The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins

July 27, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

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 →

Fiction

I sing of Beowulf’s cousins

July 26, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

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

Uncategorized

Is It Really Plagiarism?

July 26, 2012 philwade Leave a comment

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.

Authors, Non-fiction

Hunter Baker Interview

July 26, 2012 philwade Leave a comment

Hunter Baker talks about the ideas in his latest book, Political Thought: A Student’s Guide (Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition), with Brad Jackson and Allysen Efferson of Coffee and Markets. Dr. Baker explains the publisher’s intent of the series and that wanted to write a political book anyone could read.

Uncategorized

Hurrah for Macbeth!

July 25, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

DATELINE Elgin, Moray—King Macbeth released a new campaign ad today, condemning his political opponents for taking his words out of context.

In the ad, he says, ‘When my opponents quote me as saying,

“I am in blood

Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

‘They are willfully misinterpreting the plain meaning of my words. Rather than admitting that I was guilty of killing King Duncan, I was talking about our corporate guilt, and the culture of violence which—sadly—prevails in contemporary Scotland, and which my opponents in fact encourage when they oppose my sensible and moderate spear control laws.’

Thinking about Macbeth today. I’ve always liked the play, even before I realized it was set in the Viking Age, and peripherally in the Viking world. I could put Macbeth in one of my Erling novels if I wanted to. They were contemporaries, though Macbeth was considerably younger.

You’re likely aware that Shakespeare’s play is a complete libel. Shakespeare was writing under King James I, who believed himself a descendent of Banquo. Which explains all the business with the witches telling Banquo he would “get kings” without himself becoming one.

The real Macbeth was a popular and successful king, almost to the end. He killed King Duncan (who was not an old man but a young one), not in bed, but honorably in battle. Contemporary accounts describe him as both “red” and “golden-haired.” Very likely, I suppose, he was strawberry blond. He was confident enough in the security of his throne to make a pilgrimage to Rome in 1050, during which he is reported to have given money to the poor “as if it were seed.” Continue reading Hurrah for Macbeth! →

Writing

Two ways of storytelling

July 24, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

Albert Anker: Der Grossvater erzählt eine Geschichte, 1884

A commenter was kind enough to leave his opinion on one of my reviews from a couple weeks back. (No, I won’t link to it. But I won’t delete it either.) He wasn’t happy with my comments on a certain novel. He said the novel talked about things he knew from first hand experience, and he’d found it a great story. My criticisms of the author’s writing style and use of words (if I understood his comment correctly) were out of line, in his opinion. Nobody cared about that stuff.

In a way I sympathize with him. There’s a difference between good writing and good storytelling. There are a number of well-regarded wordsmiths out there who can’t tell an interesting story to save their lives. And plenty of guys who’d keep you fascinated telling tales at a campfire, who couldn’t write a coherent sentence. There’s some injustice in the fact that the first group is considered superior to the second.

I’ve known a couple fellows myself, in my time, who could keep an audience mesmerized, even though they butchered the English language. They made good use of the verbal storyteller’s tools—intonation, facial expression, changes in volume, dramatic pauses, gestures. Continue reading Two ways of storytelling →

Poetry

One Line Can Make the Poem

July 24, 2012 philwade Leave a comment

Patrick Kurp writes about those single lines of beauty or clarity within otherwise unremarkable poems. He boils it down to this: “Art is the least democratic and most ruthless of masters. It doesn’t recognize sensitivity, fairness or anyone’s good intentions – writer’s, reader’s, critic’s. Nothing else, only the work, counts.”

Fiction, Reviews

Cyndere’s Midnight, by Jeffrey Overstreet

July 23, 2012 Lars Walker Leave a comment

I took longer than I intended getting to the second volume of Jeffrey Overstreet’s Auralia Thread, Cyndere’s Midnight. I need to make sure I don’t do that again. I enjoyed it immensely.

In the first book of the series, Auralia’s Colors, Overstreet told the story of the law-bound land of Abascar, whose queen had forbidden the people to wear any colorful clothes or own any colorful objects. This led to the persecution of the strange girl Auralia, who wove and painted colorful things out in the wilderness. Eventually Abascar was destroyed, and now, as this book begins, a few refugees of Abascar eke out a perilous existence in caves.

Now the focus turns to the kingdom of Bel Amica, whose religion is more sensitive and feelings-oriented than Abascar’s. The heiress to the Bel Amican throne, Cyndere, mourns the death of her consort, Deuneroi, at the hands of the inhuman beastmen. The loss is made more poignant by the fact that she and Deuneroi had dreamed of finding a way to heal the beastmen and free them from their addiction to the Essence, a potion that alters their shapes and their natures. Cyndere’s plan now is to add to a traditional widow’s rite of sacrifice her own act of suicide.

But other characters interfere with her plan. One is the beastman Jordam, who fell under the spell of Auralia’s colors and through the power of their memory is struggling with his need for Essence—as well as with the murderous plans of his brother beastmen. And the Ale Boy, Auralia’s friend, who follows a path laid out by the mysterious, almost forgotten Keeper—a dragon-like creature which protects him and guides him as well.

The center of the story is Jordam’s struggles—with his own devolved nature, with his brothers, and even with the humans who do not trust him when he tries to help. He takes up Cyndere’s cause for Auralia’s sake, and must protect her not only from his brothers but from some of her own people.

Jeffrey Overstreet’s prose is a pleasure to read. It’s deft and light. His fantasy world is the most original I’ve encountered, post-Tolkien. I don’t recommend the book for children, solely because of the vocabulary required, but any reader who can handle this book will come away inspired. Highly recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

Back on Murder by J. Mark Bertrand

July 22, 2012 philwade Leave a comment

Lars has already reviewed Mark Bertrand’s detective novel, Back on Murder, so it may already be on your To-Read list. I finished it Friday and loved it. At the start of the novel, Roland March is “a suicide cop,” the officer in the homicide department who does the legwork no one wants to do after a fellow officer kills himself. Though March made a name for himself years ago and had the respect of whole department, his one famous case killed a part of him and has been dragging him down ever since. When a house full of gang members is found shot up, March notices a detail that sticks with him, irritating him into taking risks that only further distance him his teammates. But will those risks pay off?

Layer onto the murder case the disappearance of a beautiful blond teenager, one who looks like the other good-looking teenagers you’ve seen on national news, but this one is the daughter of godly widow, a pillar of her Houston mega-church. Is it possible the two are related, or is March just hoping for another high-profile case to put his career back on track?

The novel’s title sums up the detective’s ambition, that is, to be fully restored in the Homicide department, no longer a burn-out and convenient scapegoat for odd police jobs. He wants respect. He wants to be trusted as the lead on another murder case, not just suicide clean-up work.

As the story develops, we see the great pain March carries and shares with his wife, Charlotte. He’s continually dropping hints about it, and the narrative gradually reveals without telling too much. It’s impressive really. Bertrand has a strong novel here, and I look forward to the next two. March definitely has staying power.

Brandywine Books

The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins

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I sing of Beowulf’s cousins

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Is It Really Plagiarism?

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Hunter Baker Interview

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Hurrah for Macbeth!

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Two ways of storytelling

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One Line Can Make the Poem

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Cyndere’s Midnight, by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Back on Murder by J. Mark Bertrand

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Book Reviews, Creative Culture

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Book Reviews, Creative Culture