The Wordsmith has new words for the new year, such as adultescent (an adult who acts like a teenager) and commentariat (a group which analyzes or comments on the news).
I Will Put Back to Sea
I feel the winds of God today; today my sail I lift,
Though heavy, oft with drenching spray, and torn with many a rift;
If hope but light the water’s crest, and Christ my bark will use,
I’ll seek the seas at His behest, and brave another cruise.
It is the wind of God that dries my vain regretful tears,
Until with braver thoughts shall rise the purer, brighter years;
If cast on shores of selfish ease or pleasure I should be;
Lord, let me feel Thy freshening breeze, and I’ll put back to sea.
If ever I forget Thy love and how that love was shown,
Lift high the blood red flag above; it bears Thy Name alone.
Great Pilot of my onward way, Thou wilt not let me drift;
I feel the winds of God today, today my sail I lift.
These words are by Jessie Adams in 1906.
“No bigger than a calf’s skin”
The internet was down most of the day at work today, so a number of things I wanted to do either didn’t get done or didn’t get finished. Sometimes I wonder about this whole computer thing. Imagine an office in 1927, and somebody comes to the boss and says, “I’ve got great new office machine for you. It’ll allow you to do your bookkeeping in a fraction of the time. It’ll streamline your correspondence and printing in ways you won’t believe. It’ll provide information from around the world before the local newspaper knows it.”
And the boss, being no fool, says, “What’s the catch?” (No doubt he’d take a drag on a cigarette before speaking, because everybody smoked in the office back then.)
“Well, the machines will break down every down and then. Fairly regularly, really. And when that happens, your business will basically grind to a standstill. And even when it’s working, your employees will waste a lot of time playing with it”
Would he be willing to invest in something like that? Maybe he would. But I bet he’d think long and hard first.
Dirty Harry over at Libertas speculates amusingly on how “The Yearling” would be handled if it were filmed today.
Dr. John Eidsmoe, author of Christianity and the Constitution, is at our school teaching a seminar just now, and he dropped in to my office today. We got onto the subject of Snorri Sturlusson’s Heimskringla (the sagas of the kings of Norway), one of our mutual favorite books. I mentioned to him one of my favorite stories from the book, one which is included in the Everyman edition, translated by Samuel Laing, but not in the other two translations I own (this is due to a difference in the source texts used).
It comes from the saga of the sons of Magnus Barefoot: Sigurd the Crusader and Eystein the Good. Eystein, being good, died young, but Sigurd lived to an overrripe old age, and appears to have suffered from dementia. Toward the end he announced that he was going to divorce his faithful and much-beloved queen, and marry a younger woman.
The bishop of Bergen at the time was named Magne. Bishop Magne went to confront the king at his hall, and brought along a younger priest, also named Sigurd, who would eventually become bishop himself, and who reported what happened.
Bishop Magne sent word for the king to come out of the hall and speak with him. The king came out, with a sword in his hand.
The bishop refused the king’s invitation to come in and dine. Instead he condemned the king’s decision and told him he forbade “this wickedness.”
While he thus spoke he stood straight up, as if stretching out his neck to the blow, and as if ready if the king chose to let the sword fall; and the priest Sigurd… has declared that the sky appeared to him no bigger than a calf’s skin, so frightful did the appearance of the king present itself to him. The king returned to the hall, however, without saying a word….
Then the bishop went to his own house, and Father Sigurd noticed that he seemed extremely merry. He asked the bishop if he wasn’t frightened, and if he didn’t think it would be a good idea to get out of town.
Then said the bishop, “It appears to me more likely that he will not act so; and besides, what death could be better, or more desirable, than to leave life for the honour of God? or to die for the holy cause of Christianity and our own office, by preventing that which is not right? I am so cheerful because I have done what I ought to do.”
If you’re wondering how it all turned out, the king got his wedding in the end, by going south to Stavanger and bribing the bishop there with a lot of gifts.
But I love that story about Bishop Magne, and particularly Father Sigurd’s description of the sky appearing “no bigger than a calf’s skin.”
I’ve never read a better description of the psychological effect of fear. That man was a storyteller.
Eloquence: Most Powerful When Mixed with Truth
In the Wall Street Journal, Ian Brunskill writes, “Eloquence is a quality as much mistrusted as admired.” He goes on to review Denis Donoghue’s book, On Eloquence. “Mr. Donoghue, as teacher, essayist and author, has often been in the front line of the resulting “culture wars.” “On Eloquence” is his latest broadside. . . . [He believes] the main attribute of eloquence is gratuitousness: its place in the world is to be without place or function, its mode is to be intrinsic. Like beauty, it claims only the privilege of being a grace note in the culture that permits it.”
Alan’s Seven Books
Alan of Thinklings recommends seven books he read last year, including this one from Wendell Berry:
The Unsettling of America. There are certain authors about whom I have to say, “but of course I don’t agree with everything he says.” Wendell Berry is one of those guys. He probably wouldn’t approve of the time I spend commuting in my truck, my fancy phone that keeps me hooked up to the office 24/7, or my fondness for frozen pizzas. By the same token, I think he could stand to read a few books on economics. But he is a good corrective to many of the more/faster/now obsessions of contemporary life.
“Don’t go it alone,” says the loner
Probably the most famous New Zealander in the world, Sir Edmund Hillary, died today. He was a major hero when I was a boy. We all heard the story of how he conquered Mount Everest in the company of his faithful Sherpa, Tenzing Norway. (It’s not generally known that Tenzing Norway was a cousin of the author Neville Shute Norway.*)
I finished Dean Koontz’ The Taking today. This one was pretty much straight horror, so I didn’t like it as much as some of his other stuff. (That’s personal taste. I find horror oppressive.)
Nevertheless, I ought to add that The Taking appears to be a somewhat different take on a topic covered more extensively (and not as well) in some recent fiction on the Christian market (I won’t mention any names). This book handled the subject far better, and without preaching. There was also a twist at the end that I liked a lot.
In slightly related news, this awful story has been reported all over the web. A man in Idaho, apparently convinced that he bore “the mark of the Beast” on his hand, cut the hand off with a circular saw and cooked it in his microwave. A literal reading of Matthew 5:30 is to blame, I suspect.
I hate it when things like this happen. Not only because it makes Christianity and the Bible look bad, but because of the tragedy of a man who (apparently) sincerely believes, but has gone far off the rails.
I don’t know the man’s spiritual history, but I have a guess. I’d bet he’s not involved in any kind of consistent Christian fellowship. I suspect he’s a loner, reading his Bible alone and interpreting it alone, relying on his personal feelings.
I know—I don’t have a right to criticize. I’m a loner myself, and getting more alienated with each passing year. But perhaps that makes what I’m saying “testimony against interest,” and more valuable.
The Bible is very clear. We aren’t meant to be Christians alone. Every Christian should study 1 Corinthians 12. Verse 27 says, “Now you [in the plural] are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” We were meant to function together as a body, doing together the things none of us can do alone, and restraining one another’s excesses.
Going it alone is like—well, it’s like being a hand that’s been cut off with a circular saw.
May the Lord have mercy.
*This is a gag. And a very tasteless one.
How To Write a Book. No, No, For Real
H.S. Key blogs, “Everybody wants to write a novel or a screenplay. If you don’t, you’re lying to yourself. And if you lie to yourself, you might just make a great writer.” He cites an article by George Singleton on what to do if you want to write.
Writers on Film Strike Try Kid Lit
Some of the writers locked out of their film and tv jobs by the Hollywood union strike are working on children’s books for a more personal creative outlet. Steven Zeitchik reports:
“It’s kind of a nice way to do something creative at a time when we’re having a hard time doing our bread-and-butter work,” said David N. Weiss, a “Shrek 2” and “Rugrats” writer who recently turned in a first draft of “Carl the Frog,” about a cannibalistic amphibian. . . .
The writers are realistic about the financial rewards of a children’s book . . .
“I don’t think anyone thinks they’re going to make a lot of money on it,” Weiss said. “But creatively and emotionally, the chance to work on something that’s personal without the presence of a massive corporation is special right now.”
Neville Shute Norway!
Hey! Did you know that Neville Shute Norway is an anagram for Easy Hull vote-winner? It is! Not only that, but “Norway, the land of the viking” is an anagram for “Heavily farted know-nothing!” Can you believe it?! My source, for our friends in the press.
The Good Guy, by Dean Koontz
Sorry to do another Koontz review. But Koontz is who I’m reading just now, and the day hasn’t produced any other subject material—at least none that I noticed. If I were James Lileks, I could get a couple thousand words out of how I avoided eye contact with the guy trying to sell Strib subscriptions in the grocery store tonight.
Oh, I had my dialogue worked out. He’d say, “Interested in subscribing to the Star Tribune?”
And I’d be like, “No.”
And he’d say, “Why not?”
And I’d be like, “I can get my beliefs and politics insulted for free any time I like. Why should I pay the Strib to insult them?”
But in real life those exchanges never work out like you’ve scripted them, so I just rushed by, pretending he wasn’t there.
Anyway, to the book. The Good Guy begins with the hero, Timothy Carrier, a master mason, sitting alone in his favorite bar. A man takes a stool near him and starts a conversation as if he knows him. Assuming the man has confused him with someone else, Timothy plays along for a few minutes, just as a lark.
It stops being funny when the man hands him an envelope containing ten thousand dollars, along with a photograph of a woman he wants him to murder, and then rushes out.
Not only is Timothy not in the least interested in murdering anyone, but he finds the woman’s face extremely attractive.
So begins an odyssey in which Timothy locates the woman, a novelist named Linda Paquette, and goes on the run with her, fleeing a murderer who is a talented professional as well a total, narcissistic sociopath.
But there’s hope. Because Timothy isn’t just a good guy. He has considerable resources of his own, and the conspirators made a very big mistake when they stumbled over him.
The Good Guy is one of Koontz’ recent books, and he’s become as good at building a story as (we’re informed) Timothy is at laying bricks. Timothy is just the kind of guy the reader wants to be, and Linda just the kind of woman he’d like to fall in love with (or vice versa if the reader’s a woman. If I know anything about women. Which I don’t). I put the book down from time to time, because I had to sleep and work, but it was a struggle. The villain was interesting, frightening and believable, but Timothy and Linda caught my full sympathy and held it.
I’m kind of glad Koontz doesn’t do a lot of sequels. That means Timothy and Linda will probably live happily ever after, without running into any more ruthless serial killers. That’s kind of nice to think about.