Category: Literature

The Door Into Summer


Heinlein with (I believe) Pixie, c. 1953. Wikipedia photo.

The Door Into Summer, by Robert A. Heinlein. Original publisher: Doubleday, 1957.

When I can’t find any newer science fiction that seems worth reading, a classic Robert A. Heinlein is always a good bet. The Door Into Summer is delightful.

I’m certain I’ve complained here before about writers who don’t know how to write. The science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon made an axiom about that. It’s called Sturgeon’s Law: “Ninety percent of everything is crap.” Sturgeon was responding to the criticism that science fiction was usually of low literary quality. The point he wanted to make is that most fiction is of low literary quality, so why pick on science fiction? I have certainly found Sturgeon’s Law to be true in a long life of reading. It’s why I fling so many books after fewer than 30 pages. On Amazon, it’s why I move on after spending a few minutes with “Look Inside.”

Robert A. Heinlein could write. He’s often called “the master” by lovers of the science fiction genre, because few writers have been able to match his skill. Heinlein rarely bends the rules that apply to classical story structure, which is a great virtue. There are many reasons why some writers can’t write. But one of those reasons is that bad writers often imagine that they are too creative and too literary to be constrained by classical story structure. That kind of writing stinks so badly that you can smell it and fling it within three pages. To my taste, the stricter the form, the better the art, as long as one can master the form. The analogy I use is fugue form, one of the strictest forms in music. And yet, working within that strict form, J.S. Bach can blow your mind. As can a Heinlein novel.

The Door Into Summer is a story about extreme injustice followed by justice and revenge. Much of the charm comes from a character who is a cat. Heinlein’s dialogue can be counted on to be as good as his plots. The dialogue with the cat in The Door Into Summer is not just funny, or clever in how it serves the plot and the characterization. Anyone who knows cats will also recognize it as a true reflection of how cats think (and talk).

The cat character sent me to Google, wanting to know more about Heinlein’s cats. It seems that, in Grumbles from the Grave, a posthumous biography of Heinlein assembled by his wife and published in 1989, there is a letter to Lurton Blassingame, a literary agent. In the letter, Heinlein writes:

“Pixie is dying … uremia, too far gone to hope for remission; the vet sent him home to die several days ago. He is not now in pain and still purrs, but he is very weak and becoming more emaciated every day — it’s like having a little yellow ghost in the house.”

I believe Pixie died in 1957, and I believe Pixie was the cat that Heinlein wrote about in The Door Into Summer.

Oxford, Tolkien, and the fair speech


From my visit to Oxford, August 2019

A few days ago I finished my third reading of The Two Towers, and now I’m on book 3. The landscapes of Middle-earth are lucid in my imagination. And yet I find myself thinking again and again about Oxford. This story (the best story, I believe, in English literature) was born out of the imagination and knowledge of J.R.R. Tolkien. But Tolkien’s imaginary world could never have existed if our real world did not have the University of Oxford in it.

Yes, Oxford is one of the greatest seats of privilege in the world. Oxford has drawn heavily on the power and wealth of the British Empire. But that shows us, I believe, that no empire can sustain itself century after century — at least in any form that can do some good in the world along with the harm that empires do — unless it invests in all the things that the University of Oxford stands for.

Part of what I marvel at and am extremely grateful for is that it has been my privilege that the language of Oxford is my mother tongue. That is one thing that I can share with Oxford, though otherwise I have never had scrap nor morsel of its privilege. No matter how many languages a person may learn to speak later in life, it is the mother tongue that is connected most intimately with our minds and emotions. For years I have said, partly as a joke, that Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings would be impossible to translate into French. Tolkien’s story, and Tolkien’s language, are Anglo-Saxon to the bone, alien, like oil and water, to Latin.

In book 2, The Two Towers, I found myself re-reading and savoring the passages in which Faramir interrogates Frodo, and in which trust develops between them as Faramir decides to give Frodo as much help as he can, though they both are far from home. Faramir speaks “the fair speech.” Others in the story speak the fair speech, too. The elves for example. But though hobbits are to some degree hicks, Frodo acquired the fair speech, from his mentors.

This dialogue between Faramir and Frodo is some of the most perfect dialogue in the story. Tolkien polished every word and phrase. Consider what Tolkien as an Oxford professor was able to draw on, all products of Oxford: the long history of the English language all the way back to German and beyond; the refinements of English diplomacy; the conventions by which the privileged (Faramir was a steward’s son) expressed (or displayed) their noblesse and fine breeding. I’ll make another joke at the expense of the French. To be polite in French, one must double the number of words. It’s difficult in French to be both courteous and concise. Whereas in English a high rhetorical tone can get straight to the point.

On the train from Edinburgh to Oxford, as the train approached Oxford, a Ph.D. student whom I had talked with on the train said, “I speak acquired English.” I replied, “I understand that, because I speak acquired American.” It was not just language that we had in common. It also was a kind of language that we had in common, an echo of the “fair speech.” Americans are quite capable of the fair speech, scarce as it is these days in our public discourse.

I have heard it said about us American Southerners — at least a kind of Southerner in short supply hereabouts — that, when there is conflict, whoever is most polite wins. If that is true, then I suspect it is something we learned from the English. Pray that we all can keep it, even though, as with many Southerners who have an aptitude for language, I will cut a person to shreds with my tongue when I think they need it. Too many do. And you can get shot for mere words, these days more than ever.

Even if we have to turn to literature to hear the fair speech, it’s something we ought to do from time to time. In dark times such as these, there is something that is encouraging and healing about it.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer. Simon & Schuster, 1959. 1,252 pages.

If I had read this book five years ago, I would have read it pretty much purely as history. Barack Obama was still president of the United States. Having elected its first black president and experienced eight years of economic recovery with competent, scandal-free government, America seemed to have outgrown its worst vices. Now we know that America has not outgrown its worst vices.

In writing this post, three times I’ve written something angry, and three times I’ve deleted it. Instead of venting my anger over the ugly turn in American history that we are now living through, I think I’ll just say this: There is no better time to read this book than now. Adolf Hitler, of course, was character number 1 in this history. Just behind him were Hermann Goering (who cheated the hangman with suicide by cyanide) and the others who had great power who were hanged at Nuremberg. There were hundreds more with lesser roles whose names are on the historical record. And there were the millions of nameless Germans who should have known better but didn’t. If you read this book now, you will recognize these people, because today people just like them are still with us. That these people today have not acquired the power to do the damage the Nazis did, or that they’d be satisfied with domination and oligarchy and anti-democracy tyranny rather than genocide, says little about their character. They are the same people.

We are fortunate that so many records survived to document this history: the secret government records captured in Berlin, the diaries, the letters, and the Nuremberg interrogations, depositions, and testimony. Those are the sources that Shirer used to write this history.

Shirer writes, in his afterword to the 1990 edition:

“Perhaps it will help too if the erring governments and the wondering people of this world will remember the dark night of Nazi terror and genocide that almost engulfed our world and that is the subject of this book. Remembrance of the past helps us to understand the present.”

If only the worst people among us could recognize what they are and how eager they are to be misled. But, because of what they are, I doubt that they ever will.

The Fellowship of the Ring

I first read The Lord of the Rings almost 50 years ago. Subsequently I have reread it at least twice. I often have wanted to do another rereading, but as Bilbo is preparing for his birthday party, I realize that I can quote many of the next lines before I turn the page. It could almost be a parlor game: What does Gandalf say next? Having failed yet again to find a good novel that I haven’t read, I’ve embarked on my fourth reading of The Lord of the Rings. I just finished the first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring.

I still know the story by heart, of course. We all do. But this is the first time I’ve reread these books since my retirement more than 10 years ago. In those 10 years, I’ve read more about Tolkien including a book about the Inklings, I’ve read some of Tolkien’s letters, I’ve read a good bit on linguistics and prehistory, I’ve written two novels and part of a third, and — most important — I’ve hiked in remote places in the British Isles. It even helps to have visited Oxford last year, since that’s where these books were written. I’m finding that this fourth reading is rewarding for new reasons — savoring Tolkien’s use of language, admiring his scholarship, and marveling at his imagination.

One thing that has surprised me, though, is how much I’m enjoying the walking, walking, walking. Tolkien’s descriptions of terrain, sky (including the night sky), and weather are extraordinary. Having now hiked in moor, bog, and woodland and having ascended long, rocky, heather-covered ridges to the rainswept tops of wild mountains, I can now appreciate what previously was lost on me. It’s a travelogue, and it’s Tolkien’s descriptions that make Middle-earth so real. I never found the perfect pub (I hope to keep trying), but the provincial hotels of Scotland (such as the Royal Hotel at Stornaway) are almost as much fun as the Prancing Pony inn at Bree would be.

Before I start volume 2, The Two Towers, I am going to read William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which Ken recently finished and highly recommends. It’s a big tome, 1,250 pages. It’s the sort of book that will be kept on a prominent shelf for reference, so I bought the hardback 50th anniversary edition, which was released in 2011. Ken wrote a good comparison of Trump and Hitler, on how they’re alike and how they differ, which I would like to reproduce here later, with Ken’s permission. These three evil characters occupy the same dark space in our minds where we store our dreads and icons of depravity — Sauron, Hitler, and Trump.

Speaking of Trump, each day we learn something new and horrifying about his criminality and treason. I haven’t felt that I have anything to add by posting about politics here, though, because I think that the responsible media and the responsible commentariat are getting it right. I still don’t understand, though, why Republican senators don’t talk Trump into resigning so that the Republican Party can try to save itself, and its hold on the Senate, by putting up another candidate. But then again, it is with Trump as it was with Hitler (and Sauron). To good people (and good hobbits) who are working with good information, such depravity is incomprehensible.

Two Years Before the Mast


“A Clipper at Sunset,” Edward Moran, 1829-1901.

Whenever I have one of my fits of despair that writers can’t write anymore, I look for a classic to read. This led me to Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast.

My main interest in this book was Dana’s account of sailing around the Horn from Boston to California and back. I had been looking at my globe and marveling at what a long and treacherous trip that had to be. That made me think of Dana’s book, so I got a copy for my Kindle. I confess that I skipped most of the parts about coastal California, having been there and done that. But Dana’s time at sea is thrilling. I’d suggest keeping a schematic of a sailing ship handy when reading this book, because Dana uses a sailor’s language in discussing the parts of the ship and how it was sailed.

Many have noted that Dana was, at heart, a poet. His California travelogues are descriptive and more journalistic. But sometimes he sings:

Every rope-yarn seemed stretched to the utmost, and every thread of canvas; and with this sail added to her, the ship sprang through the water like a thing possessed. The sail being nearly all forward, it lifted her out of the water, and she seemed actually to jump from sea to sea. From the time her keel was laid, she had never been so driven; and had it been life or death with every one of us, she could not have borne another stitch of canvas.

Finding that she would bear the sail, the hands were sent below, and our watch remained on deck. Two men at the wheel had as much as they could do to keep her within three points of her course, for she steered as wild as a young colt. The mate walked the deck, looking at the sails, and then over the side to see the foam fly by her,— slapping his hands upon his thighs and talking to the ship,— “Hurrah, you jade, you’ve got the scent!— you know where you’re going!” And when she leaped over the seas, and almost out of the water, and trembled to her very keel, the spars and masts snapping and creaking,— “There she goes!— There she goes,— handsomely?— As long as she cracks she holds!”— while we stood with the rigging laid down fair for letting go, and ready to take in sail and clear away, if anything went. At four bells we hove the log, and she was going eleven knots fairly; and had it not been for the sea from aft which sent the chip home, and threw her continually off her course, the log would have shown her to have been going somewhat faster. I went to the wheel with a young fellow from the Kennebec, Jack Stewart, who was a good helmsman, and for two hours we had our hands full. A few minutes showed us that our monkey-jackets must come off; and, cold as it was, we stood in our shirt-sleeves in a perspiration, and were glad enough to have it eight bells, and the wheel relieved. We turned-in and slept as well as we could, though the sea made a constant roar under her bows, and washed over the forecastle like a small cataract.

Dana’s ship, the Pilgrim, sank off the North Carolina coast after a fire at sea in 1856. A replica of the Pilgrim, built in 1925, was berthed in California for many years and was maintained by the Ocean Institute. I was saddened to learn that this replica of the Pilgrim keeled over and sank in its berth just a few months ago — March 2020. The ship could not be salvaged.

Sixth Column — Robert A. Heinlein, 1941

Once again, unable to find any new (or newish) science fiction that I wanted to read, I turned to an oldie — Robert A. Heinlein’s Sixth Column, which was first published in 1941.

Of course it’s dated, but part of the fun of old science fiction classics is the nostalgia. It’s recognizably Heinlein, though — snappily and skillfully written, often funny, with lots of good snark that never quite turns into preaching. Old books also remind us moderns that the writers and intellectuals who came long before us often had things figured out that we think weren’t figured out until much later. For example, from a biography of Theodore Parker, I learned that our intellectual predecessors had fully explicated the moral poverty of the Bible and the case against slavery by early in the 19th Century, building on a strong 18th Century base. Or consider the social critiques of Jane Austen, or the prescience of writers such as George Orwell. Voltaire was born in 1694. 1694!

Heinlein, though, was no philosopher. His libertarian notions are tiresome, in my opinion. And though he was once a liberal, Wikipedia says that Heinlein and his wife worked for the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign in 1964. So go figure.

Since I’m a person who wouldn’t give two cents for all the theology that was ever written, I found Sixth Column amusing for its rude treatment of the church. The plot of the novel is that the United States has been taken over and enslaved by Asians, and only six members of the American military survive. To take the country back, these six members create a fake religion. “The average American,” writes Heinlein, “is completely unimpressed by scientific wonders; he expects them, takes them as a matter of course…. But add a certain amount of flubdub and hokum and don’t label it as scientific and he will be impressed.” What befuddles me is that, even though “Amazing Grace” was written in 1772, and even though intellectuals have been shaking their heads at the stupidity and gullibility of the average American for almost as long as there has been an America, we are still surrounded by crackpot religion, crackpot politics, and a technologically amazing global network providing the crackpots with their daily supersized bellyloads of flubdub and hokum, since television — brand new in 1941 — can no longer meet the demand. The master Tweets, and his slaves obey.

Sixth Column is extremely politically incorrect, which is another part of the fun. The book police brats at Goodreads have slammed it for that. A “steaming pile of crap,” one Goodreads reviewer wrote. Though some of the reviewers, I must acknowledge, know how to read old pulp fiction in its historical context. One reviewer even wrote, “When we start telling writers what they can and can’t write about we may as well give up reading.”

The year 1941 was 79 years ago. And yet here we are today, actually governed by crackpot con men and crackpot voters who think that a return to the Dark Ages will make us great again. (The Americans of 1941 had Franklin D. Roosevelt. We are backsliding.) Heinlein writes: “These savages and their false gods! I grow weary of them. Yet they are necessary; the priests and the gods of slaves always fight on the sides of the Masters. It is a rule of nature.”

ᚱᚢᚾᛖᛊ : Escaping with Anglo-Saxon


With Lily. We escape together.

Among the teetering stacks of books by my bed, I always keep some books for what I call fill-in reading. This is light reading for short reading sessions — for example, when I know that I’m going to fall asleep after only a page or two.

One such book is a 1950s textbook on astronomy, which I’ve been studying for years. Another, for many months now, is A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. The first edition of this book was published in 1894. It has been through several revisions and new printings. My copy is from 1970. Later editions include a supplement, not because new words are being invented in Anglo-Saxon (that’s supposed to be funny), but because the scholarship continues.

Why read dictionaries, or, at least, historical dictionaries? One reads these dictionaries to get a feel for the kind of words a language had. And because Anglo-Saxon (also called Old English) is an early form of my native language, and because I have a good bit of exposure to Latin through Spanish and French, a better grasp of the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary helps provide a better feel for how Old English and French came together after the Norman Conquest to give birth to modern English.

As an editor, I have argued for many years that writers need to know the difference between the Anglo-Saxon components of English and the Latin components. This is because, when we write in Anglo-Saxon, the writing is clearer and is much more useful for persuasion and evoking an emotional response. For telling stories, only Anglo-Saxon English will do. We resort to Latin only when we’re obliged to get technical or abstract. Still, Anglo-Saxon, like German, is rich with a vocabulary of abstraction and objects of the imagination, for example, gēosceaftgāst — a doomed spirit, a word which is found in Beowulf.

It’s almost impossible now to think of Anglo-Saxon without also thinking of J.R.R. Tolkien, who not only wrote a few of the most famous novels in the English language but who also aroused our curiosity about the roots of the English language.

Do you recall when you first saw the runes in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings? The runes then seemed very magical and obscure. Tolkien’s runes are part of a language he invented. But real runes are not so obscure, because they’re an alphabet used for Germanic languages before the Latin alphabet was used. It’s almost a letdown to learn that runes are so well-supported today that they are included in the Unicode table of international characters, which means that most computers can reproduce runes. (If you see question marks in the headline on this post, rather than runes, then your computer must not be fully Unicode compliant.)

While reading through the Anglo-Saxon dictionary, I found a number of words that I recognize from Tolkien. The page below, Page 105, contains the word ent, for example. It means giant.

The words you’ll find in the Anglo-Saxon dictionary fit roughly into three categories: words that are very familiar and common in English (stēam, for steam or moisture), words that are easily recognizable with a little thought (fordrīfan to drive, sweep away or drive on), and words that are interesting but that make no sense at all (dwæsian, to become stupid).

Our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon is based on about 400 surviving manuscripts. Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries took a heavy toll, though it cleansed England of catholicism. The monks’ revenge, though, is that much of what survives was written down and preserved by monks. Consequently there are a lot of ecclesiastical words in an Anglo-Saxon dictionary. If you subtract the ecclesiastical words, then you have a language that is perfectly suited for describing Tolkien’s Shire, or for telling the kind of stories that Tolkien told. It’s a world of fairy tales and adventure and unspoiled landscapes, a world of people, their surroundings, their thoughts, and their deeds. There’s even the stars. See eoforðring on Page 105. It refers to the constellation Orion. (The ð character is the letter eth and is pronounced like the “th” in “that.”)

It’s a great luxury to be retired and to have time for such pursuits as pursuing the history of the English language. Can you imagine how much fun it might be to do that for a living? Of all the lives that have been lived, I think I most envy the life of Tolkien. I could do without the World War I parts. But I greatly envy his life at Oxford. I can’t find any good photos of Tolkien that don’t require royalties, but here’s a link to some good ones at Getty Images, in which it’s clear that his natural habitat was sitting in a library, reading, wearing his tweeds, and smoking his pipe. The pubs! The Inklings! The books! The walks! The Oxford dinners! It’s all such a wonderful place to escape to in the imagination, and it’s all much easier for me to imagine after a visit to Oxford last summer.

As for escaping, I’m not ignoring the state of the world, or the state of the United States, or the exasperation of reading the news. In fact, I’ve had a lot of little local political responsibilities to deal with of late, such as precinct meetings and fundraising. It’s all a bunch of endwerc †, which you’ll find on Page 105. But that’s all the more reason to have a slosh of ale, or a cup of tea, and to spend a little quiet time trying to think like an Anglo-Saxon.

† Note: The source for the word endwerc is Leechdoms, Wortcunnings, and Starcraft of Early England, which looks like a book I need to read. The book is important enough that Cambridge University Press released a facsimile version, in a three-volume set, in 2012. It’s 1,496 pages.


Click here for high-resolution version


Some of Tolkien’s runes, with translations

A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World ★★★★

A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World. C.A.Fletcher. Orbit, 2019. 384 pages.

This incredible book has renewed my faith that people can still write superb and beautiful novels. It’s what we call a hot read. I had to keep telling myself to slow down, because the constant suspense made me want to read faster. And then you get to the end, quicker than you wanted, wishing that it could go on, so that you could stay in that world and stay in the story.

The novel’s world, as the title reveals, is a dystopia. It would be wrong to say much more than that, because almost anything one might say about this book would be a spoiler. The author, knowing that, includes this line just before the first page: “It’d be a kindness to other readers — not to say this author — if the discoveries made as you follow Griz’s journey into the ruins of our world remained a bit of a secret between us.”

I will mention some of the setting, since you’ll learn it anyway in the first few pages: The story starts in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, the memories of which are still fresh in my mind from a visit there last August. Everyone who goes there, I suspect, wants to find a way to hold on to the magic of those islands. C.A. Fletcher did it with this novel.

This book, I suspect, will become a classic. And because C.A. Fletcher is a screenwriter, I suspect it also will become a movie. Yes, it’s a dystopia; but no, it’s not depressing. You’re probably going to read it sooner or later, so why not get started…

A portrait I wish I had shot


Christopher Tolkien. New York Times photo by Josh Dolgin. Click for high-resolution version.

I hope I am not inviting copyright trouble here. The extraordinary photo above is linked to a New York Times URL; I have not downloaded a copy of it. The photo accompanies the New York Times’ obituary for Christopher Tolkien, son of J.R.R. Tolkien: Christopher Tolkien, Keeper of His Father’s Legacy, Dies at 95.

You all know who Christopher Tolkien was. There is nothing that I need to add. But as lovers of literature and photography, how can we not ask a question: Why is it that people who change the world with their books always look so amazing? It was the same with Christopher Tolkien’s father, J.R.R. Tolkien, who was always photographed in tweeds, and often in front of a fireplace or bookcase.

What a gift, to have lived such lives.

His Dark Materials ★★★☆

Until the next truly smashing science fiction or fantasy series comes along, His Dark Materials will help a bit to tide us over. Some reviewers seem to think that it’s a Game of Thrones knockoff. It looks more like Harry Potter to me. Still, there are strong elements of originality. A big part of what makes it worth watching is purely visual — an imaginary world with lots of gothic and steampunk elements. The animal sidekicks are charming and are used to excellent dramatic effect.

My main criticism might be that it’s a touch too young adult for the total immersion of someone as old as I am. But it’s good enough, I think, to make up for that. Anglophiles will love it, and unfortunately for those who live at Oxford, the flood of tourists is only going to get worse. I thoroughly enjoyed my brief visit to Oxford back in August. I’ve watched two episodes of His Dark Materials so far and have downloaded the third.

His Dark Materials was produced by the BBC and HBO. You can stream it from HBO Now or HBO Go.