Category Archives: LITERATURE

LITERATURE

A Good Biography of Charles Dickens

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As readers of this blog probably know, Charles Dickens is my favorite author. His writing is certainly flawed in many ways, but his novels are consistently entertaining, and they reward repeat readings. Back in 2002, Penguin publishers commissioned the American novelist Jane Smiley to write a biography of Dickens for its Penguin Lives series. I recently picked up a copy, and it is very good.

Smiley does not go into great detail in regards to Dickens personal life, instead describing significant milestones in it while referring to contemporaneous novels of his. I like this approach very much, as it gives me a greater appreciation of how his personal situations were reflected in his writing. As Smiley explains,

Biographies of Dickens, long and short, abound. A lifelong friend of his, John Forster, published the first authoritative one shortly after Dickens died. The most recent, by Peter Ackroyd, published in 1990, is more than a thousand pages long. It is, therefore, not the intention of this volume to lay out chronologically everything that we have come to know of Charles Dickens’s life as a result of some 130 years of industrious digging on the part of aficionados and scholars from all parts of the world (though admittedly mostly from England). The Charles Dickens we know is decidedly different from the man his contemporaries knew.

… In addition, I will offer interpretations of almost all of Dickens’s major works. One of the most interesting things about Charles Dickens is the way in which his style and his interest in social themes remained remarkably consistent throughout his career, while his vision shifted and evolved.

Thus, this relatively brief (207 pages) and readable biography is an excellent companion to someone who loves Dickens and would like to know the context in which he wrote his works. 

To continue reading my review, click here.

LITERATURE

Werewolf Cop: Law Enforcement Meets The Supernatural

Andrew Klavan has become one of my favorite living authors, and his current Cameron Winter series is excellent. His standalone novel, Werewolf Cop, came out in 2015. When first heard that Klavan considers it one of his finest works, I thought, “Maybe so, but what a silly title”. Well, despite the cheesy title, it is a terrific mix of horror, suspense, and straightforward murder mystery.

It begins with a crime scene involving several bodies that have been gruesomely cut to pieces in the NYC apartment of a small-time fencer of stolen goods. Zach “Cowboy” Adams and his partner, Martin “Broadway Joe” Goulart, are part of a special investigative unit: The Task Force for Extraordinary Crimes. All signs from this carnage point to a shadowy German gangster, Dominic Abend, who has been on international law enforcement’s radar for years, but he has kept a low profile. Such a low profile that there are barely any photographs of him. However, he seems to be involved in every kind of criminal enterprise imaginable, and it appears he is moving in to take over NYC.

While going over the apartment, Zach discovers a secret storage space in which a terrified little boy is hiding. He is taken to the station and during questioning he says he overheard somebody demanding to know where the “stoomp bassard” was. The social worker talking to him assumes he heard “stupid bastard”, but Zach decides to do a little research on his own.

After digging into the internet, he finds a reference to “Stumpf’s Baselard” in a paper written by a German university Professor Gretchen Dankl. It explores the mystery of a missing 15th century dagger called the Baselard. The paper has disappeared from the internet, but Zach is able to contact Dankl via email. She sends him a copy of her paper, but she will not communicate anything useful electronically, so Zach convinces his supervisor to sign off on him flying to Germany to meet with Dankl face to face.

His trip to Germany is an almost surreal experience, where Zach is so jet lagged he thinks he’s hallucinating things. There are all kinds of riots happening across Europe, and the political order there seems to be collapsing. Professor Dankl is a wizened old woman who appears to be crazy. She tells Zach that Stumpf’s Baselard is a dagger that is imbued with the power to prolong life and cure any wound. It was used to execute a notorious murderer who was suspected of being a werewolf in the 15th century, and after reappearing a few times in European history, seems to have disappeared. Dankl then shows Zach a photograph of a group of Nazi officers from WWII, and one of them bears a remarkable resemblance to Dominic Abend.

To continue reading, click here.

LITERATURE

Ultimate Prizes: The Third Book of Starbridge

I’m rereading Susan Howatch’s Starbridge Series, and I am noticing all kinds of details and themes I missed the first time around. The series chronicles three Church of England clerics: Charles Ashworth, the traditionalist theologian with a privileged background; Jonathan Darrow, the pious monk with incredible psychic gifts but potentially dangerous pride; and Neville Aysgarth, the Starbridge Archdeacon from Yorkshire who is a Modernist that dislikes any whiff of “Popery”.

The first book, Glittering Images, was narrated by Ashworth, and we soon learn that he is not the perfect man he appears to be. He suffers a breakdown, and through the effective counseling of Darrow, is able to emerge whole. Book two, Glamorous Powers, is narrated by Darrow, and he is shown to be extremely complicated. He also suffers a breakdown, and is healed by the empathetic counseling of his college rival, Francis Ingram. Near the end, Darrow butts heads with Neville Aysgarth, and it’s clear there is an immediate antipathy between them.

In the third book, Ultimate Prizes, Aysgarth is the narrator, and we see Jon Darrow from his perspective. But before Darrow enters the scene, we learn how Aysgarth is a young, ambitious Archdeacon with a gift for administration. It is set in 1942, and he is married to the perfect wife, Grace. They have five children – four sons and a daughter. The fifth child, Alexander, was a surprise, and Grace is exhausted taking care of him and their toddlers. She is unable to attend the social functions Aysgarth needs to “get on” in his career.

At one significant social event, a dinner with the bishop, Aysgarth meets a young socialite, Dido Tallent, and he is swept off his feet. He knows that to commit adultery is career suicide for a clergyman, so he resists his desire, but poor Grace soon realizes that something is wrong. Meanwhile, another character from Glittering Images shows up, the wily old Alex Jardine, who resigned his bishopric suddenly. He has mentored Aysgarth and assisted in his swift rise through the Church hierarchy, and he warns him to avoid all contact with Dido. Aysgarth takes strong offense to this advice and agrees to her request that he be her spiritual advisor.

To continue reading this review, click here.

LITERATURE, Music

Cecilia in Proghalla, Ep. 2: Phil Keaggy and Kevin Belmonte

In Episode 2 of Cecilia in Proghalla, Brad Birzer, Kevin McCormick, and Tad Wert have a wide-ranging conversation with the incredibly talented musician Phil Keaggy, and his gifted collaborator, author and poet Kevin Belmonte. They have a new album: Things of Heaven, that is a beautiful set of songs celebrating everything from Paul McCartney’s lost and then found Hofner bass to Easter and Christmas.

Along the way, we touch on Kevin’s new book, G K Chesterton on Life, and Phil’s fascinating career in music. Give it a listen:

LITERATURE

Le Fanu’s Ghost Stories: Classic Gothic Horror

Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish author writing at the same time as Charles Dickens. He specialized in Gothic tales of helpless young women trapped in desperate situations and some pretty spooky ghost stories. Ghost Stories and Tales of Mystery was his first collection of short stories. It was published anonymously in 1851, and it consists of two ghost stories and two Gothic ones.

The first story, The Watcher, is about a retired navy officer, Sir James Barton, who is engaged to be marries to an eligible young woman. Everything is going extremely well for Captain Barton, except that when we walks home from visiting his fiancée one evening, he hears some footsteps following him. Every time he turns around, the street is empty, but as soon as he resumes walking, the footsteps also resume.

He soon receives a brief letter that reads as follows:

“Mr. Barton, late Captain of the Dolphin, is warned of danger. He will do wisely to avoid —— Street — (here the locality of his last night’s adventure was named) — if he walks there as usual, he will meet with something bad. Let him take warning, once for all, for he has good reason to dread
“The Watcher.”

The mysterious Watcher continues to shadow Captain Barton, to the point that his mental and physical health decline to an alarming degree. It turns out Captain Barton has some skeletons in his closet that have come back to haunt him, literally!

To continue reading my review, click here.

LITERATURE

R H Benson’s Lord of the World: A Tale of the End Times

Robert Hugh Benson’s 1907 novel, Lord of the World, might be the first dystopian novel of the modern era. Robert Hugh was the brother of E. F. Benson, the master ghost story teller and author of the hysterically funny Lucia novels. He was a Roman Catholic priest, and Lord of the World is his depiction of what would happen if the antichrist came to power.

Lord of the World begins in a future England with Fr. Percy Franklin and Fr. Francis meeting with a very old man, Mr. Templeton, to learn from him what life was like in the past. It turns out that the “Individualist Party”, which is basically the Conservative Party, has been reduced to almost nothing by the “Humanist Party” which is basically Marxist. The world is divided into three regions of influence: the Eastern Empire (Asia), the West (Europe and Africa), and America (North and South). Euthanasia is widespread, and polite people don’t talk about any life after death. Of Christianity, only Catholicism remains (and it is confined to Ireland and Rome), because the Protestant denominations succumbed to the ideology of humanism.

To continue reading, click here.

LITERATURE

Roger Simon’s Emet: A Spiritual Thriller

Roger Simon is a retired Hollywood screenwriter and novelist. I’ve read his previous novel, The GOAT, about an older man who makes a deal with the devil and becomes the greatest tennis player of all time. It’s very funny and thought-provoking at the same time.

His recently released book, Emet, is more serious. It’s a thriller/fantasy tale told through the eyes of a rabbi, Benjamin Golub. He lives in Nashville, TN, and is a rabbi for a synagogue there. As a fellow Nashvillian, I really enjoyed Simon’s references to real-life locations in our city, as well as his accurate representation of its culture.

One day in 2023, a tornado rips through Nashville, and Benjamin goes to his synagogue’s storm shelter. Also sheltering with him are his wife, Maya, their tweenage grandson, Menahem (Max), and good friends Ed Ristic and Tamara Klein. Tamara is grieving the death of her 23-year-old niece, Allison, who was brutally murdered while out jogging. She blames herself, because she urged Allison to come visit her in Nashville after a difficult breakup. Ed runs a coffeeshop, The Orphanage, and has befriended Tamara. He also fancies himself as a sculptor.

The morning after the tornado blows through, they go outside to take stock of things. The backyard of the synagogue is a mess of fallen trees and mud. Ed has already been there, shoveling mud away from the back wall, and he has created a big pile of mud that is vaguely humanoid. Ed jokes that he could make a statue out of it. Maya reminds Benjamin that it looks like a statue they saw in Prague of a Golem – a mythical being that was brought to life by a Rabbi Loew around 1600. He took some inanimate materials to fashion a humanoid and engraved the word Emet on its forehead, which means “truth”. The legend is that Rabbi Loew used the Golem to protect the Jews living in Prague from pogroms, but it soon got a mind of its own and ended up causing more harm than good.

Max, who is a mathematical and technological prodigy, is fascinated by the story. He is staying with his grandparents, because he got in trouble in school and was suspended.

He had responded to a teacher asking what his pronouns were with “I identify as a donkey. He/haw.” Some of his classmates laughed, but the teacher didn’t think it was funny, and things went south from there.

Simon, Roger. EMET (pp. 32-33). Green Hills Books. Kindle Edition.

Later that evening, unable to sleep, Benjamin gets up and goes out to look at the pile of mud Ed made. You can guess what he does next: he takes a stick and engraves Emet where it looks like a forehead is.

To continue reading my review, click here.

LITERATURE

George Schuyler’s Black No More

Imagine a black scientist discovered a way to turn black people into white people. What would happen to American society? That is the premise of George Schuyler’s 1931 novel, Black No More. It is very funny and very disturbing at the same time, portraying the extreme racism of early 20th century America in all its horror and absurdity.

To continue reading my review, click here.

LITERATURE, Politics

Crockett White’s West End: All The King’s Men, updated

I have lived in Nashville, TN, practically all of my life. My parents moved here from Milwaukee, WI, when I was less than a year old. My father was hired in 1961 by Vanderbilt University to start up its Materials Science Department in the Engineering School. Even though I could consider myself a “native” Nashvillian (especially when you take into account the thousands of California refugees that have moved here recently), I have never felt like I am truly am one. It’s a cliche that Nashville is a “big city with a small town feel”, but it’s true. There’s a relatively small circle of everyone who’s anyone, and they all know each other. Still, I managed to keep up with local politics and society gossip through reading the two newspapers, The Tennessean and The Nashville Banner.

Crockett White is a former reporter for The Tennessean, and he obviously spent his career learning all about Nashville’s prominent families’ skeletons in their closets. He utilized that inside knowledge to write West End, a thinly-veiled fictional account of John Jay Hooker’s run for senate in the early 70s. Hooker was a gifted politician who truly had charisma. That word gets thrown around a lot, but very few humans possess it. Hooker had it – even his political opponents acknowledged his gift for connecting with and inspiring practically every person he came in contact with.

To continue reading, click here.

LITERATURE

George Eliot’s Adam Bede: Love Conquers All (except Class)

Last year I read George Eliot’s Middlemarch and very much enjoyed it. It has a deserved reputation of being one of the greatest English novels ever written. So, I decided to start at the beginning of Eliot’s career and read her first novel,  Adam Bede. It’s not as good as Middlemarch – very few novels are – but it is quite entertaining in its depiction of English rural life at the turn of the nineteenth century.

To continue reading this review, click here.