Review: John Twelve Hawks’ Spark

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One of these books is a hot read.

John Twelve Hawks’ newest novel Spark was released on Oct. 7, and I actually bought it that week. But I was slammed with election duties during the month of October, so I put the book aside until quiet times returned. This is because I knew that Spark would be a barn burner of a page turner. It was, and I read it in a day and a half. Brilliant writers like John Twelve Hawks don’t really need yet another glowing review, so I’d like to get off onto a sidetrack for a moment — readers.

I have become fascinated with bad reviews, because bad reviews tell writers something that writers need to know. I’ve recently gotten into the habit, both with books I’m about to buy and books I’ve already read, of looking at the most negative reviews that can be found on Amazon. This probably started when Fugue in Ursa Major got its first 3-star, as opposed to 5-star review. I was insulted by the reader/reviewer’s sheer stupidity, and I needed to assure myself that everyone’s books are misunderstood. There’s a rule among writers about never responding to a bad review. But there is no rule that says you can’t respond to bad review of someone else’s book.

Here’s a snippet from the “most helpful” negative review of Spark, which has the headline “Meh.” I’m fixing the reviewer’s multiple typos:

“Honestly, the first half of the book was so dry and boring, I really wasn’t sure I would be able to finish it. … Part of the problem was the bland writing since the protagonist has no feelings, diagnosed with Cotard Syndrome (delusion of being dead) that there is no dimension to him. I really didn’t like him much or even care what was going on.”

Why do people who know (or care) so little about novels, characterization, and storytelling even bother to read? They are stuck inside their own tiny minds, not seeking any sort of expansive experience in a book but rather seeking to have their own smallness affirmed. But any reader with a clue about how stories work knows that, if a writer starts a story with a character who is incapable of affect and who thinks he is dead, then that character is going to undergo some sort of transformation during the course of the story. A good reader also will be alert to what’s between the lines. Maybe the author wants us to think about our feelings and when feelings matter (or don’t matter). Maybe he wants us to think about what’s worth living for, or whether we’ve even alive at all. A good reader also will know that, very often in good stories, characters change during the course of the story, and the nature of that change is an important part of what that story is about. It’s like starting with a hard-hearted character like Ebenezer Scrooge and asking ourselves, “What kind of experiences might change this bitter old man into someone warm and caring?” Thus Charles Dickens gave us A Christmas Carol. What if a clueless reviewer wrote, “I just couldn’t get into this story. The Scrooge character was just so one-dimensional and mean that I couldn’t care about him. So I couldn’t finish this book.”

Bah! Humbug!

If John Twelve Hawks (he’ll almost certainly Google up this review and read it) will forgive me for plugging my own book in a review of Spark, I got a similar comment in a review of Fugue in Ursa Major on the bad-taste book site Goodreads:

“The main character was a basket case unable to form relationships and he is saved. Only a hero that Ayn Rand would love, but I could care less.”

She is talking about my Jake. (Coincidentally, John Twelve Hawks’ main character in Spark also is named Jake.) As a bad reader, she does not understand that if a writer starts a story with a character who is having trouble with relationships, then during the course of the story that character is probably going to learn something about relationships. As for Ayn Rand, the reviewer is so insensitive to the clues that every writer lays between the lines that she can’t detect that I abhor Ayn Rand. I suspect that particular reviewer was blinded by her rigid political agenda. Reading, to her, is about comfort and confirmation in her own tiny world.

But back to Spark and the mystery of John Twelve Hawks. I’ve written about him previously, here, here, and here. He is a master of the hot read. I read him partly to study his style, in particular his action scenes, because I’m not good at writing action scenes. His prose is the kind of prose I like — transparent prose that tells the story without language getting in the way. In fact we’re hardly aware of language at all. His style is very cinematic, which is why I was not surprised that he got a big movie deal for Spark.

What I would love to know is how he learned to write. It can’t be just raw talent (though he has plenty of raw talent), because every writer works from a theory of writing whether he knows it or not. John Twelve Hawks dots all the i’s and crosses all the t’s. Everything is properly foreshadowed. There are no wrong notes. He stays on course for his destination: a ripping good conclusion. By the end, all the many threads of the story have been tied together, and every character has gotten his lines just right and played his role perfectly. It’s a masculine, muscular style that would not work for the kind of stories that I want to tell, but it’s perfect for the stories that John Twelve Hawks tells.

Which brings me to what I think is the most important question we might ask about John Twelve Hawks as a writer. Why does he choose to tell the kind of stories he tells? Having asked that question, I’m not going to try to answer it. Because only writers, not reviewers, can speak to readers on a question that important. But I think it’s much more than wanting to deliver a hot read. And, whatever his purpose is, I’m pretty sure that I wholeheartedly agree with him.

Review: Interstellar

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A good test of a movie, I think, is to let it digest for a few days and then ask yourself: Having digested this movie, was it nutritious enough that anything stuck to my bones? With “Interstellar,” the answer for me turns out to be no.

“Interstellar” is highly entertaining. It’s fast-paced, very smart, and beautiful to watch. There are strong character elements, with well-paced emotional peaks and valleys. In short, it’s a great experience at the theater (I saw it in IMAX). But not much sticks to the bones.

The sport of second-guessing director Christopher Nolan’s science seems to have quickly faded from the media. I’m not hearing any Oscar buzz. I don’t think it’s just me. I don’t think it’s sticking to many people’s bones. Still, I love it when Hollywood makes science fiction blockbusters.

Was “Interstellar” an environmental movie? One of the flaws of the movie, in my opinion, was that it tells us too little about what had happened on earth and was in too big a hurry to get into space. And having gotten into space, it lingered a little too long. Matt Damon could have been written out of this film with no loss at all. Clearly back on earth there was some sort of climate disaster, and lots of people died. Clearly this led to ugly cultural changes and what seemed to be a kind of leftist fascism. But that’s all left vague. It’s almost as though the director is in a hurry to abandon the earth and get on with an earth substitute made with technology. There is an ugly whiff of techno-utopianism: earth is disposable; superior people will save our plebeian asses, but only just enough of us to assure genetic diversity.

The word “existential” shows up a lot in things written about Christopher Nolan. That is very appropriate. Nolan seems allergic to approaching anything with the scent of the collective about it. He does not concern himself with values. With Nolan, very little is shared. Everything is seen through the eyes of single individuals, and they all see something different. I’m not necessarily criticizing existentialism in art, but existentialism tends to involve heavy exertion while on a low-protein, high-carb diet.

Should you see “Interstellar”? By all means, in IMAX if possible. But go out for a burger afterwards, because you’ll probably leave the theater hungry.

You also won’t feel the need for another Matt Damon or Matthew McConaughey movie for a long, long time.

Abbey photography update

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The abbey’s venerable Nikon D1X was starting to have occasional shutter malfunctions, so I went on eBay and bought a D2X, the model of professional camera that succeeded the D1X in 2004. The pros have moved on to D3’s and D4’s, so the D2X is now an affordable camera. I found a practically new one on eBay, with barely 3,000 shutter actuations. My D1X is now a backup camera.

It always seems shocking to me that, no matter how much professionals pay for their professional cameras, lenses can easily cost as much as the camera, or more. Those of us who don’t make money from photography but who take photography seriously must make do with the best lenses we can afford. I was greatly in need of a wide-angle lens, and I recently added a Nikkor 28-70mm lens to my camera kit. I also have a 50-200mm lens that gets a lot of use. And of course everyone has a 50mm so-called “prime lens,” which has the virtue of having a large pupil and the ability to see in low light, but which otherwise is pretty limited.

You’ll find as many opinions about cameras as there are photographers, but my preference is for Nikon professional cameras. They’re heavy, and they’re outrageously expensive when they’re new, but after they’re eight or so years old, when the pros have moved on to the newest model, the previous generation of cameras becomes easy to find on eBay. And if you watch the auctions carefully for a while, you can find a like-new camera that spent most of its life in a box, unused.

It’s amazing what the new digital cameras can do. But I remind myself that, even 50 years ago and more, photographers managed to get incredible shots with cameras, slow film, and lenses that we could consider hopelessly obsolete today. My D2X seems like a miracle, and it is so well-behaved, fast, and logical that it starts to feel like a part of your eye and brain.

Sprouting season has arrived

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When the garden is kaput and stuff in the grocery store starts looking like it’s traveled a long way, it’s time to start sprouting. It’s an old hippy skill that I’ve never abandoned, though often I just forget about the possibility of sprouts.

The best place I know to get sprouting seeds is from the Sprout People in San Francisco. What out for their high shipping costs, though. If you order $60 worth of stuff, shipping is free.

And, of course, don’t forget to add lots of garlic to the dressing. With garlic, sprouts, and lots of tangerine and orange juice, you’ll survive the winter just fine.

P.S. I haven’t yet ordered sprouting seeds or sprouting supplies from Amazon, but they seem to have good stuff and good prices, and much of it is available for free shipping with Prime. I still feel a little guilty ordering stuff from Amazon, but, especially when one lives in the sticks, low prices and fast, free shipping are hard to resist.

Autographed copies of Fugue in Ursa Major

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“Intelligent, mysterious, a perfect book for a movie; loved it!”

In time for the holidays and winter reading, I’m offering autographed copies of Fugue in Ursa Major. The cost is $15.

If you’d like to order a copy, please send an email to fugue@acornabbey.com and include this information:

1. Your name and mailing address

2. Whether you’d like to pay with a check or by PayPal

3. A name (if any) that I should include with the autograph

4. The text of a brief inscription (if any) that you’d like for me to include with the autograph

I will reply to your email with information on where to mail your check or how to pay with PayPal. After I’ve received your payment, I’ll send you the book by U.S. Postal Service priority mail.

The cost of priority mail alone is more than $5, so this is a bargain and doesn’t really earn me much profit. But I thought that loyal blog readers who bought the book in eBook format might also like to have a real copy of the book.

Real apples, and the sorrows of orcharding

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November apples at Century Farm Orchards

Fatalities in the orchard during the last year include fig trees killed (above ground, at least) by brutally cold weather last winter, and another pear tree lost to the Black Death. Ken also found room for a couple more apple trees. Today I picked up some replacement trees.

I know I’ve harped on this theme before, but happy is the household with an established orchard. Rearing young apple trees is like rearing children in the Dark Ages — lots of them die, plagued with all sorts of pests, hazards, and diseases. The abbey’s orchard is six years old now, and it’s coming along. There was almost no apple yield this year, though, because last winter all the trees got a major pruning. This was probably the most important pruning of the trees’ lives, because it will pretty much determine the shape of the adult apple trees. Pruners say you should prune so that a bird can fly through the tree. That doesn’t leave a lot of buds for producing fruit the following season. But, during the 2015 season, with luck, the abbey should get its first serious apple harvest. That will be the orchard’s seventh year.

One thing I got right: Avoiding low-quality trees from mass-production nurseries, the kind of trees that are sold at box-store garden departments. I had bought a few such trees as replacements, and they just didn’t do well. Almost all the abbey’s trees came from Century Farm Orchards in Caswell County, North Carolina. They specialize in old Southern varieties of apple trees. These trees are very hardy and well-suited to the local climate, though like all young fruit trees they need a lot of care and attention to reach adulthood. Century Farm Orchards is not really a storefront operation. One orders trees early in the year. You get an invoice in October, and you pick up the trees at open house events in November.

Today’s new trees included two mammoth blacktwig apple trees, two kieffer pear trees, a brown turkey fig, and a celeste fig.

Another nice thing about the abbey’s modest-size orchard is that it’s on a fenced slope, nicely turfed, fed on organic fertilizer and lots of chicken droppings. The grass and clover in the orchard are incredibly lush, and of course all that organic nutrition and earthworm activity works down into the soil and benefits the apple trees. We use only natural pesticides. The poor trees pretty much have to fend for themselves, like 9th Century peasant children.

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I picked up two new blacktwig trees today.

Cornish pasties

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I love reading novels set in another time, another place, in which the author describes what the characters are eating. I’ve been reading Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. In it, a monk (seemingly a monk, at least) and a knight are sharing a pasty in the monk’s hermitage deep in the forest. That really stuck in my mind, and I resolved that, when cold weather returned, and after election season was over, I’d make some pasties.

Pasties are an ancient food. They go back to the Middle Ages. Now, I love nouvelle cuisine and California cuisine as much as the next person, but I also love archaic cuisine as much as I love archaic language and archaic settings. Note how the word is pronounced, though. It’s like “pass,” not like “paste.” I haven’t had a pasty since I was in Cornwall many years ago, and I had never made pasties until today.

If you want to make pasties, first I suggest that you Google around and study some recipes. Also, for the technique for crimping the crust, there are some good YouTube videos. Pasties are eaten all over the British Isles, but it is chiefly the Cornish who lay claim to the art of pasty-making today. Cornish pasties generally contain beef (skirt steak). I wanted vegetarian pasties. There are certain ingredients that are optional and certain ingredients that are not optional. Among the non-optional ingredients, in my opinion, are potatoes, rutabagas (which the British call “swedes”), peas, onions, and celery. To today’s pasties I also added a bit of grated cheddar cheese with truffles in it, as well as a little cream.

If you did your Googling, you’ll have found many different recipes for the crust. The crust resembles pie crust, except that the crust should have more “structure” than pie crust. OK. I added an egg. I also wickedly used butter in the pie crust, diluted with about 25 percent olive oil. Unlike pie crust, pasty crust can take a little kneading. Be sure to refrigerate it for a couple of hours before you roll it out.

My crimping would not pass muster with the Cornish defenders of traditional pasty-making. Maybe I’ll do better next time. But it held together.

An egg wash or milk wash will give a nice, shiny crust. I used egg wash because the abbey chickens produce more eggs than I can possibly use when Ken is away. For pie crusts, I have terrible luck if I mix any whole wheat flour into the unbleached flour. But with the pasty crush, half whole wheat and half unbleached flour yielded a very tender crust. And by the way, I no longer use any flour that isn’t organic. It makes a huge difference in quality.

The pasty was obscenely good. Have it with wine, and by candlelight and firelight, to enhance the medieval effect.

Speaking of medieval, a reader asked me to comment on the election. I was campaign manager for a candidate for county commissioner, and that job has eaten me alive for more that two months. It was like having a full-time job — meetings, constant phone calls, a heavy load of email, lots of promotional work. We ran an extremely sophisticated campaign that scared the living daylights out of the opposition. But in the end, we went down, hard, in the wave of hatred, ignorance, anger, and apathy that swept across the country on Nov. 4. But we will never give up on dragging Stokes County, North Carolina, kicking and screaming into the 18th Century.

I’ve fled back into the woods, and I hope to stay here for a while.

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Just out of the oven

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With the egg wash, before going into the oven