Reading, Religion, Writing

The weight of heroism

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Wild Bill Hickok

I’m reading a novel right now, by a very good author, which is taking me forever to get through. (I won’t say what novel—maybe I’ll review it at the end of the line.) It’s a pleasant story with an interesting narrator. But it’s so… languid. It starts with a murder, but then the plot takes the hero (and the villain) to an entirely different location, and the villain proceeds to do nothing very sinister for a considerable time. The hero is wearing himself out trying to catch the villain at something, but there seems to be nothing to catch. Thus the book lacks that sense of urgency that drives the reader to keep turning pages, and pick the book up anxiously whenever there’s a free moment.

It’s slow.

My analysis of the problem is this—the author has failed, thus far, to raise the stakes. In order to keep your audience’s attention, you need to keep the villain busy doing bad stuff. And that stuff must be devastating and costly. People who matter to the reader, and to the hero, need to be placed in imminent, horrifying danger (unless it’s the hero himself who’s in peril). The good characters’ awful pain and fear are the very elements that transfix the reader.

I think there are very few authors who don’t have a problem raising the stakes like this (I know I do). Most of us are nice people. We don’t enjoy inflicting pain. Raising the stakes is emotionally hard.

This relates to life too. I’ve written more than I have a moral right to about heroism. I believe in the necessity of heroism. I believe that faith and heroism are closely related (all heroism isn’t faith, but all true faith is heroism).

It’s easy to forget that heroism has a high cost. Continue reading The weight of heroism →

Uncategorized

Who killed Tycho?

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By way of Instapundit, I found this interesting article from the New York Times by John Tierney, about a mystery concerning the death in 1601 of the astronomer Tycho Brahe. Analysis of Tycho’s hair after his grave was opened indicates mercury poisoning as the possible cause of death.

“Who’s Tycho Brahe?” you ask. What do they teach them in these schools?

Most people’s choice for an astronomer with a dramatic life would be Galileo, because of all his disputes with the Church. But in terms of sheer drama and bombast, the life of Tycho Brahe of Denmark has Galileo’s beat by light years. He fought duels! He had a fake nose! He kept a pet dwarf and a moose! Continue reading Who killed Tycho? →

Authors, The Press

Slate's HACK/30

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Slate’s War Room has a list of thirty opinion makers and commentators they’re calling their Hack 30. “We’re listing the worst columnists and cable news commentators America has to offer. Think of this as our all-star team — of the most predictable, dishonest and just plain stupid pundits in the media.” I plan to read through it, unsure how irritated I’ll feel by the end, not that I want to carry the water for anyone, but a list like this could easily be the work of one cynical curmudgeon against many.
Related to this, Patrol Magazine has a list of “Ten Worst Christian Media Hacks,” which appears to have angered the Internet gods because their site has been down ever since they put the second part of the article on it. (links defunct)

Authors, Religion

Super apologist, supertaster

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Today is C. S. Lewis’ birthday (1898-1963). In honor of the occasion some of us have been posting quotations from his writings on Facebook. I’ll post this one here:

“The minimal religion in fact cannot, while it remains minimal, be acted on. As soon as you do anything you have assumed one of the dogmas.” (From “Religion Without Dogma” in God In the Dock)

I should have posted this yesterday so you’d have all day to celebrate, but do I have to do everything around here?

I made my special pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, besides the turkey, and while enjoying the leftovers I’ve been taking particular pleasure in breaking the edge crust off and throwing it away. I used to get in trouble for doing that when I was a kid. But what do you know? Now doctors say it’s a good idea, because it reduces fat. I was right all along. My parents could have avoided so much unpleasantness if they’d just realized earlier that Lars Is Always Right.

I’ve told you before that I’m a picky eater. So I’m delighted to discover that this may be a sign that I belong to a special, elite subspecies of humanity, the Supertaster. We Supertasters have more taste buds than you ordinary folks, and our extreme finickiness about things we won’t eat is actually due to the fact that we are tasting stuff you can’t detect.

Unfortunately, this article (tip: Joe Carter at First Thoughts) says that Supertasters tend to be skinny people.

From this I can only conclude that I belong to an even more select group—Fat Supertasters.

Blogs, Socials

Scary Ghost Stories and Tales of the Glories of Christmases Long Time Ago

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Loren has announced his 2010 Advent Ghost Story Flash Fiction Rally. I’m already polishing something, and I think I’d like to work on another one.

Religion

Thanksgiving Links

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Jared has seven great ways to crush the Thanksgiving spirit, such as freaking out over everything, like a late family guest, and practicing practical atheism.

Bill talks about communal living and productivity.

One of my earliest professional experiences involved leaving a job at a government-run municipal utility to take a job at a private-sector energy company. At the utility, it didn’t much matter what you did, you were going to get paid and keep your job. There was a lot of waste, shoddy work, and sloth at that company. Don’t get me wrong, I worked with good people. But the very structure of the place was set against big productivity gains, risks, improvements or innovation.

Loosely related to these is this post from Tullian Tchividjian on counterfeit gospels: “ways we try and ‘justify’ or ‘save’ ourselves apart from the gospel of grace. I found these unbelievably helpful.”

Authors

Free e-Book from Anthony Powell

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Patrick Kurp can’t get enough of a highly praised British novelist Anthony Powell, to which he testifies before the congregation here. What’s more Kingsley Amis says Powell is “the most brilliant and penetrating novelist we have.” That’s got to count for something.

The University of Chicago Press will be offering the first novel of Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time for free during December, so next Wednesday, if you’d like to dip your feet into an important British novelist’s epic work, download your copy here. (I neglected to say earlier that I got this link from the great Dave Lull.)

Religion

Rise up and walk. And say thank you.

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Thanksgiving tomorrow. I doubt I’ll post anything that day, as I’ll have family prowling the place like roaring lions, seeking what they may devour. Tomorrow morning comes my annual D-Day, when I face the challenge of roasting a turkey. I’ve done this four straight years now with unbroken success, but I still feel incompetent.

What am I thankful for? There’s a question to make me guilty. “A pack o’ blessings lie on my head,” to paraphrase Romeo and Juliet, and yet I spend most of my life (as you may have noticed) bemoaning the things (some of them quite important, you have to admit) that I’ve missed out on.

But I’ll tell you one thing I’m thankful for. It’s this.

Tip: Conservative Grapevine.

I love this stuff. A walking wheelchair—a way for paraplegics to enjoy a more normal life. A way to regenerate damaged spinal tissue would be better, of course, but I think we’ll have that too, before long. (And I’d bet you money it will be through a method that doesn’t involve embryonic stem cells.)

I think things like this are part of (note I said, “part of”) the answer to the question of theodicy—“If God is good, why is there so much suffering in the world?” If you’re wondering why God isn’t doing anything about suffering, I say He’s doing this. He’s working through people to overcome suffering and evil, which is a more glorious thing than starting out with perfection.

That leaves lots of questions, of course. Plenty of undeserved suffering goes unrelieved in this world. I don’t have the answer to the whole question. I’m just saying this seems to me a hint, a relevant fact.

And I would note (because I can’t help myself) that this happened in Israel, a country within the western tradition. Obfuscate all you like, but the great non-western civilizations never came up with the kind of science that does this sort of thing. The machines may be manufactured in Japan or China, but left to nothing but Shintoism or Taoism, those cultures would have gone on until the heat death of the universe without developing the scientific method and modern medicine. Because they don’t believe in a God who made a real world out of nothing, as Christians and Jews do. That doctrine made the examination of nature a praiseworthy thing, rather than blasphemy. It was Christians, who believe that physical matter was made noble in the Incarnation, who figured out thoracic surgery and penicillin.

And for that I’m thankful.

Bookselling, Non-fiction, Publishing

John Thompson of Merchants of Culture

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Cambridge University professor John Thompson talks about the problems with the publishing industry in this interview with The Brooklyn Rail. He is the author of the book

“The real trouble for the publishing industry, in my view,” Thompson says, “has more to do with the gradual unfolding of this economic transformation that led to this structure of publishing, where we now have five large corporate groups and a small number of retail chains dominating the industry.” He says the large corporations must maintain profitability, and 95% of their revenue is still from printed book sales. When profit margins stretch thin, they must eliminate people or other overhead costs to keep the large companies in the black. Everyone in the process must demonstrate growth for the corporation or risk being let go, and if they understand that to mean selling more books, despite the thousands they currently sell, then they try to crank out more books. Naturally, an environment like this produced the desire for the bestseller, those few great selling books which bring in the dough and relieve the pressure to sell other books, making one’s sales load more manageable.

Other factors putting publishing in its current bind include the rise of agents and the changes in book retailing. Will the whole thing collapse soon? Thompson doesn’t think so. Despite all of the industry changes likely to come, he states, “books are a deeply embedded part of Western culture, indeed of other cultures, too, and I don’t think that is likely to change quickly.”