I am delighted to be able to announce that King of Rogaland, the sixth book in the Saga of Erling Skjalgsson, is available for Kindle download as of today. Makes a great Christmas present for Kindle readers.
Get your copy here.
‘I mean to say, I know perfectly well that I’ve got, roughly speaking, half the amount of brain a normal bloke ought to possess. And when a girl comes along who has about twice the regular allowance, she too often makes a bee line for me with the light of love in her eyes. I don’t know how to account for it, but it is so.’
I am at one of those points in life where I find it prudent to re-read beloved books from my past, rather than spend money on new ones. Having made that determination, it was but the work of a moment for me to ankle off to the bookshelf and pull a book out of my P. G. Wodehouse shelf. And so I offer my review of Carry On, Jeeves.
The characters of Bertie and Jeeves first appear in a story called “Extricating Young Gussie”, (not in this collection) which was published in 1915. In it, Bertie is dispatched to New York by his formidable Aunt Agatha, because his cousin Gussie has formed an ill-advised attachment to a vaudeville performer. Bertie crosses the Atlantic on this mission, but in the end the whole thing is resolved through a farcical coincidence.
What’s rummy about this story (as Wodehouse himself would have put it) is that, first of all, we’re never told Bertie’s last name (it appears, in fact, to be Mannering-Phipps). Also, Jeeves does nothing brainy at all. He answers doors and takes people’s hats. That’s it. This is a nascent Jeeves and Wooster story. The concept remains in embryo.
It wasn’t until the next story, “The Artistic Career of Corky” (1916), that Wodehouse faced the challenge of solving a plot problem without letting Bertie do anything smart, which would violate his character. It was then that he hit on the idea of making Jeeves a super-intellect. And a wonderful phenomenon came into being.
“The Artistic Career of Corky” is included in the collection, Carry On, Jeeves. But its first story is “Jeeves Takes Charge” (also published in 1916). Here we get the origin story, as “rebooted” (as they say of movie franchises) by Wodehouse himself. The story opens with a wonderful scene in which Bertie, hung-over and temporarily valet-less, opens his door to “a kind of darkish sort of respectful Johnny” who immediately diagnoses his complaint and mixes up his proprietary anti-hangover concoction. Bertie engages him on the spot, and as the story continues, Jeeves contrives to disentangle him from an ill-advised engagement to Florence Cray (“seen sideways, most awfully good-looking”), who had a plan for “making something of him.”
And so it goes on through ten wonderful stories. Sometimes Bertie helps a friend out with a spot of matrimonial trouble. Sometimes Bertie’s Aunt Dahlia enlists him in an insane quest to steal some ridiculous object. It’s all light, implausible, and hilarious.
As I read, I couldn’t help thinking about Heaven (see my review on the book about Near Death Experiences, a few inches below). I think Heaven may turn out to be a lot like a Wodehouse story. We never grow old, and the world never changes (Wodehouse attempts to keep up with the times in a couple stories, but they jar). And above all stands the great God of whom Jeeves is a symbol, who (in this life, anyway) allows us to go our wayward ways, knowing that in the end we have no resource but Him, and no one who cares more for our welfare.
Anyway, highly recommended.
The breeze died. The high white sun leaned its tropic weight on the gaudy vacation strip of Florida’s East Coast, so that it lay sunstruck, lazy and humid and garish, like a long brown sweaty woman stretched out in sequins and costume jewelry.
Another classic John D. MacDonald book, non-Travis McGee variety, from The Murder Room. The Beach Girls is an interesting, often impressive tale stressing humans and society more than crime (though there’s some crime). These old paperbacks were intended for a male audience, so there’s also quite a lot of sex, though it’s not explicit. Very little monogamy is on display.
Stebbins’ Marina in Elihu Beach, Florida is a marginal operation. Its owner, an amiable widow, can’t afford to maintain it properly, and local interests are pressuring her to sell it to developers.
But the marina is home to a motley group of boat owners – local fishermen, poor boat bums and rich yacht owners. There are a couple stinkers among them, but most of them get along happily in a live-and-let-live way.
When Leo Rice shows up looking for work, something seems off about him. He’s nice enough, and he’s willing to learn and to work hard. There’s no arrogance about him. But he doesn’t seem to match the story he tells about himself. He has the look of a man used to bigger things, greater responsibilities.
Leo has a secret. He’s got an issue with one of the residents, one of the bad types nobody likes. He came for revenge, but now he can see that he’s not tough enough for that job. And he’s suddenly interested in Christy, one of the marina residents, a girl who’s been damaged in the past and put on a clown’s persona. Is he willing to die trying to get justice, or does he have a future with Christy?
The Beach Girls offers a very fine author’s human insight, empathy, and powers of observation. The mores of the time it describes are very different from ours, and will probably disturb conservatives and liberals alike. The sex is pretty free and easy in this little community, but there’s also a passage that seems to defend wife-beating (in an extreme case). Approach such passages with your sense of history in place.
Otherwise, recommended.
I am no longer a young man. Occasionally, when I haven’t been dulling my reason sufficiently, I think about death. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that it’s not being dead that bothers me (especially as I believe in Heaven), but rather the actual process of dying that I find daunting. Seems like a pretty stressful exercise to put an old person through.
So when I found a deal on a Christian book called Real Near Death Experience Stories (by Randy Kay and Shaun Tabatt), I figured there might be some comfort in it.
It was comforting, for a Christian reader. Unfortunately, I didn’t find it awfully convincing.
The book consists of transcriptions of interviews conducted on the authors’ podcast, plus an introductory chapter about near death experiences in general. Everybody involved, the authors and their guests alike, seem sincere and seem to be people of good will. They tell lovely stories about how they’ve experienced death or near-death, and the wonderful (occasionally frightening) things they saw in Heaven (and in one case, in Hell).
Let me be clear. I absolutely believe in Heaven and Hell. I believe that Heaven is a place of eternal bliss, in the presence of the Triune God. I believe that Hell is a place where the unredeemed will suffer for eternity. So I don’t doubt that part.
It’s the extras. Having described their “go toward the light” experiences and the joys and beauties of Heaven, in several cases the interviewees go on to proclaim spiritual secrets (claiming in some cases that they have new revelations for the church in the end times). Tips on how to make it easier for miracles to happen in your life. That sort of thing.
It all sounded familiar to me. I used to hear this kind of thing a lot back in the ‘70s, during the Jesus Movement. All these stories were going around about miracles and visions and prophecies – which always happened somewhere else, never here. And the big message of it all was that Jesus was coming soon – certainly before the end of ‘80s or thereabouts.
For a lot of people, I think, the failure of these prophecies was an important element in their complete loss of faith. I got the idea, when I was reading science fiction, that 70% of the SiFi writers of my generation were embittered former Jesus Freaks. I was blessed to have a better scriptural grounding than these people, and I held onto my faith.
But when the interviewees in this book tell me, for instance, that Jesus in Heaven has blue eyes, or when another tells me that we have to let our “spirits” rule our “brains,” and that contemporary praise music is an essential weapon against demons, I am dubious.
I don’t really endorse the book Near Death Experience Stories. I have no doubt the authors (and the interviewees) are sincere. They’re probably even doing some good. But I don’t have confidence in them. “Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 23:28, ESV)
Diarist Phyllis Warner found that she and fellow Londoners were surprised by their own resilience. “Finding we can take it is a great relief to most of us,” she wrote on September 22. “I think that each one of us was secretly afraid that he wouldn’t be able to, that he would rush shrieking to shelter, that his nerve would give, that he would in some way collapse, so that this has been a pleasant surprise.”
Author Erik Larson has found himself a useful and profitable niche, writing about famous characters and events in historical accounts that combine the actions of famous persons with the lives of ordinary people, to give us a many-faceted picture. The Splendid and the Vile is his account of London during the Blitz; mostly set in the crucial year of 1940. The spotlight is, naturally, on Winston Churchill and his closest circle – his cabinet ministers and department heads, and his family. But we also get to see events through the eyes of ordinary citizens. And from time to time he looks across the channel to see how Hitler and his henchmen – who couldn’t understand why Churchill repeatedly snubbed their “friendly” peace offers — reacted and responded.
And meanwhile, the ordinary public suffered, died, and (most of them) survived.
It was a harrowing time, and this is a harrowing book. But also fascinating, informative, and sometimes even darkly comic. Historical figures come alive through their own words. The great drama and surprise in the book is something neither Hitler, nor even Churchill, really foresaw – the amazing courage of the English people; what they were willing to endure to defend their civilization.
What troubled me most as I read was something not in the book – the knowledge that this epic crusade for western civilization would end in the abandonment of eastern Europe to Stalin. Plus the knowledge that the children and grandchildren of these brave people would happily accede to the demolition of that civilization in our time.
Still and all, The Splendid and the Vile is an excellent look at a pivotal point in history. Highly recommended.
The story of Charles Mulli, chronicled in the documentary, Mully, would have offered a remarkable story even without its amazing second act. But that second act is nothing less than astonishing.
I was late in seeing this film, which I’ve known about since its release in 2017. One of its co-producers, Lukas Behnken, happens to be the son of one of my oldest friends, my college roommate Dixey Behnken. I should have believed what Dixey told me about it.
Charles Mulli was born in poverty in a village in Kenya. One morning when he was six, he woke to discover his family had disappeared overnight – they’d just moved away, leaving him behind. Then followed years of living on the street and begging, until he finally found work. He worked hard and made his way up the corporate pyramid, eventually owning his own bus company and becoming regional distributor for an oil company. He was a genuinely rich man in a genuinely poor country.
Then one day some street boys hijacked his car. Riding home on one of his own buses, Charles couldn’t keep himself from thinking about the boys who robbed him. They were himself, he realized, as he might have been. As a Christian, he felt a divine call to do something about it.
So he went onto the streets, found a couple homeless kids, and took them home with him. Then more. Then even more. He never stopped. His wife and children didn’t know how to deal with it, especially when he sent his own kids away to boarding school in order to make room for more orphans. Finally they all moved to a big new facility, and they established Mully Children’s Family, a wide-ranging enterprise that raises food and earns profits which are then poured back into several large children’s homes.
“Mully” relates this moving story through dramatic recreations and filmed interviews. It’s all fascinating and riveting – sometimes hardly believable. Inspirational. Deeply challenging.
Highly recommended. I watched it on Amazon Prime, but you can see it for free here.
Today’s advent hymn was originally “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,” written by German Lutheran Philipp Nicolai (1556-1608). He is noted in our source as having “fled from the Spanish army, sparred with Roman Catholic and Calvinist opponents, and ministered to plague-stricken congregations.” So a real salt of the earth kind of guy.
Catherine Winkworth translated the piece into English (as was with last week’s hymn).
1 “Wake, awake, for night is flying,”
the watchmen on the heights are crying,
“awake, Jerusalem, at last!”
Midnight hears the welcome voices,
and at the thrilling cry rejoices:
“Come forth, ye maidens, night is past!
The Bridegroom comes; awake,
your lamps with gladness take; alleluia!
And for his marriage feast prepare,
for you must go to meet him there.”
2 Zion hears the watchmen singing,
and all her heart with joy is springing;
she wakes, she rises from her gloom,
for her Lord comes down all-glorious,
the strong in grace, in truth victorious;
her Star is ris’n, her Light is come!
Ah, come, thou blessed Lord,
O Jesus, Son of God, alleluia!
We follow ’til the halls we see
where thou hast bid us sup with thee.
3 Now let all the heav’ns adore thee,
and men and angels sing before thee,
with harp and cymbal’s clearest tone;
of one pearl each shining portal,
where we are with the choir immortal
of angels round thy dazzling throne;
nor eye hath seen, nor ear
hath yet attained to hear what there is ours;
but we rejoice, and sing to thee
our hymn of joy eternally.
Day was breaking. The dawn Swept the last stars, bits of ashes, from the sky. Of the vast rabble, Mary allowed Only the Magi to enter the cleft in the rock. He slept, all luminous, in the oak manager, Like a moonbeam in the hollow of a tree.
from Boris Pasternak’s “The Christmas Star”
Reading in 2023: Joel Miller plans to read 12 classic novels next year and review one each month. His choice for July is one Lars had talked about here: Sigrid Undset’s The Wreath: Kristin Lavransdatter (Book 1).
Arthur Machen: Dale Nelson reviews a collection of essays and stories by Welsh author Arthur Machen (1863-1947), called, “Mist and Mystery.”
Forgotten Books: Steve Donoghue had this quote nagging him recently: “Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.”
Books and Meals: “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” Many attribute this to Ralph Waldo Emerson but the best source a version of this statement could also be attributed to another man also named Emerson.
I watched an interesting movie, on a friend’s recommendation, and I think it’s worth reviewing.
The Outfit, which I watched on Amazon Prime, is a production that looks as if it was adapted from a stage play, because pretty much everything happens on just one set. But it’s not; it’s just an extremely focused drama, and it works effectively that way.
Leonard Burling (Mark Rylance) is an Englishman who runs a tailor shop in Chicago in 1956 – though he insists he’s not a tailor, but a “cutter.” Tailors, he says, just mend clothing.
His shop is located in the territory of an Irish criminal gang. The big boss is his most important customer. Although some of the people he makes suits for are anything but savory, Leonard is a complete professional, treating them all as gentlemen, studiously ignoring what they do for a living.
But what they do for a living doesn’t ignore him. They’ve installed a sealed drop box in his shop, and from time to time they leave letters and packages there for retrieval. Leonard pretends it’s not there. A worse intrusion is the attention the big boss’s son Richie (Dylan O’Brien) has been paying to Leonard’s young receptionist, Mable (Zoe Deutsch). Leonard has paternal feelings for her, and is concerned.
Then one night one of the other gangsters, Francis (Johnny Flynn) shows up with a wounded Richie. Richie has been shot by a rival gang, and he needs to lay low until their enemies have gone away. Francis demands Leonard stitch Richie’s wound up, and demands he hide a briefcase. He says the briefcase contains a tape recording made by some “rat” who’s betrayed them all. He leaves Richie there with Leonard, and the two talk.
That’s all I’ll tell you about the plot. Speaking as a writer, I wasn’t entirely happy with the plot. It’s one of those stories where a character creates an intricate plan that fools both their opponents and the audience. However, just one small miscalculation here would have been fatal, and in real life something always does go wrong. Too tight a battle plan is a recipe for disaster, as any good general knows.
Nevertheless, if you suspend your disbelief on that point, The Outfit is very impressive. Ryland is pitch-perfect as the cutter – one of those quiet men who’s got a lot more going on under the surface than anybody guesses. All the performances are excellent, though.
Cautions for language and violence. Recommended.
I was busy translating today, and then I was busy catching up on things I neglected so I could do the translating. So what to post tonight?
My latest default seems to be finding Andrew Klavan videos, because nobody does the writing job better in our time.
The clip above concerns his novel Another Kingdom, so it’s a few years old. I remember the period when he was writing it particularly, because at the time I was enjoying a brief period of personal contact with him. I’d written a glowing review of the Weiss-Bishop novels for The American Spectator, and he e-mailed me to thank me. About the same time he made a request, on the blog he was doing at the time, for recommendations on good Christian fantasies to read, saying he was writing his own first Christian fantasy and wanted to check the field out. I sent him a file of my e-book, Troll Valley.
I never heard another word from him. Ah, well. Maybe I should have sent him Death’s Doors. Or The Year of the Warrior. Or just kept silent. One never knows.