Reviews

Watching ‘The Jesus Revolution,’ and remembering

Leave a comment

This post, just to give you fair warning, will begin as a movie review and then wander off into byways of personal reminiscence. Because I’m old enough now to comment on historical films from a survivor’s perspective.

First of all, I think it’s well-established by now that The Jesus Revolution is a pretty good movie. I was looking for something to watch on Sunday afternoon, and it popped up on Amazon Prime. I put it on partly out of a sense of duty; I anticipated that it might rouse bittersweet memories (which it did). I intended to use it as background white noise while I did something else, but it compelled my attention.

Many of you have already seen it, so you understand. I’m still surprised to be impressed with Christian movies – I grew up on Billy Graham’s World Wide Pictures, which were heartfelt but ham-handed. This is cinema on an entirely different level. Kelsey Grammer does an admirable job as Pastor Chuck Smith, whose struggling congregation is suddenly invaded by an influx of hippie inquirers, led by Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie), and suddenly they’re in the midst of a Movement. Meanwhile, we follow the life of Greg Laurie (Joel Courtney), child of a dysfunctional home, who tries to find himself in drugs, rock ‘n roll, and rebellion, but nearly crashes and burns before finding his way to Smith’s and Frisbee’s church (and to love and marriage as well).

The movie is excellently cast, effectively written, and a provides a pretty good evocation of the place and time. I myself was far from the center of things, back here in Iowa and Minnesota then, but my friends and I were part of the movement, and the songs (as well as the jargon) were very familiar.

And pretty emotional, for me. So many memories. Especially of people, some of whom were the closest friends I’ll probably ever have – many of whom are no longer friends at all. Small but intense adventures with those friends. Moments of delight and victory… and of disappointment.

The end of the movie describes the Jesus Movement as perhaps the largest Christian revival this country ever saw. And yet – as I see it – it left almost no footprint in the culture, except for the creation of a couple new denominations (as if we didn’t have enough of those).

From my perspective, the great tragedy of the Jesus Movement is that, out of so many converts, so few persisted. When I got into the Science Fiction/Fantasy world back before the turn of the century, it depressed me to note what a large percentage of SF writers seemed to be embittered former Jesus Freaks. I ran into them everywhere (or so it seemed), people who’d “tried that whole Jesus thing,” but found it ultimately unsatisfying. (A lot of people, I think, claimed to believe just to go along with the fad. Many of the others were poorly discipled, or fell into the clutches of spiritual wolves, of which there were many.)

The upshot of it all is that when I think of the Jesus Movement, I end up depressed.

Secondly, there was the issue of music. A large part of the story deals with Pastor Smith’s efforts to provide a worship environment welcoming to the young people. I myself was part of a group that performed contemporary Christian songs (many of which we wrote ourselves) in churches. We got some opposition from old fuddy-duddies in the congregations, which I didn’t understand at the time. I understand now. I swear I never had any intention of killing off traditional worship, but that seems to be what the long-term result was, at least in my church. The congregation I attend began a contemporary service in the wake of the Jesus Movement, and conservative members were assured that nothing would happen to the traditional service. This year, they abolished the traditional service. And the contemporary service into which we’re all now shoehorned (called a blended service because it includes a couple hymns) affects me like fingernails on a chalkboard. I know it means something to those who like it (and they are many), but I find it raucous and irreverent.

Then – just to top off the memories – I got a text message while I was watching the movie. An old friend from those days informed me that another friend, my roommate for two years, had died in a mental institution in California.

Poor B*****. I don’t blame the Jesus Movement for his initial slight craziness. He was a little crazy before he became a Christian, as I can testify from personal observation. And he was not among those who turned their backs on Jesus. He followed Him faithfully, according to his own lights – he became a Russian Orthodox monk. Nor do I blame his final descent into madness on the Jesus Freaks – as I understand it, it probably had an organic cause.

But it seemed to me he was an emblem of those times and those people, fading away into history, in a degenerated California, his legacy known only to God.

Religion, The Press

An anonymous prayer, misattributed

1 Comment
Francis Preaching to the Birds by Master of Saint Francis (c. 1260–1280) (Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons)

Happy Friday. Tonight, in the spirit of the (political) season, I have decided to mercilessly shatter one of your dearest illusions.

The magazine, “Religion & Liberty” has the honor of having published me on a couple occasions. (The fact that my friend Anthony Sacramone is Editor-in-Chief may possibly have something to do with that fact.) The latest (Fall) issue features an article on St. Francis of Assisi which astonished me with the following paragraph concerning the well-known “Prayer of St. Francis,” which begins, “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace…”:

Eleven years before the publication of Chesterton’s St. Francis of Assisi in 1923, a small Catholic magazine in France, La Clochette, published an anonymous prayer with the title Belle prière à faire pendant la Messe (A Beautiful Prayer to Say During Mass). An abridged version of this prayer was published by the Quaker magazine Friends’ Intelligencer in 1927 with the title “A Prayer of St. Francis of Assissi” [sic]:

So that’s where the prayer came from. It has nothing to do with the revered 13th Century Italian friar who preached to birds, ministered to the poor, and considered bathing a sin.

This fact doesn’t make it a bad prayer. Not at all.

I may pray it myself tonight. Seems like a good time to do something like that.

Have a good weekend.

Uncategorized

The phenomenon of Rienzi

Leave a comment
Last scene of act 3 of Rienzi at the Théâtre Lyrique, 1869

Still toiling away at my big history book. I don’t mean to disparage it – I’m reading it with some fascination, though it does seem like it’s progressing in real time. But that throws me back on my wits (which seem to be a non-renewable resource) when it comes to blogging fodder.

Well, I nudged myself yesterday. I mentioned the name Rienzi (it’s Italian, so I assume it’s pronounced Ree-EN-zee). Once a familiar name throughout the western world, it’s all but forgotten today.

I first noticed the name when reading about the Civil War. There was a famous episode from the 1864 Shenandoah campaign, where Union Gen. Philip Sheridan rode 20 miles in about two hours, from Winchester, Virginia to his headquarters, to rally his forces to meet a Confederate attack. His timely appearance prevented a disaster, and “Sheridan’s Ride” was widely reported, and celebrated in a popular poem by Thomas Buchanan Read.

When I read accounts of Sheridan’s ride, his horse’s name was given as “Rienzi.” (The horse’s name was later changed to Winchester, and after a long life in horse years, he died and was stuffed. The Smithsonian has him now.)

“Who,” I wondered, “was Rienzi?” (I believe the name showed up somewhere else too, but I forget where. There’s a town called Rienzi in Mississippi. Maybe that was it.)

This was in ancient times, before the internet. I could have consulted an encyclopedia, but I wasn’t that interested. But eventually Joe Biden provided an information superhighway, and I checked it out in an idle moment.

Nicola “Cola” Rienzi (1313-1354) was an Italian politician. He claimed to be the illegitimate son of the Holy Roman Emperor, but actually came from humble origins in Rome. He acquired a good education, though, and grew enamored of the glories of ancient Rome. He despised the Rome of his own day, ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor and dominated by dissolute nobles. (Credit where credit’s due: I’m condensing all this information from Wikipedia. This material isn’t in my own wheelhouse at all.)

Continue reading The phenomenon of Rienzi →
Reading, Uncategorized

The phenomenon of Mazepa

1 Comment
Currier and Ives illustration for the 1846 edition of Byron’s poem.

No politics tonight, I promise. At least no contemporary politics. I’ve had enough of that for a while, I think. The battle goes on, of course, and as the sailors used to say (according to Richard Henry Dana in Two Years Before the Mast), “Never say die while there’s a shot in the locker.” But I need time to regroup.

I don’t think I’ve done much politics in this space for a while, anyway. (Perhaps, as is so often the case, I delude myself.)

So what shall I write about? I’m reading a long book of history at the moment, so it will be a few days before my next review. This book I’m reading is about the history of the Baltic region, and the author, in his description of the Russian empire, refers to a man named Ivan Mazepa. Mazepa is a name (like Rienzi, about whom I need to write someday), that used to be quite well known in the U.S. as that of a foreign hero. We even have a town in Minnesota named after him, though we added a second “p” to the spelling.

Ivan Mazepa (1639-1709) was a hetman of the Ukrainian Cossacks, and a devoted and honored commander under Tsar Peter the Great. However, in the last year of his life, he learned that the tsar was planning to replace him, and so he defected to the side of Peter’s great opponent, King Charles XII of Sweden. He has been considered a traitor by the Russians ever since, but he had many defenders as well. The Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated him, but the Greek Orthodox did not. I believe he’s quite popular in Ukraine today.

What made him famous in the west was that Lord Byron wrote a poem about him. That poem led to a play, called “Mazepa, or the Tartar Horse,” which packed them in in England and then crossed the sea to America, where it was also a hit.

The centerpiece of the play was not the drama with Tsar Peter, which happened when Mazepa was an old man. It was a dubious anecdote about Mazepa’s youth, culled from a biography of Charles XII. That colorful story claimed that as a boy in Poland, Mazepa had an affair with a nobleman’s wife. When the couple were discovered together, the nobleman punished the young man by tying him naked to a wild horse and setting it running across the plains. Somehow, Mazepa survived, and made his way to the Russians, under whom he took military service.

The play, “Mazepa,” became a theatrical staple in the U.S. A melodramatic version appeared later, which featured a live horse running on a treadmill on the stage, a pretty good technical effect for the times.

But what really made the show a hit was when they cast a woman as young Mazepa. The actress was named Adah Isaacs Menken, and she insisted on riding the horse personally (instead of using a dummy), clad only a flesh-colored body stocking. Audiences were scandalized and delighted. The play toured the American West for years, and made pots of money.

As a final note, there’s an old movie called “Heller in Pink Tights,” starring Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren. It’s based on Louis L’Amour’s novel, Heller With a Gun, and was inspired by the adventures of the traveling “Mazepa” troupe.

Uncategorized

Erling Skjalgsson’s resting stones

Leave a comment

Yes, I voted. I even posted a picture of myself rocking my “I Voted” sticker, on Facebook. (I’ll spare you that shocking image.) I voted at a very lefty church (not of the Lutheran denomination I usually gripe about), and it was festooned with banners and signs about peace and LGBTQ and Hate Has No Home Here (Unless it’s hatred for Trump. And Israel). But I made my way in and out without being discovered as a heretic.

The video above is a small treat for those who’ve read my Erling Skjalgsson books. You may recall from The Baldur Game how the hero’s corpse was carried down the peninsula, with the local freedmen raising memorial stones at each camping spot. This video (unfortunately it’s in Norwegian without English captions) shows you two of those stones, which are still standing. And it ends at Sola Church (a stone church which had not yet been built in Erling’s day).

Fiction, Reviews

‘To Kill a Saint,’ by Michael Swiger

Leave a comment

Every time I take a chance on a Christian novel, I journey, you might say, in hope. In most cases, that journey is in vain. Sadly, To Kill a Saint, by Michael Swiger, was no exception. The book was not without virtues, but it demonstrated a considerable lack of craftsmanship.

A prosecuting attorney in Cleveland is called out to a grisly murder in a church sanctuary. A young woman has been raped, tortured, and stabbed to death. The police immediately arrest the pastor, who is found on the floor of his office, scratched and covered in blood.

Hunter St. James is a young attorney working for a big, prestigious firm. He has high ambitions, which are threatened by public memories of the failure of his lawyer father, who was convicted of corruption and died by suicide. He has, however, a good friend in the firm who’s got his back. Hunter is surprised – and annoyed – to be selected as pro bono attorney for the accused pastor. Hunter is an atheist and not favorably disposed toward this man – though the things he says about God trouble his long-held assumptions. He’s also angry at his socialite girlfriend, who recently got pregnant, broke up with him, and aborted their baby.

Meanwhile, his work brings him into contact with a different woman, who offers everything he’s looking for in a partner. But as his career starts falling to pieces, he wonders whether he has anything to offer her.

I’d say that the strongest element in To Kill a Saint is the plotting. The story follows the proper story structure for a mystery/thriller, every beat delivered on cue.

But the book falls down in several areas. First of all, it reads like a Christian novel. There’s too much God-talk, and the Christians inevitably win the arguments (a common failure in Evangelical lit). Even as one character is contemplating suicide, he is still rehashing an argument about the existence of God. (As a long-time depressive, I can state that this isn’t how extreme depression works. In those circumstances, one doesn’t ponder whether God loves one. One just rails at Him.)

The writing was also weak. The author tries – I’ll give him that. But his prose is clumsy, and the harder he works for an effect, the clumsier it gets. Some selected lines go: “Her words stabbed his soul.” “The exquisite line of her lips summoned him.” And, “The smell of dead fish soured his face.”

He also commits the cardinal sin of using exclamation marks to inform us when we’re supposed to be excited.

The book involved a conspiracy by a secret society, a trope that has always annoyed me. No doubt it could be done well, but that’s not the case here.

It also annoyed me that jackboots (which play an important part in the story) are described as having laces. Jackboots do not have laces.

So, all in all, I can’t recommend To Kill a Saint. Cautions are also in order for some fairly disturbing descriptions of the occult and blood ceremonies.

Fiction, Reviews

Trojumanna Saga, translated by Jeremy Jasper Owens

Leave a comment

Everyone is bound to follow their fate, and no one is so strong as to not be overcome by anyone.

Jeremy Jasper Owens, the translator of Trójumanna Saga from Old Norse, offered me a free review copy, which I gratefully accepted. I found it a novel reading experience. It told a familiar story in a different way (I wish I knew the Iliad better than I do; I read it long ago), but it offered a few difficulties as well.

Trójumanna Saga is not, as one would expect, an Icelandic adaptation of Homer. It turns out (I did not know this) that medieval scholars had a low opinion of Homer, and preferred a short Latin history called De excidio Troiae historia, which is the main source for this saga.

Most readers, I’m pretty sure, will be particularly impressed – as I was – by the differences they’ll find from the familiar story. First of all, the Greek gods become Norse – Zeus and Hera become Thor and Frigg (the gods don’t actually play a big part in this version, though). The story begins earlier here, with Jason’s voyage to seek the Golden Fleece. Hercules is a main Greek leader in the early stages of the war, and participates throughout. When “Helena” is abducted, there is no Paris, but a prince named Alexander.

Achilles is here, but he’s not invulnerable – he suffers several wounds before finally being killed. A group of Amazons (called Shield Maidens) show up to join the defense of Troy. When the walls are finally breached, there is no Trojan Horse – the city is betrayed from within, and (gratefully) the bloodshed is (apparently) less.

I’ve always been very adamant that Greek stories are very different from Norse stories. The Greek hero dies because of his Fatal Flaw, while the Norse hero dies because he’s fated to. Trójumanna Saga is thoroughly Norse in that regard – everyone in this world is a fatalist. Courageous because he (or she) is certain his (or her) death is predetermined and inescapable.

In terms of translation, there are difficulties in this work, and I asked the translator about them. He replied that he has produced as exact a translation as he could – including the weaknesses of the original text. There are moments here where something happens, but we’re not actually told about it. The writer just goes on to describe the aftermath, and you have to assume what happened. And there are a number of idiomatic expressions that are incomprehensible to the modern reader, unexplained.

In my own opinion as a translator, such moments should be clarified through text in brackets or footnotes. Mr. Owens has chosen not to do that, which suggests great confidence in his readers’ intelligence. That may be the right choice, but I think potential readers ought to be warned about it.

Trójumanna Saga is a peculiar and fascinating historical and literary artifact. Jeremy Jasper Owens deserves our thanks for producing it.

Fiction, Reading, Religion, Writing

The mind of the Recruiter

Leave a comment

I’m still thinking about Andrew Klavan’s Find Me Nowhere, which I reviewed last night. It’s a tremendous novel, transcending its genre.

And I thought I might comment about one particular, evocative element in the Cameron Winter series.

I’ve often complained about how Christians are treated in most fiction. People who obviously know very few (especially evangelical) Christians put words into our mouths that none of us (at least those of us who are sane) would ever say in the real world.

Instead of complaining about this lazy habit, Klavan – himself a Christian – has opted to have fun with it. Being both a genuine artist and a bit of an imp, he turns it on his head.

In the Cameron Winter books, he gives us the enigmatic, seriocomic figure of the Recruiter.

The Recruiter was the head of the now-defunct top secret, ultimately deniable cadre of government assassins that once gave Winter purpose in his life, but also left him in need of extensive counseling.

The Recruiter seems to me to be a stand-in for God. He’s nosebleed-level smart, thinking five or six steps ahead of everyone, including his operatives, who never know quite what he’s up to. He’s ubiquitous and omnipotent and he moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.

And he talks like a preacher in a snake-handler sect.

Here’s a sample from Find Me Nowhere:

“Oh, did I mention Tubman says he’ll kill me if I ever come back to Kinnecombe? I think he might actually do it too.”

“No, I don’t think he might,” said the shape of the Recruiter in the shadows. “I think he almost certainly will. The man’s a sniper, after all, and a very good one. On the positive side, you won’t even feel it happen. One minute, you’ll be standing in the middle of nowhere, the next, you’ll suddenly be at the foot of Christ’s throne, all your deepest misgivings confirmed as you become fully aware for the first time that you were wrong about everything, which you’ll then continue to be painfully aware of through an endless eternity of suffering and flames.”

“That’s the positive side?”

“Wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding.”

The Recruiter is a conundrum to the modern reader. He talks like someone said reader has been taught to despise as an inbred idiot. But we know he’s the farthest thing from an idiot. On top of that, he’s black. There are no stupid black people in contemporary literature.

Winter himself never knows what to think of the Recruiter. Is he serious? Is he playing a game? Is it a psychological maneuver? That mystery helps to give the Recruiter power, both in the mundane world and in the mind.

It goes the same for the reader. The reader is forced to think about the Recruiter’s faith… probably the last thing most readers want to do.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Find Me Nowhere,’ by Andrew Klavan

1 Comment

He was the bigger one, really big, and heavy, a building of a man with a face like a sledgehammer.

I think I’ve made up my mind about where Cameron Winter, hero of Andrew Klavan’s outstanding ongoing series of mystery/thrillers, lives and works. Occasionally, reference is made in these books to the Minnesota border. It’s pretty clear that he lives in a state that borders mine. That means it’s one of four states – the two Dakotas, Iowa, or Wisconsin. One can write off the Dakotas, I think, because the Dakotas aren’t progressive enough. Iowa is a little more progressive, but not as progressive as Winter’s state seems to be, and it’s not sufficiently interesting topographically.

No, I’m pretty sure now that Winter teaches at a small university in Wisconsin. We’re also told it’s the capitol of the state, so it must be in Madison. But it can’t be the University of Wisconsin-Madison, because Winter’s school is small.

So it’s a small, independent university located in Madison. Doubtless a fictional one.

That settled, let’s go on to discuss the latest Cameron Winter book, Find Me Nowhere, which I preordered, and devoured almost the moment it was released.

We begin with a scene from a secret military operation in Afghanistan. The point of view character is thinking about an astonishingly beautiful woman he saw recently, when he witnesses his best buddy being blown to bits in a cave.

Then we switch to Cameron Winter’s world. He is now, for the first time in his life, a happy man. He’s blissfully in love with his girlfriend, Gwendolyn Lord, a born-again Christian (who, oddly, justifies going to bed with him out of wedlock). His therapy with his psychologist is going so well that they’re both considering ending the counseling.

Then he’s approached by the Recruiter, his old mentor from his days as a deniable/expendable government assassin. The Recruiter asks him, just as a favor, to investigate the fatal stabbing of a man in a dying Pennsylvania town. Since it’s the Recruiter asking, Winter knows there’s a deeper agenda here, but it never crosses his mind to say no.

The Pennsylvania town is a victim of globalization. Once it was a factory town, but all the jobs were offshored. Now the main sources of income are welfare, collected by the multitudes of immigrants the government has imported, and drug dealing. The dead man was the father of the soldier we saw killed at the beginning of the book. Winter starts asking questions, which leads to his being attacked by thugs, repeatedly. But he learns that the murder victim had been saying that his son was still alive, that he had seen and talked to him.

The quality that struck me most, as I read Find Me Nowhere, was its density. I don’t mean that in a negative way at all. I’m talking density in the sense of texture and weight. Every line in this book has heft. There is no fluff. Several things were always going on at once, and there were layers of meaning and revelation at every point.

Find Me Nowhere is a transcendent book, full of love and joy and tragedy and despair. I’ll be reading it again soon, because I always do that with this series. A lot of books lag in places – even if I love the writer and enjoy the book, there are moments when reading feels like a bit of work. Reading this book was like bingeing chocolate, a decadent pleasure I’ve recently had to give up for my health.

My highest recommendation on this one.

Non-fiction, Reviews, Writing

‘Plot & Structure,’ by James Scott Bell

Leave a comment

In fact, one could argue that the skill of the fiction writer boils down to the ability to exploit intensity.

Writer’s confession: I am currently mired in my Work In Progress. I think the story’s basic idea is a winner, but I’ve lost my way; I keep trying to make things happen, but nothing is leading anywhere.

I shall pause, I thought to myself. I shall spend my morning writing time auditioning for book narration jobs. And I shall find a good book about plotting to read.

I discovered that James Scott Bell, one of my favorite authors, wrote one. It’s not a new book (I think it goes back to around the time, long ago, when he wrote the Fiction column for Writer’s Digest Magazine), but he knows his craft, and the basic principles are eternal. So I bought Plot & Structure. I’m glad I did.

James Scott Bell is a generous writer. He’s generous to other authors, providing numerous recommendations for other people’s books on the writing craft. He’s also generous to the reader, not only explaining essential principles of storytelling, but providing examples to compare, and exercises for building creative muscles.

Bell’s primary insight (though there’s much more here) is his foundational pattern for plot, which he expresses with the acronym L.O.C.K.: Lead, Objective, Confrontation and Knockout. (For further explanation, read the book.)

Did the book help me? I’m pretty sure it did. I haven’t put my new insights into practice yet (I only finished reading the book a couple hours ago), but I think I see where I went wrong, and I have some ideas on how to fix the problem.

So I speak as a satisfied reader when I recommend Plot & Structure.