Writing

Words: playing with magic

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Roy Jacobsen, over at Writing, Clear and Simple, posts an interesting short video on “The Power Of Words.” (Click on the link to see it; I’ll throw him the traffic rather than embed it here.)

“The power of words” is a subject that intrigues me; I don’t have a fully developed philosophy of it. As a writer I know from experience that finding the right words makes a huge difference. I feel (though I wouldn’t be dogmatic on it) that there’s a mystical power in some words. As I understand it, in Old Testament Hebrew there’s no essential difference between a thing and its name. To name a thing gave you a certain power over it (thus Adam’s naming of the beasts made him lord over them all). God’s essential name, Y*H*W*H, is never to be spoken, in part because He cannot be mastered.

This sounds terribly primitive and superstitious to the modern mind, but is there not some echo of it in the Social Busybodies’ incessant campaign to change the names of things? We just get used to one “appropriate” word for people of African descent, or indigenous American tribes, or people with mental or physical problems, and the busybodies suddenly announce a name change. I assume they do this because the magic they hoped to conjure up through their magic words has failed to materialize. So they need to try a new incantation.

Blogging note: I’ll be out of town again tomorrow (personal, not Viking-related), so no post from me.

Fiction, Reviews

Mr Standfast, by John Buchan

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Due to a combination of tight finances and the possession of a Kindle, I’ve been reading a lot of old books lately, of the kind you can get cheap or free in electronic versions. So I came to read, at last, Mr Standfast, John Buchan’s second sequel to The 39 Steps.

Richard Hannay, hero of the series, is now a brigadier general in the British Army, fighting in France in World War I. As Mr Standfast begins, he has been summoned to the War Office for a special assignment. He is ordered to take on the character of a South African political radical, go to a village called Isham, and insinuate himself into a group of radicals he will find there. Further orders will follow.

The story that follows is rather discursive, ranging as far as Scotland and the battlefields of France. Hannay is reunited with several old friends and one very dangerous old enemy.

A point of interest here is that the author finally adds to the narrative the major element all film versions of The 39 Steps that I know of add at that earlier point in the saga—a love interest. Hannay meets, and falls in love with, a charming young woman who is also a spy. It’s amusing to the modern reader to see the delicacy with which her part (a rather scandalous one at the time) is portrayed.

Buchan’s portrayal of radicals and pacifists is remarkably evenhanded, in my opinion. There are German agents among them, but he makes it clear (perhaps even giving them more credit than they were really due) that most of them are patriotic in their own way—one of them even heroic.

James Bond can be reasonably called Richard Hannay’s literary son, but the differences between the generations are telling. We read modern spy stories partly to be shocked, to see what technical wizardry or ruthless killing technique the agent will use to save his life this time. The Hannay books are written with moral purpose, and seem boy-scoutish to us. The title of the book comes from a character in The Pilgrim’s Progress, and the whole story is, in a way, a commentary on that Christian classic, except that the subject is courage rather than faith. I enjoyed it.

Cautions for occasional racial and cultural comments which were acceptable then, but are so no more.

Authors

Klavan on Steyn

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I got through my first day at work with a cast (I guess it’s technically a splint) all right. The big nuisance is shifting my car.
Andrew Klavan (you probably weren’t aware, but I’m a fan of his) writes a tribute to Mark Steyn today at Pajamas Media:

But perhaps I wasn’t made to be a doomsayer. The dying of things—of art forms and civilizations as well as people—seems to me the inevitable and steady state of the world: a point of view that leaves me prone more to melancholy than to panic. What I really care about now is the immortal parts of mortal enterprise. I want to get at the spirit of human business: the wisdom and vitality of a culture’s Great Moment preserved in the artifacts it leaves behind. The irrelevant—the stuff that doesn’t matter but is simply beautiful—the music, the poetry, the pictures and storytelling—the arts—that’s where all the joy is, and it’s the joy that seems more urgent to me as the years pass.

Authors, Writing

A Whole Bunch of Writing Tips

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Steve Silberman is writing a book on “autism, the variety of human cognitive styles, and the rise of the neurodiversity movement.” He’s written articles in the past, but with the opportunity to put together 100k on a subject he is passionate about, he began to get nervous. He writes:

I’ve chosen to deal with my anxiety by tapping into the wisdom of the hive mind. I recently sent email to the authors in my social network and asked them, “What do you wish you’d known about the process of writing a book that you didn’t know before you did it?”

Several authors replied. Here’s one from Cory Doctorow that I wrestle with: “Write even when the world is chaotic. You don’t need a cigarette, silence, music, a comfortable chair, or inner peace to write. You just need ten minutes and a writing implement.” (via Books, Inq.)

Fiction

X-Men: What's the Cost of Built-in Inequality?

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“What will become of treasured notions about equality if we get to the point where genuine differences can be imprinted, demonstrated, even bar-coded? Will equality survive in a brave new world of built-in inequality?” asked James Pinkerton, writing about the new X-Men movie.

The intended message is harmony amidst difference, but the storyline is always discord, even violence, among visibly different factions. What does that tell us about the future of a speciated humanity?

Beyond the special effects, maybe “X-Men” is a already a hit (number 1 box office movie this past weekend) because it probes our deepest Darwinian feelings–and fears. If science succeeds in updating the definition of “fittest,” the survival of our particular species, in its current form, could be at risk. That’s great for future mutants, but not so great for the rest of us, and our current civilization.

Isn’t this the sticking point of many sci-fi stories and shows one weakness of the naturalistic worldview the stories come from? We’re all equal, humans and nonhumans. Even those bugs over there. Isn’t that right, Chewy? Rwaaraaa!

Uncategorized

Believe it or not, I was sober

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My posts for the next few weeks are likely to be shorter than usual, as I’m handicapped by a hand cast.

And that’s just one of my injuries.

It was a memorable weekend.

First there was Story City, IA, and its annual Scandinavian celebration. I didn’t take any pictures down there, because they would have been pretty much the same as the previous years’. Good food, nice people, gracious hosts. Sam was there with his Viking boat. Consistency is nice.

It was windy though. As Denny and I were setting up our Viking tent (a rather old one belonging to the club), a gust caught it, and we lost our grip. It fell and sort of exploded. The ridge pole broke, the frames split, and part of it fell on my head. The result was a trip to the local clinic, and three stitches.

(By the way, my brother once found a record that our grandmother, who was born in Story City, had her appendix removed in the hospital there, about a century ago. I’m confident it was a different building, but I felt a bond.)

I left a couple hours early on Saturday, to participate in a distant relative’s 100th birthday party, about 20 miles away. I walked in on them in full Viking garb, and managed to get away unscathed.

Sunday was Danish Day in Minneapolis, pictured above. Good weather, good crowd. At the very beginning of my very first fight, I got clouted on the right hand, breaking my index finger. The pain hasn’t been too bad, but this one-handed keyboarding is a nuisance.

Authors, Bookselling, Publishing

Interview with a Superagent

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The man behind the Wylie Agency speaks to the Wall Street Journal Magazine about his aggressive deals and some of the needs in the publishing industry. “I think most of the best-sellers list is the literary equivalent of daytime television. This is a world in which Danielle Steel is mysteriously more valuable than Shakespeare,” Wylie states.

Reading

Reading As Often As Possible

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“I cannot remember a time when I did not want to read as much as possible. Since my family did not have many books, my main sources were school books, gifts from relatives, and books borrowed from neighbors until I was old enough to check them out of the Butte Public Library, which I did as often and as many as possible.”

Patrick Kurp talks about the love for words, saying we have a master poet walking among us today in Helen Pinkerton. He brings her up in reference to an email he got from D.G. Myers, asking whether he thought printed books were positively, absolutely, undeniably, and reliably dead.