“The left flattens people, reduces people to financial interests. Dave’s an artist. He knew people are deeper than that.”
Andrew Ferguson has a powerful article on the political conversion of the strong playwright David Mamet. Of note is the fact that one of the books that blew his mind was Chamber’s Witness
Mamet is stirring the pot on Broadway and in Hollywood with a new book of essays, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture. I’ll bet it’s worthy reading.
World reports on heresy preacher and Family Radio lead Harold Camping, who rejects clear biblical teaching in favor of obscure bible-based speculation. I hope those who are disappointed by having to wake up on May 22 will turn to the Word of God and a gospel-centered church instead of this cult leader.
But let’s talk about the end of the age for a minute. If the Lord told your church community that he would take you out of the world and destroy everything on two specific dates (say within a few years), what would your reasonable response be? Would it not be to love others as you love yourself and to love our Lord with all of your heart, mind, and soul? Seriously, how would a defined date for the end of the age change your lifestyle? If you would make dramatic changes, then what’s stopping you from doing it today, perhaps that old lie that you have several years left to get it right before you die?
Established, well-loved authors get a little more latitude in their product than unknowns. Though I don’t mean to imply that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy Dick Francis’s Banker, I won’t pretend that it’s a taut, edge-of-your-seat thriller. It’s pretty languid, stretching the action over a period of three years. We don’t even know for sure any crime has been committed until about half-way through, and nobody gets killed till after that. The only suspense comes near the very end.
But the signature Dick Francis pleasures are all here in abundance—a stalwart, sympathetic hero, a love story that doesn’t try to hog the spotlight, and an interesting look into a world few of us know. That horse racing is involved goes without question, but the education here is in the world of merchant banking—how loans are made (or refused), what makes for success in a chancey field, how banker princes live.
Our hero is Tim Ekaterin, who at the beginning is an underling in an English bank that bears his family name (though that refers to a different branch of the family than his own). But when his immediate superior is taken ill he’s instructed to take over the man’s loan decisions. This opportunity moves him up a level in status, and he gets an invitation to attend the Derby at Ascot, where he and the rest of the party see a brilliant horse called Sandcastle come in the winner. Later, when a request comes in from a stud farmer for a loan to buy Sandcastle, it seems an excellent investment.
But, as we learn (after a year or so), someone wants to sabotage the horse. And they will not stop at murder to accomplish it.
Aside from the pleasures of reading a satisfying story from a master storyteller, Banker had other rewards for me. I enjoyed seeing the world of business, specifically the world of banking, portrayed positively, with the bankers presented as decent people who root for their creditors’ success.
“I can’t promise because it isn’t my final say-so, but if the bank gets all its money in the end, it’ll most likely be flexible about when.”
“Good of you,” Oliver said, hiding emotion behind his clipped martial manner.
“Frankly,” I said, “you’re more use to us salvaged than bust.”
He smiled wryly. “A banker to the last drop of blood.”
It was also pleasing to read, in a fairly recent book, of a hero who refuses to commit adultery when he knows he could, and could get away with it. The celebration of sexual virtue is a rare quality in literature nowadays.
Not Francis’ best, Banker is flawed but well worth the read. Recommended for teens and up.
My review of Hal Colebatch’s Time Machine Troopers is up at The American Spectator Online. I’m rather proud of my title.
It’s true enough that John Sandford’s Prey series of mystery/thrillers is getting a little long in the tooth. Anyone who compares the early books with the later ones (like Storm Prey) will immediately notice that the hero, Minnesota state policeman Lucas Davenport, is now a very different man from the younger millionaire-cop who was so good at hunting down psycho killers because he was a borderline psycho himself. Today Lucas is a happy husband and father, generally purged of his personal devils.
But author John Sandford (actually John Camp) knows there are more ways to engage the reader than train-wreck psychological voyeurism. In Storm Prey, Lucas’ wife, surgeon Weather Karkinnen, is involved in the high-risk separation of a pair of Siamese twins when she happens to see a particular Emergency Room doctor in a part of the hospital where he doesn’t properly belong. She thinks nothing of it at the time, but when the drug theft that doctor has plotted goes sour and a hospital worker is murdered, the doctor and his accomplices hire a sociopathic skinhead called Cappy to murder her. Fortunately he fails in the first attempt. But Weather refuses to go into protective custody until the surgery (delayed due to heart problems in one of the twins) is completed. So Davenport and his team set up around the clock protection for her while trying to identify and locate the criminals. By engaging our sympathy for the twins and their family along with our concern for Weather’s safety, Sandford expertly keeps the dramatic tension at a high level. A typically nasty stretch of Minnesota winter weather doesn’t make things any easier either. Continue reading Storm Prey, by John Sandford
What do you do when you’re recovering at home from a medical test, still under the influence of a mild sedative, and have stupidly left your Kindle at the office?
If you’re me (which is admittedly doubtful) you go to Netflix and stream a Norwegian movie you’ve heard interesting things about. That movie was A Somewhat Gentle Man, directed by Hans Petter Moland and starring Swedish actor Stellan Starsgård (in a marvelously underacted performance).
Titled En Ganske Snill Mann in Norwegian (I’d have translated it A Rather Nice Man myself, but this translation is good), A Somewhat Gentle Man was marketed as a “hilarious” comedy according to the DVD box. I think it’s more of a quirky, updated Noir, including large doses of black humor. Instead of the angular shadows of classic Noir, this is a Film Gris. The whole world of Ulrik, the film’s antihero, is gray, from the gray Norwegian winter sky, to the gray concrete buildings of Oslo’s seedier side, to the gray basement room he rents (almost indistinguishable from the prison cell from which he’s just been released) to his gray clothing and gray hair. Occasional flashes of color, especially red, compel the eye and signal moments of hope in his life.
Freshly released after 12 years’ incarceration for murder, Ulrik quickly reunites with his old underworld buddies. But he’s not eager to go along with their plan for him, which primarily involves his killing the man whose testimony got him convicted. Basically he wants a quiet life, to work as a mechanic and avoid confrontations (he’s almost quintessentially Norwegian in this). Most of all he wants to reconnect with his son, who is now living with a pregnant girlfriend who has no wish to have a felon grandfather involved in her coming child’s life.
As is expected in such stories, sex is a complicating issue. Ulrik’s sexual encounters are relatively explicit, and possibly the least titillating you’ll ever see on film. The whole movie has a gritty, realistic look. The women generally aren’t very beautiful, and Ulrik’s participation is as often as not merely dutiful, to avoid giving offense. His old and ugly landlady acts as if she’s doing him a favor. He’s more enthusiastic about coupling with the secretary at the garage, from whom he’s been warned off by the owner (who speaks only in paragraphs, and very fast).
In all these relations Ulrik takes a passive role, until his refusal to murder the “snitch” for his gangster buddies forces him to take personal initiative, which—not surprising in a modern film—brings about what we’re meant to regard as a happy resolution. I share James Bowman of The American Spectator‘s skepticism about the moral congruity of the ending.
Do I recommend the movie? Not generally. Certainly not to younger viewers, or to anyone offended by foul language, nudity and sex scenes (especially unappealing nudity and sex), or violence. Still, if you care for this sort of thing, and are interesting in seeing a quirky take on classic themes, A Somewhat Gentle Man contains much of interest.
A few years ago, the purveyors of crime, the crimemongers of the world, came face to face with Vancouver’s self-absorbed detective, Joe LaFlam, in the book, Bye Bye Bertie
There are many things going for this story, but there are several things going against it too. It’s funny, and many plot points are well written. The conclusion is perfect, but getting there is a bit of a long. If Joe’s mental ramblings get old too soon, the story will drag. The story pokes fun at many pop Christian ideas as well, so you may have a sacred cow BBQ somewhere here. Overall, I thought the story could use more complication and more straight-forward humor. I appreciate Rick sending me this book, and I wish him the very best.
It is over 80 degrees outside. 80 degrees. I ought to have the air conditioning on, but blast it, you’re supposed to go through a stage where you can have the windows open a while before full-on summer comes. So I’m holding out.
The “procedure” went fine today. Unfortunately we didn’t learn anything new. So I expect there will be further tests, and eventually I’ll have to see Doctor House, who will torture me and insult my faith until I get better.
For now I’m pleasantly buzzed, and I can eat again. Could be worse.
This is worth passing on. Whitestone Motion Pictures presents Blood On My Name, a short film musical narrative in the style of Americana folklore. This is a good short story. These are also the people who created the short film, The Candy Shop, which focuses on child exploitation. Though Blood On My Name is described as a bit of a horror story (it’s barely that), The Candy Shop portrays pure evil.
The Festival of Nations was mostly four days of sitting around for me, tooling leather bookmarks and wrist bands and occasionally selling someone a book. Nevertheless, I came out of it exhausted. The reasons, I think, are two.
One, it was an overdose of humanity for an introvert. Attendance was smaller this year than last (a mixture of the bad economy and the first nice weather in weeks, we think), but even so there were times when the crowds were insane, the babble overwhelming. Especially when kids were blowing those little ceramic bird whistles they sell, which emit a piercing warble.
I know multicultural festivals are supposed to bring us together and remind us how much we all have in common, but I’m not convinced the final result isn’t to remind us how different we all are, and to make us wonder how we’re ever going to get along with people who dress like that. (But that might just have been my mood.)
A young boy in our group reported speaking to one of the vendors, who was selling a marionette he designed himself. When told people were complaining that his puppet fell apart after two days, he replied that that was indeed a product failure. “It’s supposed to fall apart in one day.”
I hope, for all our sakes, that the bird whistles also fall apart after a day. Otherwise I suspect there will be an uptick in child abuse by parents all around the metropolitan area.
The other reason I was exhausted, it turns out, was that I’m anemic again. I had some tests done, and found out today (to my great relief) that I don’t have celiac disease, and so will not have to give up all breads and grain products. But I’m now scheduled to go in tomorrow for the Test That Dare Not Speak Its Name. Which means I’ll be doing things tonight no guy as tired as I am should have to do. Tomorrow I’ll be flying on Valium (which I like to think of as my reward for getting through tonight), but I’ll post something—possibly something coherent—if I can.