Fiction, Reading, Religion, Writing

The mind of the Recruiter

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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

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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

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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.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Gallows Road,’ by Giles Ekins

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I’ve read previous installments in Giles Ekins’ Inspector Yarrow series, about a facially scarred Yorkshire police detective. I’ve quite liked the previous ones, and I liked this one too – until the ending.

The story of Gallows Road involves a series of unconnected murder investigations in the early 1950s, most of them leading to a legal conviction and a hanging. Each story is heartbreaking in one way or another.

These accounts are interspersed with chapters in the story of a young Yorkshireman who is drafted into the army to be sent to the Korean War. He fights honorably, but is captured with his unit, then subjected to inhuman conditions and torture in the freezing cold of the Korean winter.

This book is not entirely bleak. Back in England, life has its bright moments – Inspector Yarrow marries and has a baby with his new wife. Romance blossoms between two young officers. The author likes to give Dickensian names to some characters, like a lawyer named Mr. Malfeasance.

But the North Korean plot thread finally leads home (erratically; the story isn’t always told in strictly chronological sequence) and culminates in a shattering, horrific climax.

Giles Ekins is a pretty good writer, though sometimes his dialogue can be a little prosy. He does characters well. And that only makes this ending harder to bear.

I honestly can’t recommend Gallows Road, unless you’re looking for motivation to go out and hang yourself.

Religion

Minnesota’s problem is religious

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Photo credit: Nikoloz Gachechiladze Photobucket license.

[The following essay was written for the American Spectator Online. I recently got a piece published there, and thought (mistakenly, it appears) that the market was open to me again. But I’ve had no further luck. It’s possible they rejected it because it’s rubbish — you’ll have to be the judge.]

“You live in Minnesota?” my new acquaintance asked. “What’s with you people? How do you explain your politics? Aren’t you supposed to be a bunch of passive-aggressive Norwegians who just work hard and never make a fuss?”

My answer is that it goes back to religion. Norwegian religion, in particular.

Which is odd, because Norwegian-Americans have never actually made up a majority of Minnesota’s population. That distinction goes to the Germans (so far, anyway). But in small town Minnesota, it was a Lutheran religious upheaval, imported from Norway, that set its stamp on the state’s spiritual character.

That upheaval was known as Haugeanism. (I wrote about its leading light, Hans Nielsen Hauge, here in the Spectator some years back.) Hauge was a lay preacher, writer, and entrepreneur who altered his country’s social order by accident, merely because he wanted to hold small meetings and share his born-again Christian experience. Private religious meetings were illegal, so he eventually landed in prison, which broke his health. But before he died, he was able to see his followers –  ordinary peasants, most of them – beginning to exercise outsized influence in Norwegian politics and society.

Hauge’s successor was John Haugvaldstad. An ambitious young man, Haugvaldstad left his farm and went into business in Stavanger, eventually becoming the richest and most respected man in the town. After Hauge’s imprisonment, the majority of the Haugeans looked to him to lead them. He was, by all accounts, an honest, charitable, and decent man.

But he changed the movement. Hauge (in my opinion, based on my reading of his [fairly clumsy] writings), was a man primarily motivated by ecstatic love. (St. Francis of Assisi was a kindred spirit.) Hauge took it for granted – naively, I fear – that anyone truly converted to Christ would find holy living easy. Because it was easy for him. He was a sunny, smiling man, always eager to help others, singing as he did so.

Haugvaldstad was another kind of character. The Christian life was not easy for him. He seems to have struggled with temptation in ways Hauge never had to. His accommodation was the classic one – he became a rule-follower.

It’s the ancient Pharisaical pattern – if you want to be seen as one who loves God, you must avoid sin. The easiest way to avoid sin is to “build a hedge about the law.” It’s not enough to refrain from drunkenness – better never to drink at all (Hauge himself was not a teetotaler. Haugvaldstad introduced that rule). Rather than merely refraining from adultery, you avoid any activity that might lead to it – such as parties and dancing. The Haugeans became famous legalists.

The problem is eternal – there are those who just get the point, and live it out naturally. And there are others who don’t get it, but admire those who do, and so try to mimic them. In Christian terms, it’s called dying to self – but while the first group dies to self out of love for Another, the second group just dies. Death to self, in itself, becomes their religion. Self-denial is their methodology and their credential. Today we call it virtue signaling, and it’s the very heart of leftism.

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Uncategorized

‘The Battle of Stiklestad’

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I am a wounded veteran of the AI wars, as I never seem to stop mentioning. So if anyone ought to take a strong stand against AI videos, that would be me.

And yet there are days when I’ve just got nothing original for our faithful readers. Today my tank is low. I’m fighting off this vampire cold, which is eating my energy. Meanwhile, this video amused me.

It’s about the Battle of Stiklestad. I find it curious to see historical events presented in detail and living color, pretending to be live action — or even some kind of artifact of time travel.

It’s actually full of inaccuracies, beyond the obvious inconsistencies. Bishops, according to my research, did not start wearing the pointed mitres until considerably later. The video shows the battle taking place in the rain, which the sagas never mention (they do mention an eclipse).

Still, if you care to watch it, it bears some points of interest, and depicts an incident that was prominent in my novel, The Baldur Game.

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

‘What I Saw in America,’ by G.K. Chesterton

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Hence [a man] is never so inadequate as when he is universal; he is never so limited as when he generalizes.

In contrast to the sentiment above, quoted from G. K. Chesterton’s What I Saw in America, Chesterton himself was never so inadequate as when he specialized. His great gift was for recognizing the universal principles – when it came to the simple facts before him, whether of history or politics, he was frequently wildly mistaken. As a thinker, he was far-sighted.

Chesterton wrote What I Saw in America in 1922, in the aftermath of a lecture tour to America. He’s almost apologetic about doing so – every Englishman who visits the United States, he says, is expected to write such a book, and he doesn’t want to disappoint his audience – though he’s not sure he has anything of great importance to say.

And, to some extent, I’d agree with that judgment. What I Saw in America is (in my view) one of Chesterton’s most dismal works, marred by his utter blindness (except in certain areas) to the signs of the times.

At the beginning, however, he does himself proud by penning a line that has become proverbial: “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed.” There are those who take issue with that idea, but I still think it’s mostly true. He chuckles over the entrance form he had to fill out at Customs, where he had to swear he was not an anarchist or plotting the overthrow of the country. Such questions seemed bizarre to an Englishman, but he goes on to dig deeper and points out that America is likely to have a Turk applying to immigrate, something improbable in England. (Those were different times indeed!)

He waxes lyrical on the subject of America’s millions of wooden houses. Wooden houses were a rarity in England, but he saw them as a product of American expansion and upward social mobility.

He is, of course, offended by the Prohibition laws. He is confident (and his experience bears it out) that those laws only apply to the poor. He blames that situation, as is his wont, on the great capitalists – who are, of course, the Jews. (Interestingly, he blames both capitalism and communism on the Jews. I get the sense that because he attributes such power and genius to them, he cannot imagine how anyone could call him antisemitic.)

The book seemed long to me, and full of misconceptions. However, he redeems himself with an excellent final chapter describing how it required Christianity, not any doctrine of evolutionary human progress, to end slavery: “There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.”

Chesterton is never dull, but he can be annoying. There was a lot of annoyance involved in reading What I Saw in America. But there were rewards as well.

Reading

Saga reading report: ‘The Saga of Gunnar, the Fool of Keldugnup,’ and ‘Gisl Illugason’s Tale’

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No doubt you’ve been waiting for my saga reading report from the second weekend of Viking Fest Minnesota. You are in luck; I did read a couple short sagas from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders during the festival, and my reports follow.

The Saga of Gunnar, the Fool of Keldugnup

This saga is one of the late ones, in which so many fairy tale tropes are employed that it’s questionable whether it has any basis in true events at all.

Gunnar is another example of the “Kitchen Sitter,” “Male Cinderella,” or “Kolbitar” (Coal-biter), a hero who loafs by the hearth all the years of his youth, then suddenly springs up with astonishing strength and skill to do what a man’s gotta do. He has some adventures in Iceland, in which (in an implausible plot development I’ve also noted in other sagas) he kills one of a pair of troll sisters, but spares the life of the other, who then becomes his devoted slave and helps him find great treasure. (Apparently, in the saga view, trolls have no sense of self-interest at all, but can be domesticated like wild animals.)

Later he travels to Norway (in the time of Jarl Haakon, whom you might recall from my novel, The Year of the Warrior) and manages to survive, even though Haakon plots to have him killed. Eventually Gunnar returns to Iceland and makes peace with the sister of a man he killed, in a rather anticlimactic manner.

At one point, Gunnar tells the jarl that he is twelve years old – which seems implausible to the modern reader, but that was indeed the age when a boy became a man under Viking law. A very short time later, though, he declares himself eighteen, so maybe it’s just a storyteller’s or scribal mistake.

Gisl Illugason’s Tale

The Tale of Gisl Illugason is a different kind of story. It takes place later in time than the classic sagas, in the days of King Magnus Barefoot (or Bareleg – he picked up the fashion of wearing the kilt in Scotland) of Norway. This story possesses enough plausibility to perhaps be based on true events.

Gisl travels to Norway, where he recognizes one of the king’s guard as the man who killed his father. So, naturally, he kills him. King Magnus wants to hang him immediately, but (in a development that resembles the story of Asbjorn Seal’s-Bane, which you may recall from my novel King of Rogaland), is persuaded to postpone the execution to the following day, so that the killing won’t be done at night, which was against the law. The next day – in a surprising twist – Gisl’s dying victim asks the king to spare his life. The king does so, and gives Gisl his victim’s place in his household.

We’re told, amusingly, that during his trial, Gisl offers (in the classic saga style) to recite a poem in praise of the king. The king gives permission and he does so, but the saga writer tells us “it was not much of a poem.”

Low points for drama; high points for realism.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Viking Fest Minnesota 2026, wrap-up

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If I am a Viking in any sense, I’m an old Viking. There are a few examples in the sagas – King Harald Fairhair doddering in the high seat, hankering after younger women, and turning the government over to his worst son. Egil Skalagrimsson, blind and dependent, still seething with murderous vindictiveness.

I find that sitting on a Viking chest (with no back support) for a 10-hour day pretty much takes the starch out of me. Next year at Viking Fest Minnesota, since they’ve exiled me to the modern merchants’ section, I think I’ll swallow my reenactor’s pride and use a folding chair. Maybe I can find a replica of one of those Roman commander chairs, if I can afford one.

(I have discovered, by the way, that acetaminophen works pretty well on day-after aches and pains.)

The picture at the top is the selfie I used to check in on Facebook yesterday (which was Sunday if you’re keeping track). I suppose a cheerier face might lead to better sales, though I didn’t do bad.

After the August-like heat and low crowds of the previous weekend, this one was considerably better. The highs were around 60 degrees Fahrenheit – suitable for woolen tunics and cloaks. And whatever kind of warm hat you have. (I have a brown sheepskin one which has never properly fit my head.)

Saturday was well-attended, and my sales were excellent. I think I had three high rollers who bought the entire Erling Saga at the festival bargain price. God bless those people. Sunday was not as good, but not bad either. All in all, the event did a pretty good job of watering the parched ground of my personal treasury.

Had some good conversations, with surprisingly few serious cranks. I was particularly happy to meet Johnny Rikard Andersen, a Norwegian who is part of the crew of Saga Oseberg, the modern sailing replica of the famous Oseberg burial ship. I attended the lecture he gave in the museum building, and it was fascinating. A new Norwegian contact is always delightful.

To finish up, a few photos:

One of the Icelandic horses being put through its paces:

My bookselling awning, in its environment (the rip in the canvas happened in a storm during the week).

A view of the inside of the historical encampment.

Now I am home again, with a bad cold. Pray for me if you like.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Sea-Gull Cry,’ by Robert Nathan

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He topped a bare rise, and saw, for a moment, the Pamet valley spread out before him like a bowl of darkness cold with mist, with the few twinkling lights of Truro scattered among the hills. Look, he thought, how each house has its own bit of light, and how the night flows around them and between them.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t read a Robert Nathan book for a while, so I went to Amazon and picked out The Sea-Gull Cry, a 1942 novel. It’s a peaceful story about the war, full of longing, resonance, and the shadow of tragedy.

Louisa, a 19-year-old girl, and her little brother Jeri, are Polish refugees. Somehow they made it to America and set out wandering in the Cape Cod area. They’ve taken up residence in the cabin of a beached scow belonging to the kindly Mr. and Mrs. Baghot. They subsist by fishing and scavenging. What they’ll do when winter comes they are not sure.

Richard Smith is college professor in a nearby town. He’s in his 40s, lonely and directionless. So he decides to buy a sailboat and spend his summer sailing to New England. Unfortunately, he isn’t a very good sailor, and he quickly wrecks himself, not far from Louisa and Jeri. Mr. Baghot helps him repair his boat, and he grows friendly with the brother and sister. He is drawn to Louisa, but assumes such interest from his side would be unwelcome. Meanwhile, Jeri has a secret plan for the future that’s both noble and potentially disastrous.

As is the case with most of Robert Nathan’s novels, the story of The Sea-Gull Cry does not deliver the kind of epic climax one might expect. The satisfactions here are gentler – kind hearts, awakening love, and some of Nathan’s most exquisite poetic prose. Also an echo of tragedy and heroism in unexpected places. There is no magic in this book, except for the magic of love.

The Sea-Gull Cry is a beautiful book. I enjoyed it greatly. The age difference between Smith and Louisa is probably more of an issue today than it was at the time – especially, as Louisa herself mentions, since there were a lot of women back then for whom there would be no husbands at all.