Brandywine Books

Weekend wrap-up

Lars Walker — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:10:54 +0000

I had two memorable experiences over the weekend.

First of all, I went to a funeral. It was the funeral of a man I'm not sure I ever actually met, but his son was an old friend. The son asked me to read the scripture lesson for the service, and I was happy to do it. In all honesty, if I hadn't had that request I probably wouldn't have gone at all, because I have a hard time believing anybody really wants me anywhere, unless they state precisely what particular job they're looking for me to do. Jobs I understand. The concept that anyone would just want me around to talk to fails the test of willing suspension of disbelief.

It went well, and I saw some old friends.

On Sunday morning, after I'd come home from early church, I logged on to Facebook. I then got a chat message from a friend who's doing missionary work in Alaska. It seemed awfully early for him to be up.

The first warning bell went off when he told me he'd been mugged while vacationing in London. Vacations in London aren't the sort of thing this fellow takes a lot of.

So while he was explaining how he'd been robbed at gunpoint, and hit over the head (huh?), and robbed of cash, credit cards and cell phone, I checked his personal page. There another friend had posted a warning in all caps, saying that he'd gotten a similar chat message, and it was a scam.

I then asked my interlocutor a question only somebody who'd worked together with us at our church body headquarters would know. And he disappeared completely.

I've said it beforeâ€”I hate con men. In the great balance of things, I'd prefer the kind of armed robber who didn't hold up my friend in London, over a con man. Because con men destroy trust. They turn society into a collection of strangers. They make human beings more frightened of one another, and less likely to give help where it's really needed. They are scum.

Manly Food

Phil — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 23:11:04 +0000

5 Hearty Winter Breakfasts to Fill Your Belly from The Art of Manliness

Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen

Lars Walker — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:18:24 +0000

It would be pointless and overweening for me to "review" Sense and Sensibility, a book many of you probably read long ago, and one which has been well appreciated by far more discerning readers than me. So let's just call this a reader's report.

I read Pride and Prejudice quite a few years back, and promised myself I'd return to Jane Austen again. The delay of more than a decade is probably best explained by the fact that Austen is a fair amount of work. To take one example of words that have changed in meaning since the early 1800s, in Austen the word "address" means the way you present yourself when conversing with other people. The notation on the outside of a letter, telling the postman where to deliver it, is called the "direction." I have a pretty good vocabulary and can work my way through, but I'll admit I had to go over a few of the sentences more than once, not only because of word choice, but because the diction could get pretty convoluted.

But the book rewarded the work. There were a number of very funny lines, delivered in a charming dry manner, scattered among the verbiage. I'd share one or two, but I returned the book to the library this afternoon when I'd finished it.

What particularly delighted me in Sense and Sensibility was the sweet reason of the whole thing. In utter contradiction to what a guy expects in a love story written by a woman, the most sympathetic character is the most circumspect one; a woman whose feelings are so well concealed that I wasn't sure until the end which male character to root for her to marry. The author, apparently, approves of this. Marriages should be well thought out, and entered into with a due consideration of prudential matters like social class, education, good taste and income. And love, of course, but don't get carried away.

I totally approve.

Gorgeous Life, Hope in Cyndere's Midnight

Phil — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:52:19 +0000

If a reader wonders why the second in the Auralia's Colors series is titled "Cyndere's Midnight," Overstreet wastes no time answering him. Heiress to the Bel Amican throne, Cyndere, is grieving the loss of her father and brother, thinking she would not throw herself into the sea that day, when she hears of the death of her husband, Deuneroi. In time, she goes to an outpost named Tilianpurth to mourn, but many around her don't know how to help, and being royalty, she will not take difficult counsel easily.

Elsewhere, a band of four beastmen roam the wilderness, killing children and traders. The beastmen are monsters, men mixed with many other animal forms. They were cursed long ago by wicked strangers with unknown motives. One them, Jordam, has stumbled onto a supernatural, dragon-like monster called The Keeper, and in a way it has shocked him into new life. Jordam was physically and emotionally broken when he ran from The Keeper. Those wounds and Auralia's artwork began to heal him.

The hope of redemption is a major theme in this adventure. Cyndere and Deuneroi hope to overcome the curse of the beastmen. The ale boy has earned the name Rescue by the people he has given his life to save. Auralia, though only a background character in this story, continues her influence on many people with her infectious love of life and endurance of her artwork.

But it isn't as if Auralia is the one light of goodness in a dark world. Overstreet's fantastic setting teems with life as if created by a wild and loving god. Colors found everywhere and the pure water of the deep well depicted on the cover give an enchanted life to those who absorb them. It's part of the magical fiber threaded throughout. It's one of many things I love about this series, which I believe deserves a place on your bookself.

Bad Literary Agent

Phil — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:58:24 +0000

Susan Bauer talks about the trials of being a small press owner and a particular letter she received from an agent.

New, improved Jesus!

Lars Walker — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:45:26 +0000

Thursday on the Michael Medved radio show is Disagreement Day. On Thursdays, he sets an hour aside specifically for people to tell him he's wrong about homosexuality, tax policy, and George Bush's culpability in blowing up the World Trade Center.

Today, he had a call from a young man who wanted to disagree with him on the legalization of drugs. This caller said he smoked pot every day, and it wasn't doing him any harm. He mentioned, as an aside, that he was a "born-again Christian." Medved, who is Jewish but who knows quite a lot about our beliefs, questioned him more closely on that point. It turned out that he did not go to church at all, and had recently moved into his first house "with my girlfriend."

I suppose there's an element of Pharisaism in my response to that call. Certainly I fail to live up to the standards of Christianity in many areas of my life, not least in my cowardly flight from almost all personal interaction with other humans. But I think I can claim (at a minimum) that I know I'm doing wrong, and that I acknowledge that I ought to do better. I've been given grace to feel some guilt. I'm afraid that Michael Medved's young caller is representative of many people who claim Christian faith in our country today. He didn't seem to be aware that a Christian is called to live in any way that's at all different from his neighbors.

I don't know for a fact that this is true of the caller, but I think a lot of people claim Christianity purely as a nostrum for their own spiritual aches and pains. "Try Jesus! Now in Extra Strength! He'll have you feeling better in no time!"

In point of fact, genuine Christianity often makes a person much less comfortable in life. We have been promised persecutions and tribulations, and to be reviled for Jesus' sake. The joys and consolations of Christian faith have absolutely no necessary connection with comfort.

Lutherans like me have a complicated relationship with the book of James, where it says, "Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." (James 2:17) We don't interpret that to mean that faith and works are equal partners in the operation of grace. We reject absolutely the idea that any effort of our own can contribute to our salvation.

But, as we read it, works are the sign and byproduct of grace. You can tell a genuine faith from a false faith by looking at its fruits. If someone is living no differently than he did before his "conversion," it's probably not a genuine one. Someone has paraphrased Luther as saying, "We are not saved by faith and works, but by faith that works."

Just dropping by

Lars Walker — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:57:51 +0000

Not much from me tonight (fortunately, Phil's served up plenty--and good stuff, too. Well done, Phil!). I got a surprise invitation from a friend to go out to dinner tonight, and afterward he needed me to help him figure out this crazy Facebook thing. So I found myself in the unaccustomed position of cybergeek. In a relative sense, of course, like the one-eyed man in the land of the three-eyed women, or something. (COMING SOON: From Roger Corman--Island of the Three-Eyed Women!)

Somebody at Threedonia, in a comment thread today, mentioned that the skull of Hitler, which the Russians produced to great fanfare a few years back, has now been determined to be a woman's skull. This led me to speculate that maybe the Soviets took Hitler alive, and tortured him for a while before he died.

One can only hope.

It led me to imagine a short story, where Hitler ends up sharing a gulag cell with Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish philanthropist. It would be an interesting study in contrasting attitudes toward tragedy and despair.

But I won't write it. Not only would it call for an author with the wisdom of the writer of Job, but I generally avoid writing about Nazis. The subject has the odd distinction of being both done to death and an insuperable challenge, all at once.

Bill Watterson Resurfaces

Phil — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:26:57 +0000

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has an interview the cartoonist and comic genius Bill Watterson, the first interview since 1989. He says:

"Ah, the life of a newspaper cartoonist -- how I miss the groupies, drugs and trashed hotel rooms! . . .

An artwork can stay frozen in time, but I stumble through the years like everyone else. I think the deeper fans understand that, and are willing to give me some room to go on with my life."

Interview with Jeffrey Overstreet

Phil — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:18:30 +0000

Film critic and author Jeffrey Overstreet has written three fantasy novels in the last few years, two of which I've read. They are fantastic (perhaps that goes without saying). He writes this series, Auralia's Colors, not to depict any historic people or setting, but "to capture the questions that keep me up at night." The third one, Raven's Ladder, is shown on the left and is being released this month.

I have found that wonderfully hopeful, powerfully redemptive, and gorgeous. His new world has an appealing natural magic which is hard to describe, like the difficulty Tolkien's elves in LothlÃ³rien describing their handiwork to the hobbits. It wasn't magic to them, but the hobbits it was.

I asked Jeffrey some questions about writing and publishing these books.

1. You've been a critical writer for many years now. Â Do you think you've always had the writing spirit/muse/curse?

I'm hard-wired to tell stories. When I was five years old, I already felt compelled to make books. I'd take fairy-tale storybooks and painstakingly copy the text onto piles of scrap paper. Then I'd illustrate those pages with crayon or watercolors.

Soon after I read The Hobbit - around age seven - I stopped copying stories and started writing my own. And sure, those first stories sounded a lot like The Hobbit. But they became more unusual and distinct as the years went on. My first "series" was a four-story epic set in a world that resembles Pixar's A Bug's Life. In fact, when I saw that movie decades later, I laughed at the incredible similarities. (Where Pixar had nasty grasshoppers, I had wicked wasps.)
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By the time I was in fourth grade, my schoolteachers were giving me about 20 minutes a day to read my stories to the class. And by my early teens, I was typing several storybooks a year. I wrote horror stories, Indiana Jones-style adventures, and even a story about mice who take over the White House and start running the country.

I wrote a series that was rather like "The A-Team in Space." It was called "Force One", and the team was led by a lizard named Guns, who was sort of like Kermit the Frog with a red cape and a helmet. They fought a two-headed villain named Xa.

So yeah, I knew very early that this is what I wanted to do.

2. How did publishing two books in 2007 change things for you or change your perspective? Â I think many unpublished writers and would-be writers hope their ship will come in once the first book hits the shelves, but that won't be the case for them.

It has changed my life, but not in the ways people might think.

Some have said, "Wow. Four books in three years. That must be nice for you!" They seem to think I've struck it rich. But I still drive the same car, eat the same meals, and work the same day job at Seattle Pacific University that I did before.

Here's what has changed. My life has become much, much more stressful. This opportunity has cost me my free time, my evenings, my weekends, and my vacations. I look back to my university days and think, "Wow! I used to think finals week was hard work!"

Don't get me wrong. It's always thrilling to see my latest project arrive in stores. I love hearing from readers. And I'm deeply grateful to WaterBrook Press for giving me these opportunities, and to my agent for his patience and guidance.

But because they've given me these tremendous opportunities, I feel both an overwhelming sense of gratitude and a burdensome sense of responsibility. Since others are investing in my imagination, I want to do the very best I can. I haven't found a critic who's as tough on my work as I am.

I found it very difficult to let go of both Cyndere's Midnight and Raven's Ladder. Readers keep telling me that the series is getting better as it goes, and I'm glad they think so. But when I look at the sequels, I think of so many things I'd like to revise.

So in short, yeah. It changed my life. I've met a lot of new friends. I'm busier than ever. And I'm learning how to manage incredible stress!

3. How did you pitch Auralia's Colors to your publisher?

Truth is the publisher found me. It's a long story. Here's the shortest version I can manage:

I never expected to be published. Reading about the process of finding an agent and a publisher depressed me. It seemed like an impossible game, like playing the lottery. I couldn't muster the energy to pursue a publisher.

Then one day, I wrote a movie review of the film Secondhand Lions. It was published in a magazine, and the review impressed a flight attendant in Atlanta. The flight attendant wrote to me and said she was coming to visit Seattle. Could we meet for lunch?

During lunch, she asked about my other writing projects. She got excited about what she read, and she called a friend. That friend happened to work at Random House. He called me the next morning to ask about my work. And the rest is history.

Here's the thing. Several days earlier, I had prayed these words: "God, if you want these stories to be published, you'll have to show me how to make that happen. If you have to drop somebody out of the sky with a golden ticket, hey, I'm ready." And then, somebody dropped out of the sky with a golden ticket. I am still thanking God. And I'm still thanking the flight attendant.
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4. You were writing Auralia's Colors a long time, weren't you?

I started writing Auralia's Colors in 1996. I lived with it for a whole decade, revising it, throwing whole chapters away, dumping characters and introducing new ones. The ale boy was not very important in the first draft, but he became the second most important character. Some characters, like Radegan the thief, didn't show up until the last couple of drafts.
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I wrote other stories during that time too, including an epic adventure about a bird that runs away from home and becomes a secret agent. I hope I get to share that story someday. That bird's my favorite of all my characters.
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But I just kept kneading and kneading the dough of Auralia's Colors, until I was sure that every page would sound good read out loud. You can do that when you spend ten years on a story.
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5. Have you worked closely with an editor on the novels? Â Was there a good bit of back and forth?

Oh, yes. I'm so grateful for my wife, Anne, who has a voracious appetite for fantasy novels. She's an excellent editorâ€”she has her own freelance editing business.
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But I am also grateful to Shannon Marchese, my editor at WaterBrook. She was extremely patient with me as I finished Auralia's Colors, helping me amplify the story's strengths and work through its weaknesses. And WaterBrook also introduced me to Steve Parolini, who is incredibly perceptive about how to make good scenes better.
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Get this: In the last edit of Raven's Ladder, Steve helped me condense the manuscript to about half its original size. And I didn't have to revise the story much. Now that's an amazing editor!
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6. Are you satisfied with how your two novels have sold?

Auralia's Colors and Cyndere's Midnight are still in stores, so... yes! And I'm grateful for all of the readers who have written to me about their experience. I never expected any of this.

7. Are you satisfied (maybe that's not a good word) with the reviews you've seen and the criticism you've received?

When I read the praise for Auralia's Colors from Publisher's Weekly, I was overjoyed. It was an honor just to show up in PW, but that review was an extraordinary blessing.

Since then, I've been delighted with any review that convinced me the writer had actually read the book and thought it through. Most of them have been surprisingly generous.

There haven't been many negative reviews. But I don't mind negative reviews, so long as the reviewers offer useful criticism instead of arrogance and insults. Any six-year-old can be a snarky critic. It takes maturity to write meaningful criticism. I should know. I used to write snarky, condescending film reviews all the time. But in recent years I've been trying to grow up and recover some dignity.

8. Do any of the reviews or comments stand out to you, for better or worse?

There's one reviewerâ€”I think she's known as the most prolific reviewer on the internetâ€”who proves time and time again that she doesn't read closely. Her reviews of all three stories have contained drastic errors, and her plot descriptions don't match the stories I wrote. I think she's a fraud. She just likes to see her name in print.

Otherwise, I don't have serious complaints.

I once read a review by a woman who interpreted Auralia's Colors as a story about the revelatory power of art. I wanted to give her a hug.

Beautiful Short Story

Phil — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:47:01 +0000

Joshua Weigel has directed a beautiful short film called The Butterfly Circus. Take the time to watch it. It's one of those timeless stories which can become a cliche when told poorly yet remains wonderfully familiar when told well.

How to bamboozle your viewers

Lars Walker — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:02:56 +0000

Had to blow snow out of the driveway again tonight. My neighbor, who also has a blower and used to do it himself, tells me his is out of commission right now.

I think I made a good investment.

One of our readers sent me a link to the trailer for an animated movie called How to Train Your Dragon, scheduled to come out next month. He asked me what I thought of it. I'm glad he did, because I'd seen it before, and meant to do a rant, but somehow it slipped my mind.

First, the obvious things. It's supposed to be a movie about Vikings, and they wear horned helmets. If you've been reading this blog for any time at all, you surely know that the Vikings didn't do that. The horned helmets come from Wagnerian opera.

But I can forgive that. It's a cartoon.

The main character's name is Hiccup. I've been trying to figure that out. Is that supposed to be a play on words? If so, what word? I don't know of any Viking name that sounds at all like Hiccup.

But here's my real objection. The movie's apparently about a kid who discovers that dragons are JUST MISUNDERSTOOD! NOTHING WE KNOW ABOUT THEM IS TRUE!

This is classic contemporary Hollywood. "Let's do something transgressive! Overturn a long-standing cultural prejudice! Prove that it's we who are the monsters, not the mythical creatures!"

First of all, this isn't creative. The sympathetic dragon has been done. And done, and done. It was a fresh idea back when Kenneth Grahame wrote The Reluctant Dragon, but that was in freaking 1898, for pete's sake.

I haven't kept count of the sympathetic treatments of dragons I've seen in my lifetime, but it's been enough to make me tired of them.

I'm not saying it's impossible to write a good sympathetic dragon story. Grahame's story, as I recall it, is quite good. But it worked because of the surprise element. Nowadays, sympathetic dragons in movies are as surprising as child-molesting priests, hypocritical Christian fundamentalists, and Government Conspiracies at the Highest Level.

Listenâ€”dragons don't exist in the real world. They're what scholars call "fabulous creatures"--creatures of fable. They have symbolic meaning, and that meaning is Powerful Evil (Chinese dragons mean something else, but we're not in China).

Dragons are powerful. They fly; they have big fangs and claws, and they breathe fire. They're protected by natural armor.

They're evil. They eat livestock and human beings, and sometimes they demand human sacrifices as extortion payments. Theologically, they represent the devilâ€”the serpent of Eden after millennia of good meals and regular exercise.

Modern movie makers (and many modern writers) don't like this. They believe that people who say, "Dragons are evil," are only really saying "I fear dragons because I don't understand them." For them, hatred of dragons is a symbol of all the bigotry they think they see in our society.

That might be true if there weren't actually things in the world that deserve hatred. There are things that are not only frightening, but worth being frightened of. When a human being faces such an evil, an evil that can kill him, he is, metaphorically, facing a dragon. And traditional dragon stories help him find courage in that useful activity.

So the real issue is whether you think evil exists. This appears to be a movie for people who think it doesn't.

I'm fairly sure that the people who produced this movie don't live in Iran. Or North Korea. Or Somalia.

Story as dog-training

Lars Walker — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:54:33 +0000

Interesting that Phil should link to an article about the structure of story today, because I want to talk about the same thing. Only I'd like to concentrate on just one element. I've blogged before on how the basic elements of plot mirror the essential truths of human life, and even of theology. Today I want to examine an aspect of human nature that makes classic story form, I think, inevitable and necessary. This is my thesisâ€”that our emotions are like animals. More particularly, like dogs.

This idea was prompted by a discussion I've been involved in, in a Facebook group. I wanted to explain my own thinking on the question, "Why is it so hard to change habitual responses, even when we know they're wrongheaded and counterproductive?" I responded that we have reason, and we have feelings. Reason is, well, reasonable. It can be argued with, and sometimes convinced.

Feelings, on the other hand, aren't reasonable. They don't listen to argument. Feelings are trained like dogs, and like dogs you can't appeal to their good sense.

This reminded me of a story. It's not a dirty story, but you might not want to read it right now, if you're eating at the computer or something.

I knew a man some years ago. He was a Navy veteran, and every inch the kind of guy you think of when you think, "military." Very straight in his posture and squared away in his habits. Not somebody you'd immediately think of if you were looking for a buddy to have a good time with.

He told a story about his dogs.

Shortly after the end of World War II, he'd been reassigned to Japan. He and his familyâ€”and his two dogsâ€”boarded a ship to make the voyage over.

His dogs (he said with some pride) were well trained. They did not bark when barking wasn't wanted. They didn't chase squirrels without permission.

And they didn't do their "doggy duty" anywhere except on ground. Soil.

There was no soil on the ship.

My friend said he felt terribly sorry for his dogs. He took them out for walks on the deck, and tried to communicate to them that, under these circumstances, the "soil only" rule was out of force.

But the dogs knew their training. In increasing pain, they demonstrated to their master that they could be relied on to obey the Rules of the Pack. Even when he was trying, to the best of his ability, to tell them to forget it.

Eventually they broke down, of course. Nature can be denied only so long. But they hung their heads in shame when it was done. They knew they'd sinned. They knew they'd proven themselves Unworthy.

That's what human emotions are like. Even when all around there are trusted, rational voices saying, "You've been taught wrong. The rule you're following isn't a rule at all, and is only harming you and those you love," the emotions remain faithful. Only the greatest stress will turn them away from obedience to the Rules of the Pack.

The rising tension of a story is how the storyteller dramatizes the struggle between dysfunctional feelings and reason. As things get worse and worse for the character, he struggles to hang on to what his Inner Dog insists is necessary. Only the greatest distress sets him free from the dog's rules.

I also contend that this is one of the reasons why "bad things happen to good people." I'm not (let me be very clear) saying that this principle explains all human suffering. Obviously it doesn't. A child dying of cancer, to take an obvious example, is not being taught a lesson in maturity.

But a lot of the time (I believe), tragedy, pain and fear are the only tools God has to override the insane instructions by which our inner dogs so often operate.

(Let it be noted that I mean to cast no aspersions on dogs as a species. I like dogs very much, and wish I owned one.)

A Tale of Use Experience

Phil — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:21:15 +0000

User Experience and Storytelling - En del ett: Common mythic elements and reader or viewer appeals.

Unhappy

Phil — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:38:59 +0000

Here's a snicker for you, photos of unhappy people in very nice modern living areas (I can't say houses, because some may be flats, apartments, or such as that). I can't decide on a favorite. It could be this poor child trying to escape a life like Eustace Clarence Scrubb's. Or this one which is thankful for the silence. Or this one: "Even in your company, I feel so alone."

storySouth Million Writers Award Open

Phil — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:31:47 +0000

The storySouth Million Writers Award for good writing published online is now open for nominations.

Fiction Friday, R.I.P. Ralph McInerny

Lars Walker — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:47:24 +0000

The Culture Alliance's (subscribers' only) Friday Fiction e-newsletter focused on me todayâ€”very flatteringly, and I'm grateful. You can read most of it yourself here at S. T. Karnick's The American Culture blog.

With all due regard to the passing of J. D. Salinger, my own reading universe has been far more powerfully impacted today by the death of Ralph McInerny, who passed away this morning. (Thanks to Southern Appeal for the heads up.)

McInerny was a noted Catholic religious scholar and University of Notre Dame institution, as well as being a highly successful mystery writer. His Father Dowling mysteries (notâ€”I repeat, notâ€”to be confused with the awful television series starring Tom Bosley which purported to be based on them), along with his Roger and Philip Knight books, set at Notre Dame, formed only the tip of his fictional iceberg, much of which consisted of books written under pseudonyms.

Although I am far from being a Catholic, I always found McInerny an author whose faith and principles I could identify with. I don't think anyone would call his books sentimental or naÃ¯ve in their depiction of the real world, but they breathed out an atmosphere of spiritual peace and rationality that must have been generated by a rare spirit. I wish I'd had the chance to meet him.

Winter Day Games

Phil — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:16:53 +0000

It's snowy in Chattanooga, the perfect excuse for some of us to stay inside and do what we normally do. I drove home carefully a couple hours ago. I'm glad I did not pass any cars in the ditch, though I did see some parked at the entrance to hilly neighborhoods.

If you are looking for a way to pass your time today, you might try these Shakespeare Games from Bantam. If you want to prepare for future snow days or family nights or the Bar's Out of Beer nights, you might try one of these games, including the Shakespeare's Quips, Cusses, and Curses Quiz Deck, hours of fun for you and anyone within the sound of your voice.

A Golden Ticket

Phil — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:07:47 +0000

About two years ago, author and critic Jeffrey Overstreet wrote about how his very good fantasy novel Auralia's Colors was accepted for publication. "In short: Somebody dropped out of the sky and gave me a golden ticket." It was an answer to prayer.

The state of the groundhog

Lars Walker — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:35:04 +0000

(Not from the movie)

It probably won't surprise you much when I inform you that I passed up the opportunity to listen to my president's State of the Union address last night.

Instead I popped my DVD of Groundhog Day into the player, and watched it for the eleventy-second time. It was almost shorter than the president's speech, and definitely less repetitious, from what I've read.

And it's the right time of year.

I think Groundhog Day is my It's a Wonderful Life. As I've mentioned before, IaWL just depresses me. The only message I get from it is "George Bailey has a wonderful life, BUT YOU'RE NOT GEORGE BAILEY!"

Groundhog Day, on the other hand, presents a lesson I can agree withâ€”"If I had the chance to do my life over about a million times, I might eventually figure something out."

I understand the original script was written by a Buddhist, and that the filmmakers cut out some of the more explicitly Buddhist elements. I suppose, to be consistent with myself, I ought to reject the film for the merest taint of Buddhism.

But what kind of theology does It's a Wonderful Life present? Salvation by good works and self-esteem. "You may think you're a miserable sinner, George Bailey, but they think very highly of you in heaven!" Not exactly Christian law and gospel.

What I like about Groundhog Day is the non-theological materialâ€”the simple moral journey of a man who does actually come to realize that he's a sinner, and then works to become somebody whose life contributes. It's not a saving knowledge, but it's a good thing for the people who have to live with him.

To a large degree, it's about humility. I could name some prominent people who seem to think that humility is for their country, but not for them as individuals. Such people need to wake up and see their own shadows.

(Crossposted at Mere Comments)

J.D. Salinger, 91, Is Dead

Phil — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:44:17 +0000

The author of The Catcher in the Rye is dead. Obit Magazine has yet to post their take, but the journalist Hillel Italie gives us a bit of nastiness in his AP story.

Salinger's alleged adoration of children apparently did not extend to his own. In 2000, daughter Margaret Salinger's "Dreamcatcher" portrayed the writer as an unpleasant recluse who drank his own urine and spoke in tongues.

Ms. Salinger said she wrote the book because she was "absolutely determined not to repeat with my son what had been done with me."

Have mercy.