Tonight, another Scandinavian hymn. It was written by N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783-1872), a controversial Danish pastor who adjusted his theology several times over his career, but rarely lowered his voice. (I think he believed – wrongly – that the origin of the Creeds preceded the writing of the New Testament and therefore they had greater authority. My Haugean forebears always considered him a dangerous thinker.) He also had the delusion that the ancient Vikings were some kind of proto-Protestants, and invented the term “Asatru” (popular among reenactors today) for worshipers of the old gods. You may remember a mention of him in Catherine Marshall’s novel Christy, which praises his development of the Folk High School movement in Scandinavia – one of the roots, I believe, of modern alternative education systems.
His followers were known as “the Glad Danes,” while the Pietists were called “the Sad Danes.”
What we have here is a hymn I remember well from childhood (we may have suspected Grundtvig’s theology in my home church, but we were fine with his hymns): “Built on a Rock the Church Shall Stand.” The original Danish text says “The Church, It Is an Ancient House.”
To prove this, to imprint it in the mind so deeply that no alternative can so much as flicker, is the goal. This is power, pure as it comes….
The prophet’s goal is simple. When the final scream in the night comes, whoever issues it will be certain of one thing.
No one hears.
Reading fiction is an activity entailing many pleasures; among them is the constant possibility of discovering a truly wonderful book. I had that pleasure – in a big way – in reading Michael Koryta’s The Prophet. It’s a book that has a lot to do with football, and it hit me with the impact of a linebacker.
In 1989, brothers Adam and Kent Austin of Chalmers, Ohio were both on a winning high school football team in that football-obsessed part of the country. But Adam made a mistake on the night of their greatest victory, a mistake that destroyed their family. Today, Adam is a bail bondsman, still living in Chalmers, in the old family house. His brother Kent is the local football coach, a much-respected figure. He’s a devout Christian, and regularly leads Bible studies in a nearby prison.
The brothers almost never speak to one another.
When Adam now makes a second mistake, resulting in a young girl’s death, he is overwhelmed with guilt. He makes a promise to the girl’s mother – he will find the murderer, and he will not turn him over to the police. He will kill him.
Adam has no intention of letting this ugly business slop over into his brother’s life – but it does. It turns out that Kent was part of the plan from the beginning – innocently and unintentionally, but he and his family will be drawn inexorably into a drama scripted by the killer.
In a separate plot thread, we follow the progress of Kent’s high school football team, as they surmount one obstacle after another (not least survivor’s grief) to pursue a championship they’ve never won before. This theme provides a sort of harmonic counterpoint to the main plot, revealing character and illuminating the narrative.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read a novel that impressed me as The Prophet did. (And I’m not even interested in football). In addition, the book surprised me though describing the struggles of a sincere, decent Christian – not in an evangelistic way, but honestly and with sympathy. This is something you don’t see often in mainstream literature.
I could go on and on. Drop whatever you’re doing and buy The Prophet. You’ll thank me.
“Return of the Prodigal Son,” by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1668. Public domain.
No review tonight; I’m reading a book that’s taking me a while, but is very well worth the time. I’m looking forward to reviewing it, probably tomorrow.
My summer cold persists in my head. It’s not as bad as it was at its peak, but this sucker has settled in for the duration. Today I actually dug out the old leftover Covid test I still had laying around. Negative. This means little, of course, as the virus has probably mutated, and the test kit has probably passed its expiration date. Nevertheless, I choose to believe it. As far as I know, that plague passed over my house like the Angel of Death over the homes of the Israelites in Exodus.
So here I sit. Of what shall I write? One racks the brain and furrows the brow (or wrinkles a stamp and thoughtfully licks the brow, like the absent-minded character in one of Ogden Nash’s poems). What do I have an opinion on, which I can inflict on my readers?
How about something inspirational? The Parable of the Prodigal Son. Luke 15: 11-32.
I think that, even in our time, a lot of Americans are somewhat familiar with the story. A younger son persuades his father to give him the wealth he would have inherited right now, then grabs the proceeds and runs to a far country, where he lives large until the money runs out. He is then reduced to working as a swineherd (a particularly shameful job for a Jew), and finally reaches the point where he’s sufficiently broken to go home and beg forgiveness, offering to become a hired servant. His father receives him with joy, orders a feast prepared, and returns him to his former status as a son of the house.
That’s the story most people know. And it’s perfectly good as such. It’s often cited by evangelists, which is appropriate.
But a lot of people aren’t aware of the rest of the story – the behavior of the Older Brother. When I look at the context, I note that Jesus tells this parable directly to the Scribes and Pharisees, in response to their criticism of his socializing with disreputable social elements. (Continued on page 2)
I’ve read and reviewed a few of David Chill’s Burnside (he’s one of those fictional detectives who apparently has no first name) novels in the past. I liked them okay, but had a few quibbles. Hard Count comes several volumes along in the series from the ones I’ve read before, and I thought the writing was better this time, so kudos to the author for learning his craft.
Burnside, our hero, is a former pro football prospect and a former cop, now a Los Angeles private eye. His private life has improved to the point where he has a live-in partner, who has a young son on whom he dotes. Gail, his partner, works in the City Attorney’s office and is running for the top job. Burnside’s not-entirely-shining past is not helping her campaign, so he’s trying to be on his best behavior.
But it’s difficult. An insurance company hires him to check out a murder attempt on one of their high-end clients, a former pro football star, now a restaurateur. Somebody took some potshots at the man in his back yard, while he was in his hot tub with his trophy wife. But the investigation gets pulled inevitably toward the insured guy’s son, a college football player who’s a hot prospect for the NFL draft, and who’s already living the celebrity life.
I found Hard Count a competently written PI story, mostly in the classical tradition. The modern shamus, of course, is more feminist and sensitive than Philip Marlowe was. Though politics were involved in this book, and we’re told that Burnside’s partner is a Democrat, there’s no real political slant here (indeed, it seemed as if they were living in another decade, when prosecutors in LA still believed in arresting people).
In the past I noted certain stylistic and grammar weaknesses in the Burnside books, but I do not see them now. Hard Count didn’t stand out from the crowd of competing detective series, but it made the cut.
I’ve become fond of the mid-20th Century mystery writer Stanley Ellin. I already recognized that he was an essentially good writer, not just a clever creator of smart mysteries. Still, I wasn’t prepared for what I found in his novel The Winter After This Summer, which qualifies as a mystery, I guess, but is more of a literary novel.
We first meet our hero, Dan Egan, as he is being expelled from his college. The fraternity house where he lived burned down the previous night, killing his best friend and roommate, the football hero Ben Genarro. Everyone blames Dan for failing to save Ben – and Dan himself is not entirely sure what happened.
Dan is the child of a somewhat tense marriage alliance between new money and old money, uniting two wealthy families in awkward coexistence. Refusing relatives’ offers of easy jobs, Dan instead goes to work in a shipyard, learning the mysteries of that dying craft. He tells us about his life, especially his disappointed love for Mia, Ben Genarro’s sister, who rejected him to marry into the American elite.
We also meet Barbara Jean Avery, a stunningly beautiful young woman who has escaped poverty in the Florida Keys, dreaming of James Dean and Hollywood. Mentally, she is an entirely ordinary girl, but Dan seizes on her beauty, dreaming of making her into a better version of Mia. Unfortunately, Barbara Jean has a husband, who is older and a religious madman. Their inevitable collision will bring the story to its climax
The Winter After This Summer qualifies technically as a mystery, I suppose, because it begins with an unexplained death – but that death is never actually explained. It’s more about Dan struggling with his personal background and trying to find his authentic self. The book could almost be described as Christian (Ellin in fact converted to Quakerism later in life), though the best Christian character in the book has fairly iffy theology. Readers should be cautioned about rough, realistic language and fairly frank sexual scenes.
I think my final take on The Winter After This Summer is that it’s one of those works that’s too smart for me. In the end, I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to take away from it. But it was a rewarding reading experience.
This Friday night, instead of music, a poem. Actor Richard Burton (a lost soul, if there ever was one) reads one of the great English Christian poems, “The Hound of Heaven.” Francis Thompson (1859-1907), an impoverished Catholic poet who died young of tuberculosis, wrote this amazing ode to the relentless love of Christ, which was published in a collection in 1893.
There was a time — it doesn’t seem long ago, but it was — when I could recite this entire poem from memory. I still have big chunks of it in my head, and can recall the others when prompted.
I always recited it more slowly and meditatively than Burton, who reads it rapidly, in the tone of a fugitive, his pacing tight with dramatic tension.
He was fat then, and day by day in every way has been getting fatter ever since, till now tailors measure him just for the sake of the exercise.
It’s kind of a waste of time to review a P. G. Wodehouse book. The intelligent consumer knows the quality of the product. But it’s possible some reader (for some incomprehensible reason) has resisted the delights of “Plum’s” work to date, so here goes.
Very Good, Jeeves!, a story collection, is obviously a Jeeves and Wooster book, so there’s no mystery about what we’re getting. Idle London clubman Bertie Wooster – or one of his equally dimwitted friends – gets into some kind of ridiculous trouble. In the end, they turn to Bertie’s valet (not butler), Jeeves, of whom Bertie testifies: “There are no limits to Jeeves’s brain-power. He virtually lives on fish.”
The basic scenario is consistent (we’d be disappointed if it weren’t) but there are minor variations from story to story – sometimes Bertie turns to Jeeves at the very beginning, but unforeseen complications stretch the problem out. Sometimes Bertie delays resorting to Jeeves because some coldness has arisen between the two of them, over a disagreement about socks or golf attire or something. Once Jeeves is absent on holiday, and on another occasion Bertie’s imperious Aunt Agatha refuses to ask help from a mere servant.
But in the end Jeeves comes through, and the sun shines once again on the Edenic world of Wodehouse.
There are plenty of familiar characters in this collection – Bingo Little, Tuppy Glossop, and – most dramatically – Bobbie Wickham, the beautiful, red-haired, walking attractive nuisance.
Also, I noted, with interest, that at one point Bertie describes a portrait of himself as featuring a monocle. Bertie used to be portrayed with monocles in illustrations all the time, but I don’t recall actually finding one in a story before (there are probably others I’ve overlooked, though).
I think several of the stories in Very Good, Jeeves were actually new to me, which was delightful. The ones I’d read before were also delightful, though, so I had a thoroughly good time.
No book review tonight. Instead, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Or to put it another way, whatever comes into my head.
I read a good article about the semicolon today in Writer’s Digest. The author courageously defended the old s-c, and I applaud him. I myself love the semicolon. Aside from its delightful precision as a punctuation mark, when wielded skillfully, I have a happy memory of it.
The memory is fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure it’s true. I was writing some kind of an essay or report in school – elementary school, I think. The “new” pale brick building on the south side of town.
I was composing, as I recall, some kind of a complex sentence. I had a complicated thought I was trying to express. I wanted to tie it all together, but it had a lot of working parts going, some of them more important than others. “What I need,” I thought to myself, “is a punctuation mark that indicates a major division in in my train of thought, but also retains a connection to the previous thought.” (Or words to that effect.)
And it occurred to me – “Hey! That’s what semicolons are for!” And I triumphantly put down a semicolon, intentionally for the first time in my life. The semicolon belonged to me now. I was its master. I had summoned it; it had not been forced on me by my teacher.
It was a moment in my evolution as a writer, though I didn’t understand it yet.
Jumping to the present, I haven’t been feeling well lately. My plan was to be doing a lot of stuff to promote the audiobook of Troll Valley right now, but I haven’t been up to the effort.
I’m embarrassed to say it’s just a cold. I see friends on Basefook and Xwitter talking about their mothers dying, or themselves being diagnosed with cancer or breaking a limb or something. And here I am, bellyaching about a common cold. So let me stipulate that I’m not competing for your sympathy. If you have only compassion enough to spare for one person today, it shouldn’t be me.
But I haven’t had a cold in years. I used to get them regularly, when I ran the bookstore at the schools. All that human contact – couldn’t avoid it. And for a while there, it seemed like every time I got that annual cold, it would settle into my chest and in the end require antibiotics.
But I don’t think I’ve had a serious cold since I retired, which is a few years now. And this one has knocked me over. Sunday was the worst day – I spent it mostly in bed, and didn’t even make popcorn for supper, which is my sacred Sunday custom. Since then I’ve been feeling a little better each day, and right now I’m actually eyeing my work load again.
I was delighted to discover I have an old stock of zinc tablets that I’d forgotten about, on a shelf. Hate the aftertaste, but they seem to help. And my ribs don’t hurt as much from coughing today.
To sum up – buy the audiobook of Troll Valley. My Norwegian accent alone is worth the price.
(And you can admire the cover – designed by Phil Wade – in both versions! Collect the whole set!)
He didn’t answer. The sun was to the west, across the pond, putting a glint on the face of his father’s watch. The wind stirred crimson leaves, scattered a few to the water like flower petals tossed into a bride’s wake as she passed, honeymoon-bound.
As Scott Carson’s (Michael Koryta’s) Departure 37 begins, on an October morning later this year (2025), the skies over the entire US are empty of air traffic – early this morning, every pilot in the country got an impassioned phone call from his mother, begging him (or her) not to fly today. Some of these mothers are dead, which does not reduce the calls’ effect at all.
On a remote peninsula in Maine, a 16-year-old girl named Charlie Goodwin is dissatisfied with her life. Her widowed father has brought her here from Brooklyn to build a brewery, but she’s bored to death with small town life. Her only amusement is filming an old local named Abe Zimmer, who has a thousand conspiracy theories to share, centered on a famous military bomber crash that happened nearby in 1962. She posts these films online, and is getting considerable attention. She’s less happy about the presence of Abe’s grandson Lawrence, whom she considers a hopeless dork.
On this particular morning, Charlie’s father is away, which leaves the three of them the only human beings on the peninsula, in the area of the old airfield, when the military cordons the area off and a plane that’s been missing for 60 years suddenly appears in the sky over the airstrip.
Departure 37 is actually a complex story, following not only contemporary events but the events and characters that led up to the original 1962 air crash – the true story of which has never been revealed to the public.
The story gets pretty technical, in terms of theoretical and science fiction technology, and I have to admit I had trouble following it sometimes. It seemed to verge on technophobia at points. And I’m not entirely sure how to think about part of the story’s resolution.
But the characters were fascinating, the plotting tight (as always with Carson/Koryta), and the drama level high. This wasn’t really my kind of book, but I’m sure many will like it more than I did – and I liked it pretty well.
You’ve got to observe the world you’re in to understand what parts of it may save you. At first, it may all seem hostile. The whole environment may seem like an enemy. But it isn’t. There are things hiding in it waiting to save you, and it’s your job to see them.
I keep saying I’m cutting back on reading thrillers, but then I get sucked in by good authors like Michael Koryta. And wowee, what a ride Those Who Wish Me Dead (which has since been made into a film with Angelina Jolie) was.
Jace Wilson did nothing wrong. The boy was in the wrong place in the wrong time, and he witnessed a murder. The two murderers didn’t catch him at the time, but now they know about him, and they want him dead. His parents decided, for his safety, to send him to Montana, to Ethan Serbin, who runs a sort of bootcamp program for troubled boys. The program involves camping up in the mountains, far off the grid. He ought to be safe there.
But no one is safe from men smart enough, and wicked enough, to figure out who to torture and what questions to ask them. Before long Jace will be alone in the wilderness, armed with just a little survival training, the prey in a seemingly hopeless game. Only he’s not quite alone. Outside his awareness, people who care are going to do more than anyone should ever be asked to do, to save his life – and perhaps their own souls.
I might not have read Those Who Wish Me Dead had I been aware that it involved two elements that particularly trouble me in stories – danger to children and danger to women. But I persevered, and got my reward in the end. Koryta is a master plotter, and he pulls all the tricks here – each new level achieved turns into a deadfall; there are traps within traps. Heart in your mouth stuff.
Highly recommended, but intense. Cautions for language, violence, and torture.
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