226. Parents' Prayer for Their Children

This is the third installment in my series of "litany meter" hymns representing an edifying, faithful prayer at different times in the lives of Christians. If my unmarried, childless existence disqualified me from writing the preceding "Prayer for a Pious Mate"
and "Childbearing Hymn," my credentials would be even more dubious in this case. But I don't think it is so. I have not lived 45 years sealed up in a solitary-confinement cell. I have been a family member, have lived among families, and have ministered to families. More to the point, I have absorbed a great deal that Holy Scripture says to families, including the parents of children. I think the best prayer in any situation would be one that gives back to God what He has given in His Word. This hymn attempts to do that in the context of bringing up children, and I hope those who have that responsibility may find it useful. The tune I chose for it is LITANY, from the "St. Alban's Tune Book" (actual title: Appendix to The Hymnal Noted), London, 1866, not to be confused with another tune titled LITANY in the same meter, by William H. Monk (1875), which I don't like as much. There is another tune I would prefer over this, but unfortunately it's one of only two hymn-tunes in The Lutheran Hymnal over which Concordia Publishing House still defends a copyright. Even compared to some other publishers, I've found that a strong deterrent against doing anything creative with it.

From the Maker's timeless throne,
Mighty Word, You once came down,
Born to seek and save Your own:
Savior, bless our children!

Let Your birth and childhood both
Sanctify and shape their growth;
Breathe baptism's forgiving oath:
Savior, bless our children!

Help them, too, grow strong and wise,
Bound, like You, to family ties,
Nor their parents' voice despise;
Savior, bless our children!

As with kindness, rich and true,
Babes into Your arms You drew,
So may they Your kingdom view:
Savior, bless our children!

Likewise, gentle Lord and just,
Take them as You can and must;
Lend them back to us in trust.
Savior, bless our children!

Purify, till You appear,
Teaching mouth and learning ear;
Nourish each in godly fear.
Savior, bless our children!

Give, Lord, our posterity
Faith and hope and charity;
Come want or prosperity,
Savior, bless our children!

Thor: Ragnarok

I decided to let one more little movie-night debauch into my Thanksgiving-week festivities last night, another one of those $5-movie-tickets-with-free-mini-popcorn nights at the Marcus Cinemas movieplex across the Lake of the Ozarks. It was my fifth trip around to Lake Ozark/Osage Beach in eight days, about the same number of visits I've made the whole rest of the year put together; I guess I'll chill now for a while. But on a tight budget, I enjoyed the new Marvel Universe movie Thor: Ragnarok, a sequel/sidequel to a number of other Marvel movies, including a couple previous Thor movies, a couple Avengers movies, Doctor Strange, and arguably, 2008's The Incredible Hulk (albeit that Hulk was played by Edward Norton). Like the DC heroes discussed in my recent review of Justice League, other characters depicted in the Avengers movies (e.g. Spiderman, Iron Man, Captain America) also have their own movie franchises, which further complicates the pedigree of this movie. I am woefully ill-equipped to present a master's thesis about these canon issues, since out of all the current crop of Marvel/Avengers movies, I believe I have only seen the first Iron Man, the Hulk movie with Edward Norton, and at least most of the first Thor movie. I'm sorry I can't even say with certainty whether I saw all of it, but it was one of those situations when I was watching cable TV with my parents, and my dad had the TV controller, and you know how dads are; they can't sit through a commercial break without changing to another channel and then, possibly, missing an act or two of the movie they intended to watch - if, indeed, there was any particular movie they intended to watch. I think I saw the better part of it, though.

So, yeah, I'm no expert on this. I mean, I thought Valerian was a really fun movie when I saw it last summer. Afterward, I learned I didn't hate it properly. This was, no doubt, because I didn't even know it was based on a series of graphic novels, so I didn't compare every tiny detail of the film to the books and find it wanting. When I express my opinion about this movie, I'm evaluating it as a popcorn-munching, casual moviegoer, not as a fan of the franchise. I haven't seen all or even most of the films that some might regard as required viewing before seeing this. I haven't read a comic book since I was about 15, and I doubt I read six of them before that. I like superhero movies because they tend to be visual funhouse rides, packed with over-the-top action, cheesy dialogue, and dazzling effects. If I was interested in their deeper themes, I would probably see something arty.

Thor: Ragnarok has some actors reprising their roles from previous Marvel films: Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers) as Bruce Banner/Hulk, Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange, Anthony Hopkins as Odin, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, and of course Chris Hemsworth - the Marvel Cinematic Universe's answer to Henry Cavill - as Thor. It has cute cameo appearances by Sam Neill, Matt Damon (uncredited), and Luke Hemsworth as actors playing the last-named father/sons trio of Norse gods. It also features Idris Elba (who lately starred on British TV as a detective named Luther) as an Asgardian good guy named Heimdall, Tessa Thompson (Creed) as the last surviving Valkyrie, Cate Blanchett (Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings) as the villainous Hela, Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park, Independence Day) as Grandmaster of a junk planet's gladiatorial games, Clancy Brown (the head screw in The Shawshank Redemption) as a fire demon who plans to bring Ragnarok (the end of Asgar), and Karl Urban (Dr. McCoy in the Star Trek reboot films) as Hela's sidekick Skurge. I thought I recognized the actress who played Goldblum's sidekick, but I haven't seen anything Rachel House was in; I guess she reminded me of The Trunchbull from Matilda. Also, I mistook rock-monster Korg's accent for South African, but it actually belongs to New Zealand native Taika Watiti, who also directed this movie.

So, to summarize what happens in this film: Not one, but two evils arise, and neither Thor nor his treacherous (and surprisingly not dead) brother Loki can stop them. Inevitably, Asgard comes to an end.

There. Happy? No? Well, for more details, see the movie. It's got lots of (how did I put it?) over-the-top action, cheesy dialogue, and dazzling effects. It has gladiatorial action, white-knuckle spaceship driving, and many thrilling battles, chases, and escapes. Also, there are some good character-development hits and a strong dose of comedy. For example, it's hard not to giggle whenever a character refers to a certain wormhole, known as the Devil's Anus. Goldblum's character is disturbing and adorable at the same time. Female movie fans undecided about seeing it should consider that one of the heroes and one of the villains are both strong women; and if you're still on the fence, Chris Hemsworth has his shirt off for a minute. Male movie fans, concerned about whether this movie is for them, need not ask any further than, "Is there a fight between Thor and the Hulk?" Yes. "Who wins?" Sorry, there was a limit of one question.

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Odin tells Thor why he doesn't need his hammer. Maybe hardcore comic fans are saying, "All right, I already know this, get on with it." I thought it was a very intelligent and emotionally fulfilling moment. (2) Loki, exiting a dimension where Doctor Strange has parked him while he talks with Thor: "I've been falling for half an hour!" (3) The spaceship chase during Thor & Co.'s escape from Grandmaster's planet, for fast-paced, funny action. Honorable mention: The whole story arc about Banner being afraid if he becomes Hulk again, he won't come back, only to have almost the opposite happen at a climactic point in the battle with Hela and her revenant army. I didn't mention them, did I? Well, add that to your reasons to watch this movie.

Overall grade: A-. Note, that's better than the B+ I gave Justice League. Even with the end-of-the-world stuff, a dystopian subplot, the deaths of several beloved recurring characters (don't think I didn't notice), and a cliff-hanger mid-closing-credits bonus scene, it's a much cheerier, lighter, unrepentantly fun movie. It doesn't pull the viewer's mood down with all that post-empire stuff that, perhaps in Justice League and certainly in the recent X-men sequel Logan, is intended to be (and might actually be) a virtue. It just takes you out of your world and shows you a good time before sending you back. Good for it. Good for you.

The Diviners

The Diviners
by Libba Bray
Recommended Ages: 14+

Being banished from her hometown of Zenith, Ohio to spend a few months with her eccentric uncle in New York City isn't much of a punishment for would-be flapper Evie O'Neill. But the fall of 1926 turns out to be a dangerous time, especially for a girl whose behavioral problems are connected with the spirit world. As curator of the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult - popularly known as the Museum of the Creepy Crawlies - Uncle Will has a velvet-rope pass to the police investigation of a series of gruesome murders that seem to involve the occult. Evie joins Will, his handsome assistant Jericho, and an irrepressible pickpocket named Sam to lend their aid, and partly through Evie's gift of seeing the history of objects when she holds them, they realize the killer is actually a ghost.

Naughty John, a.k.a. Mr. Hobbes, is more than just any ghost, however. He is the chosen one of doomsday cult that was willing to sacrifice all its original members, and many innocent people to boot, to bring on Armageddon. Being hanged, dead, and buried 50 years ago for the first half of his planned series of sacrificial murders hasn't stopped him from coming back and carrying on. Now the victims include a leading chorus girl from Ziegfeld's follies, a young trumpet prodigy on the rise in the jazz world, and more. Even besides John Hobbes, another threat is looming on the horizon that will require all the Diviners - people like Evie, whoever they may be - to join forces. Meantime, Naughty John's naughtiness must be stopped before a certain comet passes over Manhattan, only days away. The Ghostbusters faced nothing like this: an angry, hateful force of occult belief allied to a cruel intelligence. It really seems Evie may lose her uncle, the boy she loves, her most sacred memory, and even her heart - I mean her literal, beating heart - sooner than stop this menace.

I enjoyed Evie's outgoing, flapper spirit and the historical recreation of 1926 New York. I truly had creepy crawlies while reading about the evil of John Hobbes. There were several other attractive characters as well, characters whose connection to each other will (I trust) become more apparent in future installments. One thing this book could have done without is the long, portentous, but essentially anticlimactic coda - two entire chapters, if I remember correctly, after the end of the book. On the scale of a fairly long novel, however, and one whose pace was seldom exactly hell-for-leather, it's not a big problem; and it does set the hook for the sequel.

This is the first book of the "Diviners" series. So far, it is followed by Lair of Dreams and, released as recently as October 2017, Before the Devil Breaks You. I picked this book up along with its immediate sequel last weekend at a Publisher's Warehouse outlet on the other side of the Lake of the Ozarks. I then decided I couldn't wait to read the first one, even though I was in the middle of another book; devouring it in two evenings, I went straight into the sequel without pausing to pick up the book I had put down unfinished.

Bray is also the author of the Gemma Doyle trilogy, comprising A Great and Terrible Beauty, The Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing. My only previous Libba Bray reading experience was an audiobook of this last title, though I believe I have the other two on my bookshelf. I'm reconsidering my longstanding opinion that they'll keep just fine where they are. Bray's other young-adult novels include the Michael L. Printz "best book" award winner Going Bovine, Beauty Queens, and It's Just a Jump to the Left.

Thanksgiving Movie Extravaganza

I've gone to the movie theater three times during the last week. Two-thirds of it was a simple case of having a four-day weekend with the Thanksgiving holiday, and nothing much else to do. I also visited a couple bookstores and made a few purchases in that line, but I'll save that bit for later.

Last Tuesday, I decided to try out the $5 movie deal (with free popcorn!) at one of the local theaters - by which I mean, all the way around to the other side of the Lake of the Ozarks. I went with an open mind as to whether to see Coco, Wonder, or Murder on the Orient Express. Due in part to how the showtimes fell out, and partly on the advice of the ticket seller, I went with the murder movie. Directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, it is based on the classic Agatha Christie mystery, which I read in about eighth grade. It also stars Derek Jacobi ("Father Cadfael" of TV's Mystery) as the victim's valet, Josh Gad ("Olaf" in Frozen) as the victim's man-of-business, Judi Dench ("Elizabeth I" in Shakespeare in Love) as a Russian princess, Michelle Pfeiffer (I think you know) as an American widow on the hunt for Husband No. 3, Willem Dafoe (Max Schreck in "Shadow of the Vampire") as a racist Austrian professor, Penélope Cruz ("Vicky Cristina Barcelona") as a deeply religious passenger, Daisy Ridley ("Rey" in Star Wars: The Force Awakens) as a governess, Leslie Odom Jr. ("Aaron Burr" in Broadway's Hamilton) as a young black doctor, and Johnny Depp in an unusual turn as the heavy, who also turns out to be the murder victim.

This is at least the third time the story has been filmed, counting a 2001 made-for-TV movie (which I haven't seen) starring Alfred Molina as Poirot, Peter Strauss as the murder victim, and Leslie Caron and Meredith Baxter as two of the suspects. I have, however, seen the 1974 theatrical film, for which Ingrid Bergman won a late-in-her-career, best-supporting-actress Oscar as the German lady's maid. It also featured Albert Finney as Poirot, Richard Widmark as the victim, and an all-star cast of suspects including Sean Connery, Wendy Hiller, Martin Balsam, Lauren Bacall, John Gielgud, Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave, and Michael York. It's been ages since I've seen this film, but in spite of the impression the above cast list gives of a too-earnest, high-production-value bore of a film, I remember it as being basically an effective movie. The present-day addition to the novel's roster of film adaptations tops all, I guess, by putting superb performances ahead of casting stunts, and by opening up the action a bit with some scenes more of the thriller variety than the source material really called for. Perhaps this dissipates the claustrophobia somewhat. But it doesn't taint the essential chemistry of a classic Agatha Christie whodunit, of the type that subverts the whodunit concept while at the same time bringing to perfection the idea "One of the 12 people in [insert isolated setting] could have done this, and after Poirot interviews each of them, he will presently amuse the whole group with an exquisitely timed revelation of who it was."

At her best, Christie often experimented with subverting this concept and carrying it to its extreme at one blow. In The Mousetrap, for example [SPOILERS AHEAD], in which all the suspects are snowed in together at a boardinghouse, she had the sleuth (not Poirot) turn out to be the murderer. In Death in the Air, in which the murder takes place on board an airplane in flight, the passenger who eventually proves guilty is the one who has been assisting Poirot throughout his investigation. In The Man in the Brown Suit, partly narrated via the diary of a passenger on board the ship where the murder takes place, we learn at the end that the diarist has not only done the crime, but also lied to his own diary and thereby, also, deceived us all along. In Curtain, one of Christie's many "someone spending the weekend at Lady ____'s summerhouse must have done its," each crime was actually carried out by a different perpetrator, one of whom in fact was Poirot himself - while the true fiend behind all the murders didn't technically kill anyone. In And Then There Were None, a.k.a. Ten Little Indians (let's all try to forget the original title was Ten Little N*****s), the entire cast of characters, one of whom must be (and, in fact, is) the killer, dies one by one until literally none are left alive; the puzzle is which of the victims pulled it off, and how he or she managed to do some of the crimes while apparently dead. But it would be hard to top this masterpiece, perhaps the most-filmed bit of Christie, in which the fussy, mustachioed Belgian is forced to suspect each and every one of his fellow passengers on a train from Istanbul to Calais that has become stranded by an avalanche in the Carpathian Mountains. Of course, if you read the book and/or saw the 1974 and/or 2001 movie adaptations of it, you'll already know the humdinger that awaits at the end of this movie.

This remark more or less gives away what I think of the movie. It is beautifully photographed, and good use is made of camera angles (such as the straight-down-from-above dolly shot at the discovery of the body), and the acting, as I said, is superb; but attempting to "open up" this story is a bad idea, I think. Although there is a an undeniable triteness in the concept of a mystery in which all the suspects are stuck together in one place until the detective is at leisure to tell them which one (or more) of them done it, its advantage in this particular story is the sense of claustrophobia, with all these people (including, presumably, a killer) crammed together in one train car while awaiting the arrival of a work crew to dig them out of the snow. I thought Branagh's efforts to move some of the drama outside the train let a good deal of that tension out as well. So, all that needs to be added are my overall score for the movie (B+) and the Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Any time the obsessive-compulsive Poirot tells someone, "Please, straighten your tie"; (2) The scene in which Poirot "divides and conquers" the witnesses, by interrogating the German lady's maid, in front of her Russian mistress, in German; and (3) The crisis of all the movie's suspense, in which Poirot suggests that he cannot be allowed to live with the knowledge of who done it. In place of claustrophobia, the movie leaves behind a lingering impression of a tragic conflict in the conscience of a man who, earlier in the movie, flatly stated that he sees good and evil strictly in black and white.

My second movie of the week was a Friday matinee of Wonder. This was a Walden Media film (among other production companies), which is a dead giveaway that it was based on a piece of children's literature - in this case, a middle-school-appropriate novel with the same title by R.J. Palacio. I haven't read the book yet, chiefly because I haven't seen it offered for sale in paperback form, and my budget does not permit me to buy hardcovers. This isn't quite the place to mention it, but I've often been miffed in recent years by the tendency of certain books - often ones that are "soon to be a major motion picture" - to stay in hardcover for years and years, when that price point is an impediment to me buying the book. The results have sometimes worked to my advantage, such as when I saw the movie Hugo and decided its perpetually hardcover source book The Invention of Hugo Cabret could not possibly be anything special; I decided this was merciful, since even a full-prize movie ticket is cheaper than a hardcover novel, and the film takes less time to get through. I think it is also good for my opinion of a movie to see it either before reading the book it is based on, or so long afterward that I can't make a finely detailed comparison. This order of battle promotes doing full justice to the movie on its own terms.

So, without regret, I saw this movie without having read the book. I'm so over the "must read the book before I see the movie" phase of my existence; but seeing this movie may, in fact, sell me on reading the book, as soon as I can get around the problem of hardcover pricing. It was a well-structured, beautifully shot and acted, and most importantly of all, heart-touchingly well-written movie. I did not suffer from dry eyes while watching it. In fact, if tears are good for the complexion, my face benefited greatly from it. Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson were an endearing yet believable any-couple who have given their all for their son during his first 10 years of life - a boy named Auggie Pullman, who has been disfigured since birth by a genetic condition, and even after many plastic surgeries, is still a bit shocking to look at, the first time anyway. They've home-schooled him until now, but as he enters fifth grade, they decide to let him try going to a real school - though Auggie isn't quite sure. Predictably, he struggles at first with bullying, has trouble making (and in one instance, keeping) friends, and does not at all times show heroic courage. But the other characters around him - including his lonely older sister, her sometime best friend, and other kids at Auggie's school - have stories of their own that, when revealed, make your heart go out to them. And the heart that proves to matter, the center of the healing and change in the way people see (to regurgitate the movie's best line), is Auggie himself.

This is a completely lovely, lovable movie that I would recommend to everybody - a solid A grade. The Three Scenes That Made It For Me are: (1) Auggie's principal, played by Mandy Patinkin, telling the awful mother of the hero boy's most antagonistic classmate, "Auggie can't change the way he looks, so I guess it's up to us to change the way we see." Jeez. I'm choked up right now. (2) The scene in which Auggie's ex-best friend works out a clue about what caused he hero boy to stop talking to him - you can see the moment when the penny drops, and the life just goes out of the kid. (3) The two buddies making up, after an alienation that has visibly broken both their hearts, via Minecraft instant messaging.

Today's main attraction was preceded by a Disney animated short titled Olaf's Frozen Adventure, featuring the voice of Josh Gad (whom I saw earlier this week in Murder on the Orient Express) as the titular enchanted snowman. I knew who Olaf was before I saw this short, because he is so popular with kids that I couldn't help picking up on it, even though I don't have any kids of my own, and also - please, don't hurt me - I have never seen Frozen. Main cast members from that movie returning in this short include Idina Menzel, who (I think) became a household name because of Frozen though I can't recall ever seeing anything she was credited in; Jonathan Groff, who has a regular role in TV's Mindhunter, which I want to see sometime, but other than that I've never seen anything he was credited in; Kristen Bell, who headlined TV's Veronica Mars (which I never saw) and played Christina Aguilera's bitchy rival in Burlesque - finally! something I have seen! - and, of course, Gad, who I would never have spotted as the voice-actor who played Louis the mole-hog in Ice Age: Continental Drift. I'm seriously out of touch with pop culture, when my best chance at recognizing these stars - and they are stars, make no mistake - is a tie between a lip-sync diva in a musical that tanked critically and commercially, and the voice of a nebbishy animated rodent in an ensemble-cast animated sequel. Also, I don't know anything about the story that is, apparently, required viewing to understand this short. So, I didn't really understand this short. It probably isn't fair in me to give it a grade, but it had some touching moments, a good deal of comedy, and several showy musical numbers, so for whatever it's worth, I'll give it a B. It went by too fast for me to assign it a full Three Scenes That Made It For Me, so I'll mention just one: anything that had to do with the fruitcake.

The main attraction, of course, was Disney's latest animated feature, the Mexican Day of the Dead-themed Coco, which I've been hot to see since the first preview I saw of it; and that seems like a couple years ago. Animated by Pixar, which is now part of Disney, it follows the adventures of a boy named Miguel, who wants to be a musician like his no-good, never-to-be-spoken-of great-great-grandfather, but whose family has rejected everything to do with music since that dishonored ancestor abandoned his family to pursue his dream. Miguel resists his family's demand that he put thoughts of music out of his head, and runs away to the land of the dead (long story; see the movie for more details), in defiance of his loved ones, both living and dead. He and a Xoloitzcuintli named Dante have until sunrise of the Day of the Dead to obtain the blessing of the spirit of the popular singer he believes to be his great-great-grandfather. Pay no attention to the way I phrased that. It's totally not a spoiler. Oh, crap. I don't know how to finish this synposis now.

Well, anyway, the idea underlying the movie is that, on the Day of the Dead, the spirits of deceased Mexican folks can cross the flower bridge from the land of the dead tot he land of the living, and visit their non-deceased loved ones, provided the latter have set up an ofrenda (I spelled it right; don't expect me to define it as well) with their photograph on it and little gifts they might enjoy taking back to the spirit world with them. Apparently, all these ghosts and skeletons are not supposed to be scary at all, but a comforting ritual of being together with loved ones who have passed on. From the point of view of the dead, however, it is crucial that someone put their picture up, or they can't get across. Also, bygone relatives need their families to preserve their memory by telling stories about them to later generations; otherwise, the dead will fade out of the land of the living, something they call "the last death." And finally, there's some business with spirit guides, called alebrijes, sort of like winged animals in psychedelic colors, who guide the dead to the afterlife; and there is the trouble that when a living person, like Miguel, visits the land of the dead, he can only return with the blessing of his loved ones - but he must do so by sunrise, and he must meet all the conditions they may put on that blessing.

Boring as all that information is, it's better than having all the surprises of this story spoiled for you. Be it enough that all the drama and excitement of this story comes out of those principles, accompanied by Mexican-flavored song-and-dance numbers, chase scenes, gags, action, suspense, and family drama featuring a cast of really cute characters (many of them appearing as animated skeletons). Just to be mean, I won't even tell you why the movie's title is Coco. I strongly recommend seeing it. It's a wonderfully realized piece of original storytelling, with adorable characters who run the whole gamut of emotions, gorgeous imagery, entertaining music, and an immersive fantasy world with a unique texture and look. It's the kind of movie that, without saying a single word to suggest it, will leave you thinking, "Forget Trump's wall. Our country could stand to be more Mexican." On a related note, you can't watch this movie without learning (or at least re-learning) a few Mexican words, like "abuelita" (grandma) and "mijo" (my son).

Final grade: A. Three Scenes That Made It For Me, leaving aside examples that will necessarily spoil the whole flick: (1) The scene when Mama Imelda (the spirit of Miguel's great-great-grandma), thwarted in her pursuit by a gate across a narrow passage, momentarily checks the boy's flight by starting to sing; I thought this was the most heartbreaking point in the story of Miguel's alienation from his music-hating family. (2) The scene in which the old ghost who is about to fade away, forgotten, requests a song played by the sketchy spirit Héctor (voiced by Benjamin Bratt, late of "Law and Order"). I think this was the first of many moments in this movie that had me choked up. (3) The scene in which Miguel, serenading his supposed great-grand-father (voiced by Gael García Bernal) in the middle of a crowded party, walks strumming and singing straight into a guitar-shaped swimming pool. I could name a lot more examples, actually, but I thought that third one was one of the movie's funniest surprises. There are a lot more, of course. It is such a strange movie, in which the expected is a thing rarely seen or heard.

Question: Which movie that I saw this past week do I think was best? Answer: I don't know. It's between Coco and Wonder, to be sure. But they were both excellent, feasts for the heart and soul. I suppose on a surface level, which speaks very much to the question of which film was more successful, it is Coco that makes the greatest impression on one's eyes and ears. But I'm not ruling out the possibility that Wonder's more down-to-earth story doesn't pack enough emotional power to even it up. I was particularly cut to my heart by the scene in which Auggie overheard his buddy talking trash about him (recalled by his buddy later in my #2 scene); I can remember witnessing, and even experiencing, heartbreaks like that at about Auggie's age.

Finally, what did I buy at the bookstores over yonder? At the Osage Beach Outlet Mall's Publishers Warehouse store, I bought Libba Bray's The Diviners and its sequel Lair of Dreams, both in quality paperback format and at 60 percent off, so my total purchase cost just $10 and change. Then, at Stonecrest Book and Toy, I picked up Invasion by Luke Rhinehart, which I started to read last night with great anticipation. Unfortunately, my reading enjoyment has been somewhat dampened by the high concentration of Social Justice Warrior bull**** the author saw fit to pour into it. When you read my review of it, coming soon, I expect you to appreciate how firmly I plan to restrain myself. Planning to restrain myself is already taking a lot of energy, and I haven't even finished the book yet. Fish out.

225. Childbearing Hymn

This hymn and the previous one (the prayer for a pious mate) are part of a single concept - a kind of extended litany about the times of life that people generally experience, and the added meaning Christ brings to them. Because the idea of a litany came to me early in the planning process for this series of hymns (and there will be a least a couple more), I'm planning to set each one to a different tune in the same meter, as it were, the "litany" meter (7.7.7.6.). In fact, two of the eight tunes I have curated in that meter are titled LITANY, and more than one of them have been paired with a hymn that has the general character of a litany: an extended prayer calling on God for mercy in a full range of contexts. The tune, in this instance, is SCHEFFLER, from the 1657 book Heilige Seelenlust by Johann Scheffler (a.k.a. Angelus Silesius), whose conversion (only four years earlier) from Lutheranism to Catholicism led many Protestant hymnals to downplay his authorship of the hymns they took from him - a testimony not only to the offense caused by his caustic invective against the Reformation, but also to the undeniable beauty and devotional value of his hymns, such as "Come, follow Me, the Savior spake" and "Where wilt Thou go, since night draws near." Without embarrassment, I give him full credit for publishing the first known instance of this tune.^*

1. God, whose Seed was given room
In the blessed Virgin’s womb,
Sown to reap the serpent’s doom:
Help all hopeful parents.

2. From her first, unconscious glow,
Guard the mother’s embryo;
Health and cheer on both bestow,
Fruitfulness increasing.

3. Shelter, like a precious flame,
New life’s miracle, and tame,
By the music of Your name,
Two hearts’ clashing rhythms.

4. If their term be fraught with pain,
Send your servants to sustain
Their endurance, lest in vain,
Father, they may suffer.

5. Should You, in mysterious love,
Summon one or both above,
Give us the conviction of
Resurrected glory.

6. Comes the grueling time of birth,
Ease her pain with love and mirth;
Introduce her child to earth,
Cradled in Your mercy.

7. Bless them with the means to live;
Willing hands, relief to give;
Faith, to share the hope of Eve
In Your gospel promise.

8. By baptism, soon unite,
Christ, to You that little mite;
Death and darkness change to light
And to life eternal.

---

^*Extra credit: This may be the first hymn in history to incorporate a line that its author initially thought of adding as a joke at the expense of its own tune. Have you spotted it?

224. Prayer for a Pious Mate

Here is another item I can cross off the list of hymns I have been planning to write for Edifying Hymns, the projected sequel to Useful Hymns. It's kind of a scary prayer to write, since I'm one of the single adults whose numbers seem to be increasing in the Lutheran church. I've been single so long that I don't know what I would do if God answered it, in my case, with "OK, here you go." Like the best prayers, it uses God's own words to twist His mighty arm. Scriptures specifically cited in this prayer include Genesis 1:18ff; Genesis 24:63-65; Proverbs 18:22; John 2:1ff; 1 Corinthians 7:1-9; Ephesians 5:22ff; and more or less the whole book of Ruth. The tune, which was literally the first one I looked at out of an alphabetical list of eight hymn-tunes in the same meter, is titled ACK, VAD ÄR DOCK LIVET HÄR and is from the 1697 Swenska Koralpsalmboken of Stockholm.

1. God, who deemed it was not good
Man should live in solitude,
Though in paradise he stood:
Bless Your unwed children.

2. Some have not the gift to spurn
Impure lust with scant concern;
Would You not, than they should burn,
Rather have them marry?

3. Isaac, fifty, did not fail
His forlornness to curtail;
Seeing him, her bridal veil
Donned Rebekah gladly.

4. Solomon, too, understood
That to find a wife was good;
Ruth rejoiced that Boaz would
Claim from her that favor.

5. Christ Himself, at Cana’s feast,
Bride and groom’s delight increased;
May we, too, though last and least,
Taste such joy and blessing.

6. Be the unwed woman’s guide,
Fitting her to be a bride;
Place a husband at her side,
Pious, kind, and faithful.

7. Let him learn, who needs a mate,
Chastely for but one to wait;
Make their shared devotion great,
And their marriage fruitful.

8. Let her happiness and gain
Claim his willing toil and pain,
That Christ’s love may tune the strain
Of the praise he sings her.

9. Shape, as well, her wifely ways,
That each service she essays
Such a faith in him displays
As the church owes Jesus.

10. More and more, your graces lend,
Till as one their hearts shall blend,
Letting none their union end
But Your heav’nward summons.

Justice League

I don't go to the movies very often any more, and when I do, as a rule, I try to avoid sequels or installments in long-running franchises - a policy that I think has saved me many a time from feeling my ticket money was wasted. But Thursday night, when I went to see the DC Comics film Justice League, I made an exception. This was an easy decision to make, for two reasons: first, because I would have had to wait an additional hour to see Murder on the Orient Express, and the other choices (including a "Thor" movie and a comedy sequel starring Will Farrell and Mark Wahlberg) didn't interest me in the slightest; and second, because I haven't seen any of the films to which Justice League could be construed as a sequel. So, with little danger of being let down in my expectations based on a previous film, I went and had a good time.

Yes, comic book movie fans, it is true. I have never seen Man of Steel, the first film in which Henry Cavill played Clark Kent/Superman, though I have seen a few excerpts of it. Also, I have never viewed even a tiny bit of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, in which Cavill was joined by Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne / Batman and Gal Gadot in the role of Diana Prince / Wonder Woman, who had a movie of her own earlier this year. So this is kind of a sequel to three movies, all helmed (except Wonder Woman) by this movie's director Zack Snyder. The difficulty in reviewing this movie without committing a major spoiler becomes apparent when I have to bleep out part of the following sentence: Although Superman dies at the end of Batman v Superman, ### ##### principal stars return for this outing, in which they are joined by Ezra Miller (Credence Barebone in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) in his first full-strength outing as Barry Allen / the Flash; Jason Momoa, best known as Ronon Dex on Stargate: Atlantis and the title character in 2011's Conan the Barbarian, as Arthur Curry / Aquaman; and Ray Fisher, unknown to me, as Victor Stone / Cyborg. All three of these new superheroes have been teased in cameo appearances in earlier DC films (including Suicide Squad and BvS), and each of them is slated to headline his own movie within the next 3 years (Aquaman next year, and both Flashpoint and Cyborg in 2020).

In the "also starring" category, some of them making repeat appearances in the current franchise¹, are accomplished stars Diane Lane as Clark's mom, a still photo of Kevin Costner as Clark's late dad, Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Jeremy Irons as Bruce's man Alfred, Connie Nielsen as the Amazon queen who happens to be Diana's mom, and Joe Morton (who played a quirky inventor on Eureka) as an ethically-challenged scientist who happens to be Victor's dad. I didn't notice it at the time, but my research tells me David Thewlis (Remus Lupin in the "Harry Potter" films) appears in this film too, reprising a role from Wonder Woman. Also joining the cast for the first, or in some cases only, time in this film franchise are Ciarán Hinds - an actor of many faces and accents - unfortunately submerged beyond recognition in the stop-motion CGI role of Steppenwolf; J.K. Simmons, who has played Peter Parker's publisher in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as Police Commissioner Gordon; Billy Crudup as Barry's jailbird dad; and an uncredited Holt McCallany (TV's Medium) as the burglar who tangles with Batman in the opening scenes.

I haven't seen any of the recent DC Universe films, but I've been equally remiss in following Marvel Universe franchises. It sometimes takes me a while to remember which is which. For example, I spent a few minutes during this movie wondering why Spiderman wasn't in it. So, obviously, you shouldn't take me as an authority on these things. But I saw a recent video review of the latest X-Men movie Logan, which made an interesting case that the superhero film genre is responding to changes in the needs of society by turning in a more pessimistic, dystopian direction, and increasingly exploring doubts and ironies about the very concept of heroes. This movie continues that trajectory somewhat, depicting a world that is teetering on the brink of apocalypse, that is almost beyond saving, and some may wonder whether it deserves saving, or whether the superheroes are really doing it a service by attempting to save it.

This downkey atmosphere is partly, but not entirely, a result of Superman no longer being around, having (the early scenes explain, for those of us who missed it) sacrificed himself to stop a monster/weapon of mass destruction brought to life by a power from beyond this world. Now the world is in even worse danger, because a supervillain-alien-demigod named Steppenwolf, who was once stopped from conquering the world by a coalition of Atlanteans, Amazons, Olympian gods, and men, has decided now is the perfect time to make a second attempt. The aforementioned power from beyond this world proves to be but one of three "mother boxes" that Steppenwolf plans to bring together into "the unity," which will destroy the whole planet and create a new world in the image of Steppenwolf's hellish homeworld.

There's a lot of CGI in this movie, and unfortunately, not all of it is of the most convincing quality. But when the eye is able to follow the action and the mind can be persuaded to believe what it is seeing, it has a remarkable look and a lot of exciting battles. However, and perhaps to an extent that will leave rabid comic-film fans squirming with impatience, this movie's particular strength is its treatment of its six main superhero characters as human beings, and the development of their relationship.

So, without any further blather, here are the three scenes that made this movie for me:

(1) When Barry Allen walks into his apartment, switches on the light, and finds Bruce Wayne sitting in his second-favorite chair, waiting to recruit him for the Justice League. This whole scene, extending to where they drive off together in the Batmobile, is superbly written, and both Affleck and Miller deliver their dialogue with comic flair and character chemistry. I particularly liked Barry's hilarious attempt to explain his costume (made of a material designed to withstand space shuttle re-entry conditions), and Bruce's answer when asked what his superpower is.

(2) Lois Lane's confession to [### bleeped out for spoiler reasons ###] that she hasn't been strong since Clark died, and he would be disappointed with her. The emotions surrounding the entire plot of this act of the movie, which I can't describe without ruining it for you, cover an enormous range and are very effective.

(3) Barry's attempt to say goodbye to a little Russian girl, which left me guffawing and thinking, "Did he really say that?"

There are plenty of runner-up scenes, like the one in which Bruce counts his injuries after getting the stuffing beaten out of him, or when he tells Diana that Clark - who, you may remember, is actually Kal-El of the planet Krypton - is the more human of the two of them, or when Arthur unexpectedly opens up about his emotions (a perfectly timed moment that pays off brilliantly just when you're starting to wonder whether it's going to work). I think Diana is a great character (quite a looker too), and Victor has interesting problems to work through, and to be sure, Jason Momoa and Henry Cavill both supply enough masculine animal attraction that it's a wonder the picture doesn't distort around them, for relativistic reasons.

Nevertheless, my vote for the most fun character has to go to Barry Allen. He's just so endearingly insecure, chatty, funny, charged with nervous energy that keeps him running fast even when he isn't moving, afflicted with numerous fears and insatiable dietary needs. I predict his solo movie will be more of a hit than the Aquaman and Cyborg ones, because even though Jason Momoa is the epitome of unreconstructed male coolness - I mean, seriously, he makes Hugh Jackman ("Wolverine") look like a nebbish - the average person isn't going to identify with him, or feel close to his character; while Cyborg just isn't very human. Also, in a way that strangely parallels Cavill's role in this franchise, it seems Miller's character in an upcoming Fantastic Beasts sequel is going to #### #### #### ### ####. Oops. Had to bleep another spoiler there. If he keeps this up, he'll be a shoo-in for the list of "best multiple franchise actors"² - which, I was amazed to notice, doesn't have Jeff Goldblum on it. But that's a rant for another time. Overall grade: B+

---

¹Not that I would notice, but those of you following the series would.
²Anyone below Danny Trejo on this list is apparently being damned with faint praise.

Razing Arizona: A Parable

To what may I compare the politics of the present generation?

How about this map of Arizona. Just look at it. Have you ever seen a more unequal distribution of altitude? The difference between the highest elevation (12,633 feet at Humphreys Peak) and the lowest (70 feet above sea level, on the Colorado River) is horrendous. While a very small percentage of the state's area is at a lofty elevation above 9,000 feet, the Colorado Plateau forms a big, bourgeois, middle class of elevations between 4,000 (the statewide average) and 8,000 feet. A significant part of the state - almost the whole southwest quarter of the state, in fact - is below the average, with the hottest, driest, loneliest parts of the state forming a basin ranging below 3,000, 2,000, or even 1,000 feet above sea level.

Having lived there two and a half years, I can personally bear witness that life in Yuma - one of Arizona's lowest, hottest, and least rainy areas - is completely unbearable from May to September. Forget it. Only scorpions, Gila monsters, saguaro cacti, and the occasional javelina can survive there, without terraforming projects on the order of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The planet Tatooine is literally just across the river, which means California gets all the tax revenue from the Mos Eisley cantina. (It's also the planet from the original "Stargate" movie, but I digress.)

Arizonans Against Altitude Inequality (A3I) recognized the injustice of these disparities. So they got a constitutional amendment on the state's referendum ballot to shave the top 3,633 feet off the state's elevation. What area really needs to be higher than 9,000 feet, anyway? All prominences above that altitude will be converted into gravel and either thrown into the Grand Canyon, or spread around that big basin in the southwest part of the state, depending on which version of the ballot language gets the final nod from the Commission for Elevation Equalization (CEE), which the amendment will establish. Just think how much that gravel will raise the elevation of the low desert!

Just think!

All right, that amount of gravel - or the parts of it that don't end up being sold to road paving companies, with profits to be disbursed at the CEE's discretion - won't raise the elevation of that basin by any measurable amount, but it will close the gap (by up to 3,633 feet!) between the highest and the lowest points in the state. Plus, the CEE will continue to entertain proposals about shaving off even more of the rock from the higher-altitude regions of Arizona, and perhaps moving some of the middling-high peaks more-or-less intact to lower areas.

Sure, the net result will only be that the highest elevation in the state becomes lower, and maybe establishing a few additional high-ish spots (though they'll never be quite as high). And of course, those high altitudes, and whatever benefits or resources depended on them, will be gone for good. But at least the playing field, by which I mean the desert, will be more level on average. Right?

Let him hear who has ears. Let him think who has something between them.

Daisy Miller

Daisy Miller
by Henry James
Recommended Ages: 13+

This little trifle of a novella, almost a short story, weighs in at 59 pages in the "Dover Thrift Edition" in which I read it - an extra-thrifty purchase at some used-book store, whose price tag lists it at all of 10 cents. A list of other Henry James titles, printed in the back of my copy of The American, lists some full-length novels going for 50 to 75 cents. Somewhere between a clue to how old this book is and the fact that its author, dead now more than 100 years, can no longer control the rights to his work, there is a lesson about something or other - like, "Thus far the fortunes of (in some people's estimate) the finest novelist in the English language." But I don't have that lesson in sharp focus yet, because this isn't exactly a novel, and it's only the first thing I've read by Henry James.

The story, dating from 1878, is touching and sad, told from the point of view of a young American expat studying in Switzerland, named Winterbourne. While visiting his very proper, upper-class, widowed aunt in the lakeside resort town of Vevay, he is fascinated by a beautiful young American named Daisy Miller. Unlike Winterbourne, who was educated in Europe and who doesn't really understand American manners, Daisy is entirely a creature of Schenectady, N.Y. - a gregarious, fashionably dressed, spoiled banker's daughter who doesn't understand the way her every act, whether innocent or defiant, is judged by the exacting mores of the European nobility. She loves being in society, but has no consciousness of its proprieties or improprieties. She loves having gentleman friends, and risks scandal by going all over town with them unchaperoned. Her mother doesn't have the spirit to check her, and neither of them can tell the difference between a real gentleman and a charlatan. So, while Winterbourne watches her - first in Vevay, and later in Rome - he can never quite make up his mind whether to censure her for acting improperly, or excuse her for her innocence. So, while her head is seemingly turned by a handsome Italian adventurer, Winterbourne never succeeds in cutting in and saving her before her lack of good judgment leads her to irrevocable harm.

The word "bittersweet" is not enough. The ending of this brief novella (novelette?) is downright painful. Seventy years earlier, in the hands of a Jane Austen, approximately the same raw materials would have been the making of a comedy of manners. This, instead, is a tragedy of manners, in which the manners themselves are subtly indicted, and in which the difference between the manners of old world and new actually claim an innocent and vivacious life. Class snobbery; traditions - then more prevalent in the aunt's circles than elsewhere - such as single young women needing to be chaperoned in public; the health risks of visiting certain parts of Rome at certain times of day - which would probably give today's doctors a good laugh; and the heart-deadening consequences of a young man, so long separated from his home country, being unable to read the signals a beautiful girl is sending him, all combine to leave the reader sighing at the end.

The next book I plan to read is Henry James' 1877 novel The American. It's the only other one I have by me at the moment. The back-cover blurbs of both books, and the introduction helpfully inserted into this one, suggest there are common themes between them, and perhaps in most of James' better-regarded books. A native New Yorker who, like Winterbourne, was educated abroad and spent the better part of his career in Europe, James wrote such well-known novels as The Europeans, Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl, and famous short stories and novellas including The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers, plus lots of less-well-known stuff, long and short. Since I felt the impact of this little work, I think I might be up to exploring some of his bigger ones and deciding for myself whether he is as some say, in spite of Hardy and Eliot, our language's best novelist.

The Naming of the Dead

The Naming of the Dead
by Ian Rankin
Recommended Ages: 14+

In my recent review of The Snowman, I said something about Jo Nesbø moving hardboiled fiction to a climate where it will keep. I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see more hardboiled crime hanging out in Edinburgh, Scotland, which is about 578 miles southwest of Oslo as the plane flies, or about four degrees less in latitude - within about a degree, at each end, of the difference between Juneau and Anchorage. If climate change is driving mystery genres to northerly climes, I should be paying more attention to the writings of Ian Rankin. Based on this book, I probably will.

DI (Detective Inspector) John Rebus is an aging, hard-drinking, maverick detective in the Edinburgh CID (i.e., the plainclothes police). He and his lower-ranking partner, DS (Detective Sergeant) Siobhan Clarke - her first name isn't pronounced the way you think - catch a couple of inconvenient cases just as the July 2005 G8 conference, and the massive demonstrations surrounding it, are about to make their part of Scotland a mad place to be. Things get even madder on July 7, 2005 - the date that made "7/7" mean to the U.K. something like what "9/11" means to the U.S. In the midst of that, nobody wants a couple of insubordinate, boundary-crossing detectives poking into an MP's (member of parliament) plunge from a castle rampart - suicide? accident? murder? - or even chasing a serial killer whose trophies are found just up the road from the conference.

There are some odd things about that serial killer evidence, though that probably goes without saying. For one thing, the victims - three, so far - are all convicts recently let out on parole, chronic offenders with a record of rape or sexual assault. These are big, bad men: not exactly your typical, high-risk victim; but because they had victims of their own, no one has worked very hard to catch their killers, or rather killer, until now. A connection between the three men and a pro-victim website seems too obvious, too on-the-nose. A psychology professor at the local university points out the key may be anomalies in the evidence concerning one of the crimes. A computer nerd (who happens to be Siobhan's ex-boyfriend), a journalist (who collaborated on a book with John's criminal nemesis), and Big Ger Cafferty, the selfsame underworld kingpin John has spent most of his career chasing, all make themselves suspiciously helpful to the crime-solving pair, while a Special Branch operative, a city councilman, and their own chief constable put up every imaginable roadblock to their investigation, including (in the chief constable's case) suspending them from duty. Also, by the way, Siobhan's parents come to town, her mum ends up in the hospital, the whole southeast of Scotland gets snarled up in a series of demonstrations, riots, and traffic jams, and London gets bombed; so yes, there are a lot of distractions. But in spite of all these things, they keep plugging away at their puzzles.

What makes my nose twitch to the scent of something hardboiled is how, while the mystery slowly comes into focus, problems arise in the hero detectives' lives that aren't as easily cleared up. No amount of persistence will make them go away. Chuck in a dash of disillusionment with the state of the world, a specter of mortality with a nice side of nihilistic futility, some heart-tugging struggles with loneliness and (ahem) alcohol, and some of those breathtaking moments when the sleuth is forced to consider whether some of the bodies wouldn't have dropped if it hadn't been for him or her, the occasional surprise where the hero is scrobbled by villains and held prisoner overnight, and the sense that the toughest crimes are best solved by a detective who follows his own ideas about how things are done, rather than sanctioned police procedure... Yes, indeed, the Dashiell does not fall far from the Hammett.

This is the 16th of (so far) 21 "John Rebus" mystery-thrillers by Scottish author Ian Rankin, and though it is not the first of the series I have read (that honor belongs to No. 8, Black & Blue), it is the first I have reviewed. Since I've reviewed every book I have read since at least 2003 and perhaps a bit farther back, that tells you about how long it's been since I've dipped a toe in the waters of Rankin's popular series; Black & Blue's 1997 release date provides the yonder boundary of a relatively narrow time window. One of the things that may have deterred me from going back to Rebus is my recollection of Black & Blue being so full of regional dialect and slang terms, such as "paraffin budgie" (meaning, I believe, "helicopter"), that I found it heavy going. I was surprised to find no such difficulty in reading The Naming of the Dead - no budgies, paraffin or otherwise. This suggests either that my recollection was off, or that my reading since sometime between ages 25 and 31 has vastly improved my language comprehension, or that the U.S. editions of Rankin's more recent books are being more heavily edited (if "translated" is too strong a word) to give American readers more of a fighting chance. Assuming the prize lies behind Door No. 3, please remind me not to complain next time I see a publisher's note to American readers, advising them the book has been expurgated of idioms you'd have to be Scottish (or English, Irish, etc.) to understand. If English-to-English translation has become a thing, there may be a good reason.

John Rebus has been portrayed by actors John Hannah (2001-2004) and Ken Stott (2006-2007) in a series of films for British television. He is also, as I mentioned, the star of 21 novels, plus a volume or two of short stories. Their titles include Knots and Crosses, The Black Book, Set in Darkness, Fleshmarket Close, Exit Music, and Rather Be the Devil. Rankin's career goes back to the 1980s, and also includes two "Malcolm Fox" novels and seven other novels, including three originally published under the pseudonym Jack Harvey.

Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey
by Jane Austen
Recommended Ages: 12+

This book's heroine is the sort of person, the narrator tells us, no one would have expected to be a heroine. But from that opening sentence on, that's exactly what we expect - that, and a story that will stand the conventions of sensational, Gothic fiction on their ear.

I opened this book under the influence of a rumor that it is primarily about a silly girl whose habit of reading novels like Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho leads her into an embarrassing misunderstanding while staying in the stately home named in its title. Actually, that is only a minor subplot in a book that, like everything else by Austen that I have read so far, is really about a girl's dramatically fraught struggle to land Mr. Right.

In this case the girl is literally a girl: 17-year-old Catherine Morland, the eldest daughter of a clergyman and his wife who have 10 children. Mr. Right, right enough, turns out to be the first eligible male to whom she is introduced while accompanying a childless local couple to a season in the then-fashionable spa city of Bath. Unfortunately, Catherine has no experience in society, and the flighty Mrs. Allen, her chaperone, isn't a reliable instructor. So, she blunders her way into one fix after another, partly through her ill-judged friendship with the coquettish Isabella Thorpe. Isabella has designs on Catherine's brother James, and Isabella's odious brother John has designs on Catherine, but in spite of their best efforts, they seem unable to sabotage Catherine's growing attachment to the clever Henry Tilney and his lonely sister Eleanor. Things are looking really promising when Catherine is invited to visit the Tilneys' romantic pile for a while, but the Thorpes haven't played their last trick.

In addition to the romantic suspense of the story, this book contains an impassioned defense of the habit of novel reading, some superbly comic passages, and a daring number of authorial intrusions into the narrative, reminding us that Catherine & Co. are, after all, characters in a novel. It's a piece of romanticism with an anti-romantic wink, and sometimes more than just a wink. And it all goes by so quickly that you'll notice the dwindling number of unread pages with a sigh of regret.

Although one of Austen's earliest mature novels - she sold it to a publisher in 1803 - it was not printed until after her death in 1817. She is also the author of Persuasion (originally published with this book), Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Mansfield Park. I can personally vouch for them all, except Mansfield Park (which I haven't read yet), as delightful pieces of Regency-era romantic comedies/comedies of manners, written with transparent style, economy of language, gentle irony, and sparkling wit.

On the other hand, I would rather not recommend the edition of this book I read, due to its preface by literary maven Margaret Drabble, who seriously entertains some of the most obnoxious and destructive feminist criticism of this book. I recommend enjoying this book for what it is, and for what generations before us have prized it for: a piece of lightweight, lighthearted entertainment by a self-taught authoress who scarcely lived long enough to be anything but a sheltered young lady, who knew never lived anywhere but under her parents' roof, who knew nothing but the provincial drawing room, the social hothouse of places like Bath, and the "marriage mart" of the late Regency period when, thanks to the Napoleonic wars, eligible English women significantly outnumbered their male counterparts. She wrote what she knew; she wrote it convincingly; she filled it with charm and a touch of good-natured good sense; and somehow, she bequeathed on English literature a small body of prose that remains among the most prized novels of her time. The books enjoyed by this book's characters, and lampooned by its storyline, are now almost forgotten. But we remember Austen. And we forgive her for not being the battle-axe people like Drabble seem to believe she should have been. I wish those people would get over it; but it doesn't matter. Austen triumphs in spite of them.

The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera
by Gaston Leroux
translated from French by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

In this book, the Palais Garnier - a truly fabulous structure that was built during the author's lifetime - is only described as The Opera. With a similarly light touch that belies the gruesome, sensational subject matter, author Leroux (or, at least, his translator) refers to his title character, within the book, not as the Phantom of the Opera, but as the Opera Ghost - sometimes O. Ghost, or even O.G. In early chapters, a thread of whimsical humor runs through the Ghost's eerie manifestations. For example, I laughed aloud at the Ghost's letter to a certain diva, warning her not to sing that night - particularly its opening sentence, "You have a bad cold." Only after the narrative destroys the illusion that O.G. is a supernatural entity does he become truly terrifying. A phantom he may not be, but a monster he most certainly is. And yet the narrator and the reader together cannot view that deeply flawed, twisted character with complete loathing. Even after seeing him at his worst, one pities him. I think this is why, of all the writings of a prolific and popular novelist, this one book has left an enduring mark on world culture.

The Opera Ghost has a real name - at least, a first name - which, to today's ears, seems bracingly un-melodramatic for the antihero of a horror tale on the level of Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Of course, its setting is closer to us in time, so the light of modern technology shines on it to such an extent that, in spite of the opera house still being lit by gas lamps, the Ghost's torture chamber can make use of electric lights and heating elements. The phantom's history is the stuff of a potboiler all its own, but we learn it only at the end, when he has done his best to seduce a sweet young diva named Christine, who is already in love with a pretty-boy viscount named Raoul. Luckily for the young couple, they have an ally in a mysterious opera-goer known as the Persian, who has known the Ghost (whom he is unembarrassed to address as "Erik") since a chilling period of his career described as "the rosy hours of Mazenderan." (Somebody actually has written a book about this.) Nevertheless, their only path to happily-ever-after leads through a series of secret passages, deadly traps, torture, murder, kidnapping, imprisonment, sexual obsession ("I want to be loved for myself!"), and an attempt to coerce a promise of marriage with a credible terrorist threat that, today, would turn a GIGN leader's hair white.

So, in brief, I laughed. I shuddered. My flesh crawled. My guts knotted with suspense. I entered willingly into the romance of the young couple, the intrigues of the opera house, the stimulating mysteries of how the Ghost pulled all his pranks, and some uneasy encounters with uncanny beings in the bowels of the Opera who, after all the Ghost's ghostliness has dissipated, remain tantalizingly unexplained. The Ghost himself may not be supernatural, but what about the Siren? Who is the man in the black felt hat? And what, in Gounod's name, is the deal with the rat catcher? We may never know. And that's just part of what makes the Opera itself perhaps the most fascinating character in this book.

The Puffin Classics edition of this 1909-10 Gothic horror/mystery classic says "complete and unabridged" on the front cover. However, when I did some online research into who translated it (because the translator is not named in the book), I found out that the original English translation by Teixeira, the only one published before 1990 and (thanks to the copyright laws of the time) the only one likely to be published without a translator's name on it, was a rushed, "slash and burn" job that "removed nearly 100 pages of content from Leroux’s novel" and "introduced numerous mistranslations." The only thing good about it, my informant says, was the "authentic 'vintage' sound" of Teixeira's writing style. So, sad to say, my "complete and unabridged" experience of Leroux's best-known novel is neither quite complete nor even particularly faithful to the original text. But it still, for my money, beats the hell out of listening to Gerard Butler try to sing the part of the Phantom in the film version of Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical adaptation. (True story: My stepmom rented this movie and tried showing it to my dad and me. We didn't even get through the first musical number before she turned it off, offended at my tsking and groans of disgust.)

I am really intrigued by Leroux's biography (1868-1927). I get the impression he was something like a turn-of-the-20th-century French mash-up of Mark Twain and Arthur Conan Doyle - audacious journalist (one of his stories was titled "How I failed to interview Joseph Chamberlain"), heir whose wild living burned through a huge fortune, theater critic, eyewitness to a political revolution, author of a series of early detective novels featuring an amateur sleuth named Rouletabille, and prolific novelist across a number of sensational genres, with such titles as Nomads of the Night, The Haunted Chair, The Bride of The Sun, The Man who Came Back from the Dead, The Veiled Prisoner, The Burgled Heart, The Kiss that Killed, The Man of a Hundred Faces, and The Perfume of the Lady in Black. If I ever make it all the way through the Sherlock Holmes canon, perhaps I will take up a bit of Rouletabille.

223. Interpretation of Scripture Hymn, Mark 2

As I said in my explanation of yesterday's original hymn, I over-planned for a projected "hermeneutics hymn," so I was forced to decide to split it into two hymns. Also, if you're looking for a polemic or a rhyming, metrical compendium of rules to understand Scripture the way I think it should be read, I'm sorry; you won't find it in either of these hymns. Their real goal is to support the (Lutheran) Christian's faithful prayer for those engaged in the task of biblical interpretation, and to fill that prayer with the truths and promises God himself provides in Scripture. The tune is YORKSHIRE (STOCKPORT) by John Wainwright, c. 1749.

O Father, in prophetic speech made known:
One with Your Word, Your sole-begotten Son:
One with Your Spirit, who moved holy men
To set Your pow'r at work by tongue or pen:
As You are one, unite our mind and heart
To serve Your word, and bear a pupil's part.

As true disciples, may we first believe
All that Your word reveals, and so receive
By faith the very gifts You promise there;
To change one letter, may we never dare.
All things are Yours; Your Yes is surely Yes:
Thereby depends our hope of blessedness.

Help us to reason from Your holy writ,
That we draw comfort, patience, hope from it.
Therein You wound and heal, You kill and raise;
Therein You bid us both repent and praise.
Conform our judgment to its holy light,
And help us handle law and gospel right.

Help us, who search Your word, not search in vain,
As those who sought salvation without gain.
We would see Christ; Lord, teach us how to look
And, looking, find Him filling all the book.
Help us, by daily searching of Your word,
To verify the gospel we have heard.

No private parsing of Your word can bless;
May we with all the saints one faith confess.
As You are one, one word in us abides,
Partial to none, nor moved by winds or tides:
So solid is this rock on which we stand
Our hope of entering the promised land.

Your word is proof against the devil's rage;
So armor us, Lord, with its sacred page.
Gird us with truth, and boot with words of peace,
Until the fiery darts of Satan cease;
Clothe us in righteousness, Your strong cuirass,
That we may stand, though earth and heaven pass.

222. Interpretation of Scripture Hymn

A cuter title might be "Hermeneutics Hymn," but I'm not as sure as I once was that a systematic list of hermeneutical rules is where it's at (as in, "Any blockhead can correctly interpret the Bible if he reasons from these 16 rules in the order in which they logically flow from first principles," etc.). Nevertheless, I've wanted for a long time to write a hymn that reflects the things the Bible says about itself, and prays those things back to God as an appeal for faith in His word. The evidence of that desire is more than a page of closely handwritten notes, with way too many key points, each followed by at least one Bible reference. The challenge, which has kept me hesitating while other planned hymns have practically written themselves, is to keep the hymn reasonably short and not bludgeon the topic to death with a too-exhaustive treatment. So, here's a hymn that attempts to cover about half of that material, in a prayerful manner that I think, after all, might be more useful to Christians than a doctrinaire treatment. I reserve the remainder of my hermeneutical notes for a later hymn. The only obvious tune for this hymn is ACH, WAS SOLL ICH SÜNDER MACHEN, ad. from J. Flittner’s Hirtenlieder, Altdorf, 1653.

Lord, whose writ cannot be broken:
God, whose voice can never lie:
By Your truth now sanctify
Those who read or hear it spoken.
All its benefits supply,
Changing hearts and minds thereby.

Cause it to be preached in season,
Out of season, just the same;
Nor let it go forth in vain.
Captive take men's sinful reason;
Form their minds, their hearts inflame
By the power of Your name.

Give them eyes for faithful reading,
Ears to hear the word of life;
Let the seed so planted thrive.
From Your folly, far exceeding
All man's wisdom, men derive
Pow'r to make the dead alive.

By its living, mighty function,
Your word called all things to be,
Blessing them abundantly;
Even now, it spreads its unction,
Causing sinful men to be
Justified eternally.

Send Your Spirit, eyes unveiling
To the myst'ries of Your word,
Which the nations call absurd.
Let men see its pow'r prevailing
Where Your promises are heard,
As dead hearts to life are stirred.

Open, Lord, men's understanding,
Though they be of earth and dust;
Break their hearts' dead, stony crust.
Open Scripture to them, branding
On their minds, with searing trust,
Him whose blood bespeaks them just.

With salvation thus enlightened,
Make them daily more adept
In Your promise and precept
Till, of death and hell unfrightened,
For a season having slept,
Into glory they be swept.