literally true in every detail.
Ha, ha. No, they’re not saying that. What they’re saying, as best I understand it, is that the social relationships portrayed in those ancient epics are more realistic than those in modern fiction.
“Of the three myths, the network of characters in the Iliad has properties most similar to those of real social networks,” they write in the journal EPL (Europhysics Letters). “This similarity perhaps reflects the archaeological evidence supporting the historicity of some of the events (the tale describes).”
Similarly, the way the characters of Beowulf are linked together “has some properties similar to real social networks,” they write. This confirms the archaeological evidence that a number of the characters are based on real people, “although the events of the story often contain elements of fantasy.”
Because, apparently, even though modern fiction is considered more realistic in terms of how people really relate to each other, modern fiction also oversimplifies enormously.
Or maybe it’s just that ancient people had big families and were proud of it, while we today have small families and generally try to keep them out of sight.
I know that I oversimplify in my Viking novels. One of the things you can’t miss in the Icelandic sagas is all the genealogies (I made some jokes about it in West Oversea). These things mattered to the original audiences. They knew those farms and those families, and the affiliations mattered. I keep the relatives pretty much to a bare minimum in my stories, and even so I have to add character lists so the readers can keep their score cards straight.
In general, I don’t like novels with large casts. I lose track. “There will be fewer, and better Russians,” said Stalin, and I can only wish Tolstoy had said the same.
Tip: Threedonia
Here’s a lightly political topic on which I’d like your comments. William Bigelow accused President Obama of stealing his latest tagline, “We’re all in this together,” from Britain’s Labour Party leader. Read the short post and tell me if you think this should be consider plagiarism. The last example given, where Mr. Obama copies words from Deval Patrick, looks like plagiarism to me, but the tagline? I don’t know. This seems fair game to me, though it’s naturally opening yourself up for a shot like Bigelow’s post. I mean, if the new socialist president of France talks about wanting a country where “we’re all in this together,” I’d hope that connection would still harm any U.S. national politician, notwithstanding Dennis Kucinich.