Help needed

I’m pondering a small problem with my upcoming e-book, Troll Valley. And I thought, hey, I’ll crowdsource it to the world’s smartest people, the few, the proud who read Brandywine Books.

Our own Phil Wade has been applying his considerable graphic skills to creating a cover, based on a photograph I took of the Gunderson House, the house in my home town (Kenyon, Minnesota) which inspired the house where the main characters of Troll Valley live.

Friends, this is going to be an awesome cover. I know the word “awesome” is overused, but I mean it literally. Or almost literally. Anyway, it’s great. Phil took a bright, sunny picture, ran it through some filters, and turned it into a dark, numinous sort of thing, with extras that you’ll just have to wait to see. Almost identical to what I envisioned, and much better than I dared hope.

But here’s where the problem comes. We’re laying it out with my name where it belongs (at the top). And the title, somewhat larger, near the bottom.

And it occurred to me that most books include some kind of tag line, a teaser to give people a hint what sort of story they’re looking at here.

I’m trying to come up with a tag line that will suggest the kind of weird book this is. Here’s where I solicit your help.

But you need something to work with. A short synopsis of the story: Continue reading Help needed

Parables, with rimshots



“The Parable of the Blind Leading the Blind,” by Abel Grimmer (1565-1630)

Joe Carter at First Thoughts links to an intriguing article by James Martin, S. J. in The Wall Street Journal, called “Jesus of Nazareth, Stand-Up Comic?” Before you take offense at the title, take time to read the piece. I think he makes an excellent point.

There are more overt signs of Jesus’s appreciation of a sense of humor.  My favorite is the story of Nathaniel in the Gospel of John.  When he hears that Jesus is from Nazareth he says, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”  It’s a dig at Jesus’s hometown, which was seen as a backwater.  What does Jesus say in response?  You would expect the grumpy Jesus to castigate Nathaniel.  But he does the opposite.  Jesus says, “Here is an Israelite without guile.”  In other words, here’s a guy I can trust!  And Nathaniel joins the apostles.  It’s an indication of Jesus’s appreciation of a sense of humor.

Jesus’ parables, I’ve long believed, are particularly opaque to modern Christians because of our wrong-headed insistence on treating them as solemn guides to exemplary living. My own reading of the gospels (though Heaven knows I’m no scholar, and understand Greek not at all) has convinced me that parables need to be taken one at a time. Some are solemn, like the story of Lazarus and the rich man. But others involve crazy exaggeration (Jesus loved hyperbole, to an extent that would probably get Him in trouble in the modern church), and can best be described as a spiritual kick in the pants.

Martin gives some examples, which I generally agree with. One of my own favorites is the Parable of the Unjust Steward, in which Jesus tells—with apparent approval—the story of a manager who first of all embezzles his employer’s money, and then, before cleaning out his desk, gets a bunch of his boss’s debtors to falsify their loan documents, so that they’ll owe him favors. How many Sunday School teachers have twisted themselves into logical knots trying to get a “Go and do thou likewise” out of that story? The real point is just that crooked sinners are smart enough to “feather their nests” by helping others, purely out of self-interest, and we should be smart enough to do the same with an eye to eternity, especially since we handle wealth that our Master wants us to share.

When I was in a musical group I always meant to write a comic skit re-imagining the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant as a Godfather-style gangster story.

“You wanted to see me, Don Vito?”

“Yeah, Louie. Siddown. You want a cigar? Somethin’ to drink?”

“No, no thank you, Don Vito.”

“Wanna get right to business, huh?”

“If that’s all right, Godfather.”

“Sure, sure. OK, here’s the thing. I been hearin’ some stories. Whispers in my ear, you know? Something about you and Benny the Ninepin. You know about these stories?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What I been hearin’ is that you beat him up, broke his arm with a pool cue. Is this true?”

“He owed me money, Godfather.”

“How much, Louie?”

“A C-note.”

“A C-note.”

“That’s right.”

“One-hundred bucks.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Now Louie, I’m confused. ‘Cause I seem to recall a time when you came up short… what was it? Two million simoleons?”

“Uh, somethin’ like that.”

“An’ all the boys told me I ought to break your neck and bury you out in the flats, so the other collectors would be more careful next time. But you was my cousin’s husband, so I said, ‘Nah, I’ll let it go this time. Put a scare in him and see if he cleans up his act.”

“I’ve always been really grateful, Godfather. You see, that’s why I was tryin’ to collect from Benny, so I could start payin’ you back–”

“A hundred bucks on two million? For that you broke Benny’s arm? Did it occur to you that a guy who’s had two million bucks written off ought to give a break some bum who owes him chickenfeed? What kind of a goombah are you…?”

"The Reversal," by Michael Connelly


I felt what Maggie had tried to describe to me on more than one occasion when we were married. She always called it the burden of proof. Not the legal burden. But the psychic burden of knowing that you stood as representative of all the people. I had always dismissed her explanations as self-serving. The prosecutor was always the overdog. The Man…. I never understood what she was trying to tell me.

Until now.

I still haven’t entirely warmed to Michael Connelly’s “Lincoln Lawyer” character, Mickey Haller, who strikes me as somewhat irresponsible (a useful quality, perhaps, in a criminal defense lawyer).

But The Reversal, “A Lincoln Lawyer” novel, is as much a story of Mickey’s half-brother, police detective Harry Bosch, as it is one of Mickey’s, so I had no problem getting on board. And the story as a whole seemed to me as engaging and sympathetic as Connelly has written in some time.

It begins with Mickey doing something he’s always sworn he’d never do—go to work (on a temporary basis) as a county prosecutor, making and presenting a case against a convicted child murderer. DNA evidence has won the convict a new trial, but the District Attorney’s office still believes they have the right man. The most important element of their case is the eyewitness, the victim’s older sister, who was only a child at the time.

Mickey agrees to do the job—just this once—on the condition that he gets his ex-wife, prosecutor Maggie MacPherson, as his associate. (He wants to improve his relationship with her.) With Harry Bosch as chief investigator, it makes the entire prosecution a family affair.

The narration switches back and forth from Mickey’s point of view (presented in the first person) and Harry’s (in the third person). The alternation makes an interesting counterpoint. Mickey is all about tactics and strategies, intuiting the Defense’s moves on the basis of his own considerable experience on that side of the courtroom. Meanwhile Harry runs down leads and dogs the suspect in his accustomed, obsessive way, his focus always on his duty (or vocation), as an officer of society itself, to see justice done and the evil removed from our midst.

This being fiction, of course, even the best courtroom strategist can’t foresee, or prevent, the big surprise that takes the story’s climax out of the safety of the courtroom and into the perils of a city full of innocent bystanders.

The Reversal is an excellent thriller from a master storyteller. Recommended for adults. Cautions for language and icky stuff.

The Unreliable Narrator

Anne Enright talks about her novel, The Forgotten Waltz, with The Paris Review:

Gina Moynihan is the kind of person who realizes what she’s saying in the saying of it. And I think many of us are similar. Until you start articulating something, you don’t quite know what it is, and you don’t see the mistakes or flaws in your own argument until they’re in the air. She’s in the process of realizing what she’s saying, in the process of realizing what she knows or what she has refused to know—that’s the journey of the novel.

The wonderful thing about this kind of unreliability is that it reflects the unreliability of our own narratives about our own lives. You tell a story about how you ended up at this place, rather childishly thinking that there is no other place that you could have ended up—especially when it comes to love, which has this destined, momentous feel to it. I was balancing that momentous and eternal sense of love with the cause and effect of meeting people and shagging them or not.

St. Crispin's Day

This call to celebrate a literary holiday in St. Crispin’s Day seems jaded, but maybe I am ignorant of King Henry V true character and the context of his war with France. I like this holiday idea though. Today, friends, is St. Crispin’s day. From Shakespeare’s Henry V:

“He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,


Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,


And rouse him at the name of Crispian.


He that shall live this day, and see old age,


Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,


And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’


Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.


And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”

Guy Patrick Cunningham writes, “In Henry V, Shakespeare offers us an opportunity to see the horror that results from pursuing winning only for its own sake. This is why St. Crispin’s Day ought to belong to Shakespeare’s play, and not the historical Henry’s battle. Because by reading, rereading, or simply thinking about the play, we are reminded that there is often a difference between the achievements that usually get remembered and the achievements that actually make people’s lives better.”

Here’s a summary of the Battle of Agincourt, which Henry won on October 25, 1415.

For your Spectation

My latest article for The American Spectator can be found here. It’s about the old Robin Hood television series we Baby Boomers enjoyed in the 1950s.

I note that Michelle Malkin wrote about Robin Hood today too.

Great minds, and all that.

DVD review: "Buck"

Full disclosure: This should probably be called a Netflix review rather than a DVD review, but I can’t link to Netflix on Amazon.

Full disclosure number two: I’m not a horseman. I’ve ridden some, and generally managed not to fall off, and my brothers and I had a pony when we were kids. But I know I’m a tenderfoot. I qualify in no way to evaluate the horse training methods discussed in this excellent documentary.

It sure makes a good story, though.

Buck Brannaman, the subject of Buck, is one of the most famous proponents of what might be called the “new school” of horse training, an approach that concentrates on understanding the horse’s fears, calming those fears, earning the animal’s trust, and then becoming its thoughtful master. Buck seems to be able to take all but the most damaged animals, and fairly quickly to gentle them and get them doing what he wants them to do.

He was one of the inspirations for the book The Horse Whisperer, and served as technical consultant and stand-in for Robert Redford’s movie adaptation. Nowadays he travels the country nine months out of the year, conducting four day seminars on horse training.

The most remarkable and moving aspect of this film is its treatment of the abuse Buck and his brother suffered at the hands of their father, after their mother’s death. Fortunately they were removed from his care and placed in a loving foster family where they gradually learned to trust grownups again. Buck explicitly links this experience to his approach to horse training, feeling that he understands the horses’ fears (they’re essentially afraid that we’re predators trying to eat them) on a profound level.

With all I’ve heard of “Horse Whisperers,” I was half prepared for a lot of new-agey, PETA-style sentimentality and romanticism in the the film’s treatment of horses. I’m happy to report that there’s none of that here. Buck still considers himself a cowboy, and an important part of his technique is getting the horse (and its owner) to understand who’s supposed to be the boss. A dangerous horse must be put down, for the sake of humans.

This is a fine, moving documentary. I recommend it. I think there’s a little rough language, but I don’t have a strong recollection of it.

In Response to Having His Book Pulled from a Library

Author Charles Bukowski wrote this letter in response to a reporter asking for him to comment on the removal of one of his books from a Netherlands Public Library. He makes a good point.
“The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth,” he says. “Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them.”
Thanks for this link to Frank Wilson, who observes the letter “pretty much says it all. But it won’t stop the censors of all stripes.”

Burn: Never Extinguish

This is a commercial posing as a short film on creative desire. I suppose the bottom line for a commercial is the sale of drinks, specially the energy drink, Burn. But this bit of video is calling us to create out of our own image and don’t let hardship, like a tornado, get in the way.

Perhaps the video I embedded here last night changed (because I think I double-checked its availability). Here’s another link to the video.

Link sausage, Oct. 21, 2011

Tonight, as we approach the weekend, a couple links. Both will lead you to delicious compendiums of obscure information, with which you may amaze your friends and win bar bets (not that any of our readers ever go to bars).

First, from Listverse: Twenty Great Archaic Words. Words that we’ve somehow allowed to slip out of common use. Yet a few of them seem (to me) to be very useful. My favorite:

17. Apricity – The feeling of the warmth of the sun in winter. This word sparked this list when I used it in conversation and no one knew what it was. Nothing particularly funny, just a great word and a great sensation.

One of my favorite sensations, and a word I need to work into conversation from now on. I suspect I’ll get the chance before many months have passed.

(Caution: The last archaic word is one you might want to shield small children from.)

Also, from The Scotsman, Vikings and Scotland: Ten Lesser-Known Facts:

Clan names are a visible relic; MacIvors were originally the sons of Ivar, MacSween, the sons of Swein, Macaulay, the sons of Olaf, MacAskill, the sons of Asgeir and so on.

I didn’t know about those names. I did know about MacLeod, the sons of Ljot (some people say Ljot means “Light,” and others say it means “Ugly.” I’m not qualified to judge, but I’d bet on “Light.” Just a hunch.

Have a great weekend.