I should have known better than to declare spring yesterday. Today it only got up to around fifty, and there’s even a little snow predicted over the weekend.
I have the superpower of always being wrong. I must learn to use this power for good.
Sloth, by Mark Goldblatt
One of the most interesting tricks of the mystery writer is “the unreliable narrator.” When you aren’t sure if you can believe what the storyteller tells you, it adds a whole level to the puzzle.
Author Mark Goldblatt has added a further level of complexity. Not only does the narrator of Sloth
You see the kind of book we’re dealing with here?
Mark Goldblatt (the real one, I mean. S. T. Karnick assures me he actually exists, and that’s good enough for me) has written a parody of postmodern novels in which he out-deconstructs the deconstructors. Layers of meaning and misdirection are everywhere (as well as a lot of word play and fairly low humor).
The unnamed hero’s initial challenge is to convince a girl he’s never met—a girl he knows only through the television screen—that he’s not insane. A resident of a Manhattan apartment, he’s fallen in love with Holly Servant, a model/exercise instructor on a cable TV show out of California. He writes her erudite, impassioned love letters, not really expecting a response, but desperately hoping she’ll at least read them and bestow on his passion the dignity of her recognition.
When she eventually does reply, he attempts to impress her by assuming the Mark Goldblatt (fictional in two senses) identity.
“But since you’ve inquired, I will confess that I am in fact a journalist. It’s a point of considerable humiliation for me. For what is a journalist except a liar in denial? Truth is the single greatest threat to my livelihood, the sword poised eternally overhead, for if ever the reader asks himself, Should I trust the words? then I am lost.”
Meanwhile, the narrator comes under suspicion in the murder of a male prostitute in his neighborhood, and is questioned by a detective named Lacuna (I kid you not).
And his friend Zezel (their relationship just skirts the edges of homoeroticism, but this may be because the narrator actually is Zezel. Or perhaps he does exist, and the narrator doesn’t. Zezel sometimes sneaks into the narrator’s apartment, turns on his computer, and enters falsehoods [or are they?] into the manuscript, another layer of uncertainty in the narrative) is having an affair, and his spurned wife throws herself at the narrator.
Sloth is a wickedly funny, challenging and brilliantly written novel by an author of rare wit and creativity. Great fun for sophisticated readers (hey, I enjoyed it, so you don’t have to be all that sophisticated). Cautions for language and sexual situations.
Recommendations for the Grammar Lover
We want to write well, even if no one can define well for enough English speakers for very long. For this year, however, there are a few grammar book recommendations from Robert Lane Greene. He notes, “There’s nothing wrong with holding grammar in high regard, but much of the high dudgeon around it is more than a little bit of bunk. These books help you approach writing and speaking not with anxiety or frustration, but humility and wonder.”
The fellowship and the spring
I have just joined The Fellowship of the Viking Dragon. This is not a heathen religious group, but a group of supporters of an ongoing project to build the largest replica Viking ship ever constructed. I’ve offered them my services as a writer and translator. If you want to keep up to date on the project, or help in some way, information is here. Look around. There’s a lot of interesting photos of the process.
The ship’s being constructed in Haugesund, which is essentially the ancestral home town of the Walkers, who came from Karmøy just across the sound. So I’m very keen on this project, aside from its essential coolosity.
Somebody needs to do a good, epic Viking movie one of these days, featuring a big sea battle. There’s a growing fleet of very fine replica Viking ships in the world, just aching for a shot at stardom.
I’ve been doing a lot of Norwegian blogging lately, haven’t I?
For a change of pace, I’ll add something about the weather. Yesterday was the day I relaxed at last. I tense up every year around the beginning of November, and I don’t ease again until spring is firmly in place. Yesterday I felt that had happened. I saw one tiny snow pile in the shade of a tree while driving to work this morning, but I’m betting it’s gone as of this hour. Had a lovely walk by the lake tonight.
Tomorrow’s only supposed to get up to fifty, but I stand by my decree–spring is here.
Men should not act like boys, unless they're playing Viking
Another Viking from my group posted this video of us on Facebook. It’s not one he made; he found it somewhere. I’m not entirely sure who made it, but it’s very well done.
You’ll note that I “kill” Ragnar in the first fight. A phenomenon that rare deserves to be memorialized on film.
Watched the movie, The Hangover last night. I’d heard a lot about how hilarious it is.
Well, it’s funny. I laughed (snorted, actually) in a couple places. But mostly I found it distasteful.
It purports to be an affirmation of manhood and male bonding, in the face of a feminizing culture.
But that affirmation of manhood is actually an affirmation of boyhood. These men aren’t asserting their right to their status as men. They’re asserting their right to be irresponsible and make idiots of themselves. As if that’s what being a man is about.
I was particularly troubled by the attitude of the father of the bride (played by the great Jeffrey Tambor), who sends the bridegroom off to his Vegas bachelor party with a serious, fatherly speech that says, “Remember, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”
What kind of father is that? What kind of father will his son-in-law be?
Yeah, I’ve achieved fuddy-duddy status at last.
Sonja? I hardly known ya!
My recent lack of book reviews is not because I haven’t been reading books. I’ve been reading a very long book for a while (one I enjoy, but which is taking forever). However, I’ve interrupted that to read a shorter book that someone has asked me to review (more on that anon). I also read a technical manual for a piece of equipment I’m in the way of acquiring. There will be reviews, in time (not of the technical manual, of course). Until then, I vamp.
Tonight’s vamp is Sonja Henie, who was born April 8, 1912.
Norwegians are ambivalent about her, even after all these years. On one hand, she was perhaps the greatest Norwegian celebrity of all time, and a world-beating winter sports athlete. Norwegians will forgive a lot in a world-beating winter sports athlete.
On the other hand, she knew Hitler personally (her husband did business with him), and got along with him quite well. She even gave him the straight arm salute once. Although as a Hollywood celebrity she supported the American war effort, she never lifted a finger to support the Norwegian resistance, something that left a very bitter taste.
Also she was by all accounts alcoholic, narcissistic, and promiscuous. You’ve heard the expression that starts with a vulgar “b” word, and ends with “on ice?” She could have been the inspiration for it, if she wasn’t the inspiration in fact.
Personally, I generally don’t go for the round-faced look, so she never did much for me in the movies.
In other news, Anthony Sacramone posted a new item at Strange Herring, apparently in response to my legendary powers of persuasion.
It’s not a funny piece, but we take what we can get.
Meanwhile, our people have him under surveillance.
Boys and girls together
My creative juices are a little clotted tonight, so I’ll fall back on an old standby—a family photo from my scan collection, one which apparently sat in the sun too long at some point in its history, getting badly faded out.
Analysis:
This one isn’t strictly a family picture. It’s a photograph (dated around 1930, I’d guess) of the class at a country school, containing at least one of my family members. The second girl from the right on the bottom row is my aunt Corene, I think. Though it could be Aunt Jeannie. But I think it’s Corene.
The thing is, I had the idea my dad was in this picture. But it’s hard to pick him out. The little boy second from the left in that same bottom row might be him, but the hair looks a little dark (Dad was extremely blond). The story I recall is that the picture also includes, among other people, the girl who someday would be the mother of a guy who was my college roommate for a while, years later. But I don’t recall which girl it is.
I also recognize the two boys on the right in the middle row. Not as individuals, but by their family. They were neighbors of ours, and the face genes ran strong among them.
Actually, saying they were neighbors is redundant. This was a country school, built on the old Northwest Ordinance principle by which one section of land in each township was sold to pay for a school, which the kids in the township would attend. As you probably know, it was a one-room operation, in which the older kids and the younger kids all sat in class together. There are those who argue to this day that that setup was actually a benefit to all concerned. The younger kids had the older kids to help them, and the older kids got to help teaching, which is one of the best ways to learn.
You’ll note that almost all the boys are wearing bib overalls. A very practical garment for boys, those were. They cover the most vulnerable parts of the shirt (except, of course, for the elbows), preventing stains and wear. Oddly, although I grew up on a farm, and my dad wore them all the time, I don’t recall ever wearing one myself. There is, however, an old picture of me as a toddler in a small pair.
If I’d been born only a few years earlier, I’d have gone to this school. It was only about a half a mile from our farm, and was still standing, abandoned, when I was a kid. A friend of mine lived on that farm, and we sometimes went inside and goofed around.
Our township schools around Kenyon consolidated just a couple years before I started, so I went to the “new” school in town while it was still pretty new. It was a light-colored, one-story brick affair built in a U shape,with two wings branching off a central administrative section. I suspect somebody thought we kids would play in the space between the wings, but we almost never did, and the teachers didn’t encourage it. Too many windows there. The building was state of the art, equipped with the green chalkboards that, all the best minds agreed, would streamline the learning process and put us years ahead of the Russians. Each room was equipped with an asbestos fire blanket, I recall.
I don’t remember any of my classmates ever wearing bib overalls to school. That age had passed.
Green Eagles–Dude!
“Author Stephen Atlrogge says that there’s a conspiracy affecting every person who has ever lived,” reported the publisher Crossway’s blog. Atlrogge has written The Greener Grass Conspiracy to explain the problem and recommend a solution. This photo, however, says he should have given his book another title.
Silence (with words)
I don’t often travel alone, and when I do, I don’t turn on the TV. Watching it isn’t how I want to spend the little time I have in the room, and since my on a working trip, I don’t think my managers want me to lollygag around the room for long, especially when I could be lollygagging right under their noses. (Lollygag is a distinctly American word from 1862, perhaps deriving from the old world loll meaning “to relax completely.”)
I know many Christians will approve of my habit of ignoring the hotel room TV, because it guards me from any temptation to watch the soft porn or worse which is usually available on premium cable channels. (Pornography, by the way, was first used as an English word in 1858. It comes from a similar Greek word which meant “writing about prostitutes.” I wonder how many models or actors would want to think of themselves as prostitutes.) I wonder if a growing number of other believers, those who vocally criticize “fundamentalists” for hiding from the world in their church-bunkers, would see what I do as hiding from the world also or maybe a lack of self-control due to a prudish morality.
(A prude is an excessively modest or discreet person. The word comes from an old French world, which meant “good, virtuous, modest.” The word had variations for male and female, the male version meaning “a brave man.”)
Regardless any criticism, I think leaving the TV off is one step in cultivating an acceptance of silence, a small detox from the constant noise in our media-saturated world. Doing that should help build contentment, self-control, and even purity. How can I surrender my indefatigable pride to the Lord of Life if I hide in a bunker made by the world markets? Isn’t that one of the many meanings of Psalm 119?
Herring shortage. Women, minorities suffer most.
The redoubtable Anthony Sacramone, most amusing of the Lutheran bloggers (OK, it’s a low bar) has done it again. And I don’t mean that in a good way.
His recently resurrected Strange Herring blog hasn’t been updated since March 27. And we all know what that means. Mr. Sacramone has lost interest again. He’s only been back at it since February, and already the Herring languishes like a dead… well, like a dead herring.
I suppose I ought to be grateful for what I can get. I try to be clever on this blog, but I’m seldom hilarious. I’m not capable of the consistent high level of mirth that Sacramone generates when he’s on. No doubt it takes something out of a fellow. Perhaps it causes an amusement deficiency in him, forcing him to retreat to a basement hideaway and read Sylvia Plath while depilitating himself with salad tongs, until his system regenerates itself.
At least Doktor Luther In the 21st Century is still tweeting. I don’t tweet myself, or follow tweets, but I read Doktor Luther’s here.
I shall note that today was the actual beginning of spring, for me. It was the first night I have taken my walk by the lake since last fall. The temperature was almost sixty, which is a little cold for me, but a real man would probably call it perfect. I returned home without any injuries that I’m aware of, so let the revels begin!
I shall wear the ends of my trousers rolled, I think.