My Interview with Sarah Beth Durst

The author of Into the Wild and Out of the Wild recently contacted me to let me know about her latest book, Ice. As a result, I was able to get a free copy of the book and publish a review of it before it was released on October 6. Another exciting result is that Sarah agreed to give me an interview, albeit in the emailed-back-and-forth format that passes for an interview in the Blogosphere. So here are my Q's and her A's. Thanks, Sarah!

RF: What attracted you to writing a book based on "East of the Sun and West of the Moon"? Did a particular version of this grandmother tale inspire you?

SBD: I love this fairy tale. It has everything one could ask for: a fearless heroine, true love, an impossible quest, and a talking polar bear. The version of the tale that I fell in love with was collected by the Norwegian folklorists Asbjornsen and Moe, translated to English by George Webbe Dasent and illustrated by the amazing artist P. J. Lynch.

I veer rather far from the original tale in my novel ICE -- it's set in present-day Arctic and incorporates a lot of elements not in the traditional story -- but at its heart, it is still a tale of a fearless girl, true love, and an impossible quest across the frozen North.

RF: Besides your study of folklore, what research did you do to prepare for writing ICE?

SBD: I did a TON of research on the Arctic. I read every nature book, survival guide, polar bear book, explorer memoir, etc. that I could get my hands on. My favorite was A Naturalist's Guide to the Arctic by E. C. Pielou.

RF: How closely do you identify with Cassie, your main character in ICE?

SBD: Not at all. She dives into freezing oceans, jumps off mountains, and walks through blizzards. I, on the other hand, am a total coward and not very fond of the outdoors. (Too many bugs!) I loved writing about her, though, and living vicariously.

RF: Tell us a little about the path that led you to write novels based on folklore.

SBD: Folklore and fairy tales are everywhere. The images have such a grip on our imagination and on our way of seeing the world. To me as a writer, they're irresistible. So many reader expectations and so much cultural baggage to play with!

RF: Do you have other folklore-based novels planned? What can you tell us about them?

SBD: My next novel is called TIGERLILY, and it's coming from Simon & Schuster in fall 2010. It's about magic at Princeton. It isn’t folklore-based, but it does have were-tigers, talking-gargoyles, dragons, and hot college boys. I've very excited about it!

RF: What values or message do you want to get across to your readers? Or, do your books have a purpose besides to entertain?

SBD: Story comes first. Always. That said, I'm sure my worldview seeps into all my work. ICE, for example, is about true love -- the kind of love you work at, not simply fall into. Real love.

RF: In order of priority, who is the "target audience" you intend to write for?

SBD: I write for me -- or people like me, who want magic, adventure, and love in their books. I don't write for a particular age. In fact, I think it's a mistake to alter your style or tone or themes to fit a particular age reader. Just be true to the story and the characters and your own heart, and the rest will take care of itself.

RF: What writers and books do you consider most influential on your work and outlook?

SBD: I love fantasy. These days, I read YA fantasy almost exclusively. Some of my favorites are Tamora Pierce, Diana Wynne Jones, Diane Duane, and Patricia C. Wrede.

I love the optimistic worldview that you find in so much of YA fantasy, the little-guy-can-triumph and true-love-conquers-all kind of attitude. That attitude matches my outlook and informs my work. I’m definitely a glass-half-full, don’t-give-up kind of person.

RF: What do you think of your contemporaries, such as Michael Buckley and Delia Sherman, who are writing books based on similar material?

SBD: I love their work! Michael Buckley's Sisters Grimm books are wonderful, clever and fun, and Delia Sherman's Changeling is a must-read for anyone who has ever set foot in NYC. I'd also recommend Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing and Elizabeth C. Bunce's A Curse Dark as Gold.

There are a ton of wonderful YA books out these days. It's a very exciting field to be a part of!

Thanks so much for interviewing me!

LCMS Sells KFUO Anyway

Today's big news in the St. Louis region is that the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has decided to sell KFUO-FM. To sell it, in fact, to a "praise music" broadcasting outfit that plans to rename it "Joy FM."

I guess I'm just going to have to retract everything I said before about whether the LCMS should sell Classic-99. Because, as everyone knows, the Missouri Synod is the true visible church on earth and, therefore, by definition, must be correct in all that it says and does. You can't criticize your church, right?

Well, nuts! I can't help it. I am ashamed of my Synod today. If this deal goes forward, it will become an accessory to two crimes: one cultural, the other spiritual.

The cultural crime is that it will cease to bear witness to the best that the fine arts and classical music have to offer to our society and our church. After 60 years on the air, the region's best classical radio station will become a purveyor of musical junk food.

The spiritual crime is that it will yield airplay, or bandwidth, or whatever you call it, to a religious tradition that peddles false teaching. Sorry, folks, but I have to call a spade a spade. What "Joy FM" will offer is theological snake-oil - man-centered, materialistic, moralizing (or, in some cases, demoralizing), synergistic, decisionistic, emotion-centered, commercialistic, triumphalistic... my vocabulary expands as I think about it, and none of the words herald good news. Its music is a reflection of its doctrine: cheap, trashy, aimed at the lowest common denominator, aimed at the bottom line. It's a perversion of Christianity that exists to pick people's pockets, and that only aims to make "disciples" of those with deep enough pockets to keep the spiritual Ponzi scheme going.

That the LCMS would sell its beacon of culture and humanity to such a "ministry" should scandalize everyone who cares about Lutheranism, and everyone who is proud of what KFUO-FM represents. But what can we do? The Synod is broke. It has to liquidate its assets to keep up with the bills. Once they're gone, though, it will be harder to recover such assets than to build them in the first place. And then what will the LCMS do? Go bankrupt, evidently.

Maybe when a church has become ethically and spiritually bankrupt, the other kind of bankruptcy isn't such a big step. Maybe, when we cease to offer a real alternative to teachings and practices that other church bodies have been doing longer and better, it's even inevitable. But if I were on the Synod's Board of Directors, I would argue - alone, perhaps - that it would be better to hold out for a buyer who wanted to program classical music than to insist, as I understand the BOD did, on selling to a "Christian" group. How ironic! While they may have intended well by this decision, I misgive whether the LCMS will live down the scandal it will cause.

Reading at the Wheel 1

You can have breakfast in bed. Thanks to the internet, you can go to work in your underwear. I have even overheard someone using an urgently-needed public bathroom as their personal phone booth, courtesy of Verizon Wireless. (May their charging cord get caught in their zipper.) But who in his right mind would read at the wheel of his car?

I did, for the first time this morning. And it was almost pitch dark at the time.

To be sure, I was reading a symphony with my ears. But in my books, that's like listening to the voice of a book's narrator with your mind's ear. If listening to a symphony is like reading a good book, I read all the way to work today.

My first Reading at the Wheel experience, facilitated by Sony Walkman technology, was Arnold Bax's Symphony No. 2 in E minor and C major, vintage 1926. The recording, blessedly, dates from much more recently. Otherwise it would have been hard to hear much over the noise of the wheels on the road and the wind whistling through my side window, which was open just a crack to compensate for the dewy humidity and my car's current lack of working air circulation. It was especially hard to hear because, as I learned later, the volume on the Walkman is turned all the way down by default. Until I learned to turn it up each time the power came on, I had to twist the volume knob on the car stereo all the way up. The result was a lot of white noise and just enough music to keep me from pulling over in frustration.

So I heard Mr. Bax's Second Symphony again on my way home. It sounded much more satisfying with the volume knobs in proper balance. In fact, it sounded so good that I listened to parts of it twice. And now, without the accompaniment of highway noise, I'm listening to it again.

Bax was a British guy with a funny little fetish about being Irish. His Second Symphony was dedicated to a Russian-born American conductor, Sergei Koussevitzky, who played a huge role in promoting the music of modern composers. Nevertheless it took Koussevitzky three years to get around to conducting the premiere of this work with his Boston Symphony Orchestra. It wasn't heard on Bax's native soil until the following year, 1930. All this dithering strikes me as remarkable. For from the moment the piece began I was struck by its dramatic power, its tight thematic unity, and its scintillating instrumental colors. I thought: "If this music isn't famous, it should be."

The first of this symphony's three movements begins with an ominous drumroll. Several ideas revealed in this slow introduction are knit into the fiber of the entire symphony. The first idea is dark and brooding, the second savage and threatening, the third pierced with agony, the fourth (introduced with flutes and muted trumpets in parallel motion) exotic and mysterious. Celesta, harp, piano, glockenspiel, and lots of brass join the orchestra as it develops these ideas, building up to the main Allegro moderato by around 4'.

The first theme of this main section, introduced by clarinets, is clearly derived from the exotic motive from the intro. The addition of a xylophone and tambourine enhance its exoticism, like incidental music from a film about travel across the Near and Far East. The melody flows and flowers naturally, effortlessly growing and evolving, evoking now a scene of rural gaiety, now all that is awesome and awful in a major modern city. A pall of dread settles over all, like the kind of night for which words like "miasma" were coined: now the intro's savage and threatening motive becomes the Allegro's second theme. A soulful cello solo pours out its grief into the night, and the night responds with sympathy. Around 9'15" the harps lay down an accompaniment for a magically lyrical episode, delicately shaded with instrumental watercolors.

Mr. Dark & Brooding from the intro comes in at 11' sounding really pissed. A mood of violent agitation throbs beneath the recap of the first theme, allowing Bax to roll out some of his most dazzling orchestral hues and chord voicings. At 13'30" it dies down mysteriously. Flutes and harps play accompanist to a stringy gush of romantic melody. Eventually we recognize this as a facet of the first main theme. Rumors that the movement is about to end in a low-key epilogue prove to be spurious, however. Bax reviews the ominous motives of the slow introduction, building up at last to a closing chord akin to a shriek of fury.

Movement II (Andante) is a bit of a musical pastiche. It begins in a manner that reminds me of one of the weirder, low-key movements from Holst's Planets (which predated this symphony by a decade). This passage morphs into a gushy theme that could have flown straight out of the slow movement of a Rachmaninoff piano concerto. Later, the music plunges into realms of faerie that savor of Delius, only to follow it up with an impression of Elgar in all his pomp and circumstance. A clarinet tune at around 6'50" signals the first point in this movement where Bax steps out of character and expresses himself without analogy to a familiar type. Now the music builds in genuine dramatic power, adding an organ pedal point to the build-up to a climax based on the opening motive of Movement I's slow intro. After a pause for breath, the music resumes in an entirely new vein, with solos by violin and trumpet that glow with courageous happiness. The movement ends with a sense of one accepting the mysteries and uncertainties of life with a cheerful outlook.

The third and final movement begins with a slow introduction warning of grim things to come. Very soon the main Allegro feroce breaks out with the same sort of demonic energy and quirky yet vibrant melodism that later marked Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances. This is by no means the last point in this movement that bears an affinity to Russian music. For a moment, around 2'30", I could swear I'm listening to a Polovtsian Dance by Borodin. Then comes a passage that must have been in the back of Walton's mind when he wrote his First Symphony a few years later. Is Bax stealing or being stolen from? The answer is, apparently, "yes." Too many interesting things happen, in the next pages of this auditory book, to describe without getting in my own way. Let's just say Bax makes bold use of bold ideas, crafting remarkable sonorities that fill the whole range from the deep, organ-reinforced bass to piercing heights that shine with a brassy finish, from massive piles of sound to delicate, intimate moments with solo violin, limpid harp, muted trumpet, and innocent flute. In spite of a few late pangs of anxiety, the symphony achieves a calm conclusion, drifting away as on deep, dark, yet tranquil waters.

I hear tell that Bax's Second triggered shock in its first audiences. The only thing I find shocking about it is that it isn't better known. I think it's touched by genius. Exciting, colorful, splashed with brilliant light and spooky shadows, it has a roguish wit sharpened on the music of many of Bax's predecessors and contemporaries, a serious intellect focused on taut construction and thematic metamorphosis, and a masculine zest that animates everything in a magnetically compelling way. His Second Symphony, in short, proves that Bax was a total stud. Why else would I risk my life reading it (with my ears) while driving to and from work? I've listened to it three times in one day, and I still think it's terrific.

Changing Jobs

What am I doing up at this hour? Well, I'm changing jobs, you see. I ended my new job at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday. I am starting my old job at 6:30 a.m. on Monday. I've had the intervening 47.5 hours to adjust my sleep schedule from working all night and sleeping all day, to going to bed early in the evning, getting up very early in the morning, and working into the early afternoon. It's not an easy adjustment to make over a weekend. I expect to reach equilibrium sometime around Thursday.

No, that isn't a mistake of a tired mind. I said I was quitting my new job and starting my old one. That is correct. I solicit your prayers and God's blessing as I bend my efforts once more toward duties from which I was relieved almost exactly a year ago.

I'll be spending a lot more time on the road. The old job that I'm starting has a much longer commute than the new job I just quit. I've made an investment to help me with that. With my last use of the employee discount card, moments before my exit interview, I purchased a portable CD player that I can plug in to the cigarette lighter, and that has an adapter that I can plug into the tape deck in my car radio.

Now I won't be at the mercy of the radio any more - even beloved KFUO-FM, where I used to hear the same commercials twice going each way, day after day, until I thought they would drive me insane. For all the wonderful classical music they play, they seem to spend just as much time broadcasting advertisements. This is their bread and butter and I don't hold it against them. It's just a me thing.

I can't stand having pieces of my life torn off and burned on the altar of commercialism. I can't stand the mindless drone of the same ad playing day after day, three or four times a day. This is why I can't watch TV any more. I prefer to be in control of the time I spend watching video, listening to music, and reading. I prefer to fill that time with quality content, and to keep words from our sponsor to a minimum. So I watch the boxed sets of TV shows, season by season; more often I read and play the piano, etc., when an ordinary person would be watching the tube; and now I'll be listening to my own classical-music picks on CD as I commute.

I've given some thought to combining two of my interests. I may start investing in audio books. Until now I've been deterred by the fact that most of them are available on CD, while my car radio only has a cassette player. Clearly, the car is where I would need a book to be read aloud. When I'm not at the wheel, I can read by myself very well, thank you. So I'm going to be taking stock of what's available, and affordable, among the books I've been planning to read. Maybe I'll be able to redeem the two hours a day I spend at the wheel, by having that many more book reviews to write at the end of the week.

Two Book Reviews

Summerland
by Michael Chabon
Recommended Age: 12+

Ethan Feld is the worst baseball player in the history of Clam Island, Washington. His presence in right field, for one inning, can cost his little-league team a four-run lead. His batting is so bad, it's nonexistent; kids call him Dog because he just stands there, waiting for a walk. Everyone on the team hopes he won't show up for games. No such luck. Because Ethan's father, a widowed designer of personal and family dirigibles, is a team jersey-wearing, fanatical baseball lover.

Nevertheless, when a very peculiar talent scout spots Ethan, he recruits him to be a hero. A baseball hero. The hero who will save the world, if it can be saved.

You have to understand, first of all, that our world is only one of four main limbs growing out of the trunk of a tree. Known as the Middling to folks from outside, it lies between the Summerlands and the Winterlands - worlds populated by magical creatures such as werebeasts, sasquatches, and ferishers (don't call them fairies), giants, shaggurts, and Big Liars (basically, tall tales come to life). Certain people, called shadowtails, can travel from world to another, like squirrels hopping from branch to branch.

One thing all these worlds have in common is baseball. Its rules have magical, binding power in the Summerlands, as Ethan and his friends find during their quest. Pitchers can't shake off their catchers' signs. Magical "grammers" ensure a level playing field for all players, regardless of size. Heresies, such as the Designated Hitter rule, can break magical protections and doom entire communities.

Playing his way across the Summerlands, Ethan gathers a motley team of players to his quest to save his father, and to stop Coyote - also known as the Changer, a type of devil - from carrying out his plan to end all existence as we know it. As he studies the art of being a catcher, Ethan takes tips and help from a tomboy, an android, a very small giant, a wererat and a werefox, a couple of ferishers, a washed-up professional player, and a female sasquatch named Taffy. He faces teams of giants, fairies, the "bowling men" who make thunder in the mountains, and some of the toughest ruffians ever to spit tobacco juice in the dugout. He also faces his own weakness and inadequacy, his deepest fears and desires, and the power in his pain.

This book is a big, beautiful gift to kids, especially kids who like baseball and/or stories of wonder and magic. It blends the two as few books do: The Boy Who Saved Baseball and Two Hot Dogs with Everything come to mind, but they aren't in this book's league.

It's so filled with ideas that it will make your gray cells dance. It has a huge sense of humor, including some of the best laughs I have had in a long time. It has a little bit of Native American spirituality (occult-sensitive readers beware), a twist of Nordic mythology, a strong vein of American folklore, and a faint but charming Yiddish lilt. It is packed with characters you will cheer for, scenic descriptions of breathtaking beauty, psges of terrific dialogue, delicious new words such as "squatchlings," and baseball games that could well make a believer of the meanest skeptic. It's a healing book, a challenging book, a book jocks and dweebs can share, a book parents can share with their kids. It might be (oooh, here it comes) the Best Book I've Read This Year.

Michael Chabon is the owner of a Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and a Nebula award for The Yiddish Policeman's Union, a sci-fi novel set in an alternate timeline. His book Wonder Boys was adapted for the screen by Harry Potter scribe Steve Kloves. His other titles include Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, a mystery called The Final Solution, and a short-story collection titled Werewolves in Their Youth. If the joyful, generous, overflowing-with-wit writing style of Summerland is typical of his books, I expect to enjoy all of them in time.

Tales of Ancient Egypt
by Roger Lancelyn Green
Recommended Age: 10+

What he did for Greek myths and legends and the tales of Robin Hood and King Arthur, noted folklorist and biographer Roger Lancelyn Green now does for the tales of myth, magic, and adventure from one of the world's oldest and most distinctive cultures.

Isolated by geography, fed and watered by the Nile, the ancient civilization of Egypt developed a unique outlook on life and death, with special emphasis on the latter. Their long, unbroken line of kings, together with a compulsion to build monuments to the dead that have endured for thousands of years, enables us to look back over an incredibly vast period of history, putting us in touch with the strange stories people told each other four or five thousand years ago. Lancelyn Green helps us make sense of these stories, explaining them and organizing them so that their power and grandeur inspire awe and wonder, rather than confusion.

Here are the stories of the gods of Egypt, such as Amen-Ra, Osiris, Isis, and Horus - similar yet different to the characters in the mythology of other cultures. We appreciate, though perhaps never understand, why some of the gods are represented by animals (or by human figures with the heads of animals), such as Anubis the dog and Horus the falcon.

The later stories of magicians, thieves, divine-human Pharaohs, shipwrecks, and wars are set in the context of a religion that adored Osiris, god of the underworld, expected to return from Duat with the blessed dead and to make Egypt an everlasting paradise. The tales have wit, family drama, excitement, and more than the usual dose of spookiness. And they leave one in awe of the endurance of so many stories for such a long time - stories that make the human beings who dwell in them, and who told them, seem so close and vibrantly alive.

I think parents of all religious persuasions should read books like this with their children, read and discuss them. All English-speaking people can enjoy and benefit from such tales, which at the very least give us the magic of story (a type of magic that harms no one) and a perspective on the variety of human culture and the mystery of history. With Lancelyn Green telling the tale, the medicine goes down very easily indeed. I can hardly imagine a better introduction to a subject that some fascinated readers may choose to study in greater depth and detail.

Alternate Lyrics

As I've mentioned before, the Symphony Chorus is working on Michael Tippett's secular cantata A Child of Our Time. In it there is a very challenging chorus with the following lyrics: "Burn down their houses! Beat in their heads! Break them in pieces on the wheel!"

This presents a problem. In order to learn the intervals and rhythms in this tricky piece, we need to practice it a lot on our own time. However, some of us have expressed concern about the wisdom of going around singing those words.

So Amy Kaiser, our chorus director, put out a call for alternate lyrics. Here are the submissions that resulted. I think they're priceless. See if you can guess which one I submitted!

1. Learn how the rhythms
Beat in your head,
Bounce to the music on your heels.

2. Burping my baby,
Cradling his head,
Too many peaches for his meal!

3. Gingerbread houses
Gingerbread men
Break them in pieces for a meal

4. Split the banana
Scoop the ice cream
Shake choc’late sprinkles over all

5. Open the boxes
Take out the eggs
Break them in pieces in a bowl

6. Turn on their browsers!
Tweet 'til they're dead!
Make them do FaceBook 'til they yield!

7. (Several verses and coda)
Log on to Facebook!
Count all your friends!
Think about quotes to make them smile.
And keep them guessing!
Make smart remarks!
Try to be cle-ver-er than they!
Tell us your status!
Tell us what you think!
Like!
Comment!
Waste time! Waste time!
On the web, on the web.

Personally, I like #6 best. But really, don't take that as a clue.

Mystery Brew

Lately, I've been trying out some of the smaller, domestic brands of beer. Partly this is so I can have a sixpack handy most of the time without going to much expense. One that I rather like is Griesedieck Bros., a German-style golden pilsener. It's quite good, considering the price.

But there's a mystery about it. The label says "St. Louis" right under the brand name. Then it says, in smaller print, "Brewed and Bottled by Griesedieck Bros. Brewery, Black River Falls, Wisconsin."

Don't tell me what it says on Wiki. Please, don't leave a comment explaining that the brand originated in St. Louis as an American-style lager, then sold out to Falstaff, went out of production, was recently revived, and even more recently reentered the St. Louis market where it started out. I don't want the mystery to be demystified. I like to wonder. It's a pleasant state of mind. Intoxicating, even!

By the way, another cheap, domestic, off-brand beer I have recently sampled and enjoyed was the 312 Urban Wheat produced by Goose Island Brewery in Chicago. It's quite drinkable, compared to some American wheat beers I have tasted. Give it a try!