Authors

"Stieg Larsson set out to defy the conventions of the crime novel"

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The Wall Street Journal has some emails from Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and following popular crime novels. The author writes of his intention to work around the usual formalities of crime novels. Main characters are not from typical crime novel stock, and he didn’t want his serial killer offing anonymous people, so he spend time introducing minor characters. In real life, no one is completely anonymous. He also states:

A rule of thumb has been never to romanticize crime and criminals, nor to stereotype victims of crime. I base my serial murderer in book I on a composite of three authentic cases. Everything described in the book can be found in actual police investigations.
The description of the rape of Lisbeth Salander is based on an incident that actually took place in the Östermalm district of Stockholm three years ago. And so on.

Lars reviewed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo here, and the following book, The Girl Who Played With Fire in this post.

Religion

An alloyed golden rule

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For most of my life, I’ve been aware of a particular conflict (there are many, of course) between liberal and conservative Christians. I’m going to try to shed some light on this particular difference of opinion.

Which means, of course, that I’ll just make people mad. But I persist.

The disagreement, I think, springs from a misunderstanding of the Golden Rule.

Liberal Christians (I believe) tend to think the Golden Rule says something it doesn’t actually say. They think it says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—and they will treat you the same way.”

But the text doesn’t actually say that. What it says (I’m quoting the NIV here, despite my recent criticism of that translation, because we’re kind of chained to it on this site, through our associated Bible Search app) is, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12) Continue reading An alloyed golden rule →

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Friday Fight: The Axeman Cometh

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The swordsman here doesn’t appear to be eager enough to fight. He’s playing half-hearted defense. I wonder if he had charged the axeman early, would the whole fight be changed by that burst of passion?

Non-fiction, Reviews

Evening In the Palace of Reason, by James R. Gaines

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Evening In the Palace of Reason is a smart, engaging, well-written historical study that ought to be a lot better known than it is.

It centers on a fleeting moment, just a footnote to history. But what happened, and the story that leads up to it, illuminate three epochs of European history, and have relevance in our 21st Century as well.

The facts are easily summarized. On the evening of May 7, 1747, Johan Sebastian Bach and his son Carl presented themselves, by royal command, at the palace of King Frederick the Great of Prussia in Potsdam. Frederick, with his customary lack of courtesy, had required their immediate attendance following the old composer’s arrival by coach, after a three-day journey. He wasn’t given time to wash or change his clothes. Continue reading Evening In the Palace of Reason, by James R. Gaines →

Non-fiction

Approaching Stranger than Fiction

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Cowboy on ridge aiming rifle

WASHINGTON TIMES–‘Toughest sheriff’ recruits big names for border ‘posse’

“America’s toughest sheriff,” Phoenix’s Joe Arpaio, is creating an armed “Immigration Posse” to combat illegal immigration, and Hollywood actors Steven Seagal and Lou Ferrigno, along with Dick Tracy and Wyatt Earp, have signed up.

This is real, even those last two names, who are a Chicago cop and the nephew of the real Wyatt Earp. The sheriff says he and his state are the new whipping boys of Washington bureaucrats.

I like this idea. It’s a little scary, but I don’t know how it else the problem can be contained. I want immigrants, whom I assume have the best intentions, to be treated with mercy, but I think the traffickers should be shot. They are no better than the slave traders who dehumanized and profited from unwilling immigrants to the American colonies and the southern states.

Authors

Turn Back! Dreadful Tales of Agony and Despair

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Michael Drout has written the foreword to new anthology called, The Last Man Anthology: Tales of Catastrophe, Disaster and Woe. The name is drawn from Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, assembling stories with the goal to bring “catastrophic literature into the twenty-first century while staying true to Shelley’s timeless themes of chaos and isolation.”

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Multiple hooplas, plus a likely historical exaggeration

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I didn’t sleep well last night (not unusual), and I expected today to be kind of lousy, as they so often are, for some inexplicable reason, when I’m half asleep all the time.

But it was a good day.

First, deep background. I spent most of last Saturday tinkering with my snowblower, because we’d gotten about 10 inches of dense, heavy snow overnight. I’d planned to do housecleaning that day, to prepare for the upcoming holidays, but clearing the driveway took priority.

I never did get the driveway cleared (fortunately mild weather since then has melted most of it off now). I’m new to snowblowing, and wasn’t aware of the arcane things you have to do to get one of those suckers running again after its summer vacation.

I finally gave up, and decided I’d take it back to Sears for service one night this week. But this was the first night I’d had clear to do that. Continue reading Multiple hooplas, plus a likely historical exaggeration →

Book Reviews, Creative Culture