Fiction, Reviews

‘My Man Jeeves,’ by P. G. Wodehouse

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It was one of those jolly, peaceful mornings that make a chappie wish he’d got a soul or something…

I picked up this P. G. Wodehouse collection, My Man Jeeves, which proved to be a series of stories from the early stages of the Wooster/Jeeves saga. I tend to forget that Bertie Wooster first appeared to readers as an Englishman residing in America. His saga begins with the story “Extricating Young Gussie,” which does not appear in this collection, and for good reason. “Extricating Young Gussie” features Bertie and Jeeves, but the author had not yet had the Great Brainstorm. In that story, Bertie’s last name is unclear, and all Jeeves does is answer the door and take people’s coats. It’s so jarring to the unsuspecting reader that some Wodehouse fans consider it non-canonical – though this collection belies that. In it, Bertie refers a couple times to the fact that his current residence in New York City is due to the fact that his Aunt Agatha had sent him there on the Gussie mission – and since he failed to complete it to her satisfaction, he’s waiting for the heat to die down so he can go home. (When he says, “What I mean is, much as I like America, I didn’t want to have England barred to me for the rest of my natural…” I thought sadly of Wodehouse’s actual exile after World War II.)

The book’s title is slightly misleading, as some of the stories are in fact not about Bertie and Jeeves, but about Reggie Pepper, a sort of proto-Bertie. Like the Bertie of “Extricating Young Gussie,” Reggie lacks the blessing of an omniscient valet (though there’s a valet with feet of clay in one story), so his problems tend to be solved by some kind of deus ex machina. Wodehouse, of course, uses dei ex machina in the majority of his non-Jeeves stories, because they’re a silly device and suited to the idiom.

If you watched the excellent BBC Jeeves and Wooster TV series with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Frye, many of these stories will be familiar to you – they based a whole season on them, I think, though the TV writers made some judicious alterations.

In short, My Man Jeeves is very funny and entertaining, as you doubtless knew from the outset. If you’re an admirer of Billy Sunday, you might resent a disguised reference to him (under the name of Jimmy Mundy) in the last story — but he’s an instrument of happy story resolution, so I don’t see why you should.

Fiction, Reviews

Homer’s Odyssey: How Dumb Is the Crew?

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Here’s my attempt at a video review of Homer’s Odyssey. I’d like to make a series of one-star reviews of classics. I may not be smart enough to pull it off. May not be dumb enough either. Let me know if you enjoy it and any other comments you wish to share.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Nobody’s Hero,’ by M. W. Craven

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She had the physique of a long-distance runner and looked twice as miserable.

There are certainly reasons to dislike M. W. Craven’s Ben Koenig books – I’ll mention one in this review. But one thing you won’t have to worry about is finding yourself in the hands of an amateur storyteller. This guy knows his business (he even knows how to use the word “myriad”).

Ben Koenig, our hero, is (as you may recall from yesterday’s review) a former US Marshal with specialized combat training. He lives off the grid and on the run (there are reasons), but he’s nevertheless on call for special assignments from the US government. He is, incidentally, incapable of fear due to a brain anomaly, which can be good or bad depending on the situation.

The problem in Nobody’s Hero begins with a series of murders staged as accidents. The victims are unlikely choices – upper level (but not top) functionaries and experts in fields as diverse as waste treatment and cultural anthropology. Then one day an elderly Englishwoman is abducted in a park. Investigators find a letter in her safe, with a list of names on it. Most of the people listed there are dead, but the one still alive is Ben Koenig. Soon he finds himself on a plane to London, accompanied – again – by fellow agent Jen Draper, with whom he has a hostile but respectful relationship. Their investigation will lead them to one plot twist after another, many surprises, and lots and lots of violence.

The action in Nobody’s Hero is implausible in the style of today’s action movies, but it goes beyond anything you’re even likely to see there. I have to give author Craven full marks for creativity – his villains are idiosyncratic, and the Big Threat is one you’ll never see coming.

You should be warned, however, that the final showdown gets very, very grotesque. This book is not for the faint of heart.

It’s very well done, but it’s not for everyone.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Fearless,’ by M. W. Craven

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I didn’t like Jen. Never had. There was just something about her, something not quite right. Like watching a nature documentary narrated by someone other than David Attenborough.

To begin with, a reader may well be excused for thinking he’s picked up a Jack Reacher novel by mistake. We meet Ben Koenig, the hero of M. W. Craven’s Fearless, as he is traveling the country by bus, with no possessions other than what he carries in a backpack. When danger arises, he is dangerous and resourceful, and can handle himself well, because he’s a former Marine with “very special” training, and technically still a US Marshal.

But Ben is not Jack Reacher. He’s just as dangerous, perhaps, but he has a very different reason for his hobo lifestyle. (For one thing, he has a brain anomaly that prevents him from feeling fear. That is not always a helpful trait.) However, he finally gets trapped, and that’s when he encounters his former boss, who needs his help. The boss’s daughter has been kidnapped, long enough ago that he’s lost all hope of getting her back alive. He needs Ben to employ his skills to find the kidnappers – and to put them down without mercy.

Ben doesn’t hesitate, but the job includes one unwelcome feature. He’ll have to work with Jen Draper, a former fellow marshal, now a private security contractor. They don’t like each other at all, but call a truce to get the job done.

The trail will lead them to a small town in Texas where a young entrepreneur is building a solar energy company. Much blood will be spilled, and there will be big surprises before the final showdown.

I was much impressed with M. W. Craven’s writing (the title makes an amusing contrast with the author’s name). This guy (he’s actually an Englishman, but he writes American well) is a pro. His plotting is addictive and creative, constantly escalating in the style of a movie thriller. His characters are quirky and fun, and the dialogue is snappy. The occasional political comments seem balanced, and should not greatly offend anybody on either side.

My only quibble is a cultural one, and very likely a point forced on the author by his editors (at least implicitly). The relationship between Ben and Jen is a good one dramatically – we can tell that they hate each other so much that we know they’re going to fall in love down the road, which is always fun. But the author overstresses her capabilities as a fighter. We’re told not only that she’s brave and fierce and fit, which is plausible. He has to go on to state that she was the “toughest” in their unit – that all the men were physically afraid of her. I might (possibly) believe that if we were told that she has an extra chromosome and hair on her chest, and if the unit were not elite, but in fact she’s described as slender and attractive. I’ve often complained about the little women who keep showing up in stories and movies beating up much bigger, stronger men, and I’m not going to quit. It’s implausible and does nothing to advance the story.

Still, that’s an isolated issue. Overall, Fearless was a top notch read, and I’ll be reviewing the sequel tomorrow.

Fiction, Religion, Reviews

‘The Bishop’s Wife,’ by Robert Nathan

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He discovered the wealthy lady in a small house near the river, furnished in the style of the last century, which is to say that everything was uncomfortable. She received the archdeacon in her library, in which there still remained a few books.

I approached Robert Nathan’s The Bishop’s Wife with some hesitation. Fond as I am of Nathan, he was a Jewish writer, and I wasn’t looking forward to finding out how he dealt with the Christian church. In the event, it was indeed a little awkward, but that wasn’t the only awkwardness I experienced with this story.

The Bishop’s Wife was made into a movie in 1947, starring David Niven (as the bishop), Cary Grant (as the angel), and Loretta Young. It’s a minor Christmas classic, not as popular as “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but like the Capra movie it features Christmas and an angel. The movie isn’t bad; I was surprised to discover how far it veers from the book at the end.

Bishop Henry Brougham is a dignified, earnest churchman (one assumes he’s Episcopalian, but references to Luther and the Augsburg Confession suggest to me he might be Lutheran). His great vision is to promote the Christian home, but he believes (for some reason) that the way to nurture good homes is to build a cathedral. The challenge of raising funds is daunting to him, so he prays to God for an archdeacon gifted in fundraising. That’s when Michael appears. He informs Henry that he’s an angel, and that he’s here to do that job. Henry accepts him, but they keep the angel part to themselves.

Henry introduces Michael to his wife Julia, and Michael immediately falls in love with her. It’s a novel experience for an angel, except that it reminds him of the world before the Fall, when all was innocence and love. Julia is a frustrated wife – there’s no passion in her marriage, and she pours her affections out on her daughter Juliette. (I did not like Juliette much – her dialogue seemed very artificial to me.)

Both Michael and Julia are strongly tempted, but (spoiler alert) nothing more than a kiss happens between them. Unlike in the movie, where the angel (called Dudley there) helps the bishop to understand his deeper ministry and to appreciate his wife, the book ends with nothing much changed in that regard. Michael completes his assignment and returns whence he came, with a deep and tragic and new understanding he never had before. Julia gains one thing in her life, but her marriage is left pretty much the same.

It’s hard to know what to say about The Bishop’s Wife. My orthodox Christianity made me an argumentative reader. The overarching theme seems to be that the joy and love of Heaven, which permeate Michael, are so much higher than Christian theology and morality that they render them rather irrelevant. (I’m sure that’s true in a sense, but it’s hard for a Christian to conceive of an angel being indifferent to the Son of God.) Henry is both a bad churchman and a bad husband, I think – he overspiritualizes his marriage and overmaterializes his ministry. It’s disappointing that he leaves the stage as clueless as he was before.

The Bishop’s Wife left this reader oddly flat. It’s remarkable to me that it’s one of Nathan’s most famous works.

Reading, Religion

Milestone

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Photo credit: aaronburden. Unsplash license.

I hesitate to post this, because it sounds like bragging – even worse, it sounds like bragging about a spiritual matter. Even worse, I might actually be bragging and in denial about it. Maybe I can pour enough self-deprecation on to counterbalance the sin of pride.

Last night, at bedtime, I finished the Book of Malachi in my Bible (I always do my bedtime Bible reading in Norwegian, to multitask, stacking education on top of edification. I’ve done this for more than 50 years.) I started (in English) when I was in confirmation class at church; I must have been about 13 years old. I’m now… considerably older.

Since I read from the Old Testament and the New Testament at different times of the day, I get through the New Testament several times for every full reading of the Old Testament. I don’t know how many times I’ve read the New Testament. But last night marked my 20th reading of the O.T. (Actually, it may be my 21st. There was a time I lost track of the hash marks I put in the inside cover; I opted for the lower count to be sure I wasn’t cheating.)

At the rate of one chapter a night, five nights a week (I give myself a break on weekends), it takes me a little over four years to read the Old Testament through.

Twenty readings seems to me like a milestone. I could have racked up more hash tags, certainly; there have been periods in my life when I got out of the habit, not without guilt. (At one point I grew deeply concerned about my spiritual state, as I was having such a hard time picking the book up at night. Then it occurred to me that the print was awfully small. I procured a pair of reading glasses and found my spirituality restored.)

I’m sure there are a lot of people who’ve read the Bible more times than I have, adjusting for age or not. Some people follow reading plans that get them through the whole thing (New Testament included) in a year. I respect that, but I’ve never felt right setting goals in my Bible reading. It’s like scheduling visits to one’s grandmother.

There was an age when the number of times you’d read the Bible earned you esteem in the United States. Emotionally, I suppose I still live in that time.

Rewards in Heaven? I believe there are such things, but I generally don’t consider them in practice; when we get Over There, we’ll cast whatever crowns we’ve acquired at the feet of the King. So the only reward I expect for my Bible reading is whatever wisdom manages to work its way into my mind and spirit. That ought to be enough. Adults don’t expect a reward for eating healthy food – the food’s effects are the reward.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Something New,’ by P.G. Wodehouse

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One of the King Georges of England—I forget which—once said that a certain number of hours’ sleep each night—I cannot recall at the moment how many—made a man something, which for the time being has slipped my memory. Baxter agreed with him.

Not long ago I reviewed P.G. Wodehouse’s novel A Damsel in Distress, which I described (with my customary insight) as an embryonic work in which the attentive reader might discern elements that would eventually flower in his Blandings Castle series.

Something New (published in England, for peculiar reasons, as Something Fresh), is a 1915 publication which constitutes the next step in the process. Because this is in fact the first bona fide Blandings Castle book. Several familiar elements are here – the castle and estate themselves, of course. The dreamy, absentminded Clarence, Earl of Emsworth. The efficient Baxter, his private secretary. And the presence of imposters in the house.

But much remains only potential. Lord Emsworth, at this stage, is still enamored of his flower gardens – he has yet to discover the delights of pig-keeping. He is also obsessed with repainting his furniture, a trait bestowed on him, I suspect, solely to provide a plot point. The Efficient Baxter is a valued employee here, not the living torment he will later become to his employer, motivating Emsworth to fire him and hire a succession of other secretaries, all imposters. Instead of the earl’s sister Lady Constance, who bullies him and effectively runs the household in later stories, the only sister present in this book is Lady Ann Warblington, a retiring sort who is given little to do in the story.

That said, the plot is amusing enough for an early work. Ashe Marson, a struggling writer in London, falls in love with Joan Valentine, a former chorus girl and current magazine writer. By coincidence they learn (separately) that Lord Emsworth has “stolen” a priceless Egyptian scarab from the collection of the American millionaire J. Preston Peters (he in fact slipped it into his pocket absentmindedly, and then forgot about it). Mr. Peters offers a large reward for the scarab’s recovery, and the two young people both travel to Market Blandings, installing themselves as servants in the castle. Rivals at first, they later decide to go into partnership, as love blossoms.

There are several other plot lines, especially concerning Lord Emsworth’s son Freddie having gotten engaged to Mr. Peters’ daughter, though she is being pursued persistently by another young man who has loved her for many years (he’s staying at the castle too; I forget on what pretext). The high point of the story is a slapstick nighttime scene where Ashe, creeping out to burgle the scarab, collides with Baxter on the hall stairway, breaking furniture and rousing the whole household from their beds.

Another interesting feature of this book is the glimpse it gives us into “downstairs” life in a stately household. The author delights in describing the rigid class snobbery of the upper servants, and the strict protocol they observe in seating arrangements. This element is touched on in later stories, but I don’t think Wodehouse ever again spends so much time on it.

Something New is a very funny and likeable book. I laughed more than once. It only hints at the greatness to come, but it’s definitely worth reading for its own sake.

Reviews

Film review: ‘A Great Awakening’

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On Sunday I noticed that the movie “A Great Awakening” was available on Amazon Prime, and I watched it. As an old man who remembers the Bad Old Days, I approach all Christian movies with suspicion, but I was pleasantly surprised.

In case you’re not familiar with it, the film is about the relationship between Benjamin Franklin and the evangelist George Whitefield. Generally, it avoided preachiness, despite the fact that one of the main characters was a preacher.

The film opens during the Constitutional Convention, as the assembly seems about to collapse, with federalists and states’ rights advocates unable to find common ground. Someone calls on Benjamin Franklin to share his wisdom, but he goes home without making a statement. That night he is reminded of his old friend Whitefield, and he tells his grandson the story of their friendship.

We travel back to Whitefield’s childhood as the son of a widowed innkeeper in England. A kindly patron offers to provide funds for him to attend Oxford University. However, he’ll have to attend as a servant, caring for the needs of wealthy students. Those students treat him with contempt, except for the members of the “Holy Club,” the Christian group led by the brothers John and Charles Wesley. Joining them, George becomes a zealous worker with the poor, and in time experiences his own faith breakthrough. Once ordained, he finds his fiery preaching unwelcome in the Church of England, and concludes that there will be better fields of harvest in America.

On this side of the ocean, his preaching (particularly his ability to project his voice to huge numbers at once) impresses Franklin. Whitefield, for his part, wishes to contract with Franklin as his publisher. As Whitefield’s mission prospers, the arrangement brings great profit to both of them, though Whitefield’s percentage goes to support an orphanage he establishes in the south, which proves more expensive than he hoped.

We watch Franklin’s increasing involvement in revolutionary politics, and learn that Whitefield didn’t live long. In their final meeting, Franklin continues to reject Whitefield’s invitations to believe in Christ, denouncing Whitefield’s decision (hypocritical in light of his previous condemnations of slavery) to use slave labor at his orphanage, in order to prevent bankruptcy.

But when Franklin returns to Congress, he draws on his memories of Whitefield to suggest a possible plan for bringing the representatives together.

All in all, it was a pretty effective movie. I believe it’s questionable whether Whitefield himself would have ever supported independence – he was a loyal subject to the king all his life. I was a little disappointed that they changed his appearance – he famously had one crossed eye; here the eye looks cloudy instead. The writers made an honorable choice in including his failure on the slavery issue – though it weakens the story line a little.

I think it’s questionable whether Franklin’s resolution was really offered with Whitefield in mind, and I’m pretty sure historians will question whether it was that resolution that saved the Constitution.

But movies aren’t about exact history; compared to films like “Braveheart,” “A Great Awakening” towers like a monument to verisimilitude.

The actors’ performances are extremely good. The production values are quite high, considering the production company’s available resources. The plot is generally effective and even moving.

We have in fact reached a point in history when Christian and conservative filmmaking is often palpably superior, both in content and artistry, to most of Hollywood’s output. I look forward to seeing “Young Washington” when it becomes available to me.

Movie-wise, the future looks pretty bright for our side.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Wild South’ and ‘Hell for Leather,’ by Alan Lee

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Johnny remembered a story from the Bible when the lame and the sick gathered around a pool where an angel would stir the surface and whoever reached the water first would be healed. Except it never seemed to work. The casino felt like that, desperate people huddled and hoping for a miracle, day after day.

I’ve been raving about Alan Lee’s Mackenzie August/Sinatra novels, telling you how much fun they are. But those books didn’t prepare me for his Atlanta Burning series, two books released to date. This new series raises the stakes, takes it to a whole new level. I call it genuinely epic. Think of a fusion of the classic Western story with a Mad Max postapocalyptic thriller. With a Christian element artfully woven in. The first book is The Wild South.

This is the setting: Atlanta in the present, or maybe a few years into the future. The place has become a dystopia. Police defunding has resulted in rampant crime, the authorities helpless. In response, the government has instituted radical, controversional new rules – bounties will be placed on the worst criminals at large, and licensed bounty hunters will be permitted arrest them. Licenses aren’t hard to get. Every sane person can tell the results will be horrific.

Our hero, Johnathan “Johnny Sugar” Young, is not much interested in all that. He’s a Georgia celebrity, thanks to his college football career, in which he led his team to two Sugar Bowls, even though he quit before graduation and never even tried out for professional ball. He was a cop for a while and even took FBI training – but he quit that too. Today he’s a professional gambler, playing high stakes poker at an Atlanta casino.

He lives in the upper story of a commercial building he owns. His roommate is Kunga, a former criminal who once stabbed him with a knife, but then was born again and changed his ways. He’s now Johnny’s best friend.

Because the police only respond to emergencies nowadays, Johnny has to call in a private crime scene investigator when his property is robbed. The investigator turns out to be Bella Adams, the love of Johnny’s life, whom he hasn’t seen in years. She’s still mad at him for leaving college (and her). She tells him she’s a licensed bounty hunter, and has plans to go after her chunk of the reward money when the season opens. She knows Johnny’s skills, both as a cop and a gunman (he’s a natural), and she asks him to become her partner. Learning she has lost her apartment, he invites her to move in with him and Kunga. Thus begins an awkward but increasingly affectionate partnership.

It’s quite a ride. There’s violence here, of course, but there’s also increasing personal insight, and prophecy, and acts of heroism, and a remarkable final showdown unlike anything I’ve ever read before. I couldn’t wait to download the second book, Hell For Leather

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Fiction, Reviews

‘The River Journey,’ by Robert Nathan

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“Well, then,” said Minerva at last, “what are we to believe?”

“Believe in what you do not know,” replied Mrs. Mortimer promptly. “Believe in your own ignorance.”

I wasn’t entirely happy with the last Robert Nathan book I read, but now I’ve finished The River Journey (published 1949) and it’s all right again. This novel is a sort of an allegory. I didn’t entirely understand it, but it raised the right issues.

Minerva Parkinson is a middle-aged housewife in an Iowa town on the Missouri River. When her doctor tells her she’s dying, she decides not to inform her husband Henry. Instead she intends to give him the adventure he’s always wanted but never reached out for. He’s always wanted to go down the river to St. Louis and New Orleans. So now she’ll cash in her stock certificates and buy a houseboat, and they’ll take that journey. She isn’t sure she’s made him happy all these years, but he’ll have this happy memory when she’s gone.

When they finally set out, she’s a little disappointed at first. Henry isn’t sure about this whole thing; it’s kind of frightening. He’s mostly coming along to please her. But the situation changes in Nebraska City, where they take on two passengers – a young woman named Nora and a mysterious, dark man named Mr. Mortimer. Mr. Mortimer, Minerva comes to realize, is Death. And Nora, like Minerva, is dying. When a flirtation begins between Nora and Henry, Minerva suppresses her jealousy, wanting to give them both a little happiness before she departs.

In terms of strict morality, I didn’t entirely approve of the plot of The River Journey. But I don’t think it’s intended to be taken on that level. This is a journey through the heart, a confrontation with mortality and the things we must leave behind.

The bottom line is that I enjoyed The River Journey very much. It possessed the full Robert Nathan magic.