Category Archives: LITERATURE

LITERATURE, Republic of Letters

Futility and Meaning in Willa Cather’s “O Pioneers!”

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
– Ecclesiastes 1:1-3

Imagine being a woman on the threshold of adulthood – ready to set out and make a life for yourself. For a woman in late nineteenth century Nebraska, that likely means marrying and settling down on your own farm. But then your father’s dying wish is that you carry on his life’s fruitless endeavors. He unshackles the albatross from his neck and chains it to yours, since your brothers have no imagination and your mother wishes she had never left her home country. And you have a young brother you must now essentially raise as your own child. A burden far too much for a 20-year-old woman to bear.

Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! masterfully portrays the ruggedness of a harsh landscape as it was broken and transformed by the blood, sweat, tears, and lives of European immigrants who moved to America in search of something better than they had. Cather’s depiction of their lives suggests they didn’t find it, but maybe they made a better life for their grandchildren, although the emergence of the Dust Bowl a few decades after this book ends suggests they didn’t. In fact, their very efforts to remake the landscape likely caused the ecological disaster that ensued, which then spurred a new emigration, this time to California. In the end, their efforts to remake the land were futile. Their life’s work literally blown away on the wind.

O Pioneers! is generally thought of as an homage to the strength of the American prairie and the strength of the people who supposedly conquered it. At face value, that is true. At the time of publication (1913), the widespread drought to hit the American prairie region was still decades away. It is also often held up as a pillar of feminist triumph, with a strong female lead who is fiercely independent in her efforts to tame the land. That is a superficial and ultimately inaccurate reading, since Alexandra Bergson ultimately realizes her life’s meaning cannot be found in toiling over the land or crunching numbers in an account book.

Cather’s greatest strength in this novel is her ability to say so much with so few words. This brevity reflects the openness of her prairie home. She’ll often use brief phrases in the voices of her characters to make brief but deep statements, often in the mouth of Carl Linstrum, Alexandra love interest. Carl is the one who leaves the Divide as a teenager once his family decides to give up and return to St. Louis. Carl spends his life drifting, working as an engraver and dabbling in art. As an aside, that gave me a chuckle as my Swedish great-grandfather Oscar Engstrom worked as an engraver, and I grew up surrounded by his framed watercolors. Though he died before my grandparents even met, he has cast a long shadow over me, inspiring my own interest in watercolor.

Perhaps Cather is reflecting herself in Carl’s character as someone who left Nebraska yet found herself haunted by it, as evidenced in her work. One of Carl’s more poignant quotes is telling:

Freedom so often means that one isn’t needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and our delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leave nothing behind us but a frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got our living by.

All we have ever managed to do is pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theaters. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder.”

– O Pioneers! – Part II, Chapter IV

Today we might leave behind a smartphone, a video game console, and a pantry full of mass-manufactured chemicals masquerading as food. Apart from that, little has changed. We live lives of brutal obscurity. At best we might wave at our neighbors while taking the dog out, but deep down we know we won’t be missed when we move from one apartment to another or one job to another. We are cogs in a machine. Rolling stones that gather no moss. Carl (and Cather) comment on the same obscurity and brutality of life that Steven Wilson brilliantly analyzed in his album Hand. Cannot. Erase. just over 100 years after Cather wrote O Pioneers! Nothing is new under the sun.

Cather had the opportunity to experience both the ruggedness of the open land and the suffocating closeness of the city. She writes as someone who knows the futility of city life firsthand. And yet she never moved back to Nebraska, despite multiple novels ostensibly romanticizing rugged prairie life.

Or is she really romanticizing it? She did leave, after all, something her main character wanted so strongly for her little brother, Emil. Having not grown up in the Great Plains, I can’t exactly relate to Cather’s nostalgia. (I grew up in northern Illinois, though, and I will likely always have a soft spot in my heart for the flat fields of corn speckled with farms and distant treelines.) Yet after reading O Pioneers! I am left with a torn sentiment of the landscape so masterfully described, conquered, and lived in. It seemed to keep its more thoughtful inhabitants enthralled. They both hated and loved it. Both Alexandra and her father seemed to love it passionately, yet it is clear Alexandra is yoked to it.

As the book rolls through Alexandra’s life, the reader begins to wonder what she has to show for it? Yes, she has tamed the land, and she has even shown herself to be shrewd with business. She saw the potential her father saw in the land that others missed and even abandoned in hard times, buying their plots on credit and paying off the debt once the land soared in value. But beyond the land and some employees, what does she have? Two brothers who can’t stand her and another brother who doesn’t fit with the landscape, much like her lost, found, lost, and found again lover, Carl. She has no family of her own, no meaningful life beyond the day-to-day existence. It’s as if she, like her deceased father lying in his grave, is being swallowed up by the land while still alive. What is the point of her life? To continue fighting the land and the stubborn people who inhabit it?

Same old song
Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see

Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind

– Kansas (Kerry Livgren) – “Dust in the Wind”

Every time Carl walks back into Alexandra’s life, a subtle sense of regret pops up, as if she knows life has more to it than what she has created. She wishes she could go with him wherever he might go, live how he lives, be with the only man who ever seemed to understand her. From the get-go in this story, he’s the only other character besides Emil who seems to have a strong sense of empathy (he rescues little Emil’s kitten from a telegraph pole on a blustery winter day). And yet his sensitivity is what makes those around Alexandra dislike him. Her brothers call her foolish for considering marriage at the age of forty.

Sadly it takes extreme tragedy for Alexandra to finally break free from the yoke her father placed on her and make her own choice. Or more accurately, it was an outside force that broke the yoke – the murder of Emil and Marie. Once this yoke is gone, then Carl is willing both to return and to stay, something he never seemed able to do before. While the story ends on the rosier implication that Alexandra has finally found peace with her lover returning to the Divide, she actually finds that peace a couple chapters earlier. The death of Emil rocks her world unlike anything else she has experienced. Her emotional breakdown culminates in her being caught out in an evening storm in the graveyard at the graves of her father and brother. Her friends find her and bring her home and put her to bed. As she nods off, she revisits a dream she has had repeatedly since her youth, yet this time the dream is fulfilled:

As she lay with her eyes closed, she had again, more vividly than for many years, the old illusion of her girlhood, of being lifted and carried away by some one very strong. He was with her a long while this time, and carried her very far, and in his arms she felt free from pain. When he laid her down on her bed again, she opened her eyes, and, for the first time in her life, she saw him, saw him clearly, though the room was dark, and his face was covered. He was standing in the doorway of her room. His white cloak was thrown over his face, and his head was bent a little forward. His shoulders seemed as strong as the foundations of the world. His right arm, bared from the elbow, was dark and gleaming, like bronze, and she knew at once that it was the arm of the mightiest of all lovers. She knew at last for whom it was she had waited, and where he would carry her. That, she told herself, was very well. Then she went to sleep.

O Pioneers! – Part V, Chapter I

This passage is the most important in the book, yet it is very easy to miss or dismiss: a dream following an exhausting physical and emotional experience. Yet Cather writes that this has been a recurring dream for Alexandra, one that only now in the midst of tragedy is made clear. Alexandra finds her peace, meaning, and purpose in the true source of peace, meaning, and purpose – Jesus Christ.

Why, might you ask, do I conclude that Cather is referring to Jesus in this passage? Let’s look at the description of Jesus in His glory as seen in the book of Revelation:

Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.

– Revelation 1:12-16 (ESV)

Cather’s description of this “mightiest of all lovers” mirrors the description of Christ from Revelation. The description of his skin as a bronze color is a direct reference, and I think that is the clear giveaway. Everyone else in this story is almost assuredly of extremely fair skin. The major characters are either Scandinavian or Bohemian, not races known for dark complexions. In Cather’s description, this individual is shown with a white cloak that “was thrown over his face.” The description of Jesus in Revelation explains why his face might need to be covered in this interaction with Alexandra: eyes like a flame of fire and a face shining like the sun in full strength. Not exactly something which someone experiencing traumatic emotions would want to be confronted.1

With this encounter with Jesus, Alexandra is changed. Following this she travels to the prison in Lincoln to visit her brother and friend’s killer and offer him forgiveness. The grip the land has over her is loosened, allowing her finally to open her heart to Carl Linstrum and embrace the beauty, meaning, and purpose God gives us with love and marriage. Her breakdown in the cemetery and encounter with God in a dream shows her that what really matters is far more than what we build and grow with our hands and sweat. The people we love and the connections we make is what matters. How we treat others, how we care for those who need it, how we treat the world around us: those are things that matter. No matter what we build, it won’t ultimately give us the satisfaction we seek, no matter where we live or what we do. Carl Linstrum was right: “there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years” (Part II, Chapter IV). Or as Solomon put it, “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

  1. I came to this conclusion before consulting any secondary readings on O Pioneers! Some literary scholars (but not all) disagree with what I believe is an obvious interpretation of this passage. Many critics identify the person Alexandra sees in her dream as Death, going so far as to say that she had a death wish. David Stouck says as much, using rather bizarre language to describe the transformation Alexandra undergoes after the dream: “The final possibility of a marriage between Carl and Alexandra is perhaps sheer wish-fulfillment on the author’s part (that desire to be united with the eternal mother), but it is always held in perspective by the repeated account of Alexandra’s dream wherein only the mightiest of all lovers can carry her off, that lover being identified towards the end of the novel as none less than Death” (Stouck, 30). This is a remarkably inaccurate reading of this passage, especially considering how Alexandra’s behavior changes in the aftermath. Maire Mullins points out that it is following this dream that Alexandra goes to visit Frank Shabata in prison to offer him forgiveness for killing Emil and Marie. Mullins rightly recognizes the Christlike imagery in this dream. Mullins interprets the earlier dreams as Alexandra wrestling with her suppressed erotic desires. She argues that Alexandra spends the majority “of her life sublimating the erotic power that lies within her,” focusing on her farm instead. When she had these dreams Alexandra would try and block them out by taking a vigorous bath, even literally pouring cold water over herself in an effort to scrub out any hint of sexuality. Mullins accurately acknowledges the presence of Christ in the ultimate satisfying dream that Alexandra has, but she oddly claims the dream merges Christianity with Native American myths, a theme she tries to draw from other parts of the text. I believe this is reading something into the passage that simply is not there. Further, she limits the transformative power of Christ in Alexandra’s life. Mullins concludes that this encounter in the dream allows her to forgive Shabata and finally connect with Carl Linstrum through “the conscious connection to the erotic and spiritual power within.” This is the problem with the overarching feminist theory Mullins applies to her reading from the beginning of her article. It discounts the power of Christ to truly transform a person’s desires, instead limiting it to some vague sense of self-realization where Alexandra accepts her sexuality. In actuality, she finds the peace and meaning she has been searching for all along, finding that it is not in the land or in the sexuality she seeks to repress. It is in Jesus. With that ultimate realization, she is finally able to let Carl into her life since his presence will not impact her value or worth, just like her impact on the land will not impact her value or worth. Those things are inherent through her relationship to God. ↩︎

Works Cited

Mullins, Maire. “Alexandra’s Dreams: ‘The Mightiest of All Lovers’ In Willa Cather’s ‘O Pioneers!'” Great Plains Quarterly 25, no. 3 (2005): 147–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23533606.

Stouck, David. “O Pioneers!: Willa Cather and the Epic Imagination.” Prairie Schooner 46, no. 1 (1972): 23–34. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40629091.

Art, Faith, LITERATURE

Andrew Klavan’s The Kingdom of Cain: Beauty from Darkness

Andrew Klavan is one of the most intelligent and thought-provoking cultural critics working today. It doesn’t hurt that he’s also an excellent mystery writer. His Cameron Winter series of novels has given me hours of great enjoyment, and he’s just getting started with it.

Besides mysteries, Klavan also writes nonfiction, including the bestselling The Truth and Beauty, where he discusses how nineteenth century romantic poetry reflects eternal Truths. His latest book, The Kingdom of Cain, is subtitled Finding God in the Literature of Darkness, and he isn’t kidding when he says Literature of Darkness! He focuses on three horrific and infamous crimes, and then he describes how each one led to extraordinarily beautiful and inspirational works of art. So how can the terrible crime of murder lead to great art? As he puts it in the Introduction,

The opposite of murder is creation – creation, which is the telos of love. And because art, true art, is an act of creation, it always transforms its subject into itself, even if the subject is murder. An act of darkness is not the same thing as a work of art about an act of darkness. The murders in Shakespeare’s Macbeth are horrific, but they are a beautiful part of the play. (p. 17)

To continue reading, click here.

Faith, LITERATURE, Philosophy

Ross Douthat’s Believe: Apologetics for a Skeptical Age

Ross Douthat is a New York Times columnist who opines regularly on issues of morality, faith, and culture. His latest book, Believe, is an interesting entry in the crowded catalog of Christian apologetics. 

Douthat chooses to devote most of his book to making the case for a higher reality than the one we can measure scientifically. As he puts it in the introduction,

Whatever mysteries and riddles inhere in our existence, ordinary reason plus a little curiosity should make us well aware of the likelihood that this life isn’t all there is, that mind and spirit are just an illusion woven by our cells and atoms, that some kind of supernatural power shaped and still influences out lives and universe. (p. 7)

Believe is not a long book – eight chapters, 206 pages – but it is packed with weighty argument and evidence for a “supernatural” reality. The chapter titles outline his thesis:

  1. The Fashioned Universe
  2. The Mind and the Cosmos
  3. The Myth of Disenchantment
  4. The Case for Commitment
  5. Big Faiths and Big Divisions
  6. Three Stumbling Blocks
  7. The End of Exploring
  8. A Case Study: Why I Am a Christian

What is welcoming about Douthat’s approach is his invitation to simply accept the evidence around you and acknowledge that some sort of creative intelligence is the likeliest explanation for our universe. He doesn’t even get into why he believes Christianity fits the bill until the final chapter. As a matter of fact, he posits that belief in any of the major religions – Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam – can lead a person to ultimate truth better than nonbelief:

Your choice might be the wrong one ultimately but the right one for you in that moment, or the wrong one but with enough that’s right in it to make an important difference in your life. And if, in the end, your initial conversion doesn’t convert you the the true faith, the religion you enter will have hopefully acquired enough truth and wisdom in its long development to make a ladder upward, from the mire of meaninglessness and the snares of indecision toward whatever the full plan of your life is meant to be. (p. 149)

In The Mind and the Cosmos chapter, Douthat points out that 

It isn’t merely that the universe appears improbably fine-tuned to enable our existence. It’s that our own consciousness seems improbably capable when it comes to discovering that fine-tuning, like a key fitted to a lock. (p. 61)

In other words, it’s a miracle that the universe is habitable for us and we are able to discern that habitability. 

From that basic argument, Douthat builds his case, eventually addressing three “stumbling blocks” that prevent people from believing in God: 

  1. Why Does God Allow So Many Wicked Things to Happen?
  2. Why Do Religious Institutions Do So Many Wicked Things?
  3. Why Are Traditional Religions So Hung Up on Sex?

His answers to these questions are thoughtful, comprehensive, and convincing. 

It isn’t until the last chapter that Douthat makes the case for Christianity as the best explanation for reality and how we should live. As he acknowledges, he’s a Christian because that was the dominant religion of the culture in which he was raised. At no point in the book does Douthat promote Christianity at the expense of the other major religions (although he is careful to warn the reader against getting involved in cults or Satanism!). This fair-minded approach is very effective, in my opinion, making his points hard to refute. 

Believe is the latest in a long line of Christian apologetics (the first of which is probably Augustine’s Confessions, but I’m not sure), but it is somewhat unusual in its acceptance of other ways of reaching the truth. Douthat is primarily concerned with winning people over to a belief in a Creator God who cares about his creation. Once one has made the commitment to that belief, Douthat is confident that a sincere seeker will eventually be rewarded with a greater understanding of how we should order our lives, and, as a result, live much more fulfilling lives.

LITERATURE

John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes: Deep Sea Dystopia

The Kraken Wakes (1953) is John Wyndham’s sixth novel and the first to follow his masterpiece, The Day of the Triffids. Like its predecessor, The Kraken Wakes is the story of an apocalyptic event that threatens the survival of humanity. In this case, it isn’t mass blindness and carnivorous, mobile plants, but rather an unseen yet enormously powerful alien presence that makes its home in the deepest sections of our oceans.

Wyndham begins his tale with the two main characters, Mike and Phyllis Watson, watching icebergs in the English Channel slowly drift past them. Wait, what? Icebergs in the English Channel? Yes, and it isn’t until nearly the end of the book that we learn why that’s the case.

The story is told through the eyes of Mike Watson, a scriptwriter and journalist for the EBC (English Broadcasting Corporation). He divides his account into three large sections, Phase One, Phase Two, and Phase Three.

Continued here.

LITERATURE

Trollope’s Can You Forgive Her? Another Victorian Classic

Ever since I read Charles Dickens’ first novel, The Pickwick Papers, I have been a fan of Victorian literature. Anthony Trollope was a contemporary of Dickens, and an incredibly prolific writer. Can You Forgive Her? is the first novel in his Palliser series. It begins with the dilemma facing Alice Vavasor: “What should a woman do with her life?” For an upper-class woman in Victorian England, the options were limited to marrying or living with relatives the rest of your life.

Alice is engaged to a man everyone (including her) acknowledges is a perfect catch. John Grey has a substantial estate in Cambridgeshire, he is definitely in love with her, he is intelligent, handsome, and doting. Yet, Alice looks upon a future with him with apprehension – she only sees herself trapped in a boring country estate with no intellectual or social stimulation. As she explains to her aunt McLeod,

People always do seem to think it so terrible that a girl should have her own way in anything. She mustn’t like any one at first; and then, when she does like some one, she must marry him directly she’s bidden. I haven’t much of my own way at present; but you see, when I’m married I shan’t have it at all.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE. Can You Forgive Her? (Kindle Locations 564-566). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.

It doesn’t help that she previously was in love with her cousin, George Vavasor, who cheated on her. He fancies himself a bohemian who is above such mundane institutions as marriage, and he and his sister, Kate, waste no time convincing Alice to break off her engagement with Grey.

Alice convinces herself she is unworthy of being John Grey’s wife, but to her consternation, he refuses to accept her rejection of him and insists she is still betrothed to him. He isn’t ugly or forceful in any way, he is simply confident that, given time, she will come to her senses and return to him.

Kate Vavasor is also unmarried, and she has an extended visit with her aunt, Arabella Greenow. Mrs. Greenow has recently lost her fabulously wealthy older husband, and Trollope’s account of how she flirts with two men – the boring but well-off farmer Mr. Cheesacre and the dashing but penniless Mr. Bellfield – while observing the proper mourning rituals is hilarious.

Yet another cousin of Alice, Lady Glencora Palliser, invites Alice up to her estate to spend a few weeks. Lady Glencora is very rich, very young, and recently married to Plantagenet Palliser, a very dull man who greatest ambition is to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. She once loved a dissolute young man, Burgo Fitzgerald, but her family intervened and made her marry the much more suitable Palliser. He doesn’t give her much attention, and she is fairly miserable.

Burgo is friends with George Vavasor, and he hopes to elope with Glencora to Italy. George doesn’t encourage him to do this, but he doesn’t discourage him, either. George is basically amoral, and he pursues whatever path will give him the most pleasure. He breaks up Alice and John Grey’s engagement, because he gets a kick out of it, not because he is in love with Alice. So the stage is set for all kinds of social intrigue and shenanigans; in other words, a perfect setting for a Victorian novel!

This is the first novel by Trollope I’ve read, and I’m impressed. He is very different from Dickens, though. Where it was always clear from his works that Dickens had a heart for the poor and downtrodden in Victorian England, Trollope obviously moved in a higher social setting. He chronicles the issues and conflicts facing the British governing class in the mid-nineteenth century.

Can You Forgive Her? is primarily concerned with the limited options available to upper class women of that time. Alice is principled (to a fault) and wants to make a difference in English society. Her only option, since she can’t vote – let alone run for Parliament – is to ally herself to someone who can run for office. That is a major reason why she breaks off her engagement to John Grey; he is quite happy to live a quiet and prosperous life in Cambridgeshire, taking no interest at all in politics.

Lady Glencora is forced into a marriage with the up and coming Plantagenet Palliser, and even though it is her fortune that makes possible his political career, she has no interest. She is the most interesting character in the novel. She yearns to be free of stuffy Victorian conventions, and she delights in tweaking her poor husband’s sensibilities. She’s never in danger of getting into any scandal, but she is very funny whenever she decides to do what she wants.

More serious is George Vavasor. Initially, he is a somewhat sympathetic character, in that he wants his former love, Alice, to renew their relationship. He is very clever in the ways he manipulates her and his sister, Kate, to get what he wants. As the novel progresses, he becomes more and more trapped in a downward spiral of greed, deceit, and fury. By the end of the book, he is truly evil.

Plantagenet undergoes character growth in a positive way, learning how to be a good husband to Lady Glencora restoring proper perspective to his life. He and Cora will return in later Palliser novels, and I look forward to seeing their marriage mature.

Aunt Greenow also develops into a worthy character. At first, she is comical in her flirtations with Mr. Cheesacre and Captain Bellfield, but when her niece Kate needs her, she is there with excellent advice and moral support.

The main negative of the novel is the indecision of Alice when it comes to accepting John Grey’s standing offer to resume their engagement. She drags her feet for increasingly poor reasons, and it gets tiresome to read of her inner struggles when there really isn’t much reason for them. However, as a portrait of upper class Victorian England, Can You Forgive Her? is a detailed and fascinating glimpse into a long gone era. I will definitely read the next novel in the series, Phineas Finn.

LITERATURE, Music

The Fantastical Prog of Terra Incognita (Uncharted Shores)

Hello, Spirit of Cecilia readers! Kevin J. Anderson has a Kickstarter campaign up and running for a gorgeous reissue of his Terra Incognita trilogy of fantasy novels and accompanying music that includes a new album from Roswell Six – Terra Incognita: Uncharted Shores.  Brad Birzer, Rick Krueger, and Tad Wert share their thoughts on it.

Tad: Brad and Rick, I understand this is the third Terra Incognita album, but they haven’t been on my radar. What’s the story behind this group, and how are they connected to author Kevin Anderson?

Rick: Tad and Brad, it’s great to join you two for a roundtable at long last!  I’m sure Brad knows a lot more about this project than I do.  But I first came across Kevin Anderson when he and Neil Peart wrote a novel based on the Rush album Clockwork Angels.  That one led to two more novels in the CA universe over the years, Clockwork Lives and Clockwork Destiny; all three of them were delightfully true to Peart’s concepts, with lots of clever Easter eggs from the Rush canon and enjoyable plot twists.  The only other novel of Anderson’s I previously read is The Dark Between the Stars, the first part of a science fiction trilogy that was nominated for a Hugo award back in 2015 – solid, sprawling space opera fun.   I’ve just downloaded his latest, Nether Station and am racing through it; he’s got that ever so slightly pulpy, lickety-split writing style down.  it’s about a deep space expedition that, little by little, gets kinda eldritch . . .

But that really just scratches the surface of what Anderson has done.  He’s most famous for continuing Frank Herbert’s Dune saga with Herbert’s son Brian; he’s also produced tie-in novels in the Star Wars, X-Files and DC universes; he’s an extremely prolific writer overall, whether it’s sci-fi, fantasy, horror or any combination of those genres – by his count, about 180 novels to date.  On top of all that, he and his wife Rebecca Moeste run their own publishing company, WordFire Press.

Through Brad’s connections with Anderson, I’m on WordFire’s mailing list, so I’ve noticed that he’s run a few Kickstarter campaigns over the years.  His latest campaign is a reissue of Terra Incognita, a fantasy trilogy originally published in 2009-2011. The thing that’s different about these books, though, is that the first two had soundtracks; apparently, Anderson has had a lot of contact with the music world over the years.  And maybe that’s where I should let Brad take over.

Brad: My dear friends, Tad and Rick, so great to do this with you guys!  And, to talk about one of my all-time favorite human beings, Kevin J. Anderson.  I’ve been reading Kevin’s works for years, but I only got to know him for the first time about 11 years ago.  I had a one-year position at the University of Colorado-Boulder (2014-2015 academic year), and that position came with some funding to bring speakers in.  As soon as I arrived in Longmont (where we lived for the year), I contacted Kevin (whom I had never met) and Dan Simmons.  I never heard back from Simmons, but Kevin immediately agreed to come speak for me.  He and his lovely (and equally talented) wife, Rebecca, came to Boulder, and Kevin gave an excellent speech on the art of writing fiction.  He called it his “pop-corn theory,” explaining that ideas happen all over the place.  I loved the speech.

And, I also loved Kevin and Rebecca.  We hit it off at dinner at an Indian restaurant right before Kevin’s talk.  He then invited us to his famous New Year’s Eve party for 2015.  Dedra and I happily drove to Monument to see Kevin’s impressive and rather Arthurian house!  Crazily enough, my car slid down his steep driveway and almost crushed the natural gas vein!  Thank the good Lord that disaster was averted and New Year’s Eve was a different kind of blast.  One of the great things about Kevin is he knows how to form communities.  He’s a natural leader.

We also really bonded over his friendship with Neil Peart.  In fact, it was Kevin who suggested I write the book about Peart’s lyrics, Cultural Repercussions, for his WordFire Press.  I was deeply honored to do so not just because of my love of Rush, but also because of my respect for Kevin.

And, Kevin has deep roots in the prog rock community.  Indeed, I can’t imagine a current writer who has greater or more legitimate ties to prog than does Kevin.  Rush’s Grace Under Pressure inspired Kevin’s first novel, Resurrection, Inc., and Kevin’s never been shy about his inspirations: Rush, Kansas, Styx . . . .

Rick, you brought up Clockwork Angels and its surrounding universe.  Admittedly, I love the Clockwork trilogy–the novels, the audiobooks, the graphic novels–and I think that Kevin really offered new insights into Rush and, frankly, into music.  To me, Clockwork Angels is Chestertonian, and I don’t understand why it’s not been made a Netflix series!

When I first encountered Kevin’s music project, Roswell Six, I was understandably impressed by the scope as well as the execution of the vast project.  Kevin has a great entrepreneurial spirit, but always with the artistic soul.  Roswell Six perfectly blends Kevin’s many loves and expertises.  I’ve been proudly listening to the first two CDs since they were first released, and I happily include them among my all-time favorite albums.  I’m especially taken with the first CD, 2009’s Beyond the Horizon.

When Kevin first announced this Kickstarter project–hardback editions of Terra Incognita as well as a re-release of the first two Roswell Six CDs, AND a brand-new third CD, I was absolutely thrilled.  I pledged during the second hour of the campaign.  And, that campaign has done exceedingly well.  Initially hoping to hit the $10,000 mark, the Kickstarter project, as of this writing, is at the $51,000 mark with 399 backers!  Incredible.  And, so well deserved.

So, what do you guys think of the music?

Tad: Okay, both of you have much more experience with Anderson’s work than I. When I saw that there was a companion novel to Rush’s Clockwork Angels, I immediately read it and enjoyed it very much. The Roswell Six albums slipped under my radar, though.

That said, I really like this third album, Terra Incognita (Uncharted Shores). To my ears, it’s pretty much straightforward, classic progrock. Fans of Kansas, Styx, Spock’s Beard, Threshold, Arena, et al. will love it. The fact that there are so many different vocalists brings to mind an Arjen Lucassen project – especially when the beautiful voice of Anneke van Geirsbergen appears in track 3, “A Sense of Wonder”. 

I like the acoustic, Celtic sounding “Haunted and Hunted” a lot. “Lighthouse” is another highlight for me, with its chugging rock riffing and excellent guitar soloing. “The Ballet of the Storm” is an instrumental that has a very nice intro played on violin that transforms into a warm piano/electric guitar duet underpinned by some excellent bass. 

“The Key to Creation” features the return of Anneke, and it has a fun 80s vibe to it – it’s got a relentless beat with a wall of synthesized sound. As a matter of fact, I think this is my favorite track on the album. It has a nice hook in the chorus that sticks in my ear. 

“Unexpected” keeps the musical quality high with, I believe, Dan Reed handling the vocals. I feel like these songs will take on more meaning when I have the chance to read the accompanying novels. They obviously follow a storyline. In many of the tracks, I can hear sounds of the sea, which makes sense, given the Uncharted Shores title!

Rick: Brad, what you said about Anderson’s connections in the music world helped me get my bearings for listening to Uncharted Shores; it definitely has that American heartland prog vibe with some nifty touches of funk (but also touches of European theatricality, as Tad pointed out).  KJA gave an interview this week with Michael Citro of Michael’s Record Collection where they go into the background behind the music; the basic tracks are written and performed by Bob Madsen (bass), Billy Connolly (guitar), Jerry Merrill (keys) and Gregg Bissonette (drums) – all artists working under the umbrella of The Highlander Company Records.  (Madsen’s band The Grafenberg Disciples announced themselves to the world a few years back with a tribute to Peart, “No Words”, that caught Anderson’s attention.)  And all that excellent violin work is by Jonathan Dinklage – he led the Clockwork Angels string section on those 2012 & 2013 tours.  Rush connections aplenty!

The guest vocalists take the whole thing up a notch as well.  Michael Sadler from Saga sings on the title song. “Hunted and Haunted” and “Lighthouse”; he’s played one of the “lead roles” for all three albums. Like you said, Tad, Ted Leonard and Anneke give it their all on their feature tracks.  But the big surprise for me was Dan Reed, who takes the villain role on “Mortal Enemies” and “Unexpected”; for a minute, I thought Steve Walsh had emerged from retirement!  Reed has this grizzled timbre, but a real purity of tone and expression underneath, and he absolutely sells the part.  And The Grafenberg Disciples vocalist Hans Eberbach brings it all home on “Not In My Name” –  gutsy and soulful by turns, and consistently dramatic (with Tull’s Doane Perry contributing a spoken-word cameo as a capper)!  I think that’s the track that’s my favorite so far.

But there isn’t a duff song on the new album, and it definitely grew on me the second time through.  I agree with you, Tad, that knowing the Terra Incognita storyline better will probably help, but the core emotions and throughline of the story come across loud and clear.  According to the Anderson/Citro interview, all the albums are being released through Sony (on InsideOut?) in the fall, but I decided not to wait; I’ve pledged for the ebooks and the digital albums, so my summer reading and listening are already lined up.  And when the CDs go to broad release – who knows?  It’d be far from the first time I’ve bought music twice!

Brad: Tad and Rick, so well stated!  And, yes, I pledged to buy all three albums as well, even though I already own the first two.  If you’ve not listened yet, I especially recommend the first track on Beyond the Horizon: Ishalem.  Incredible prog metal.  Very much in line with Ayreon or Dream Theater.

For those out there not totally familiar with Kevin, he has, as noted above, written extensively in the Star Wars, Dune, and X-Files franchises.  My favorite of his own books (that is, those not set in another mega genre/universe) are Nether Station (a sequel to H.P. Lovecraft’s Mountains of Madness) and Stake (a completely original novel questioning the existence of the supernatural).

Again, all praise to Kevin for bringing together so many beloved things: fantasy, science fiction, and prog rock!

Tad: Kevin Anderson’s Kickstarter link is here, for those interested!

fiction, LITERATURE, Music

SciFi/Fantasy Meets Prog (and the result is glorious)

Acclaimed author Kevin J. Anderson, is beginning a Kickstarter campaign tomorrow (March 11, 2025) to reissue his three-volume Terra Incognita project. The books have been previously published in paperback, but have been out of print. Anderson plans to rerelease them as a deluxe set of hardcovers in a slipcase.

Accompanying the books is a trio of albums featuring the cream of progressive rock. Just check out the lineup for the soon-to-be released third album, Uncharted Shores:

• Michael Sadler (SAGA)
• Dan Reed (Dan Reed Network)
• Doane Perry (Jethro Tull)
• Ed Toth (Doobie Brothers, Vertical Horizon)
• Jonathan Dinklage (Rush Clockwork Angels, Lady Gaga, Barbra Streisand)
• Greg Bissonette (David Lee Roth, Ringo Starr All Stars)
• Anneke van Giersbergen (European vocalist)
• Ted Leonard (Spock’s Beard, Pattern-Seeking Animals)

Be on the lookout for an in-depth review of this album soon. Meanwhile, check out the Kickstarter campaign – it will be the only means of acquiring this historic literary/musical project, and it only runs from March 11 through April 4!

[This post was updated to reflect the fact that all three novels have been published in paperback, and the personnel for the third Terra Incognita album was incorrect. The post now has the correct lineup.]

LITERATURE

The Day of the Triffids: Classic Dystopian Fiction

I have been slowly reading John Wyndham’s works, and I finally hit paydirt! His earlier efforts, Foul Play Suspected, and Planet Plane, were not very good. However, his fourth novel, The Day of the Triffids, is a classic dystopian tale. It’s been made into a movie and TV miniseries, and even though it was published in 1951, it hasn’t aged one bit.

It is told through the eyes of biologist Bill Masen, who has made a career out of studying some strange plants called triffids. They grow to be 8 to 10 feet tall, they produce very useful and nutritious oil, and they are able to move about on their three main roots. Unfortunately, they are also carnivorous and have lethal stingers they can whip out and lash their victim with. It’s possible to “dock” a triffid – i.e. cut off it’s stinging lash – but that reduces the quality of its oil, as well as the yield of its seeds.

No one knows for sure where they came from, but they suddenly appeared all over the world at pretty much the same time. Masen believes they are the result of Soviet genetic engineering. Their benefits outweigh their risks, and Masen works for the main developer of triffid products. One day on the job, he is glancingly stung in the face and temporarily blinded. This accident turns out to be a Godsend, because while he is the hospital bandaged up and recovering, an extraordinary, bright green meteor shower occurs one evening. Everyone on earth is awestruck by its beauty, and Masen has to listen to his nurse describe it in great detail.

However, the next day, when he is scheduled to have his eye bandages removed, no one comes by his room. He calls for breakfast, and there is no reply. He takes the bandages off himself, and he soon realizes that everyone who watched the cosmic pyrotechnics is blind. What follows is a clear-eyed account of what would happen if 99% of humanity suddenly went blind, and there is a strange species of ambulatory plants that seem to be sentient and can kill.

You can read the rest of my review here.

LITERATURE

Charles Williams’ All Hallows Eve – Stranger Things Meets Rosemary’s Baby

The First Edition

All Hallows Eve is Charles Williams’ seventh novel, and one of his best. In 2024, I began working my way through all of the novels of this member of The Inklings, the famous literary group of friends that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Williams’ fiction is definitely darker and more philosophical than the writings of either of the his more well known colleagues.

All Hallows Eve begins with a startling scene: a young woman, Lester Furnival, is standing on a street in nighttime London, and there are none of the usual sounds and traffic around her. She soon realizes that she is dead. She and a friend, Evelyn Mercer, were supposed to meet each other for a get-together, but they were killed by a plane crashing into the area. It appears that Lester and Evelyn are in some sort of purgatory – they can interact with each other, but they do not perceive any other beings. The only way they know it’s night is when the lights come on in the houses around them. There is no sun or moon, just a diffuse, gray light.

Back in the land of the living, Lester’s grieving husband, Richard, visits his artist friend, Jonathan Drayton. Drayton is a talented painter who shows Richard his latest work: a painting of a charismatic religious leader who goes by the moniker Simon the Clerk, or Simon Leclerc. It has been commissioned by Lady Wallingford, a devoted disciple of Simon. Jonathan Drayton is in love with her daughter Betty, but she will not allow them to get engaged.

Lady Wallingford drops by to view the painting, and she is extremely disappointed. In her eyes, Simon looks malevolent, and the people in the congregation look like insects. Later, Simon himself visits Drayton to view the painting, and he proclaims it a masterpiece that captures him perfectly.

What follows is a very dark tale of necromancy and all-consuming greed for power. Simon was conceived and born during the French revolution, and he has plans for world domination that involve breaking through to the spiritual plane where Lester and Evelyn are. Lady Wallingford’s daughter, Betty, is the hinge through which this will happen. Things get very creepy as the story unfolds – I was put in mind of Rosemary’s Baby as the pieces fell into place.

As a favor to Jonathan, Richard Furnival agrees to attend a meeting of Simon’s followers, and see if he is legitimate. Simon uses some sort of spell to put everyone under his will. At the end of the meeting, Simon speaks to Richard, and Richard recounts their disturbing conversation to Jonathan:

“He [Simon] said: ‘I won’t keep you, Mr. Furnival. Come back presently. When you want me, I shall be ready. If you want your wife, I can bring her to you; if you don’t want her, I can keep her away from you. Tell your friend I shall send for him soon. Good-bye.” So then I walked out.

He lifted his eyes and looked at Jonathan, who couldn’t think of anything to say. Presently Richard went on, still more quietly: “And suppose he can?”

“Can what?” asked Jonathan gloomily.

“Can,” said Richard carefully and explicitly, “do something to Lester. Leave off thinking of Betty for a moment; Betty’s alive. Lester’s dead, and suppose this man can do something to dead people?

CHARLES WILLIAMS. All Hallows’ Eve (Kindle Locations 1850-1855). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.

As the story unfolds, there is a contrast between the characters who grow and mature, and the ones who degenerate. Betty, who is initially a slave to Simon’s will, gradually comes into her own and is able to resist him. Lester also matures spiritually as she learns to navigate the purgatory she is in. Both she and Richard remember their brief marriage, regret the mistakes they made, and come to a much deeper love than they had when she was alive. Even Jonathan’s art takes on a life of its own, becoming more transcendent.

On the other side, Lady Wallingford becomes less and less of an individual with actual agency, Evelyn undergoes a horrific degeneration into petty hatred, and Simon Leclerc reaps the rewards of his dark magic.

All Hallows Eve is one of Williams’ most accessible reads, as well. In a few of his earlier novels, particularly Descent Into Hell, his prose was very dense and unwieldy, and his dialog hard to follow. Every conversation in All Hallows Eve is terse and to the point. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, even though it creeped me out at times. I wonder if the creators of Netflix’s Stranger Things are familiar with it, since there are definite similarities in the basic premise of both tales. Anyway, for fans of fantasy with a very dark edge (but a happy ending), I highly recommend All Hallow Eve.

fiction, LITERATURE

George Eliot’s Middlemarch – The GOAT of British Literature?

George Eliot’s masterpiece,  Middlemarch, is a massive and complex portrait of rural England at the time of the 1830s Reform Bills. The BBC lists it as the greatest British novel of all time. You can read my thoughts on it here.