I watched this video discussion yesterday, and it had me ready to stand up and cheer. I don’t agree with either of these men entirely (though I respect both immensely), but the essence of their theme is exactly what I’ve had on my mind recently.
In Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis remarks that, although he was an atheist as a young man, he found — to his annoyance — that all the writers who really spoke to him believed in God. I think most of the real creativity in art today comes, to some extent, from our side. Some of the best artists don’t even know they’re on the Road yet, but they are.
I’ve made great strides with the InDesign software I’m struggling with, but the last few intractable problems still defy… tracting. And I don’t have a book to review tonight.
So I offer the video above, from a podcast called “Order of Man” (about which I know naught, but I found nothing objectionable when I watched). It’s about an hour, and it features an interview with Andrew Klavan about his latest novel, The House of Love and Death (which you really ought to read). He also discusses his journey to faith.
A young woman, slender as cigarette smoke, drifted toward him across the lawn. A breeze blew, bearing the first biting chill of winter. An armada of cumulous clouds sailed across the blue sky. Winter could picture the smoke-thin girl borne away on the breeze and vanishing. Yet on she came.
I’ve reached a strange point in my strange life when I no longer get Christmas presents. And yet I do get Christmas a present each year, ever since Andrew Klavan started writing his Cameron Winter books. These are my Christmas presents (a little early), even if I do have to buy them myself, and I await them with under-the-tree anticipation.
Klavan does the thing he does, perhaps, better than anyone alive. And it all comes together seamlessly in this idiosyncratic series of novels about a former government black-ops assassin, retired to teach English at a small midwestern college, but occasionally intruding himself into a murder investigation. Because he has a “strange habit of mind,” an instinctive ability to project himself into crimes, analyzing motives and methods.
In The House of Love and Death, the third in the series, Cam reads a news story about a multiple murder in Maidenvale, a small town not far from Chicago. In a mansion in a gated community, three members of a wealthy family were gunned down, along with their nanny. The police suspect the slain daughter’s boyfriend, a Mexican-American boy who attended her private school. But Cam senses a hidden logic in the crime, a logic he can’t yet put his finger on. So he drives to Maidenvale to ask questions. He finds the local police detective hostile, and adamant the boyfriend is innocent. A female security guard at the gated community is certain the boy did it. But Cam isn’t convinced either way. Before he gets to the truth, he’ll face threats from the police, the local drug gangs, and the family of one of the victims.
In a way, though, this is all a kind of distraction. Cam has reached a crisis point in his sessions with his psychologist, Margaret. He’s preparing to open up to her at a new level – to reveal to her the worst thing he ever did in his life as an assassin. Something that’s closed his heart off and prevented his forming romantic connections in all the years since. But will the truth be too much for even her to accept?
Another interesting plot thread is an ongoing subplot about Lori, a “diversity” officer at the college, who’s made it her mission to get Cam fired, not realizing that her inquiries are raising red flags in Washington. If she only knew it, Cam is the only thing standing between her and deniable liquidation.
I wish I could have brought myself to read The House of Love and Death more slowly. I’ll probably read it again. I can’t imagine how it could have been better.
Let’s see. Where am I? I did a Zoom interview with a student from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay this morning. Some kind of history class assignment. She was supposed to speak with a more impressive Viking reenactor, but had to settle for me due to a glitch in the system. It was nice. She was an intelligent young person. Gave me hope.
I’m trying to figure out Adobe Indesign (not Light Desk, as I erroneously termed it last night; I saw the I and D logo in my mind, and they looked like an L and a D, so I vamped). I was referred to a YouTube video for an introduction, but that created as much confusion as it cleared up for me. I bought a book, which I shall try out this evening. I intend to learn this irrational, user-unfriendly mouse maze of an app, or die in the attempt.
Packed for my trip to Brainerd tomorrow. Paid my bills a day early, because I’m flexible that way. Walked to the post office for stamps.
But what shall I blog about? I think, on consideration, that I still have things to say about Story as a key to the universe, as if I didn’t overtalk my intelligence in my previous post on the subject.
Dale Nelson, in commenting on that post, noted that our Lord, when He came to earth, did not come as a philosopher, but as a storyteller. This is an excellent point, one I wish I’d thought of.
So I’ll double down. When God chose to reveal Himself to us in written form, He did not give us a book of systematic theology (I’ve often wished He had, but oddly He did not consult me). Instead, He told us a story.
Wouldn’t it have been a relief if the Bible had begun with The Book of Epistemology? We could have a Book of Trinitarian Doctrine, and a Book of Soteriology, and it would all end up with a Book of Eschatology.
The Quran is kind of like that, as best I understand it, based on my limited examination of the book, though it’s not very organized. The Quran is essentially a book of doctrines and commands. It’s not what you’d call a gripping narrative.
The Bible we’ve been given, however, is a narrative. God chose to tell what is essentially a story. There’s other elements in there – poetry, and law, and wisdom literature, etc. But it’s all set within an epic dramatic narrative. The world is created, Man is created, Man falls, Man runs berserk, God begins calling out a series of individuals, then a family, then a nation, through whom He will – gradually – reveal His purposes for redemption. Finally the Hero – God Himself in human form – appears and – through great sacrifice – undoes the Fall, conquers death and the devil. Finally, we’re given a glimpse of Christ’s ultimate triumph and the eucatastrophe.
A lot of church schism and religious war could have been avoided if we’d had a divine book of unambiguous theology instead of the Bible we got. But God hasn’t chosen to reveal Himself that way, either in His written Word or in His incarnate Word. He seems to prefer stories. And stories tend to be so… ambivalent. The better the story, the harder it is to explain.
During my recent long road trips, I decided to splurge on a couple audio books. Both were by Andrew Klavan – books I’d read before but wanted to revisit. My Minot book was The Truth and the Beauty, Klavan’s manifesto of art-oriented theology. My Green Bay book was The Great Good Thing, his spiritual autobiography.
I found The Great Good Thing easier to grasp. It’s a straight memoir, with its lessons fairly obvious. Great story, too.
But The Truth and Beauty, though fascinating and inspiring, eludes me at some points. Even after two readings, I still have a hard time articulating what the point of the book is. It’s mostly about how the Romantic poets followed their perceptions of beauty, which led them (in some cases not very far) towards the truth of Christianity in a world gone apostate.
But I can’t grasp the nub. I can’t tell you what Klavan is trying to say we need to learn from the Romantic poets.
And it occurs to me that’s the whole mystery of the thing.
Great art generally can’t be reduced to a formula or a moral. It leads you to a place where you confront an idea that is a Person. And persons can’t be defined – not within the limits of human reason. (God can define it all, I have no doubt.)
It’s a little like Zen, where you sit around and meditate until you “get” some irrational concept. I reject Zen, and I reject the irrational too. But the Buddhists have an inkling of some truth there.
Stories can lead us to an encounter with God. Reason can too. But neither the story nor reason automatically produce faith. The faith comes from an encounter with Jesus Christ. That encounter is a miracle; St. Paul knew, and the theologians have agreed, that it’s nothing either our imagination or our reason can produce. It comes from outside. It’s something you receive.
And you can’t always put it into words. You can only tell stories about it.
We’ve raved about Andrew Klavan’s series … well, we’ve raved about almost everything he’s written and about him personally. We can’t hide our admiration. We’re crazy about him.
A couple years ago, he released the first novel in the Cameron Winter series, When Christmas Comes. Lars said, “If Graham Greene had written A Christmas Carol, it might have turned out something like [this].”
Last year, the second novel was released. A Strange Habit of Mind is a compelling story of justice and love. My fear is that “Poetry boy” is going to get it in the teeth next time around. (If you know, you know.)
And by the end of October, book three will be upon us. Publishers Weekly calls The House of Love and Death “complex,” “gripping,” and “a penetrating mystery with a plot that cuts straight to the dark heart of some of modern America’s most pressing issues.”
I just finished listening to the Highbridge audiobook of A Strange Habit of Mind, and the memory of it is pressing me to pre-order The House of Love and Death. Klavan’s writing is gripping, especially when I compare it to my other recent reading. He doesn’t just communicate efficiently, like I might do sometimes. He draws you in. I can’t quote him precisely, but there’s a moment when an adorable student is praising Prof. Winter’s lecture and she pauses to choose just the right word to describe her impression then uses the same word every other student uses in that situation. I love it.
If you pre-order The House of Love and Death, you’ll help push it on to the NY Times bestseller list which will help sustain the series for many books to come. I’m sure you’re the kind of person who would want to do something like that. The generous sort. A warm-hearted, salt-of-the-earth type, that’s you.
Your correspondent is a tad down today. Translation work has been slow (read nonexistent), and it snowed and snowed for days and days. Stopped today, and we should be safe for a while according to the forecasts. But it’s… full out there. Chock full. This is one of those years when we don’t know what to do with all the accumulation. The piles along the driveway are nearly as tall as we are.
Of course my neighbor clears the snow for me with a machine, but it’s guilt-inducing to watch him at it.
The news is depressing too. I think I’m going to turn off talk radio again for a while (except for some hours of Prager). Listen to Pandora instead. Confession: I’d like to see my party, you know, pulling together. But I’m afraid that if I say that I’ll be accused of being a RINO. The arguments in favor of the Twenty make some sense to me, but I don’t like watching friends turn into enemies. Simple soul that I am, I don’t think that really helps in the long run.
Above, maintaining the theme of love for That Hideous Strength I’ve been proclaiming all week, here’s Andrew Klavan talking about it. Some of this is a little hard to understand (how can anybody not love Narnia? How can anybody read THS with ease the first time through?), but his opinions on the meaning of the book are spot on. They get him the all-important Walker endorsement, which is nice.
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.
Happy Friday. Today I saw my doctor, and I was actually eager to see him. Because I was able to show him all the weight I’ve lost (40 lbs. by his figures). It isn’t often a guy my age is able to tell his doctor good things.
Above, Andrew Klavan and Ben Shapiro discuss their 5 favorite movies and books. This clip reinforces my suspicion that Klavan is way, way, smarter than I am.
In the wake of my fulsome review of Andrew Klavan’s A Strange Habit of Mind yesterday (it was so gushy it even embarrasses me a little, but I meant every word), I thought we could have some advice from the master on starting out as a writer. So here’s a video, which is apparently about a year old, since he plugs When Christmas Comes.
I should probably take this advice myself, though I wonder how many agents are interested in bright young authors in their seventh decades.
She made a movement then—just a small one, very subtle. A little nod of the head while her hand tugged gently at the edge of her skirt. That was all. But to Winter it was clearly suggestive of a curtsey, a gesture so ladylike and anachronistic that it seemed to strike clean through him like a saber thrust. When she returned to her table to gather her overcoat and her purse, he felt as if she had left a jagged hole of loneliness at the center of him, front to back.
The paragraph above is as good a description of a certain male experience (one of our nobler ones) as I’ve ever read. Which is just the kind of writer Andrew Klavan is. He’s the best at what he does. We American conservatives (and Christians) aren’t worthy of his talent.
But be that as it may, we are the happy recipients of another book in Klavan’s Cameron Winter series, which is cause for rejoicing. The first Cameron Winter book, When Christmas Comes, was released around this time last year, and it floored me. I prayed there’d be more, and A Strange Habit of Mind, just released, is my Christmas miracle for 2022.
Cameron Winter, you may recall, is an English professor at a college in an unnamed midwestern state. (I was pretty sure it was Indiana while reading the last book, but we learn now that it borders Minnesota, so I’m guessing Wisconsin.) He’s independently wealthy and working at a job he loves, but he’s also lonely and depressed.
So he sees a psychologist, an older woman. To her he confides the causes of his depression and isolation. Partly they come from his tragic childhood, but much of it is due to his previous career. He used to work for an organization called the Division, which trained him to be an assassin. Not like in the movies. Their methods were far more subtle than the silenced pistol or the garotte in the dark. They knew ways to destroy people by exploiting their personal hungers and weaknesses, and to kill them in ways that looked like natural death, or accidents.
Cam recently got a text from a former student who’s been living in San Francisco. Just two words – “Help me.” Cam called back immediately, but got no reply.
Later he learns that the young man threw himself off the roof of his apartment building shortly after sending the text. Cam is troubled and looks into it. The young man had left school under a cloud, and his subsequent history said little for his character. A drug dealer. A girlfriend abuser. Really, he was no loss to the world.
But Cam can’t let it go, for some reason. He has, as he tells his counselor, “a strange habit of mind,” a gift that was useful to him in his work for the Division. When he ponders an event, his mind unconsciously reorganizes data, enabling him often to discern underlying crimes. And as he looks into the student’s world, he finds that the girlfriend he beat up just happens to be a sister to Molly Byrne, “the Cinderella girl,” the woman who married Gerald Byrne, the richest, most powerful man in the world. (Think Jeff Zuckerberg, but crazier and with more power.)
That leads him into Byrne’s personal history, and a pattern begins to emerge. People who hurt people Byrne cares about tend to have bad accidents. Not only that, but people who oppose Byrne’s social and political causes tend to suffer similar fates.
And something else is plain to Cam. These are exactly the kind of “accidents” he and his colleagues in the Division used to orchestrate. And now, with a few more strategic deaths, nothing will stand in the way of Byrne fundamentally transforming the global order.
So the showdown is inevitable – Cameron Winter vs. the Most Powerful Man in the World.
There wasn’t a moment of slack in this plot. I was riveted from the first page to the last. Not only that, but the bare act of reading was a pleasure, because the prose was so perfect, so evocative and satisfying, like a delicious meal. I may read it again soon, just to savor it.
I recommend A Strange Habit of Mind as highly as is humanly possible. Thanks, Andrew Klavan.
