Fiction, Reviews

Falling Up the Stairs, by James Lileks

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You’re probably aware that I’m a major fan of Minneapolis writer James Lileks (though you probably don’t know—because I’ve been so discreet about it—that I once did a half hour of radio with him in studio). So when he re-released his first novel, Falling Up the Stairs, as a Kindle book I snapped it right up.

How shall I express my reaction? It’s not a bad book. If you’re a fan of Lileks, you’re likely to get a lot of entertainment from it, as I did.

But it’s not a particularly good novel.

It suffers from a congenital disorder of first novels—too much showing off. The author is eager to throw everything in, to demonstrate his range and complexity. And this being Lileks, the range is broad and the complexity variegated.

But the book can’t figure out what it wants to be, and the reader ends up with narrative whiplash.

The story’s narrator is Jonathan Simpson, who when we meet him is “social editor” of a newspaper in a small Minnesota town. He’s depressed because his career is going nowhere and his girlfriend (whose career is going somewhere) has left him to move to New York.

His life gets quickly shaken up when, almost all at once, he gets fired from his job and learns that he has inherited a Minneapolis mansion from his eccentric aunt, whom he never much liked. He drives to the city in his AMC Pacer, throws his parasite cousin out of the house, and comforts his senile butler and motherly cook. Then a series of fatal poisonings begin, the work of a health food terrorist group (!)

You may have intuited the problem. You start with a comic premise and comic characters (I thought the beginning fully worthy of Wodehouse), and slide into terrorism and the death of the innocent. Wodehouse morphs into Saki, who becomes James Patterson. I’m not saying such a transition is impossible, but it’s pretty hard, and a debut soloist should probably stick to one or two octaves.

There’s also a serious problem with the classic Kindle formatting glitches. Lileks announced the other day on his blog that he was pulling the book temporarily to fix the problems, but it’s still up on Amazon. So I’m not sure what you’ll be getting if you buy it today. My copy had serious problems with paragraph breaks in the wrong places, something that interferes with dialogue passages. There were also a couple points where stretches of text got duplicated.

So I can’t wholeheartedly recommend Falling Up the Stairs. On the other hand it’s only three bucks for the e-book, and it’s Lileks, so it’s probably still good value for money.

Publishing

Interview with Keith Urbahn

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Coffee and Markets talks to Keith Urbahn about his new firm, Javelin, and publishing conservative authors. “As the only full-service book writing and publicity firm in the nation’s capital, Javelin is the first of its kind,” says Urbahn’s LinkedIn bio, “offering concrete, multi-channel services from crisis communications and social networking solutions to speech and book writing.”

Uncategorized

S.D. Smith is the Story Warren

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“There are imaginative tales burrowing into our children’s hearts, past the ‘watchful dragons’ of their minds, to inform who they are at the deepest levels. . . . We want to serve you as you seek to foster holy imagination in the children you love.” Smith rallies an admirable team to write some good, good stuff.

Authors, Religion

Linkage about writers

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I reviewed Ric Locke’s Temporary Duty a while back. If you’ve been thinking about buying it, this would probably be a good time. Or you can go to his web site and hit the Donations link at the upper left. Ric has been diagnosed with Stage III, inoperable lung cancer, and his financial situation is tight.

Ric was kind enough to give me encouragement and advice when I was thinking about doing an e-book. He’s in my prayers.

Our friend Hunter Baker recently gave a speech on the Christian view of freedom, and how it differs from the secular humanist view, at an event in Tennessee. You can read the text here, at his blog.

From Rousseau’s perspective, Christianity and particularly what he called “Roman Christianity” presents a serious problem because there will always the difficulty of double power since the church will not simply yield to the state. Where there is conflict, the church will go where it believes God is leading it. In Rousseau’s mind, such a conflict should be impossible. The state must rule without question. He praised Hobbes for trying to put the two powers back together under the rule of Leviathan in which the state would control religion completely. What is needed, Rousseau wrote, is theocracy such that there is no pontiff other than the prince and no priests other than the magistrate. The only real sin in this new state Rousseau envisioned is intolerance. It is not even enough to have theological intolerance and civil tolerance. Theological intolerance cannot be tolerated. Anyone who “dares to say outside the church there is no salvation ought to be expelled from the state . . .”

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

Light: C. S. Lewis’s First and Final Short Story, by Charlie W. Starr

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If Lewis’s epistemology has a center, it is in fact, not truth, because truth is always about reality—one step removed from the thing itself.

Winged Lion Press is a small publisher concentrating on C. S. Lewis- and mythopoeic-related material. I received a free copy of Light: C. S. Lewis’s First and Final Short Story from publisher Robert Trexler.

Many, if not most, C. S. Lewis fans are familiar with a story called “The Man Born Blind,” published posthumously in 1977 by Lewis’s literary executor, Walter Hooper, in the book The Dark Tower and Other Stories.

A few years ago, a different version (and a later one, in the opinion of Charlie W. Star, author of Light) was acquired by a collector of Lewisiana. The manuscript’s provenance is cloudy, but handwriting and ink strongly indicate that it’s genuine. This story carries Lewis’s own title, “Light” (the title in Hooper’s volume was his own invention, as the version he had had none).

Of all Lewis’s writings, “Light” is probably the most enigmatic. It springs from his most profound thinking on meaning and reality, and these are deep waters indeed.

I should caution you that unless you’re a hard-core Lewis fan, you may find this book kind of hard going. The grass here is tall indeed. I couldn’t help thinking of A Canticle for Liebowitz, as Charlie Starr manages to find material for an entire (and not short) book in a four page story. But for the Inklings enthusiast, there’s much of interest here.

The story is examined from several directions, but perhaps the most fascinating are those of dating and meaning. The two are closely related, as Lewis’ friend Owen Barfield clearly remembered seeing a version of the story in the late 1920s, some time before Lewis’s conversion. But Starr argues (pretty convincingly) that this version was written around 1944. His argument is that Lewis must have nursed this story, re-writing it from time to time, over the course of his lifetime, so that it meant rather different things at the end than it did at the beginning.

Light is not for the casual reader, but I recommend it for the hard-core Lewis fan.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Reviews

Praise from Caesar

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I had the pleasure of getting my review of Andrew Klavan’s novel Crazy Dangerous (not here, but in its The American Culture incarnation) linked today by Klavan himself. In the course of the linkage he refers to me as “my colleague.”

That’s kind of the apotheosis of the concept of generosity, right there.

I’m Klavan’s colleague in more or less the same way I was Sir Anthony Hopkins’s colleague when I was doing community theater down in Florida. Or in the same way I was Christopher Nolan’s colleague when I cobbled together my West Oversea trailer. Or in the same way that guy in the subway station who plays with his instrument case open for spare change is Yo Yo Ma’s colleague.

But the fantasy is appreciated.

Yesterday was Svenskarnasdag (Swedish Day) at Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis. As usual, the Viking Age Club & Society was there for the entertainment, enlightenment, and moral uplift of the community. I fought a few fights, and never did better than a mutual kill. I’ve come to accept the fact that that’s more or less my calling.

Talked to a fellow who asked me about the Vikings in Scotland, and I was able to unload a lot of the stuff I learned in The Viking Highlands.

The subject didn’t stray as far as the Battle of Kringen, in 1612, whose 400th anniversary is today. Information here. (Thanks to Tim Eischen for bringing this to my attention.)

In brief, King Gustav Adolf II of Sweden wanted to attack Denmark by way of Norway. He hired a group of Scottish mercenaries under the command of George Sinclair (ironically, the Sinclairs are one of those Highland clans with Norse roots. But I doubt if that bothered them much) to march across Norway. An irregular force of Norwegian farmers ambushed them in a narrow mountain pass at Kringen, killed most of them by causing an avalanche, and slaughtered most of the rest. A few survived, and numerous Norwegians in Romsdal take pride in being their descendents.

We Norwegians have relatively few military victories to celebrate in our history, so this event looms large in our cultural tradition.

Blogs, Socials, Goofing, Religion

Slumgullion Friday

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In the spirit of Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine, I offer the following excerpt from the nonexistent book, Lars Walker’s Fulsome Compendium of Rightfully Forgotten Church History:

The Vigilant Baptist Movement (June 1852): On June 3, 1852, independent Baptist preacher Titus A. Drumhead founded the Vigilant Baptist Fellowship. The Vigilant Baptists took their marching orders from Luke 21:36: “Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” Operating on the hermeneutical principle that nothing whatever in Scripture is ever to be taken symbolically, Rev. Drumhead declared that he had given up sleeping forever, trusting that God was able to sustain him in wakefulness so long as he lived. He exhorted his congregation (which consisted of six people) to follow his godly example. On June 5 of that same year, the Vigilant Baptists nearly entered into a merger with the Independent Church of Spiritual Water, a group which took its inspiration from John 4:14: “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst….” and so abstained from all liquids entirely. The merger was never consummated due to Rev. Drumhead’s unexpected unconsciousness. Awakening twelve hours later and concluding that he was not among the Elect, Rev. Drumhead became a Methodist. The fate of his movement, however, was happier than that of the I.C.S.W.

Our friend Loren Eaton gave me a plug over at his blog, I Saw Lightning Fall, yesterday. Thanks, Loren.

Finally, another great article about an American cartoonist from Stefan Kanfer at City Journal. This time he writes of Winsor McCay, the first great (and insufficiently remembered) newspaper cartoonist and pioneer animator. When I was a kid, my grandparents had a book of Little Nemo in Slumberland in their house. I glanced at it, but didn’t care for the look of it. Little Nemo, in particular, looked like a sissy to me.

And indeed, McCay’s work isn’t really for children. As an adult I’ve had the chance to look at a little of the man’s work, and it’s… gobsmacking. Great vistas of incredible, hallucinatory images splashed all across the newspaper page in full color. The man’s draftsmanship, modeling, and use of perspective have never been surpassed. In fact, I don’t think anyone else ever tried to do what he did.

Authors, Fiction

Imaginary Books

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Mark Bertrand, whose novel Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery), the third in that series, comes out in a few days, refers in an imaginary work of non-fiction written by a journalist about the novel’s main character, Roland March. “It’s a 2003 true crime book by journalist Brad Templeton, covering March’s most famous early case,” Bertrand explains. The characters in his novel refer to the book repeatedly, which led Bertrand to write portions of the book in order to keep everything straight. You can read those portions through the link on this post.

Fiction, Reviews

Wrongful Death, by Andrew Price

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My adjustment to the world of the Kindle e-reader has brought about some changes in my reading habits. You may have noticed that I’ve been doing more negative reviews than I used to. This is because the availability of very cheap—or free—e-books has seduced me into downloading a number of books by authors I’ve never heard of. And, as Theodore Sturgeon (I think it was Sturgeon) said, more or less, “90% of everything is crap.” I’ll admit to being kinder to authors who approach me personally to review a book (sometimes I’m so kind I say nothing at all), but generally if I read dreck I call it dreck.

Wrongful Death by Andrew Price is not dreck. It has numerous flaws, but it was a book I enjoyed, and I want to encourage the author to carry on (though I suggest finding a better proofreader).

The hero of Wrongful Death is Scott Blakely, an attorney in the town of Greenfield, Pennsylvania, a dying community in the Rust Belt. He barely squeaks by financially. This isn’t helped by the fact that he has a high sense of both morality and ethics (they’re not the same thing), though he shares a practice with one lawyer who’s a sexual adventurer and another who’s an ambulance chaser with no visible principles at all.

Scott is hired by Madeline Tashard, the widow of a local psychiatrist who died under a doctor’s care in the town’s hospital. It’s a pretty clear-cut case of malpractice. But Madeline is an oddly unsympathetic widow. She suffers from partial paralysis, but bridles when anyone offers her any assistance. She treats her young daughter with noticeable coldness.

As the story unfolds, we’re able to observe Scott’s highminded (but strategically brilliant) conduct in the case, as well as a portion of the tactics and strategies of his opponents. Not only the principles, but the town itself, face disaster if some of the parties get their way. There are surprises in store, and the final resolution will be shocking but satisfying (at least it was to me).

Wrongful Death isn’t a legal thriller, in the sense of lots of violence and action. It’s more cerebral, something I appreciated. The characters were well-drawn and believable.

The writing needs some work. Author Price is under the delusion that incredulity can be indicated by pairing a question mark with an exclamation point at the end of a sentence, and that expressions of doubt, even when framed as statements, should be indicated by question marks. He needs an editor.

But he’s able to tell an exciting, compelling story without gunfights or car chases. Kudos to him.

Cautions for adult themes and language.

Fiction, Reviews

Crazy Dangerous, by Andrew Klavan

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Andrew Klavan has taken a small (but worthwhile) detour in his writing career over the last few years, producing top-notch thrillers aimed at the Young Adult audience, published by Christian publisher Thomas Nelson. His previous four books, The Homelanders series, brought the Christian YA field to a whole new level. All in all, I think the stand-alone novel Crazy Dangerous is even better.

One improvement is the narrator/hero of Crazy Dangerous, Sam Hopkins. Unlike Charlie West, the hero of the Homelanders books, Sam is not an adolescent James Bond, outstanding at everything he does and equipped with a black belt. Sam will be far easier for most kids to identify with. He’s a smallish, not very popular, not academically outstanding, not very athletic teenager, struggling with the challenges of being a preacher’s kid in a small town in upstate New York. When he receives an odd offer of “friendship” from three of the shadiest kids in his school, he gets involved with them, just to escape the public expectations that face every PK.

But the situation changes when his new “friends” make an attack on Jennifer, a vulnerable classmate with mental problems. Rescuing Jennifer, and paying the price for it, seems to be the end of Sam’s adventure, but it’s only the beginning. Because Jennifer’s mysterious, oddly articulated visions of impending death and disaster have more truth in them than anyone guesses, and everyone in Sam’s world is not what they seem. But the lesson Sam is learning—“Do right. Fear nothing”—steers him through a variety of strange paths to the right decisions in a big, explosive story climax.

Great story. Great values. I found it interesting that Sam’s pastor father, though a good dad and a wise man, seems to be a liberal Christian, and therefore blind to some truths that might have helped his son. That was an intriguing—and narratively useful—nuance.

The plot was weak at one point, I thought, where Sam made a braver choice than I thought consistent with his character. But that might be just a coward’s reaction to reading about a better person than himself. It certainly won’t bother young readers, who will consume this book like nacho chips and shake the bag for more.

Highly recommended for teens and up. Great for adults too. Intense situations, but no foul language.