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Prayer request

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Got this from our friend Roy Jacobsen, of Writing, Clear and Simple, who lives in Fargo:

If you decide it’s not appropriate for Brandywine Books, I understand; however, if you’d post a request for prayers for the safety of people in the Red River Valley, I’d greatly appreciate it.

They’re predicting a 41 foot crest on Saturday—that’s a foot higher than our last big flood in ’97, and the highest on record. We’re cautiously optimistic, but it’s a near run thing.

It’s appropriate, all right.

From what I hear, they’re having trouble getting volunteers to help with sandbagging up there. I can’t help wondering if that’s partly a result of one of the “lessons of Katrina”–that the federal government is responsible for everything.

For the record, Roy isn’t one of the shirkers. He’s been out filling sandbags, and the weather’s pretty nasty.

Uncategorized

Before We Learn the Truth

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“Whenever politicians declare a crisis, or an emergency, watch out. Chances are this means they want to impose something before the public discovers the truth.”

— Cal Thomas, in his column today.

Fiction, Reviews

Grave Goods, by Ariana Franklin

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It should be clear by now that I’m an appalling sexist, most especially in regard to novels written by women. There are certainly female authors I like (Sigrid Undset, Dorothy Sayers and P. D. James come to mind), but I approach novels written by women with almost (not quite; that would be impossible) the same level of trepidation I experience when approaching an actual woman in real life. Female novelists, in my experience, tend to a) write their male characters badly, and b) view the world through a Gender Studies lens.

I quickly decided that Ariana Franklin was an author in that mold as I read the historical mystery, Grave Goods. But persevering to the end, I decided I had been unjust (to a degree). Continue reading Grave Goods, by Ariana Franklin →

Fiction, Reviews

A Quiet Flame, by Philip Kerr

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Raymond Chandler, creator of the archetypal fictional detective Philip Marlowe, famously wrote of the hard-boiled hero in his essay, “The Simple Art of Murder,”

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid….

The question posed by author Philip Kerr in his Bernie Gunther novels would seem to be, “What if the streets were even meaner than those of Philip Marlowe’s Los Angeles? What if a man very like Marlowe had been a detective in Berlin in the 1930s?”

I had never heard of Philip Kerr before I got the offer of some free review proofs from G. P. Putnam’s (I love being a book blogger). But I’ll have to find the earlier books in this series now. A Quiet Flame is pure, classic hard-boiled, worthy of Chandler and Hammet, with an original twist. Continue reading A Quiet Flame, by Philip Kerr →

Writing

John McWhorter on English Problems

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Problems or inconsistencies with English: “But Shakespeare is not assumed to have been in his cups when he wrote in The Comedy of Errors, ‘There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me / As I were their well-acquainted friend’ (Act IV, Scene 111). Later, Thackeray in Vanity Fair tosses off ‘A person can’t help their birth.’ …”

Because the rest of us think it’s proper English to say, “One should take his opinion outside,” one and his being singular. In the above examples, Shakespeare says, “a man I meet . . . as I were their friend.”

I’m right to complain, aren’t I?

Poetry

Swift On An Ill-Managed House

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LET me thy properties explain:

A rotten cabin dropping rain:

Chimneys, with scorn rejecting smoke;

Stools, tables, chairs, and bedsteads broke.

Here elements have lost their uses,

Air ripens not, nor earth produces:

In vain we make poor Sheelah toil,

Fire will not roast, nor water boil.

Through all the valleys, hills, and plains,

The Goddess Want, in triumph reigns:

And her chief officers of state,

Sloth, Dirt, and Theft, around her wait.

“On An Ill-Managed House” By Jonathan Swift

Writing

Similes Like Childhood Odors

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This is from a published work. “Her pensive frown drew me like a smell from childhood.”

You know, I’m pretty familiar with childhood smells. I can smell one now, as a matter of fact, a powerful, pervading smell from a cute, little child. But this simile doesn’t work for other reasons. Let’s talk about it.

My first thought is the writer has mixed two senses. Her face or her thoughtful, moody appearance appeals to him. He sees her and remembers … an odor?

What if he saw she was deep in thought, and frowning in an adorable way? Perhaps she frowned over her hands at the floor. I walked up to her and said, “You remind me of a cookie.” Anyway, my good wife, who is not frowning now, said this sentence and the paragraph with it would be improved by focusing on the girl, not the narrator’s emotional reaction to her.

The sentence reminds me of these: “Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.”

“She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.”

That’s good writing.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture