Fiction, Reviews

‘Justice Without Mercy,’ by Blake Banner

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Looking at my old reviews on this blog, I see that I stopped reading Blake Banner’s Harry Bauer books mainly because they featured cliffhanger endings, which I hate. I absentmindedly picked up Justice Without Mercy, and was relieved to find that it did not end with a cliffhanger. So that’s good. But I still wasn’t entirely happy with it.

Harry Bauer works with Cobra, one of those super-secret semi-governmental security organizations so vital to the survival of the thriller genre. In Justice Without Mercy, he is sent to the small island of I-Takka, between Guyana in Surinam. The island, he is told, is essentially ungoverned. Control is in the hands of a mysterious corporation mining lithium and (according to rumor) carrying on mysterious human experiments. There are reports that children are being abused and murdered. Harry’s brief, which he welcomes, is to see if it’s true – and if it’s true, to take out the main people with extreme prejudice.

Harry Bauer suffers as a character from his extreme aptitude for his job. He’s big, strong, fast, trained to the limit. Throughout the story, whenever he needs to kill somebody (which happens with increasing frequency), he has so little difficulty that the author has to throw in a dozen hyperdeveloped mutants at the end to give us a dramatic climax. Harry is given a few meditative moments in which he ponders the morality of killing, but to someone who just finished reading Mark Helprin’s Elegy in Blue, it was pretty perfunctory. Also, the ending was a little incoherent, I thought.

I’m getting old, after all. I don’t enjoy high body counts as much as I used to. The Harry Bauer books are actually quite well-written (I liked the prose), and they fill the much-needed market niche of books tailored to male readers. So I shouldn’t complain.

But personally I found it rather dreary. It’s fine for its target audience. though. Cautions for lots of violence, rough language, and sexual situations.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Elegy in Blue,’ by Mark Helprin

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If I cast back over the wars, famines, pandemics, and plagues, all the afflictions of nature and human nature, it seems clear to me that, as a necessity like breathing, the greater command of existence is to look beyond existence itself. Somewhere in the most delicate and invisible abstract is a point where all things come into balance, time stops, pain vanishes, and love and light are the same.

Imagine Death Wish, but recast in the form of a Baroque oratorio. That’s one way to attempt explaining Mark Helprin’s luminous latest novel, Elegy in Blue. Baroque is an appropriate adjective, because he has a very baroque style – he delights in lists, and catalogs, and endless iterations of ever-increasing granularity in detail, so that finally your brain surrenders and you just get caught up in the beauty of the words. And the beauty of the words is a major element of the meaning.

It’s also a hymn to the borough of Brooklyn, which the narrator loves even as he watches it being corrupted.

This narrator is a retired New York investment banker who never divulges his name. Aside from service in Vietnam and the loss of his son in Iraq, he has generally had a privileged life, especially in his marriage to his wife Clare, whom he loves profoundly.

Then he happens across an act of evil in process, and he does the only decent thing, the thing any man should do. As a result, he loses everything and becomes a pariah, a broken man. When he learns of another evil act which he has the power to stop, will he have the courage to act again, knowing the price of virtue?

In a previous book, A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin gave us what I consider one of the great antiwar novels. But that should not be misunderstood as an affirmation of pacifism. The pacifists are some of the main villains of Elegy in Blue, cowards who resort to bromides like “cycle of violence” because they haven’t the guts to act against manifest evil.

Elegy in Blue is presented in intertwined chronology, so that sad endings are often described before happy beginnings. I steeled myself at first for the pain that was clearly coming, but on balance the story was mostly about love and joy, and the things that outlive us in the end.

As always in Helprin books, there was also a lot of humor. Dealing here with New York corporations and legal firms, he disports himself with monickers like Angier Francis Diphthahng, Bradford Pear, Simon Yachtsman, Hodgkins Chalmers, and Chalmers Hodgkins.

A Helprin book is a literary experience, intended to be savored and revisited. I loved Elegy in Blue and recommend it without reservation.

Authors, Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough,’ by John J. Ross, M.D.

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Those who claim that Shakespeare did not write his plays often argue that only some wealthy, privileged, and highly educated person would have been capable of writing them. The premise of this argument is fundamentally mistaken. Literary genius more often arises from disappointment and chagrin than comfort and complacency; the rich and content have no need of imagination.

The Duke of Wellington is supposed to have remarked that no man is a hero to his valet. No doubt there’s some truth to that – familiarity, especially regarding a person’s phobias, thoughtlessness, and hemorrhoids, has to take the shine off their glamor, however eminent they might be. Nevertheless, there’s another way to look at it.

Years ago, I read a book called Napoleon’s Glands, by Arno Karlen (unfortunately out of print now). I found it fascinating, and learning about famous people’s physical frailties did not generally lower my opinion of them (even if, as in the case of Napoleon, I disliked them from the onset). I had a similar experience with John J. Ross’s Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough, which applies very much the same analysis to great English-language authors.

The book deals with William Shakespeare, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, The Brontë sisters, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, William Butler Yeats, Jack London, and George Orwell. We learn that Shakespeare might have contracted syphilis (which was endemic in England in his time), though it’s not certain, and the author describes the harrowing medical treatment (surprisingly not worthless) he might have undergone for it. More solidly, the Bard’s deteriorating handwriting indicates essential tremor, a common malady in aging people (we have it in my own family).

Milton suffered detached retinas; Jonathan Swift probably had Ménière’s Disease and certainly died of dementia. Tuberculosis, probably contracted in a horrific private school, plagued the Brontës. Nathaniel Hawthorne may have had Asperger’s Syndrome, and probably died of stomach cancer. Melville looks like Bipolar Disorder. Yeats seems to have suffered from brucellosis; Jack London had scurvy and yaws, and probably died of an accidental drug overdose. James Joyce looks like a case of reactive arthritis, a condition related to venereal disease, and suffered greatly from deteriorating eyesight. Orwell was (probably) another victim of tuberculosis, aggravated by bad lifestyle choices.

Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough may be an unpleasant read for sensitive readers (I myself grew up on a farm and am son and brother to nurses, so my threshold of nausea is pretty high). But I found the book absolutely riveting. And rather than inspiring contempt for these remarkable artists, my admiration for their achievement, in the face of such suffering, only rose.

The book did make me wonder, though, whether my lack of literary success might be due to insufficient craziness in my makeup.

Music, Religion

‘God’s Word Is Our Great Heritage’

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I’m in the middle of reading a very interesting book whose review must wait till Monday. So, this being Friday, I have ferreted out another Scandinavian hymn for you.

“God’s Word Is Our Great Heritage,” I think, is not familiar to non-Lutherans, though the tune will be. (I find, to my chagrin, that most of the YouTube renditions feature the wrong tune – by which I mean a tune I didn’t grow up with. Almost the only version with the right tune is the one I’ve posted above, featuring a solo singer who does a pretty good job.)

The author of the hymn, once again, is the problematic N.F.S. Grundtvig of Denmark. It’s rather odd that we have a hymn in praise of Scripture from his pen, as one of his eccentric doctrines, at least at one point in his career, was that the Apostle’s Creed was older than the Gospels. Nevertheless, there it is, and I think it’s to his credit. The translator, Ole C. Belsheim, a Norwegian immigrant, attended, among other schools, Luther College, Decorah, Ia. and Augsburg Seminary, Minneapolis (both of which I attended too, except that Augsburg was just a college by the time I got there. It calls itself a university now, probably on the strength of its association with me).

The hymn is also peculiar in having just one verse, as far as I can tell. C. S. Lewis, who hated long hymns, would have loved this one, if he ever heard of it, which I doubt.

Happy weekend.

Music, Uncategorized

‘The Ballad of Casey Jones’

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Yesterday I had three ideas for blog posts, all of which seemed to me both intriguing and easy to remember – so why write them down?

Today, of course, I’ve forgotten them all.

The only thing I came up with today – for no reason I can think of – was the song in the video above, quaintly illustrated with footage of model trains. Well, I’m the grandson of a railroad man (a line foreman), so why not post about the legendary Casey Jones?

As a child, I thought of Casey Jones as a burly blonde man, due to seeing a syndicated TV series about him starring Alan Hale, Jr. (later to be Skipper on “Gilligan’s Island”), and a local Minnesota kids’ TV show, starring a guy constructed along roughly the same lines. In fact, Jones was a tall, thin, dark-haired fellow. His name was John Luther Jones (1864-1900). He was born in Missouri, but his family moved to Cayce, Kentucky, from which he acquired the nickname “Casey.” He married a Roman Catholic girl in 1886 and converted to that church.

Jones went to work for the Mobile & Ohio Railroad as a telegraph operator, but rose rapidly to the lofty position of engineer, moving to the Illinois Central railroad. He achieved, if not celebrity, at least some public distinction during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, when he was one of the engineers assigned to carry tourists to the fairgrounds. He was popular with the passengers, and enjoyed the work.

As an engineer, he was known to be a risk-taker. There were penalties for skirting safety rules, and he racked up a fair number of them, but Jones and the other engineers were well aware that the penalties for late arrival were greater. In any case, he seems to have liked the challenge. He was a speed junky – in a later time he might have been a race car driver or jet pilot. He was proud of his “on time” record, and is credited with performing an authentic real-life rescue worthy of a movie – sighting a child standing frozen on the tracks as he worked on the engine’s running board, he climbed out onto the cowcatcher and scooped her safely up in his arms.

He worked out of Jackson, Tennessee until 1900, the year of his death, when he transferred to Memphis. On April 30, 1900, at 12:50 a.m., he boarded his regular engine 75 minutes behind schedule (accounts differ as to whether he’d been given time to rest properly). The weather and track conditions were good, and he whooped and poured on the speed, confident he could make up the time. Unbeknownst to him, a train stalled at Vaughn, Mississippi, too long for the siding, was blocking the track. A flagman had been sent out to give warning, but Jones either did not see him or saw him too late. When he realized he was going to plow into the other train, he blew the whistle (as a warning), reversed the engine, and told his fireman to jump. He himself stayed in place. His train hit the boxcar, derailed, and finally came to a rest. There were some injuries, but only Casey Jones died. Since that time there have been quibbles, but most people considered him a hero.

“The Ballad of Casey Jones” seems to have been first sung by Wallace Saunders, a black engine wiper who’d been a friend of Casey’s. However, it’s not certain what words or music he sang; he never wrote them down. The ballad evolved into the folk song we know today. It’s been recorded by many artists.

The Commie labor agitator Joe Hill wrote a version called, “Casey Jones, the Union Scab,” which was a vile slander – John Luther Jones was a paid-up union member.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Common Tragedy,’ by Alan Lee

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I never hesitate about buying one of Alan Lee’s Mackenzie August books (though apparently I’ve missed a couple in the series. I’ll have to remedy that). Common Tragedy is 15th in sequence. Mack August stands in the hardboiled tradition, but he’s taken Robert B. Parker’s sunnier approach and turned the dial up to “cheery.” If Raymond Chandler is “Noir,” Alan Lee has to be described as “Blanc.” Mack August is a big, strong, happy man who loves his life, loves his wife and kid, and enjoys company so much that he lives in a house with his father, his father’s girlfriend (the sheriff), his US Marshal friend Mannie Rodriguez and Mannie’s girlfriend Noelle, his own wife, and his dog, and they take an “it takes a village” approach to raising the kid.

They live in a house in a nice neighborhood, complete with a Home Owner’s Association. One evening, the HOA president hosts a meeting/picnic for the board in his yard, next door to Vickie Plemmons, the past president, a woman with a drinking problem and a rebellious, drug addict daughter. When Vickie disappears inside her house and doesn’t return, a neighbor woman goes inside to check on her. She finds Vickie and her daughter both dead of drug overdose.

It looks like a double suicide. The police want it to be a double suicide. But Mack is dubious. For one thing, it’s unclear how the drugs were administered. Working without a client, just out of a sense of community obligation, Mack starts asking questions. And it’s clear that a lot of his neighbors have things to hide.

Mack’s work is both hindered and helped by another neighbor, a crime podcaster, who has been secretly filming and recording his neighbors for some time, and soon starts racking up followers for his viral podcast.

On top of that, it turns out that Mannie’s girlfriend Noelle is pregnant, and she’s reluctant to tell Manny about it.

Common Tragedy is a fast-moving, amusing, and tragic story with a deeper message. I think the author may be a Christian, though his characters don’t always act like it. Highly recommended, with cautions, mostly for language.

Reading

In praise of Phonics

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Photo credit: Michał Parzuchowski. Unsplash license.

My favorite teacher in junior high school was Mr. B_______ . He was a tall, lean, austere-looking man who served in many ways as my role model. He was also head of the English department, and I’m pretty sure he made a major mistake in that role.

I remember him saying to the class one day, “People ask me why we don’t teach Phonics in our schools. My answer to that is that English is not a phonic language.”

Which turned out to be partly true but short-sighted. If he were still alive, I hope he’d have admitted that.

I was reading the latest issue of Thinking Minnesota, the magazine of the Center of the American Experiment, a local think tank. It featured an article about teaching literacy in schools, and sketched the history of the Phonics/Whole Language controversy. “Whole Language” was a theory that began to gain influence in the 1950s. It involved students recognizing words on sight, using flash cards, rather than through the words’ spelling. I was not taught to read under the Whole Language model, but I know a guy who attended the same schools, five years younger than me, who did. When he reads anything, he tells me, and comes to a word he doesn’t know, he just guesses its meaning and skips over it. He has no other tools. That’s what he was taught in school under Whole Language theory.

For my own part, I remember being taught to “sound out” words in my classes. That was Phonics training. They taught it in school, but I remember the day I actually “got” it, and that was at home.

It was summer vacation. Somebody (my grandfather, I think) had given me, as a Christmas present, a subscription to the summer edition of The Weekly Reader. The Weekly Reader was a thin magazine (it no longer exists) published for school children as an aid to reading education. I had just gotten my first copy, and had sat down to read it. But I hit a word I didn’t know, and went to Mom.

“You can sound it out yourself,” she told me. “Look at the letters. The first letter is ‘b.’ What sound does ‘b’ make?”

I said, “buh.”

“Right,” she said. “Now the next letter is ‘e.’ What sound does ‘e’ make?”

And she walked me through the word (it only had four letters), and when I had them all, I sounded it out “BE-AR.” Not exactly phonetic, of course; she had to explain that you sometimes have to search around a little, but by means of context and running through familiar words, you could generally work it out.

And soon I was tackling one word after another. I was genuinely thrilled. I’d found the key to literature! From then on, I lived more and more inside books.

I suppose a large percentage of our readers are younger than me, and therefore Whole Language-trained.

If you can’t “sound out” words, I promise you it’s not a complex art. I learned it before my brain was fully developed. I bet you could work it out in an afternoon. Simply vocalize your way through the letters.

Just a suggestion.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Mildred Pierced’ by Stuart M. Kaminsky

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By now I’ve read and reviewed the majority of the late Stuart M. Kaminsky’s amusing Toby Peters novels. Mildred Pierced is the second to last in the series, and I’m pretty sure I’ve covered the final one already. But I don’t read them in order. I read them based on how much I like (or am interested in) the celebrity client involved in each mystery. Mildred Pierced must – as any old film afficionado will guess – involve Joan Crawford, an actress who has never appealed to me in any way. Hence my delay in reading it (though she nosed in ahead of that Commie, Charlie Chaplin).

Mildred Minck is the unfaithful, abusive wife of Sheldon Minck, LA’s worst dentist, who shares an office with PI Toby Peters. Somebody killed her in a park with a crossbow bolt, and it is Sheldon’s great misfortune to have been seen standing near the body, holding a crossbow. Sheldon swears to Toby that he didn’t do it (and it’s hard to imagine a putz like Sheldon successfully murdering anybody) and asks Toby to prove his innocence. Therefore, Toby must question the witness, who just happens to be movie star Joan Crawford. To his surprise, she wants to hire him too – to keep her name out of the papers.

Now Toby has to investigate the people who put a crossbow into Sheldon’s hands – a crackpot group of proto-survivalists. Meanwhile, Toby’s sister-in-law is dying of cancer, and his cop brother Phil is contemplating retiring from the force.

Snappy, fast-moving, full of oddball characters, Mildred Pierced keeps faith with the template of the Toby Peters novels. I liked it a lot, even if I don’t like Joan Crawford much. Recommended. No serious content warnings are called for.

Music, Religion

‘O Gladsome Light’

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I often post old hymns here, especially on Fridays. But I’ve never posted one this old — it’s “O Gladsome Light” (Phos Hylarion) a hymn still used in Orthodox churches, and first known from a manuscript around 300 AD. But it could be older.

I should mention that others promote a hymn called the Oxyrhynchus Hymn. You can decide for yourself.

Have a good weekend.

Uncategorized

The Uber of 2 evils

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Photo credit: Jon Tyson (jontyson). Unsplash license.

“How’s it going?” a hypothetical interlocutor asks me.

Well, stuff is happening. My life is not dull. On a positive note, I just got an opportunity (not a lead-pipe cinch, but a possibility) to get involved in a writing project. I’m not going to tell you what it is right now. If I make the cut, I’ll let you know. If not, I’ll plausibly deny any and all knowledge of the whole matter, an eternally believable dodge in my case.

I have, I think I’ve mentioned before, two separate editing jobs with deadlines coming up soon. One pays money, the other (I can only hope) treasures in Heaven.

Have I done any more driving for Uber Eats? Not this week. I’ve been busy with the editing stuff, and – can I be frank with you? – I’m still a little scared. I’ve learned a lot in my first few runs, and one thing I’ve learned is that my Android phone is way underpowered. The many glitches I’ve experienced in the Uber Eats app are (I now suspect) due to my phone just running out of memory. I’d already decided to restart the thing after each delivery. Now I plan to refuse all “stacked” deliveries – deliveries where you pick up from two vendors located close to each other, and then deliver both in a single run. Every time I try that, the app refuses to give me directions, and I have to switch to Google Maps. I’ll see if doing only singles makes it better.

But not tonight. More editing has come in. I figure I need to prioritize the editing, even though shirking Uber Eats embarrasses me.

A friend suggested I get a new phone. I told him that if I could afford a new phone, I probably wouldn’t be driving for Uber Eats.

Life, said the wise man, is a choice of the lesser of two embarrassments.