Are schools getting more transgressive in your community? The national push will suggest a righteous war of librarians and school officials against parents who, I don’t know, want their kids to be safe and not exposed to content that can’t be read in a school board meeting.
Do educators allow parents to have a say in whether a book in the school library is pornographic? In a sane world, yes, but we live in 2022.
Here in the Midwest (which is actually the North Central US, but why be pedantic?), when we encounter something that’s unlike anything we’ve seen before, but still doesn’t impress us much, we damn it with faint praise by saying, “Well, that’s different.”
I’d describe Mark Gilleo’s Hunting Rabbits as “different.” I can honestly say I haven’t ever read anything quite like it before.
Charlie Gates is chief of police in Williamsburg, Virginia, home of Colonial Williamsburg. One day there’s a holdup at a local drug store, and the culprit is thwarted, getting his arm broken by a bystander who knows how to handle himself. The bystander then disappears.
The next part of the story confused me a little. Williamsburg isn’t a big town, as far as I know. But the police resources that are now devoted to this non-lethal crime struck me as implausible in any police department these days. Charlie is even able to secure the assistance of a big-city homicide detective, Luis “Quags” Millares, who becomes his trusty right-hand man.
Studying surveillance camera footage, they learn that the crime-stopping bystander soon left the area on a bus, along with a couple other drug store customers. A little inquiry reveals that this bus is one of a private fleet whose sole purpose is to transport CIA trainees to and from “The Farm,” the nearby, high-security federal training facility.
Even more intriguing, a fingerprint on the robber’s gun, touched by the crime-stopper, matches a print from the scene of an old murder – that of Charlie’s own sister, one of the victims of a still-unidentified serial killer decades ago.
What confronts them then is what I’d describe as a “black box” investigation. Because of security regulations, the cops find themselves unable to interrogate either their suspect or any witnesses. What they end up doing is to present various threats of bad publicity to the Farm authorities, and then watch as they themselves clean up their own mess — not always getting it right, either.
I found the story unsatisfactory in several ways. The decisive stuff in the narrative happens mostly offstage. Our heroes are just spectators, sometimes unsatisfied spectators.
Also I thought the characterization was clumsy, especially at the beginning, where characters commit the common literary sin of telling people too much at their first meetings. And there were some homophone spelling problems.
The book wasn’t bad, but it didn’t leave me wanting more.
There’s much talk today of the death of Olivia Newton-John, the famous Australian singer. And that’s appropriate. She was a great talent (not to mention a heartthrob for my generation).
But I just learned of the death, last Friday, of another great Australian singer. Judith Durham of the Seekers succumbed to a long-standing lung condition. She was 79.
According to what I’ve read, Miss Durham was a Christian who hesitated at first to go into secular music because she was committed to Gospel.
The Seekers’ music was unique. I hope it lasts forever, because it sure means a lot to this old man.
Rest in peace.
Today’s hymn, “He Leadeth Me,” is by Baptist Minister Joseph H. Gilmore (1834-1918) of Rochester, New York, who was also on the faculty of the University of Rochester to teach English. The tune was arranged by William B. Bradbury (1816-1868) of York, Maine, after seeing the hymn text in a publication. He was a born musician and inspired the regular study of music in New York City public schools.
1 He leadeth me: O blessed thought!
O words with heavenly comfort fraught!
Whate’er I do, where’er I be,
still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me.
Refrain:
He leadeth me, he leadeth me;
by his own hand he leadeth me:
his faithful follower I would be,
for by his hand he leadeth me.
2 Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom,
sometimes where Eden’s flowers bloom,
by waters calm, o’er troubled sea,
still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me. Refrain
3 Lord, I would clasp thy hand in mine,
nor ever murmur nor repine;
content, whatever lot I see,
since ’tis my God that leadeth me. Refrain
4 And when my task on earth is done,
when, by thy grace, the victory’s won,
e’en death’s cold wave I will not flee,
since God through Jordan leadeth me. Refrain
I’ve run out of time to do a blogroll post this morning, so let me share a couple things before I install someone I love in a college.
Reading: In the U.K. Critic, Simon Evans writes about pretending to read books: “‘I am writing a book,’ says the man at the drinks party, in the old Peter Cook cartoon. ‘Neither am I,’ replies his companion.
“Still makes me laugh. But would now work with ‘I am reading a book’, too.
“’The larger the island of knowledge,’ goes the old Reader’s Digest phrase, ‘the longer the shoreline of wonder.’ I used to find that thought reassuring, even awe-inspiring. It is now absolutely terrifying. That’s before you factor in the fractal nature of the coastline. When you get there, there is no ‘there’.”
I have never pretended to have read something I haven’t read, but plenty of times I have suggested, discussed, or recommended books on the scantest of knowledge about them, which is something entirely different.
Southern Literature: Warren Smith notes that Marion Montgomery and Flannery O’Connor were close friends for a few years and gave us “perhaps the greatest definition of Southern literature anyone has so far come up with, certainly one of the most quoted.”
A good psychological thriller can be great entertainment, if the psychology is plausible. How does Dark Peak, by Adam J. Wright, stack up?
Mitch Walker is an English landscaper, a hard-working divorced father. Thirty years ago, his sister was abducted and murdered by a serial killer in Derbyshire, where his family lived at the time. His mother was so traumatized that she took him and fled away, and he never had contact with his father again.
Now he receives notice that his father has died, leaving him the Gothic-style mansion where they lived at the time, plus a fortune. Mitch doesn’t mind the money, but he doesn’t look forward to going back to the mansion. He still has nightmares about the place.
Elly Cooper is also divorced. She’s a former journalist who wrote a bestselling book about a serial killer and has been living off the royalties for some time. But book sales have fallen off, and her agent offers her a deal to do a new book, about a series of unsolved murders in Derbyshire, one of which is the murder of Mitch’s sister.
They will arrive around the same time, and their arrival will stir up old memories and old evil. It soon becomes apparent that the murders have not stopped – and someone in Mitch’s own family may be responsible.
The great weakness in Dark Peak was characterization – which ought to be the first thing you need to get right in a book of this type. If you don’t understand your own characters, how are we to believe you about psychopaths? The characters in Dark Peak commit the common fictional character error of keeping secrets from the police for reasons that advance the plot but seem unnatural in the real world. They also tell each other too much – real people rarely spill their guts to each other like these people do. It provides an excuse for information dumps, but again it rings hollow.
Also, for this reader, the murderer’s motivation, when finally revealed, didn’t seem very plausible.
The book is free for Kindle as of this review, so you might want to check it out, but I was rather disappointed. Cautions for disturbing content.
I liked the first Marc Kadella novel that I read, Cult Justice (by Dennis Carstens), even though there were some problems with the prose, because it had solidly conservative content and the story was pretty good. Reminiscent of a John Sandford book, but with a legal setting. The second one, Maddy’s Justice, I liked less, because it was all You-Go-Girl feminism (as I perceived it). So I figured I’d give Kadella one more shot with Twisted Justice. I have to say, he knocked it out of the park. For this reader.
Minneapolis lawyer Marc Kadella, along with his impossibly hot girlfriend, Maddy Rivers, attends a Christmas season party in a box at U.S. Bank Stadium. They were invited by Parker Crane, a friend who’s done well in financial services. During the party, Parker asks Marc about what a divorce would cost him, as his marriage is on the rocks. When he hears the answer, Parker comments that he’d be better off killing her. Then he takes it back.
Not long after, Parker’s wife Diana is stabbed to death in the parking garage of her lover’s apartment building. When the police check Parker’s cell phone records, they put him in that exact spot at the time of the murder.
Parker maintains that his phone was stolen, and he’s being framed. He retains Marc to defend him. As a defense attorney, Marc, of course, has no need to prove Parker innocent. He just needs to raise reasonable doubt. His obvious tactic is to construct a SODDI (Some Other Dude Did It) defense.
To do this, he looks into Diana’s personal history – and finds a wealth of alternative murderers. Because it turns out Diana, a former Minnesota Vikings cheerleader, had a nice little side gig going as a high-end call girl. And some of her clients were among the most powerful men in Minnesota, men with plenty of things to hide…
This book was a little more courtroom-centric than the previous book, with fewer shootouts and gunfights. That was fine with me. The courtroom scenes seemed authentic, and thus educational. As usual with this series, I found the character banter amusing, but not convincing. The problem with misplaced modifiers in the text, so evident in Cult Justice, was not noticeable here. I did note one badly cast sentence that should have been re-written, but in general the writing was okay. The final “surprise twist” didn’t surprise me, but was dramatically appropriate.
What I really loved about Twisted Justice was that it poked a well-deserved finger in the eye of the Minnesota power structure. That was genuinely sweet.
I found this film on YouTube. It’s some footage of the Viking festival at Avaldsnes, which I attended last month. This would be Saturday. I see several people I met on it, But I think everyone will agree that the highlight of the film is the scene, toward the end, where I am featured tending the fire in the longhouse. Enjoy.
Occasionally, I think. Even more occasionally, what I think makes sense.
Today I was thinking about stories. Or “story” as a subject. I’ve written about it here before.
I have a theological view of stories. I noticed first, long ago, that the basic structure of plot (hero faces challenge – hero must overcome repeated, escalating failures to achieve goal) works because it mirrors the basic structure of our lives. This is the art of living. Stories tell us how to live. (A bad story is a kind of crime, because it teaches wrong lessons that could get people hurt.)
Later, I thought larger. The universe, it seems to me, is a story. Christians don’t believe that life is an eternal cycle, as many of the pagans did. We believe that history is a narrative. It has a beginning and an end. Tolkien declared that the Resurrection was the “eucatastrophe” (the happy, unexpected turn of events) of the story. The final happy ending awaits.
I had the thought, this morning, that all stories with happy endings are, in some sense, Christian. Even if they’re profane and filthy. They still have a holy structure. Sacred bones, you might say.
But then I thought, what about tragedy? Is tragedy un-Christian?
No. Tragedy is (according to Aristotle) meaningful. The hero’s ending may be awful, but it means something. The tragic hero may deserve his fate (like Macbeth) or may be the innocent victim of Destiny (like Oedipus). But his death is significant. It arouses pity and horror. It enriches the spirit. There’s meaning in tragedy.
What is not Christian is the story of futility. The absurdist tale. I’ve run across a few in my time, and I hate them. One that comes to mind is “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” which I watched on Netflix. I can see the story’s value as a corrective to the conventions and tropes of the Western genre, which get turned on their heads one after another. But the final conclusion is emptiness. Another was “No Country for Old Men,” also by the Coen Brothers. I’ve heard it described as a Christian story – and maybe it is at some intellectual level too deep for me – but I saw it as a story bereft of hope.
I’m trying to work these thoughts into the book. Means a few last-minute adjustments.
After the minimum waiting time, they were married late one afternoon at the court house, and left in a new white Pontiac convertible, the back seat stacked with her matched luggage, her smile as brilliant as a brand new vermin trap ordered from Herter’s catalogue.
Whenever I see a deal on one of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee books in e-book form, I grab it. So it was with Bright Orange for the Shroud, a fairly early – but memorable – entry in the series. If I remember correctly, now and then in later books, when he’s recalling his personal nightmares, McGee mentions Boo Waxwell.
Travis McGee isn’t a private eye. He calls himself a salvage specialist. When people are robbed of large amounts of money or valuable possessions, he goes and gets them back, then keeps half the value. This enables him to live his chosen lifestyle – “taking his retirement in installments.”
He plans to make this particular summer one of his lazy ones. He’ll do some maintenance on his big houseboat, the Busted Flush, cruise a bit, do some fishing. He’s earned a rest.
Until Arthur Wilkinson shows up on the dock, incoherent and emaciated. Arthur was part of their beachside community for a while, a low-key, diffident man who’d made money in the family business. Then he met tiny, gorgeous Wilma Ferrer, married her, and moved away.
But it turned out Wilma was a con woman. With her little group of confidence friends, she picked Arthur clean. Money wasn’t enough for her, though. Together with the muscle of the group, big Boo Maxwell, she made sure Arthur had been destroyed as a man.
McGee can help people recover stuff, but recovering a lost soul is outside his skill set. So he goes to Chookie McCall, a professional dancer who dated Arthur for a while, before hooking up with a wrong guy, now in prison. Though she’s reluctant at first, one look at Arthur arouses all Chookie’s maternal instincts.
McGee comes up with a plan to con the cons and get some of Arthur’s money back. It’s a good plan. His mistake is underestimating Boo Waxwell as an opponent. Though he comes off as an ignorant, overgrown cracker, Boo is no fool at all. Someone suggests that Boo is McGee’s alter ego, what he might have been if something had been missing in his make-up. (In many ways, Boo anticipates Max Cady, the brutal villain of MacDonald’s novel The Executioners, which was filmed twice under the title, Cape Fear.)
There’s not a wasted line in this book. It’s tough and hard-boiled and tender and sympathetic. There’s a lot of sexual content. Some of it reads really great from my traditional, sexist point of view, and some of it reflects the mores of the sexual revolution and hasn’t aged well.
The plot includes, in my opinion, one too many lucky breaks for the good guys. But all in all, Bright Orange for the Shroud works splendidly. Highly recommended.