Reading, Religion

A hermit’s happy Christmas

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Photo credit: Laura Nyhuis, lauraintacoma, under Unsplash license.

I want to tell you about my Christmas, and I worry that I’ll do it badly. I’m susceptible (as you may have noticed) to the temptation to play the martyr, but in fact the tale I have to tell you is quite a happy one. I had a blessed Christmas.

My church is one of those that only did Christmas Eve services this year, so I went to that, and then Christmas Sunday lay before me unscheduled (my family will gather next weekend). It’s something of a challenge for a Christmas-lover like me to spend the big day by himself, but I prayed earnestly for a good spirit as I went to bed.

I woke up remembering a strange dream (as if I’ve ever had a dream that wasn’t strange). I was kneeling, studying a doll house. I was certain, for some reason, that there were tiny people living in that doll house. But I’d never seen them. They were shy and they kept out of sight, frightened, no doubt, by my size.

And as I thought about that dream, lying in bed, it occurred to me that this was a parable of Christmas. God faced a similar problem when He came into the world, and He solved it by becoming small, by becoming a baby.

I thought that a rather jolly way to wake up Christmas morning. It put me in an unexpectedly festive mood. Then, as I got up, I noticed how cold it was. Our natural gas company, worried about the gas supply (Gee, I wonder how that came to be a problem), had asked us to turn our thermostats down to 65⁰, and I’d done so, like a loyal Comrade. I remembered that I’ve got a nice, hand-knitted pair of wool stockings somewhere, which I hadn’t worn in a while. Seemed like a good day for them. I poked around in some drawers, and in the bottom bureau drawer I found, not the socks (I found those somewhere else), but a pair of flannel pajamas. I hadn’t worn those pajamas in years. I’d forgotten I owned them. When I contemplate my old clothes, the question is always, of course, “From which geological era of my life do these come?” I’ve been thin and I’ve been fat, and I still haven’t lost enough weight to wear the older stuff. But I tried the pj’s on, and they fit very well. I’d been wearing ordinary cotton pajamas, but it seemed to me flannel was just the thing for current conditions. It was like getting a Christmas present, so I decided to consider them one.

Through the rest of the day I took a break from my diet, considering it a Feast. I listened to Christmas music by Sissel. And I continued reading the book I was working on, Lewis’ Perelandra (which I mean to review tomorrow).

Perelandra, it seems to me, stands alone among Lewis’ works in a particular way. I think it’s the most fully mythopoeic of his books, most closely bound to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, if only in spirit. Lewis was at the peak of his creative powers here, and he excelled at moving the heart by way of the intellect – I’ve read Perelandra several times, but this time was almost physically difficult for me. More than once I had to stop to regain my composure. Not because I didn’t like it, but because it pierced my heart again and again. So I was something of an emotional basket case on Christmas day.

But I wasn’t unhappy. In its peculiar way, this was one of the best Christmases I’ve ever spent.

Music

The Prince of Peace Has Come, Yet We Have Little Peace

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The Christmas concert my church choir performed this year featured Vivaldi’s Gloria. The video above is the second movement, “Et in Terra Pax,” performed by the Oxford Schola Cantorum and Northern Chamber Orchestra.

“Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.”
And in earth peace to men of good will.

Vivaldi set these words to rather unpeaceful music. It has a dreadful plodding to it, as if we fear the coming of terra pax. Its slow tension is a beautiful metaphor for knowing the Prince of Peace has come and yet feeling our lack of peace throughout our lives. We long for the peace that has come, Lord. How long?

Of the increase of his government and of peace
  there will be no end,

on the throne of David and over his kingdom,

   to establish it and to uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

   from this time forth and forevermore.

The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. (Isaiah 6:7 ESV)

Music, Religion

‘Hark, the Herald Angels Sing’

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A blessed Christmas to all you Brandywinians out there. My own plans are to celebrate Christmas in my usual madcap way — a traditional Scrooge Christmas with a lowered thermostat, dim lights, a cup of gruel by the fire, and a chair set out for any wandering ghosts who might appear to accuse me.

Above, a clip I’ve probably posted before — Sissel with the Pelagian Tabernacle Choir, doing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” my favorite Christmas hymn.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Out of the Silent Planet,’ by C. S. Lewis

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It seemed to Ransom that he had never looked out on such a frosty night. Pulsing with a brightness as with some unbearable pain or pleasure, clustered in pathless and countless multitudes, dreamlike in clarity, blazing in perfect blackness, the stars seized all his attention, troubled him, excited him, and drew him to a sitting position.

Yet another book that I love and haven’t read in a while is Out of the Silent Planet, first in C. S. Lewis’ science fiction trilogy. Perhaps the least noted of the three books, because it’s less lyrical/symphonic than Perelandra and less controversial than That Hideous Strength, it is nevertheless one of the great space travel books of the 1930s, and (I believe) a game-changer in the genre.

If you haven’t read it before, we meet our hero, philologist Elwin Ransom, out on a walking tour. Traveling later than he intended due to a disappointment in accommodations, Ransom encounters an old woman, weeping and searching for “her Henry.” Henry is her son, who is a little “simple.” Henry works at a nearby facility run by two rich men, one of them a university don. Hearing about this don, a colleague who might offer a night’s rest, Ransom offers to go look for the boy. He manages to get onto the facility grounds, where he sees two men trying subdue poor Henry, who cries out that he doesn’t want to go “in there.” Ransom interferes, enabling the boy to escape. Then he finds that one of the men is in fact someone he knows (and has always disliked), a man named Devine, once a scholar, now a businessman. He introduces his colleague Weston, a world-famous physicist. After some initial unpleasantness, Ransom is indeed invited in to spend the night.

What he doesn’t know is that Devine and Weston are planning a trip to “Malacandra” (Mars). They’ve been there before, and encountered creatures called Sorns. The Sorns asked them to bring them someone “of their own kind.” Assuming the Sorns want a human sacrifice, they’d intended to use poor Henry. But if Ransom insists on interfering, he’ll do just as well.

So soon Ransom finds himself on a spherical spacecraft, headed to Mars. He finds space (wonderfully) different from what he expected. Once he’s arrived on Malacandra (brilliantly imagined according to the scientific knowledge of the time), he gets free from his captors and soon encounters a “Hrossa,” one of the three indigenous sapient species. Again and again, what he finds confounds his presumptions and expectations. Aliens aren’t what he expects, the universe isn’t what he expects, and at last he even gets an objective look at humanity itself, through alien eyes. Then finally through Eyes even more alien.

I’m not an expert on Science Fiction in the 1930s-40s period, but my impression (reinforced by references in this book) is that the common assumption in the field was that aliens were either hostile super-intellects or primitives. Lewis lampoons this latter view in the character of Weston, who gives a ridiculous, patronizing, “me give-um you pretty beads” speech to an Intelligence infinitely above his comprehension. It’s a brilliant satirical scene, and – I suspect – stories like “Avatar” may be the distant descendants of this seminal book.

It goes without saying that I recommend Out of the Silent Planet unreservedly.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Maltese Falcon,’ by Dashiell Hammet

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He went out, walked half the distance to the elevators, and retraced his steps. Effie Perine was sitting at her desk when he opened the door. He said: “You ought to know better than to pay any attention to me when I talk like that.”

“If you think I pay any attention to you you’re crazy,” she replied, “only”—she crossed her arms and felt her shoulders, and her mouth twitched uncertainly—“I won’t be able to wear an evening gown for two weeks, you big brute.”

He grinned humbly and said, “I’m no damned good, darling,” made an exaggerated bow, and went out again.

Working my way through books I’ve read and remember fondly, I picked The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammet off my shelf. It’s a fascinating book, and I have much to say about it.

Of course, it’s impossible to contemplate this work without considering the looming image of the classic 1941 movie directed by John Huston, starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. After I finished reading, I immediately took out my DVD and watched the flick. I also watched a few clips from the original 1931 version, starring Ricardo Cortez, available on YouTube. It’s a much inferior movie, far more loosely paced, and Cortez (physically a better casting choice) plays the role with a constant leer, as if it’s all a joke, even when he’s giving up the girl he “loves.”

The first thing you learn when you read the book is that Sam Spade looks nothing like Humphrey Bogart. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, muscular. His face is “made up of v’s,” so that he looks “rather pleasantly like a blond Satan.”

In case you’ve never read the book or seen the movie, Sam is a San Francisco private eye, in partnership with a guy named Miles Archer (with whose wife he’s carrying on an affair). When beautiful, young Brigid O’Shaughnessy walks in and asks them to put a tail on a man who’s holding her sister against her will, they lick their lips (both at the fee and at Brigid) and Miles takes the job. The next morning Sam learns that Miles has been shot to death.

What follows is a complicated dance that goes on for some time before Sam even learns that Brigid is in competition with some other sinister types to get ahold of a figurine of a black falcon, believed to be worth a fortune.

The Maltese Falcon is a seminal book in the history of mystery literature, an archetypal hard-boiled tale. And hard-boiled it is. Sam is a shockingly tough character – he appears utterly insensitive, not only to the woman he’s committing adultery with, but to his starry-eyed young secretary (far more vulnerable in the book than the tough cookie played by Lee Patrick in the 1941 film); with men he’s just brutal. He’s big and strong, and it does no good to pull a gun on him, because he’ll just take it away from you. He appears to have no principles, either – he deals and double-deals on equal terms with the Fat Man and Joel Cairo.

It’s only at the end that you begin to see something deeper. This is a man with a list of certain principles – probably not a long list, but the ones he has he sticks to. At the end of the story, he stands left with nothing, and it’s by his own choice. Which makes Humphrey Bogart, in the end, a better Sam Spade than Ricardo Cortez. Bogart expresses the foundation of the character; Cortez portrays its façade.

There’s a running theme of sacrifice (of a cynical kind) in The Maltese Falcon. The famous scene at the end (spoiler here) where Sam tells Brigid he won’t “play the sap” for her is paralleled earlier by the scene where Gutman decides to sacrifice Wilmer, his catamite, as the “fall guy” for the murders. Author Hammet had it on his mind that there are things more important than being in love. Since Hammet was a Communist, I couldn’t help thinking of Stalin’s callous murder of millions “for the greater good.” But a Christian can also appreciate this, as our Lord told us that whoever loves father or mother, son or daughter more than Him is not worthy of Him. (Communism is, after all, only the most successful Christian heresy.)

In style, Hammet was, I think, a little inferior to Raymond Chandler. You look in vain here for Chandler’s lyrical, epigrammatic descriptive passages. The Maltese Falcon is heavy on description, but it’s punctilious description. Hammet tells you what everyone wears, down to details of style and color. He likes to set a scene, to leave nothing to the imagination. The dialogue, however, is sharp and tight. Read the book and watch the film, and you’ll see that the script writers’ main job was cutting. What you hear the actors saying in the film is almost always straight out of the book.

The Maltese Falcon is a tremendous hard-boiled mystery. Highly recommended.

Music

Have Yourself a Sad Little Christmas Song

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Meet Me in St. Louis is a hit musical that gave us the song “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” performed in the video above. The movie was initially released in St. Louis November 1944 and nationwide January 1945. Judy Garland plays Esther Smith, the eldest of four daughters, who falls for a new boy in town, played by Tom Drake.

The context of the Christmas scene is their father having accepted a job transfer to New York, which would uproot the family right after Christmas. Esther is comforting little Tootie about the move and sings the melancholy song. But the songwriters originally leaned into the sadness more than Garland and the movie executives wanted. Classicfm has the story.

Here are some of the original lyrics:

“Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
It may be your last.
Next year we may all be living in the past.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
Pop that champagne cork.
Next year we may all be living in New York.”

The second version, which Garland sang, were revised again for Frank Sanatra, so you may hear the song conclude with “Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow” or “So hang a shining star upon the highest bough.”

Either way, I hope you have yourself a, uh, you know.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dangerous Behavior,’ by Walter Marks

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I almost liked this book very much. In the end I wasn’t quite satisfied, but there’s a lot to be said for it.

The hero of Dangerous Behavior (first volume in a series) is Dr. David Rothberg, who has recently taken a job as a psychological counselor at an upstate New York prison, for various complicated personal reasons. His first challenge is a big one – he’s supposed to do an evaluation for a parole recommendation on Victor Janko, “the baby carriage killer.” This man was convicted years ago of murdering a young woman while her baby daughter watched. Victor doesn’t seem like the type to commit such a crime – but then, murderers often don’t. Is he a very devious psychopath, or could he possibly be genuinely innocent?

Complicating the evaluation are Victor’s manipulative murder-groupie girlfriend, and a sadistic prison guard whom David knows to be abusing Victor.

I have to say that Dangerous Behavior did a great job of keeping my interest. I actually sat up late to finish this book, something I don’t often do at my age.

However, I thought the plotting was a little forced; characters sometimes seemed to break character in order to make dramatic points happen. Also, the climax was surprisingly understated. In addition, the portrayal of a Catholic priest hinted at an authorial attitude that usually bodes ill for me as a reader.

I don’t know if I’ll pick the sequel up or not. Nevertheless, I have to admit that Dangerous Behavior was a good read overall.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Laughing Gas,’ by P. G. Wodehouse

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‘The Hitlers and Mussolinis of the picture world,’ said George, ‘What do they do? They ship these assortments of New York playwrights and English novelists out here and leave it all to them. Outside talent don’t get a chance.’

The quote above is self-referential. P. G. Wodehouse was both a New York playwright (in the musical comedy line) and an English novelist, and he had, indeed, been imported to Hollywood in 1929 to work on scripts for a while. He didn’t fit in and left little visible trace on celluloid, but he did mine the experience for comedy in his novels and stories. One of his most explicit Hollywood novels is Laughing Gas (which doesn’t seem to be available as an e-book, or even as a reasonably priced paperback, right now. But the link will take you to an audible book).

Reggie Swithin has recently inherited the title of Earl of Havershot, but he still hasn’t accustomed himself to that status. So he hasn’t the resistance to refuse the family solicitor’s request that he travel to Hollywood, California to disentangle his cousin Egmont from some American girl (who certainly must be inappropriate) to whom he’s gotten engaged.

On the train trip across the American continent, Reggie meets the beautiful April June, a famous movie star, who confides to him that she hates her life of glamor and longs for a simple home where she can be with her books and her flowers and her cooking… why, Reggie’s ancestral manor sounds like just the place!

Reggie is working up his nerve to propose to her as he arrives in Hollywood, where he meets the girl Cousin Eggy is engaged to – awkwardly, she turns out to be Ann Bannister, to whom Reggie himself was once briefly engaged. Then Reggie has an attack of toothache. In the dentist’s office, he finds that another Hollywood star, little Joey Cooley (“Idol of American motherhood”) is having the same procedure done by the dentist’s partner. As they are both under the influence of laughing gas at the same time, some sort of mix-up occurs (“probably in the fourth dimension,” Reggie thinks) and the soul of each transmigrates to the body of the other. Thus Reggie wakes to find himself very small, dressed in knickerbockers, and sporting long golden curls. He’s going to have to figure out how to live a child star’s life – which is made no easier by his guardian, a formidable woman who limits him to a diet based on prunes, to maintain his weight.

We only learn through hearsay what’s happening with Joey, in Reggie’s body, but the boy seems to have a good time. He can get all the sweets he wants now, and there are a lot of people he’s been dreaming of boffing on the nose; Reggie has a healthy young body with a good right arm and boxing training.

And so the story proceeds. Reggie will learn to view April June from a whole new perspective, and will also learn to appreciate ice cream and breakfast sausage in a whole new way. In the end, of course, everything will turn out for the best.

I have to admit I didn’t enjoy Laughing Gas as much as I remembered from my first reading, long ago. It’s not because the story is a poor one; it’s not. It’s just that, for personal reasons, I have trouble with stories about kids in general. It was interesting, though, to see how Wodehouse looked at Hollywood from personal experience.

Recommended, if you can find a copy.

Music

Christmas Singing: On Christmas Night, All Christians Sing (Sussex Carol)

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“Sussex Carol” arranged by Elaine Hagenberg

This is the fourth week of Advent. Christmas Day is next Sunday. With many great Christmas carols, I had to choose a song that leans into Christmas today in order to have room for another one next week.

This traditional English carol was written by Luke Wadding (1628–87), bishop of Ferns, County Wexford, Ireland. The third verse appears to have been added to the original at some point, but songs and hymns aren’t particularly set in stone anyway. The tune is also traditional, arranged by the great Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).

1 On Christmas night all Christians sing,
to hear the news the angels bring;
on Christmas night all Christians sing,
to hear the news the angels bring:
news of great joy, news of great mirth,
news of our merciful King’s birth.

2 Then why should we on earth be sad,
since our Redeemer made us glad:
then why should we on earth be sad,
since our Redeemer made us glad:
when from our sin he set us free,
all for to gain our liberty.

3 When sin departs before Your grace,
then life and health come in its place;
when sin departs before Your grace,
then life and health come in its place;
angels and men with joy may sing,
all for to see the new-born King.

4 All out of darkness we have light
which made the angels sing this night;
all out of darkness we have light
which made the angels sing this night:
“Glory to God and peace to men,
now and forevermore. Amen.”

Music, Poetry, The Press, Uncategorized

The Silent Night Coming, Deep and Shallow Fakes, and a Jazz Medley

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But peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
         His reign of peace upon the earth began:
The winds with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kist,
         Whispering new joys to the mild Ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.
...
The Oracles are dumb;
No voice or hideous hum
         Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
         With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance or breathed spell
Inspires the pale-ey'd priest from the prophetic cell.

Two stanzas from John Milton’s “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity“

Obituary: “And I feel so sorry for him, I feel so sorry for this tender man,” Nabokov writes, “that suddenly the line I am writing seems to slip into mist.”

Easy Photo Fakes: With advancing artificially intelligent image generators, creating convincing pics from a handful of social media posts is fairly easy. The better images AI can create, the more dangerous it is to everyone. Maybe we should take our photos offline.

Artificially Created Videos: In a few years, an Israeli company may be able to produce computer generated video avatars that look as real as actual video.

Why Journalists Fall for Hoaxes: “Every hoax in America the past 200 years originated in the news business, or passed through it. When the world moved much slower, hoaxes were publicity stunts carried out by newspapers.”

Not Allegory: “The Twelve Days of Christmas” celebrates the meaning of Christmas and Christianity

Beethoven and Christmas: “If beauty will save the world it must be qualified that love will save the world. Because in beauty we find love. In finding beauty and the love that governs it, we are always directed to the Christ who came into our lives and taught us how to love. St. Augustine said that we often first come to know God (who is Love) through the love of others and the love that others show us.”

And though this is not Beethoven, it’s a good Christmas share.

Three original arrangements by Tony Glausi, “A Christmas Jazz Medley”

Photo by Angela Roma/Pexels

Book Reviews, Creative Culture