Writers everywhere say their craft is much like a reality show–their every action watched and analyzed, applauded and jeered. Looking awesome while writing or typing have been the notable skills of great authors such as Voltaire, Oscar Wilde, and Willy Makeit. The first reality star author, Dante Alighieri, is supposed to have said, if he were any more verbosely handsome, he’d be king.
Big Brother is after American authors in Kwame Alexander’s proposed show America’s Next Great Author. He’s putting together a pilot and calling for contestants who will pitch novel ideas to the judges. Six contestants will be selected for a month-long reality show retreat during which they will write the novel they pitched. And that’s not all.
“Throughout the retreat, they’ll also participate in storytelling challenges and work with mentors to develop their stories,” Publishers Weekly reports. Show co-creator David Sterry said “the challenges will ‘show off a writer’s ability to use words, think fast, be creative,’ but also help them to learn to market and promote their books ‘because writers are called upon to do so many different tasks now in modern publishing that have nothing to do with writing your book.’”
And will they have anything like their book or their sanity when they finish? (Via Prufrock)
Old Tech: Frank Adams’s Writing Tables, 16th-century English writing technology via 𝕊onja Drimmer on Twitter – “It’s especially famous for two things: its erasable pages and the survival of its original stylus.”
Bestsellers: Among the bestselling books of 2022, Colleen Hoover is making a killing. Publishers Weekly has the list. Hoover’s novel It Ends with Us is #1 and three other novels are on the list too.
National Poet: The Library of Congress has appointed the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, Ada Limón. (via Literary Saloon)
Photo: World’s largest buffalo, Jamestown, North Dakota. 1990. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
This book grabbed me on the first page, with a well-written description of a walk on the beach.
Unfortunately, it lost me soon after that. But I stayed with it out of an odd sort of train-wreck fascination.
Woman in the Waves by William J. Cook is part of a series, and apparently wraps up business from previous books. But it stands alone all right. I certainly won’t be going back for the preliminaries.
Peter Bristol is a college professor in Driftwood, Oregon, a widower who has regimented his life strictly to regain a sense of control. One day, on his weekly walk on the beach, he sees a woman in a wedding gown walking into a heavy surf. Although he tries to rescue her, she’s gone in a moment.
Then, not long after, he finds a woman’s severed arm on the beach. On one of its fingers is a valuable diamond ring.
Policeman Charley Whitehorse is chief of police in Driftwood. In spite of the coincidence of Peter reporting both incidents, he doesn’t suspect him. His thoughts can’t resist turning to a man he knows to be a killer, who eluded him in a previous case – another college professor with a sexual taste for young coeds.
The story itself was okay, though melodramatic at the end. But the storytelling was highly amateurish. It read very much like a lot of well-meant Christian fiction – and often slipped into theological discussions. But no particular faith was affirmed, and a fair amount of profanity was present. Also there was premarital sex without criticism.
The author’s main problem was over-writing, something I complain about in a lot of my reviews. One of the characters asks at one point, “Is everybody around here becoming a [expletive deleted] philosopher?” A moment of self-awareness by the author, because everybody does philosophize in this book. Which leads to another problem – all the characters think and talk the same way. Gangsters and cops and college professors – you can’t tell them apart by their speech. In general, it’s a good idea to convey information to the reader through thought and dialogue rather than information dumps. But there are limits. Not everybody thinks out everything they’re doing every time they perform habitual acts, but they do in this book. A lot of very unnecessary information gets conveyed.
Also, the characters tend to make theatrical gestures, like leaping up and shaking their fists at the heavens. Scenes like that need to be used judiciously, if at all.
So I did not enjoy Woman in the Waves, and I do not recommend it.
June 24: Reporting from Gardermoen Airport in Oslo, where I am spending more of my life than I ever wished. It’s been a long day, and I’m only about half-way through.
I got up, not too early, and Trygve asked me if I wanted to see some more sights before I left. Why not? He took me to various places. We saw the Utne Hotel in Utne (which has no connection to his family, though he is related to the people who built the Ullensvang Hotel).
He took me to a fascinating place I’d never heard of (that I remembered). It’s Agatunet, the only partially preserved medieval klyngtun in Norway (if I remember correctly). A klyngtun was what I described the other day, where all the neighbors on various parcels on a farm lived clustered together in something like a village. One part of the tun’s main building, the Lagmandshus, was bujlt in 1221 according to dendrochronology. It was the home of Sven Bjorgulfsson Aga, a lawspeaker who was mysteriously murdered a little later and found beheaded across the fjord. Never solved. Otherwise, Agatun is a rare surviving klyngtun even without the medieval building.
The dark-colored end of this building is the surviving part of the 13th Century Lawman’s house in Agatunet.Genuine 13th Century wooden wall.Original carvings in the wood.Inside the courtroom.The other side of the building. Less interesting, but the light was better on this side.
We drove up to Voss, stopping for a few more photo opportunities…
Voss, I think.
…and had lunch in Voss. Biffsnirper, an unusual Norwegian dish consisting of shredded tags of beef which you dip in a sauce. Served with French fries and a salad. I quite liked it. Not sure what the sauce was.
Biffsnirper.
Finally we went to the bus station and figured out what I was supposed to do with my suitcase (keep it with me) and where to get on the train. Trygve and I said goodbye. He really delivered a tremendous visit, especially considering how I jerked him around about the dates. It seemed to mean a lot to him that, after 16 years, he’d been able to keep his promise to take me to Svelland farm. It meant a lot to me, too.
The Bergensbanen is considered one of the most beautiful train rides in the world. It takes something over seven hours, and crosses the Hardangervidda plateau and stops at various localities headed for Oslo. I arrived some time after 10:00 p.m.
I’d been told that there were buses to the airport right there, and that I could just ask someone where to find them. In fact, I spent about an hour and a half wandering through the railway station, across the footbridge to the bus station, and back. Almost nobody was working at that hour. I saw no security officers. The people I worked up my nerve to ask knew nothing.
Finally I decided to just take the airport train, which was clearly signed and for which buying a ticket was easy. The track was easy to find too. So that’s how I got to the airport, a little after midnight.
Since then I’ve been vegetating here at the airport. If I had any class I’d have gotten a room at a motel and slept decently, but I nodded in a chair, reading when I couldn’t sleep (which was most of the time). I was waiting for instructions to appear on the big board to tell me where to check in. Finally I stopped checking (didn’t want to lose my seat) and arbitrarily chose 9:00 a.m. as the time I’d check again. The desk number was up by then. I proceeded down to desk 2, where there was a very, very long line doing that switchback, stay-between-the-ropes Disney thing. I assume they were understaffed due to the strike. I got my boarding pass at last, went through security, and got over to the gate side, where I now sit recharging my cell phone and waiting for the time to come to go to the gate. Many challenges lie ahead.
Final note: Challenges indeed. The flight to Reykjavik was packed and uncomfortable. I asked about Lost & Found at the airport, to see if I could get back the Amazon Fire I lost. They told me it had to be done online. The check-in line was long again, but the flight to New York was only about half full, and thus comfortable. At JFK customs took forever, and then security took forever and ever, amen. I ended up missing my connection, spent a night in a cheap hotel in Jamaica, NY, got onto a (delayed) flight to Minneapolis on standby, and finally arrived after 10:00 p.m.
I refuse to think about all that. My trip to Norway was, considered in itself, a wonderful experience and could hardly have gone better. Many thanks to all the friends and family who went to such trouble to make it such a good time for me.
Daring adventures, whimsical worlds and fantastical creatures – this family has experienced it all 💛 We can’t wait for you to meet them on screen this winter. #WingfeatherSagapic.twitter.com/rWtD0AYzJr
The first season of the animated adaptation of Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga will be streaming from Angel Studios after Christmas 2022.
Angel Studios is the company responsible for The Chosen series as well as two clean comedy shows, Drybar Comedy and Freelancers (The first season of Freelancers is mad-cap hilarious.)
The interview has a few points of interest, and I want to share only one of them here. Wall talked about some of the difficulties in finding partnering studios who may push or insist their story hit certain cultural values they don’t want to hit. Angel Studios said, “You guys make your show. Like, we’re happy to provide feedback for what we think works, you know, audience metrics and that sort of thing. But you know your people, you know your content, go make that.”
Netflix wouldn’t have it that way. Wall said, [edited] “We were told they’re not going to do Wingfeather Saga, they’re not into it over at Netflix, because it’s patriarchal in structure. And we’re not going to do those kinds of stories. . . . because we have a grandfather and a mother and these kids that live together and like we’re not into that. It has to be, you know, a single mom or a dad and any other kind of gender or sexual things you can put in there, they’re into it.”
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.
