A surprising number of older mysteries are showing up these days, a development that pleases me a lot. Such books are enjoyably un-Woke, by and large. Dead Folks’ Blues, by Steven Womack, is a pretty good book with roots in classic hard-boiled.
Harry James Denton is recently divorced, and recently fired from his job as a newspaper reporter in Nashville, Tennessee. He moved into a smaller apartment, switched to a smaller, older car, and set up as a private eye. So far, most of his income has come from repossessing cars and skip tracing for a buddy in that business, and his operation is sinking fast.
Then in walks Rachel Fletcher, blonde, beautiful and rich. Once upon a time, Rachel and Harry were in love. But they drifted apart, and she married a successful surgeon. Now she’s living the good life.
Except it’s not as good as it looks. Her husband, she tells Harry, has a gambling problem. She’s pretty sure someone has threatened his life over unpaid debts. She’s willing to pay Harry – generously – to keep an eye on him.
The money, on top of Rachel herself, is irresistible. But this case will be full of surprises. Harry will find himself unconscious on top of a corpse, followed around by sinister characters, and beaten within an inch of his life before – belatedly – the whole plot comes together for him.
Dead Folks’ Blues was fun to read. Author Womack does a pretty fair job with his hard-boiled narration, though he needs to learn when to stop talking and trust the reader to get the joke. Also, I figured out Whodunnit pretty early.
Not sure if I’ll carry on with this series. It shows promise, but there are suggestions of leftish political leanings – and such things tend to only get worse. But it was worth reading. I do recommend it.
June 22: A day of disaster that ended better than I feared. “The thing that I have greatly feared has come upon me,” as it says in Job. I’d worried that this trip was going too well, and today I discovered a serious problem – all of my own making.
Yesterday I told Trygve that I needed to take time to fill out some US Customs re-entry forms (turned out they didn’t apply to me after all) and book my tickets for my bus trip to Oslo Friday. I chose a bus to ride, started the checkout, and came up against a problem I’ve encountered before and should have remembered. I can’t buy anything online with a credit card in this country. They want to text me a security number, but the cell phone tied to the card is my American one, which doesn’t work in Europe.
Then I realized that I’d made the same calendar mistake I made before with Trygve. First I told him I was coming Tuesday, and then (for some unknown reason) I bought a ticket for Monday. Now, I realized (to my horror) that my plane leaves Friday, not Saturday. So Thursday needs to be my travel day. That’s tomorrow.
I apologized profusely to Trygve, who seemed fairly sanguine, however. After trying a couple things, including a call to my credit card company, he said the best thing was to drive to Voss and buy a train ticket to Oslo there. This is the Bergensbanen, a famous rail line I’ve ridden before. We weren’t sure my card would work there either, but what choice did we have?
Statue of Knut Rockne in Voss. You can tell from the look on his face he thinks I’m a moron.
We drove to Voss (famous as the birthplace of Knut Rockne, and a beautiful place in its own right), and found a ticket machine in the entry hall – out of order. You can’t buy a ticket from an agent anymore. It’s all automated. Trygve led me up to the platform, and we found a machine there that did sell me a ticket. And my card worked.
Sigh.
Relieved, we did some driving around, doing some of the sightseeing Trygve had been planning but now will be prevented from doing. Three waterfalls, plus the Norwegian Nature Center in Eidfjord.
I forget what these falls are called. Voringfoss, maybe.This one is called the Skjervsfossen. I could have gotten a better picture if I’d stepped closer to the edge of the observation platform, but I didn’t want to show off.
Up to the Hardangervidda plateau itself (at least the edge of it), where we looked at Sysenvatn, an artificial lake built for hydroelectricity and some other sights on the plateau.
Just a random, picturesque spot.
Then we drove back (it took a while). I was feeling better by now, though I still feel dumb. I think I ought to have my mental acuity checked by a doctor when I get home.
We went out again about an hour later to pick Trygve’s son Kjell up from dayschool. We then went to a few picturesque spots above the town to take pictures. It really is quite dramatic. I think I’m going into Sublimity Shock. I need the Midwest to get my blood sugar level back down.
Tomorrow we may do some more sightseeing before my train leaves, but we need to give ourselves time to get to the station, because those narrow mountain roads are prone to long traffic delays.
Well, I have done it. I have completed reading Paul Kingsnorth’s Buccmaster Trilogy. Frankly, if I’d known what I was getting into, I’d probably have given it a miss. But in the end, it did grab me.
Alexandria, the third book of the trilogy, almost seems to take us back to the 11th Century setting of the first book, The Wake. It’s about people living a primitive life in fen country. Only this isn’t the past, it’s the post-apocalyptic future, some time after global warming (one assumes) has permanently heated the earth and raised the water levels.
The main characters, who speak in the same kind of crude old English dialect as Buccmaster in The Wake, are all that remains of one of the few remaining, primitive human tribes. Once there were hundreds of them, but they’re down to seven. There are a patriarch and a matriarch, a married couple with a young daughter, one other old man and a young man, who has no sexual outlet except for carrying on an affair with the married woman.
They are a matriarchal society, and they worship an earth goddess. Their creed is the importance of the body – there can be no life without the body. Their great enemy is Wayland. (We remember Wayland as Buccmaster’s god in The Wake. But now Wayland isn’t a blacksmith god, but the guiding spirit of Alexandria, which is an artificial intelligence bank into which most of humanity has uploaded its consciousnesses. Emissaries from Alexandria, strange semi-human creatures in red cloaks, constantly dog them, tempting one tribe member after another away into the supposed delights of Alexandria.
Toward the end, when the villagers have to flee rising waters and head for Glastonbury, where they expect final illumination, I began to actually be engaged with this story. Although there’s no Christianity here, except in passing allusions, the central question is a profoundly Christian one – what does it mean to have a body and a soul? Do body and soul have to be at war? Can there be a marriage between them?
I don’t necessarily recommend Alexandria or the Buccmaster Trilogy, unless your brow is pretty high as a reader. But it’s a meaningful literary exercise from an author who’s now a Christian.
June 21: Up bright and early for the big day of this leg of the visit. Trygve drove us to Odda, which he told me is where the series Ragnarok was filmed (Odda was a good place for that project, as it combines stunning natural beauty with some genuine industrial blight. I helped translate Ragnarok, but had missed that fact), and we met his uncle Knut there. Knut joined us for the trip.
First he drove us to Rosendal Baroniet, the only barony in Norway, and long the place to which many of our ancestors paid rent . I embarrassed myself a little by asking (when the guide asked) for a Norwegian translation of his talk. I then rescinded that, because I realized it would prolong the tour, and I really needed to use a bathroom. I finally asked him to direct me to one, which he did (a staff toilet), so I missed a portion of the tour. Generally I could understand what he was talking about, though I missed a lot of the details. Most of the details?
Rosendal Barony, main residence.
Then we drove on, around the Åkrafjord, to Åkra itself, where we met a local fellow named Lars Erik, who was delighted to tell us all about the place. He showed us a place on Vika farm, across the road, where a fire devastated the tun (cluster of buildings where various families on the farm lived together) when it burned spectacularly in 1790 (?). Lars Swelland’s father, if I recall rightly, was born on Vika farm.
The old tun site at Vika.
Then to the old church. The present building began construction in the 1790s. This was after the people started refusing to enter the old stave church, which was swaying in high winds so that the bell rang by itself. It was later remodeled a couple times.
Aakra Church.
Sadly, the remodels removed a number of wall paintings in a naïve style, of which only a few traces remain.
A trace of the old church wall paintings, preserved under a door frame. It’s thought to be Samson and the lion.
The church possesses a 12th century brass and lapis lazuli crucifix, its oldest possession
There is also the old baptismal font…
… the original baptismal basin (not in the old font now)…
…and the pulpit.
The original wood joinery is visible in many places, including very handsome “ships’ knees” pillars along the walls.
Outside there’s a long stone on which they used to set coffins before funerals…
and several soapstone crosses, a couple in a Celtic cross pattern, which seem to have been “erased” and re-inscribed many times, so there’s no way of saying how old they are. These crosses are chained to the wall to prevent theft.
The harbor at Aakra, from the churchyard.
We paused for a pancake and jam snack at a nearby café (next to the general store), and then we started climbing the mountain. I’m probably exaggerating when I say the drive took about an hour, but that’s how it felt – switching back and forth along narrow paths and finally gravel roads. We were very high up. Trygve kept apologizing for the bad weather, but I found it grimly beautiful, suitable for a Romantic painting.
When we finally reached Indre Svelland, Trygve found the neighboring farmer, Knut, who’d said he’d be happy to show us the old farmyard. It turned out to be just across a couple fences – the old house is long gone. Just a rocky place on the hillside.
Old site of Indre Svelland farm.
Knut ‘s old photo of what the place used to look like. I can’t recognize anything from the picture above.
But he was delighted to tell us all about “America Lars,” as my great-grandfather was known to the neighbors, because he came back twice (before his final, permanent return to Norway) to visit.
I’ve written of his story here before. Briefly, though he was quite successful as a farmer in Minnesota, Lars Swelland got overwhelmed after the death of his wife. When his son, who was renting his farm, missed a payment during the Depression, and he received one (1) dunning letter from the mortgage company, Lars packed up, got on a train for New York, and then boarded a ship back to Norway. Telegrams sent to intercept him either missed him or were ignored. The farm was lost to the family, and he spent the rest of his life in penury — somewhere else than Indre Svelland. He died during the Occupation.
Knut and his wife invited us in for coffee (I drank some, because it was the only low-sugar beverage on offer). We discovered that we’re third cousins. so we constituted a happy family gathering. They were very interested in the family in America, and we had a long chat. They showed me a door in their house that was salvaged from Lars’ old home. Nicely made – I seem to recall that Lars’ father, who made it, was a skilled handyman.
Knut and his wife with my great-great-grandfather’s door.The view from Svelland farm.
We’d been out several hours now, but we stopped on the way back in the town of Rosendal for some supper. It turned out to be hard to get supper in Rosendal. Everything was shut down. At last we found what seemed to be a sort of nightclub, where they served us hamburgers (Knut had a chicken salad). Not bad either. I picked up the check.
Rosendal.
Finally we headed back to Odda, dropped Uncle Knut off, and then headed home. It felt like a long drive (we were gone almost exactly twelve hours).
Lots of beauty, lots of new experiences and people met, and a bucket list experience. It was a big day. I’m ready for bed now.
Another oldie from John D. MacDonald to review. You Live Once is not, in my opinion, his best work. But I may be prejudiced. (Ya think?)
Back in the mid-50s, when You Live Once was published, there was a particular kind of corporate culture common to several major American corporations (I had an uncle who was involved in this). The company would move young executives around, relocating them every couple years, putting them to work in various divisions on various jobs. The idea was to make them generalists, able to step in and take over wherever they were needed.
Clint Sewell is part of this culture, though unusual in being a bachelor. That suits his boss, Dodd Raymond, very well. Dodd is carrying on an affair with Mary Olan, a wealthy local girl, notoriously promiscuous. Dodd brings Clint along on double dates with his wife and Mary, allowing him to spend time with Mary while Clint amuses his wife. Clint has tried his own luck with Mary, but she put him off.
It’s a great arrangement for Dodd, until everything goes foul. Clint wakes up in his apartment one morning with a bad headache, and finds Mary dead in his closet – strangled with his own belt. Panicking, Clint drives the body to the woods and dumps it (feeling guilty). But that doesn’t put the police off long. Soon he’s a fugitive, looking for someone to turn to for help.
I thought You Live Once was more of a programmer than most of MacDonald’s books, more of a potboiler cranked out for a buck. But my judgment is clouded because the story employs a trope I dislike. That trope may have been quite fresh in 1956, but it’s pretty predictable today. And it’s one that annoys me.
So I don’t give You Live Once my highest rating. Your may like it better.
June 20: Up, fed, and generally on time for my trip to Ullandsvang via Hardanger. Caught the Kystbussen (Coastal Bus) at 7:45 or so, and it took me by way of several tunnels and a ferry ride. Tore was waiting for me at Haugesund, and we set out north in his car.
Change in plan, not for today, but for my ride home. Tore said the strike was spreading at the Oslo airport, and he believed the best thing for me to do, to avoid missing my plane, was to take the Haukeli Express bus on Friday. Easy to get a bus from the bus station to the airport, he says. I’ll go with his advice. I rely on the kindness of new acquaintances. Also, I’ve ridden the Haukeli Express before, and liked it very much.
We were met at the town of Etne by Trygve’s uncle, Knut. Knut knows a lot about local history, and filled the time before Trygve got off work by showing me several local sites.
One was Stødle Church, on the site of the farm of Erling Skakke.
I’ve written about Erling Skakke (1115-1179) before in this journal. This was not my Erling (Skjalgsson), but another nobleman, even more powerful in his prime. He participated in a Crusade along with Ragnvald Kali Kolsson, Earl of Orkney (whose poems I reviewed on this blog once upon a time). During a sea battle in the Mediterranean, he took a wound in the neck. It healed up, but the muscles tightened on that side, so that he always held his head crooked thereafter (“skakke” means tilted). He married Kristin Sigurdsdatter, daughter of King Sigurd the Crusader.
When there was a temporary dearth of viable candidates to inherit the throne of Norway, Erling worked a deal with the church to get his son Magnus crowned, on the strength of his being a king’s grandson. This violated the law, which said that inheritance went through the male line. So there was resistance to the innovation, and new claimants appeared, and this launched Norway’s Age of Civil War, a long and bloody time. Erling was regent during Magnus’ minority, and remained powerful up until the time when both of them died in battle against the Birkebeiners (Birchlegs).
Erling Skakke’s view, from Stodle farm.
Uncle Knut obtained a key at the hotel to get inside the church. The interior is what I believe to be simple Romanesque, with a small chancel, and a tiny chapel at the very end. This small chapel, I am told, was probably built by Erling himself in the 12th Century.
Interior of Stodle Church. Note the naive paintings on the left-hand wall, the chancel, and the small inner chancel at the end.Chancel.Erling Skakke’s inner chancel.
The portions built later are decorated with naïve images of the gospel writers (as I recall), and also of the five foolish virgins. These paintings were apparently uncovered during the last restoration of the church. There is also a hogback gravestone outside the church wall, which reminded me of English ones. A Viking Age style.
Hogback gravestone.
There was also Grindheim church, which features a genuine rune stone set up against one wall (its inscription pretty much unreadable today, alas), and a fascinating stone cross. This one has had its capital knocked off, but has a notable feature – there’s a hole through the junction of the arms. This is reminiscent of Irish crosses, and suggests an Irish influence
Irish-influenced stone cross at Grindheim Church.
He took me to his home, where his wife Valborg made a delicious lunch. Then they both took me out to a nearby nature area for a walk through the woods. As we were about to leave we met a couple they knew coming in. They told us someone else from America had recently been through, asking about Vika farm (one of my ancestral places).
Then back to the house for dessert. By now we were all great friends. Trygve showed up, had some dessert himself, and then we took pictures all around and headed further into the Etne region, and on to Hardanger.
I’m already forgetting all the places we saw. As I mentioned before, Etne is a remarkably beautiful place, and Hardanger is the same but more dramatic. Trygve showed me the places where his family had lived in the past. He showed me the farm where my brother’s wife’s family came from.
Across the water, Frette farm, where my sister-in-law’s family came from.
He showed me a place to get a better picture of the Langfoss waterfall, which is indeed quite long.
Langfossen.
Also the Låtefossen, a magnificent double falls.
Laatefossen.
Kyrping, a picturesque cove at the edge of the Åkrafjord, home of Kyrping-Orm, father of Erling Skakke.
Kyrping.
Nearby was the bronze plate in the mountainside dedicated to honor the journalist Eric Severeid, whose family came from Severeid farm. We stopped for ice cream at a place where Trygve likes to shop. We drove over to Hardanger (avoiding a tunnel at one point for a more dramatic ride), which I still consider insanely beautiful.
Just a random picture taken while waiting for the light to change on a one-lane, mountainside road.
Kind of like a real-world rollercoaster, where falling off the world is a serious possibility. I was amazed at farms and homes where the driveways run upward at more than a 45⁰ angle. And in the end we drove up a similar driveway ourselves, to reach Trygve’s home.
“Through All the World Below” arranged by Alice Parker, performed by The Atlanta Singers
This traditional, anonymously written hymn is unfamiliar to me. Hymnary.org notes it is published in only a handful of hymnals, many of those being 200 years old. If those hymnals introduce this piece at all, they do so with a statement of its theme, that God is seen through his creation. The earth, the natural habits of the world, and all the tangibles of life are not merely matter and energy, devoid of spirit. Our world and ourselves are the handiwork of the Almighty.
1. Through all the world below, God is seen all around; Search hills and valleys through, There he’s found. The growing of the corn, The lily and the thorn, The pleasant and forlorn, All declare God is there, In the meadows drest in green, There he’s seen.
2. See springs of water rise, Fountains flow, rivers run; The mist below the skies Hides the sun; Then down the rain doth pour The ocean it doth roar, And dash against the shore, All to praise, in their lays, That God that ne’er declines His designs.
3. The sun, to my surprise, Speaks of God as he flies: The comets in their blaze Give him praise; The shining of the stars The moon as it appears, His sacred name declares; See them shine, all divine! The shades in silence prove God’s above.
4. Then let my station be Here on earth, as I see The sacred One in Three All agree; Through all the world is made, The forest and the glade; Nor let me be afraid, Though I dwell on the hill Since nature’s works declare God is there.
After I reviewed Dorothy L. Sayer’s Busman’s Honeymoon the other day, I recalled that a movie had actually been made of it, starring Robert Montgomery. Miss Sayers hadn’t liked it much, by all accounts. I checked to see if the film might be on YouTube, and behold it was. Obviously I had to watch and review it. (The YouTube version is called Busman’s Honeymoon, like the book, but in America it was released as Haunted Honeymoon.)
It was an interesting experience. I find I have to review it on two levels – one, as a fan of the Lord Peter Wimsey books, and second, as a “dispassionate” movie viewer.
First of all, as a Wimsey movie, it’s pretty weird. Not to say disappointing.
Robert Montgomery (a matinee idol in his day and father of Elizabeth Montgomery of “Bewitched”) looks nothing at all like Lord Peter. He doesn’t even wear a monocle. He’s an American, and speaks with that old mid-Atlantic accent that sounds British to Americans but doesn’t fool Brits.
Harriet Vane is played by Constance Cummings, another American actor, with a somewhat more convincing English accent (at least to my ear). But she’s far too pretty and… how shall I put it? dewy-eyed to be Harriet Vane.
Bunter is played (quite disappointingly) by Sir Seymour Hicks. I am sorry to report that he’s a somewhat farcical character – not as farcical as Arthur Treacher playing Jeeves in the awful film Thank You, Jeeves with David Niven, but far below the level of dignity Bunter demands.
Also oddly, Inspector Kirk, a rather innocent local policeman in the book, has now become a shrewd Scotland Yard man sent in from London. He’s played by Leslie Banks. At first I thought he’d somehow acquired Lord Peter’s monocle, but on closer examination I found that’s just the way his right eye looks.
Crutchley, the sinister handyman, is played by Robert Newton, who some years later would achieve immortality as the archetypal Long John Silver. (When you Talk Like a Pirate on Talk Like a Pirate Day, you’re imitating Robert Newton.)
In short, little attempt has been made to incarnate Miss Sayers’ beloved characters. That strikes me as a poor business decision, but it’s classic film industry procedure.
On the other hand, when I look at the film purely as cinema, I have to admit it’s not bad. And in many ways superior to the originals.
First of all, the writers have added an obstacle to the story. Lord Peter and Harriet have agreed, we are informed, to give up detecting now that they’re married. They exchange pieces of jewelry to seal the deal. This adds a nice element of conflict, as Inspector Kirk keeps tempting them with clues.
Secondly, in “opening out” the original play, the film makers have added action. Miss Sayers’ book version was also opened out from the play, but she spent most of that time in dialogue, which sometimes got repetitive. The movie gives us a manhunt on the moors and an auto accident, which up the pace and add excitement.
All in all, it’s a pretty good movie of it’s kind. It’s just not Wimsey.
The London Times said, “There was something intensely thrilling, almost weird, in the thought of these two passengers traveling across the Atlantic in the belief that their identity and their whereabouts were unknown while both were being flashed with certainty to all quarters of the civilized world.”
There was a time when “Crippen the Poisoner” was as famous as Jack the Ripper, largely because he was the first murderer whose arrest could be followed in “real time” by the public, through wireless telegraph reports. His story, along with the story of Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless, entwine to form the narrative of Erik Larson’s Thunderstruck. He performed a similar trick in his fascinating book, The Devil in the White City.
Hawley Harvey Crippen came from a respected Methodist family in Michigan. Though known as “Dr. Crippen,” he was in fact a homeopath. But he was respected by all who knew him – a tiny, balding, pop-eyed, bespectacled man, unfailingly polite and endlessly patient with everyone. Especially with his wife Cora, who was bubbly and social and domineering. She was, in descending stages, an aspiring opera singer, an aspiring Variety performer, and finally a popular hostess with the theatrical set, first in the US, then in London. She was an extravagant shopper and treated her husband as a house servant. Until…
Until he hired young Ethel Le Neve as a typist in his office, and fell in love with her. One day he announced to Cora’s friends that she’d left suddenly for America. And not long after, he told them she had died. This struck them as preposterous – gregarious Cora leaving without saying goodbye? Leaving all her clothes and jewelry behind? (Especially when they spotted Ethel wearing one of her necklaces.)
Some of them called the police, and Inspector Dew (who would become a celebrity because of this case) interviewed Crippen, who seemed plausible. But when a body was found buried in the basement, and Crippen and Ethel vanished, the hunt began.
A hunt that would have been impossible except for a brand-new invention, Wireless telegraphy, a new technology that wasn’t even perfected yet.
The other thread of this book is the story of the inventor of the Wireless, Guglielmo Marconi. Today we’d classify Marconi as someone on the autistic scale – obsessive in his interests, clueless in dealing with people. He wasn’t really a scientist – he was a tinkerer, an experimenter who followed his instincts rather than scientific principles. This annoyed real scientists, and together with his disregard for their feelings, made him a lot of enemies.
It’s an irony of this story that the murderer is nearly the most sympathetic character in it. I’m glad that author Larson chose to tell it in a dispassionate manner – it could have been maudlin.
If you like history and lots of interesting details, Thunderstruck is a fascinating book. I recommend it.
June 19: Today was not as exertive as the day before, but quite satisfactory. I slept the sleep of the just, and woke feeling OK except for the congestion I’ve been having. I doubt this is Covid, as there’s no headache and no particular sore throat, not to mention no change in my sense of taste.
My hosts were kind enough to wash my dirty clothes, and to hang them to dry.
Then we headed for the Stavanger Archaeological Museum, where they’re having a special Viking exhibition for the Hafrsfjord Jubilee. I’ve been to the museum before, and like it very much. The exhibition turned out to be free, because of the festival.
We saw a fascinating collection of Viking artefacts, many of them from the Stavanger area, though a number of them were carted off to Bergen, where they remain, in the old days before there was a museum here. We saw three fine Viking swords…
…and some of the gullgubber, mysterious images on gold foil, thought to be votive offerings to the old gods…
I’d never guessed they were as tiny as they are.
Also gold arm and neck rings, and various pieces of silver treasure.
And a piece of a ship’s dragon head, recovered from a bog, something I never knew existed. And displays of various kinds.
A piece of a dragon head.
Other rooms showed area history from other ages, back to the stone age. Of particular interest was a loop of projected video of a young blonde woman doing a sort of haka dance, wearing the famous bronze age string skirt, often depicted in history books. She was very lovely and quite topless, and I liked her right off.
The gift shop had many tempting items, but I restricted myself to a blue glass ring.
The afternoon was quiet, and we said goodbye to the nephew at last, as he was picked up for his flight back home to England.
Tomorrow I must get up early to catch my bus for the first leg of my trip to Hardanger.
