Spencer Quinn. The Sound and the Furry. Atria, 2013.
———. Paw and Order. Atria, 2014.

The Sound and the Furry is another enjoyable Chet and Bernie mystery. A big part of the enjoyment comes from the stories being told from the dog’s point of view: Many sounds, many smells, always distracted by food, and confusion over human conversation.

This time private investigator Bernie Little meets a “perp” he knows as he watches a prison highway crew at work. Frenchie Boutette hires Bernie to locate his missing brother Ralph—the only law-abiding one in the family, and that includes his mother. Ralph is an inventor with nearly thirty patents to his credit, and he has suddenly disappeared.

The search takes Bernie to the Bayou country of Louisiana. Ralph has been living on a houseboat. Frenchie’s wife Vannah actually paid Bernie for the assistance with money that smelled of shrimp.

When Bernie arrives in St. Roch, Louisiana, he learns that one of Ralph and Frenchie’s other two brothers has been arrested for stealing a truckload of shrimp. No one knows what happened to the cargo although a local restaurant is offering an all you can eat shrimp fry. Duke Boutette was the last person seen near the shrimp, and he was too drunk or stoned to remember anything.

Even before Bernie leaves his home in Arizona, he was offered fifty thousand dollars to work for an unethical security firm and threatened by a stocky Quiero, a member of Central American drug gang. Everyone describes Ralph the same way—a loner, a brain, wouldn’t hurt a fly, a math genius. What is going on anyway?

There is quite a lot. Bernie stays faithful to his girlfriend Suzie in spite of Vannah’s attempts to seduce him. He find’s Ralph’s glasses on a bayou islet. He learns that Ralph’s dog Napoleon is missing, too. When he visits a local veterinarian to ask about Napoleon, she is busy cleaning a few oil-soaked seabirds.

Chet not only tells us the story in is delightful way—never, he tells us try to chew steel wool—he also makes a few discoveries himself. Unfortunately, he is not always able to communicate what he has discovered. Twice in Louisiana he recognizes the scent of the man from the California security firm, but Bernie cannot smell him or recognize him.

Oh, yeah, the Boutettes having been feuding with the Robideaux family since the Civil War. And, as the title suggests the line from Macbeth, “…it is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury” and the Southern Gothic novel The Sound and the Fury, which is a tale told in part by a mentally challenged boy. In Faulkner’s day, they called them idiots.

There is a running gag in The Sound and the Furry about how stupid the three Boutette brothers excluding Ralph are: “What’s dumber than a moron?” No, Chet our narrator is no idiot, but some of the characters in this story are.

Paw and Order directly follows on the tail of The Sound and the Furry. Instead of returning home to Arizona, Bernie decides to go to Washington, D.C., to surprise his girlfriend Suzie, a journalist there.

Suzie has gotten involved in an investigation that may concern some foreign powers meddling in an American presidential campaign. Now, this book came out in 2014. I cannot help thinking that Christopher Steele or someone from the Clinton campaign read this book and said, “What a great idea!”

Bernie gets suspicious that things are not quite right when Suzie’s landlady, a woman named Lizette Charbonneau from Montreal, tells him the best place to stay in the city is the Chateau Frontenac. The Frontenac is a lovely place, but it is in Quebec City, not Montreal.

Though Bernie has an interesting scuffle with some bikers in the first chapter, the adventure really begins when Suzie’s main source of information is murdered. Bernie gets involved right away because he is arrested for the murder. Now, Bernie has been arrested before by crooked officials, but this time there is enough evidence to cause his arrest.

After Bernie is released, the British father of the murdered man hires Bernie to find out what he can. Neither we nor Bernie learn why he is suddenly released and even given a p. i. license for the District of Columbia until the very end. There are a lot of secrets in the nation’s capital.

Chet the dog narrates this story, too. Again, Chet notices things the humans don’t. There is a man who frequently shows up for no apparent reason, but Chet seems to be the only one who notices him. He also sees a strange bird flying around Suzie’s house. He tries to let the humans know about it, but it always flies away before they see what he is barking at.

As ever, Chet entertains the reader with his canine perspective, and it seems almost everyone is either lying or covering something up. Does truth even exist in D.C.?

John Bishop. Act of Murder. Mantid, 2019.

Act of Murder is an unusual mystery. Dr. J. R. Brady (a.k.a. Jim Bob) is an orthopedic surgeon, not even a pathologist like Quincy (though he does consult with one over a couple of patients who die in the story). He is not even directly involved in the mystery. He observes. In a sense, he is more like Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes’ chronicler. As Watson largely observes, so does Dr. Brady.

Brady finds himself observing immediately. He is in his back yard minding his own business when he hears the squeal of tires, a thump, and an automotive motor racing away. He runs out to the street in front of his house and sees a neighbor’s nine-year-old son lying in the road. Someone calls 911. Brady does try to revive the boy, but it is clear that he is dead.

The boy’s parents blame Brady for not saving their only son’s life, but there was really little he could do. The fact that the boy had a rare congenital brittle bone disease no doubt contributed to his nearly instant demise.

Much of the story is about Brady’s day-to-day orthopedic work at a hospital in Houston, Texas. We also get Facebook-like details about his meals—it seems doctors eat out a lot—and, as the young people say, too much information (TMI) about his love life. (It’s OK; it is all about how attractive his wife is.) Still, Jim Bob spins a decent yarn, and gradually a mystery unfolds.

Obviously, the police and the boy’s parents want to find the hit and run driver and bring the person to justice. As both a doctor and a witness, Brady is brought into the investigation. If there is a Holmes in the story, it is the young Police Detective Susan Beeson. Her father is the retired police chief and an acquaintance of Dr. Brady.

We get a sense of what upper class Houston is like, with some side trips to Galveston and Port Arthur.

We see what Brady sees, and perhaps like Brady and Beeson, we begin to make the connections. And there are many to be made.

Around the same time as the hit and run, the semi-retired CEO of Brady’s orthopedic practice announces he has prostate cancer and will be undergoing treatment. Just when it appears he is recovering, he suddenly dies in his hospital bed. Act of God, or Act of Murder?

Brady’s pathologist friend makes some discoveries as does Brady’s son, a college student who does white-hat computer hacking on the side. It all comes together in the most interesting way.

The author’s approach is distinctive, though the climax may have a bit of a stock ending. Dr. Brady “goes with the flow” and tells a story with a mystery that only a doctor could explain well.

Robert McCaw. Fire and Vengeance. Oceanview, 2020.

We enjoyed the first Koa Kāne mystery we read. This one, actually the third in the series, is just as intense. And like the other, a story like this could only happen in the fiftieth state.

Very simply, the volcano overlooking the city of Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, lets off some steam sometimes. It has not erupted since 1801, but it is still live. Suddenly, a volcano vent opens up right underneath an elementary school while school is in session. Fourteen students and a teacher are killed. Many more students are hospitalized.

The overheated school is badly damaged. Now, the Big Island of Hawaii is formed by five volcanoes, three of which are still active, so a volcanic vent should be obvious to anyone getting a building permit on the island.

Indeed, as crews tear apart the remains of the school, they discover a basement wall six feet thick and a steel fire door in its middle. It looks like whoever built the school knew about the vent. That is negligence, and it could be negligent homicide.

Enter Koa Kāne, chief detective of the Hawaii County police. He is told to investigate, but both the mayor and the governor want a quick resolution. This school tragedy becomes national news. In some ways it is like a school shooting, only more deliberate.

Meanwhile Koa’s younger brother Ikaika has been in prison in Arizona where the state of Hawaii has been sending some of its prisoners. That program is being phased out, and almost as soon as he gets back to a prison in Hawaii, Ikaika passes out. He is hospitalized, and the doctors make a discovery that may partly explain his criminal behavior.

No sooner does the investigation begin than one of the contractors who built the school and the architect who designed it are murdered. There appears to be a serious cover-up going on, but the mayor and governor are still looking for a quick resolution.

As the plot thickens, Koa discovers political corruption at some of the highest levels in the county and state and a connection to a bizarre murder in the 1970s that has never been solved. This is another plot-driven mystery that gets bigger and bigger. And to solve what prove to be multiple crimes requires a lot of ingenuity and plotting on the part of the Hawaii police. Yes, Fire and Vengeance is ingenious and igneous fun.

There is an interesting side note about the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Koa’s girlfriend is a park ranger there. While she does not figure as much in this story as she did in Off the Grid, we hear from her what the park is like now. It has been closed since 2018 thanks to the eruption of Kilauea, but the park service employees are working harder because of the challenges caused by the eruption.

While it is not on the same level, this reviewer gets it. This past week my school is closed like many in the country because of the Covid-19 scare. Teachers will still be going to school every day and will have to come up with ways of teaching online. It may be a break for the kids, but I am not sure that it will be much of a break for us teachers. It has already proven more time-consuming than normal school days.

There is one mystery connected with this novel, though, that is not solved to my satisfaction. The book tells us that author lived in Hawaii for twenty years but now lives in New York City. Why would anyone leave Hawaii for New York City?

Rashi Rohatgi. Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow. Galaxy Galloper, 2020.

Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow describes a time and place little known outside of East India and Bangladesh. It starts out as a drawing-room novel but ends as a kind of political history. In turns, this reader was reminded of the Chinese classic The Dream of the Red Chamber and the Conrad story “The Secret Agent.”

Set in East India in 1905, when India included what is today Bangladesh and Myanmar, we meet a middle class family told from the perspective of daughter Leela, betrothed to Nash. Though their marriage has been arranged, they have fallen in love. Nash was studying engineering abroad in Japan until the dangers precipitated by the Russo-Japanese War sent him back home to India.

Nash and Leela corresponded during this time, and their correspondence really did become love letters. Their relationship is quite charming. But when Nash returns, the family and friends are confronted with modernity.

Nash had gone to Japan to study engineering because at the time it was the technologically most advanced nation in Asia. The young Indians like Nash, Leela, and their friends understand that Japan is more advanced because it is independent. So, yes, there is talk about Gandhi and independence from Britain.

The specific political issue that is affecting Leela and her friends, though, is segregation. She has attended a girls’ school that enrolled both Hindus and Muslims. The British government in India has decided it would make for more peace to segregate the schools, sending Muslims and Hindus to different schools. The girls from her school petition the government to keep the schools desegregated.

Zainab is Leela’s Muslim friend who supports this move. Zainab’s family is wealthier, so her brother owns a camera and enjoys taking photographs. When Zainab’s brother and Leela’s sister fall in love, though, there is a question about how “desegregated” they can become. When we discover how Zainab herself has maintained her wealth, more questions are raised. Leela’s widowed father, meanwhile, has an ongoing relationship with an Anglo-Indian lady. She is beautiful, but Leela and others look down on her because of her mixed race.

The drawing-room relationships are complicated, indeed, perhaps symbolizing what is happening and what will happen in India in the coming century. And as the political issues come to a head, we get a preview of what will happen in the country in the next fifty years. Leela’s confrontation with the Viceroy, who visits their city, is not what we expect at all.

For an understanding of an exotic culture in English, Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow reminds this reader of some of the work by Jhumpa Lahiri or The Hamilton Case. Its subtle but serious and even shocking personal drama is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf.

To this reader there is a serious flaw in the telling of the story. Since I am reading a pre-publication copy for reviewers, perhaps this will be corrected. The entire story is told from Leela’s first person point of view. But the language, even in dialogue, is the language of 2020, not 1905. There are numerous terms and figures of speech that did not exist in 1905 in English, let alone the English of India: backstory, in the loop, fallout, frisson, arch as an adjective, and women’s liberation, to name a few. One could imagine, I suppose, a woman nearing 100 years old looking back and using current jargon, but not such neologisms in the dialogue. With a serious revision of the wording, this book could become a real gem. As it stands, it is a fascinating story with some jarring, anachronistic language.

Colum McCann. Apeirogon. Random House, 2020.

Years ago I did some research on the migration of birds through the Holy Land. Birds throughout Europe and Asia that winter in Africa funnel through that neck of land that connects West Asia with Africa. I wrote an article for a magazine on the subject, but it was never published. Apeirogon describes various birds of Palestine and Israel, both residents and migrants.

Even longer ago than that I read some stories by Jorge Luis Borges. I once attended a public lecture given by him. I loved his tales, but there was one story that was over my head. Apeirogon mentions Borges a number of times and alludes to that story. When Borges refers to the Aleph in a story by that name, he is suggesting not just the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, he is describing a degree of infinity, according to McCann. (See David Foster Wallace’s Everything and More.) I will have to reread that story.

An Apeirogon is a polygon with an infinite number of sides. Technically, it is not a circle because it has an Aleph sub zero points (i.e., the set of rational numbers [א₀]) while a true closed curve like a circle would have an Aleph sub one set of points (i.e., the set of real numbers [א₁]).

So the conflict over the Holy Land that developed in the twentieth century appears circular—A attacks B, who attacks back, and it goes on and around like migrating birds. But it is not exactly circular. It is a conflict with many sides. The first chapter begins “The hills of Jerusalem are a bath of fog.” The last chapter, also called chapter one, ends with, “The hills of Jericho are a bath of dark.” A many-sided circle? How well does either side see?

Apeirogon touches on many things, but it is mainly about two men on two different sides who come together in the name of peace. Their unlikely connection begins because of evil.

One of the men, an Israeli named Rami Elhanan, is a seventh-generation Jerusalemite on his mother’s side. His father was born in Hungary, survived Auschwitz, and was smuggled into Palestine after World War II ended.

His father-in-law was an honored general who fought in three of Israel’s wars between 1948 and 1967. Yet after 1967 he spent the rest of his life campaigning against what is called the Occupation. He believed that it was possible for Arabs and Jews to live together without the intimidation and bitterness that the Occupation has provoked. At one point McCann notes that Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the father of the modern Hebrew language, believed that Arabs and Jews were brothers with a similar language and cultural background.

Like most Israelis, Rami was drafted. He served in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Though assigned to a tank repair unit, he saw action in the Sinai and knows he killed some Arab soldiers who were trying to kill him. These Arabs were probably Egyptian, not Palestinian.

After directly seeing war, he expressed some sympathy with his father-in-law’s beliefs. Still, he wanted nothing to do with politics or the military after his tour of duty. He married, began a family, and worked as a graphic artist in Tel Aviv. His life would radically change one day in 1997 when his thirteen year old daughter Smadar was killed on her way home from school by two Palestinian suicide bombers.

Eventually Rami joined a group of parents who lost children in the conflict: both Jews and Palestinians. Many sided, indeed. There are even more sides because Smadar had already adopted her grandfather’s opposition to the Occupation. Still, to the bombers she was just another infidel.

The other main character is Bassam Aramin. He is a Palestinian who was arrested at the age of seventeen for throwing rocks at an IDF jeep. He was sentenced to seven years in prison as a terrorist.

Apeirogon retells some of the treatment he received at the hands of the prison staff. Much of it was meant to humiliate him, but there were occasional acts of kindness as well. He never compromised with the authorities even when the raised the possibility of extending his prison term. His reaction was reminiscent of Thoreau’s in On Civil Disobedience where he expresses the idea that some things are more important than being set free from jail.

Released from prison at the age of twenty-four, Bassam gets married and raises a family. In an incident that is like a mirror image of Smadar’s, in 2007 Rami’s daughter Abir is shot and killed by an IDF soldier while she was on her way to school.

Rami befriends Bassam. He understands. Together they promote the parents’ group and each tells his story. Over the years they have spoken all over the world, yet in their homeland they often have to resort to subterfuge to meet. They are very frank.

Bassam and his family spend a couple of years in England as he studies the Holocaust. He knows it really happened—he is no denier—but he wants to understand the Jews better.

Both Bassam and his wife Salwa appreciate the freedom in England, especially the freedom to travel. Apeirogon has pictures of various signs from Israel warning that Jews or Palestinians are prohibited from entering certain areas. But the Aramins do not stay in England. Palestine is where they belong. Bassam meditates on a line from the Persian poet Rumi:

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
Today I am wise, so I have begun to change myself. (325)

At one point the author observes that the Kabbala sees two aspects of God:

The first, known as Ein Sof, finds God to be transcendent, unknowable, impersonal, endless and infinite [always infinity]. The second is accessible to human perception, revealing the divine in the material world, available in our finite lives.

Far from contradicting each other, the two aspects of the divine—one locatable, one infinite—are said to be perfectly complementary to one another, a form of deep truth to be found in apparent opposites. (236)

Not only does this say something about the way God reveals Himself, but in its subtle use of chiasmus, it really points to the two natures of the Messiah: He is both God and man. That is indeed the main way God revealed Himself to mankind. See Hebrews 1:1-3.

Speaking of Messiah, there is a detailed and accurate description of what crucifixion was like, notably the crucifixion of Jesus. That is chapter 358.

There are 1001 chapters, corresponding to The 1001 Nights, a.k.a. The Arabian Nights. They average less than a page per chapter. Many are just one or two sentences. A few are photographs. As you may have already noticed, the chapters cover a variety of topics, but together they provide many of the infinite sides of the story.

Although the world stereotypes both Jews and Palestinians, Bassam seems to be more aware of this. Once when being interviewed for a television show, he felt his interviewers wanted him “to fit into their box of ideas” (312). From my own experience with the press when I was in the Coast Guard, I can identify with that experience.

Bassam would note that:

So many times people would come up to him after his lectures and say that they wished there were more like him. What do you mean? he would ask. Immediately they would realize what they had said and drop their heads. As if he didn’t encounter people like himself every single day, at every single angle [infinite angles?]. As if he were the only sort of Palestinian they could stomach. (382)

Prejudice is simply part of who we are.

Since one man served time in prison and the other in the military, there is a small amount of strong language.

There is so much more. Apeirogon is a work of art, but it is not precious or elitist. We do not have to get it all to get it.

As a reviewer I am left with two minor questions.

In chapter 121, writing about a German concentration camp, the book mentions a German lieutenant named Rahm. Corrie ten Boom’s book The Hiding Place tells about a conscience-stricken German Lt. Rahm when she was caught rescuing Jews and sent to concentration camps. Same man? A deliberate choice of name on McCann’s part?

One of the chapters on bird migration lists nearly forty reasons why six out of ten birds do not survive migration. I would be surprised if it is much different in the Old World, but in the Americas cats kill more birds than just about anything else. Why are cats not on McCann’s list?

It is a minor quibble over a major work.

Arthur Phillips. The Tragedy of Arthur. Random House, 2011.

The Tragedy of Arthur can be fun for those with a literary bent, especially those who enjoy Shakespeare or enjoy making fun of Shakespeare.

The author observes, quoting Moby-Dick:

“This absolute and unconditional adoration of Shakespeare has grown to be part of our Anglo Saxon superstition…Intolerance has come to exist in this matter. You must believe in Shakespeare’s unapproachability, or quit the country. But what sort of belief is this for an American?” I liked Moby-Dick until I read that quote. Now I love Moby-Dick. (95)¹

The author may be a bit jealous of Shakespeare and is trying to prove that he can write just as well as Shakespeare can.

We know this is going to be a little different because one of the first pages has the typical “Other works by” page. This has two authors listed: William Shakespeare, with a list of all his works including collaborations and lost works, and Arthur Phillips, with a list of the four titles under his name. Similarly the back matter includes the “About the Authors” page with two short paragraphs, one on each man. Immediately, we understand that much of this tale is going to be tongue in cheek.

This is really two stories. The first story is reminiscent of Tristram Shandy. If you have ever read or even flipped through that eighteenth century novel, you know that it purports to be an autobiography of Mr. Shandy. It is very discursive. Indeed Tristram is not even born until about a quarter of the way through the novel!

So we learn that Arthur Phillips’ family has discovered a lost play of Shakespeare, a folio edition printed in 1597 by a well-known London printer. Mr. Phillips has agreed to publish it if he can write the introduction. But the introduction is over 250 pages long, and in it he tries to show that the play is a forgery. Well, maybe he does.

The remaining hundred pages or so is the play attributed to Shakespeare.

You see, Arthur Phillips’ father is a forger. His father was attracted to his mother when he met her in college as soon as he learned her name: Mary Arden, the same as the maiden name of Shakespeare’s mother. Now Mary keeps this suitor at arm’s length because she has a bland but earnest boyfriend back home in Ely, Minnesota, by the name of Silvius. (Like the bland but earnest shepherd in As You Like It?)

Ely, Minnesota, is the gateway to the Boundary Waters region along the Canadian Border where Rainy River and the Lake of the Woods, made famous by Tim O’Brien, are located.

His father gets Silvius out of the way (this is the sixties) by forging a draft notice to him. Silvius arrives at boot camp in North Carolina, and no one can find any records, but it is obviously a genuine draft notice. After a few months of trying to decide what to do with him, the army gives him an honorable discharge, but by then Mary is engaged to Mr. Phillips. They will live in the Minneapolis area where Arthur becomes a Twins fan. At one point his father gives him a baseball autographed by Hall of Famer Rod Carew. Arthur later assumes it is, like most things from his father, a forgery.

Mr. Phillips really only figures in the life of Arthur and his twin sister Dana a when they are aged 5 to 8 and a bit when they are in their teens. The rest of the time he is in prison for various forgeries or only has visitation weekends because Mrs. Phillips divorces him after his second imprisonment when the kids are nine. Silvius is still patiently waiting, and she marries him on the rebound.

Both Arthur and Dana have identity crises partly related to the fact that their father is incarcerated. Phillips observes:

Adolescence produces all sorts of variations of incomplete emotional development; it’s the Island of Dr. Moreau of human personality. (45)

Dr. Moreau, who ran the island named for him in H. G. Wells’ sci-fi novel, experimented with people and animals, crossing them genetically and making half-men and half-beasts. (Crichton’s Next is in some ways merely an update of Dr. Moreau.)

So much for the thin background. Dana and Arthur are not unlike Viola and Sebastian in Twelfth Night. Like many twins, Arthur describes how close they identify with one another. It is really very moving.

They grow up. Like others with a distant or uninvolved father figure they both have some identity problems. Arthur is simply a cad. You would not want him around your sisters or daughters. Dana becomes a lesbian.

They do sometimes go out looking for women together. If see a woman they both find attractive, they make a friendly bet whether she is gay or straight. Eventually, after many years, Dana moves in with a woman whom Arthur is convinced is his soul mate. I suppose that would be Twelfth Night for the twenty-first century.

This could be considered the first tragedy of Arthur because he is lonely at the end. But this is hardly a tragedy. We are supposed to feel pity for the tragic hero, as we do for Hamlet or Othello or King Lear. All I can say about Arthur is from the musical Chicago: “He had it coming!” He does love his sister, but he is a cad.

He is amoral and seems to gloat about it. At one point he does admit, though, that “…the pleasure of being angry and right was (and still is) a delicious brain cocktail, and a moral license unrevokable until the mood passes.” (56) True enough!

Although I have skimmed over the plot of the Introduction of the book, this is not much of a spoiler. What is fun is reading between the lines about Shakespeare and the cleverness of Mr. Phillips’ forgeries. He gets even with someone whom he does not like by making a crop circle in his corn field one night when Arthur is ten. Everyone in southern Minnesota is talking about the alien visitation!

Gradually, we learn that Mr. Phillips was a talented artist but had trouble selling paintings. He started working for an insurance company by painting copies for its art-collecting clients. He learned his craft well.

Phillips notes the uneasy irony of his own occupation as a novelist. He also is creating a kind of forgery.

It also equates writing with a sort of con job (building illusions with a reader’s own imagination, then being far away when the pigeon realizes there’s nothing real at all in the experience). (79)

Mr. Phillips, Shakespeare fan that he is, reads Shakespeare out loud to the twins when they are young. All three of them can quote Shakespeare fluently. The last time Mr. Phillips is arrested, he is nearly sixty. He is penniless and is given a public defender. He is frustrated with her because she does not recognize Shakespeare. He complains that twenty or thirty years before if he quoted Shakespeare, a good lawyer would know what lines came next. Times are changing. (I think of my Great Uncle Jim who was a lawyer born around 1880. He quoted poetry frequently.)

There are allusions to many Shakespeare plays in the course of the story. Arthur even spends time in London and Venice. He is Jewish, so The Merchant of Venice strikes a chord with him. But even there it seems people do not understand him when he speaks of a pound of flesh. Of course, one could argue that Arthur is looking for about a hundred and twenty pounds of flesh at any given time.

Without giving too much of a spoiler, there is even a spot where the Introduction alludes to probably the most famous stage direction in Shakespeare and maybe in all theater: “Exit, pursued by a bear” (The Winter’s Tale 3.3.58). At one point he notes titles of numerous other classics which themselves allude to Shakespeare such as The Sound and the Fury and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

Dana becomes a stage actress. Some of the humor comes from the way she and other actors and directors interpret the same scene or character. For example, is Ophelia tragic or on the make like Gertrude? A recurring theme is that since there are few stage directions and no production notes, interpretations are largely up to the director and actors.

One example from personal experience: Usually A Midsummer Night’s Dream is played as a comedy. One of funniest productions of any play or film I have ever seen was done by Hartford Stage around 1989. Still, I once saw a version that played it like a horror film. With mischievous spirits, rivals threatening to kill each other, and a nighttime setting, one could do it that way. That production was not funny, nor was meant to be.

In his Introduction, the author notes that not all of Shakespeare’s plays were that great. Phillips notes that only recently have people thought Shakespeare might have had a hand in Edward III. I have read or at least watched some version of most of his plays, but I had never seen anyone do Henry VIII. I read it. There is probably a reason why no one performs it. It is pure plotless propaganda, kissing up to the queen.

While I do not recall Phillips mentioning Henry VIII, it fits in with some interpretations of the Arthur play. Many of Shakespeare’s history plays have troubled monarchs: Lear, Henry IV, Henry VI, the two Richards, Macbeth. These may have barely made it past the censors. Henry VIII might have been a sop to the government. And perhaps there was only one copy of The Tragedy of Arthur extant because it presents Arthur as merely lucky and barely competent (based on Holinshed) rather than the legendary hero of Camelot in many other stories. (The Introduction perhaps paints King Arthur as even less royal than the play itself.)

There are also questions about the provenance of other Shakespeare plays. Dana goes through a stretch of being mad at her father for abandoning the family by going to prison and develops a list of arguments why Shakespeare did not write the plays. At first she cannot make up her mind on whether Marlowe, Bacon, or the Earl of Oxford wrote them, but she settles on the Earl. She then imagines him having a Jewish catamite who helps him write the plays—the Earl knows politics and the Jew knows the Bible, together they nail the tales. (Technically, there were no Jews living in England between 1290 and 1656. You can look it up.)

Since there is a lot about who wrote any of the Shakespeare plays and about Mr. Phillips’ escapades…so, then, the obvious question is this: Is The Tragedy of Arthur folio a forgery?

To be or not to be, that is the question.

Have fun with that.

The last 110 pages are the purported Tragedy of Arthur by Shakespeare. It is awkward enough, no one would confuse it with Hamlet or Macbeth, or for that matter even Two Gentlemen of Verona, though it does borrow a little from that play. However, let’s face it, not every play Shakespeare wrote was a huge hit. The Tragedy of Arthur is certainly no worse than Henry VIII.

I should emphasize Phillips presents it as if it were a Shakespeare play. This is not an updated telling of a Shakespeare story like The Mayor of Casterbridge or A Thousand Acres. Nor is it a send-up like Pynchon’s “Fear and Loathing in Vienna.” The Tragedy of Arthur play is written in late sixteenth-century English iambic pentameter. It could probably pass for the era if not for Mr. Shakespeare himself.

Perhaps the most distinctive thing about this King Arthur story is that is nothing like most of them. No round table, no French knights. Indeed, the only recognizable names from most versions (Mallory, Tennyson, White, etc.) are Arthur, Mordred, and Uter (Uther). His queen’s name Guenher is close to Guinevere. Like many of Shakespeare’s historical plays, it is based on Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

At one point in his Introduction, Phillips notes that Prince Hal or Henry V could go in several directions, but ends up redeeming himself for the good of the country and crown. Arthur reminds us a little of the young Hal, only he is like the Phillips persona in the introduction, more of a womanizer. He is likely illegitimate, though Uter’s only son. He is surprised when he is made king, and he does try to do his best. So, yes, he dies fighting Mordred after killing him, which is pretty much universal in the Arthur legends.

Perhaps Phillips tries to show that anyone could write a Shakespeare-ish play. And the play is definitely more tragic than the Arthur Phillips in the Introduction. Together, the two parts do make a whole. Readers who have strong ideas about Shakespeare, positive or negative, should get a kick out of The Tragedy of Arthur.

Note
¹ I recall reading that Melville thought Shakespeare was overrated. At some point after he had already done some writing, he got a new pair of reading glasses. He had owned a set of Shakespeare plays, but it had small print. With his new spectacles, he developed a more positive view of the Bard, and used a few of his techniques in Moby-Dick. Lack of eyestrain does contribute to more enjoyable reading.

Daniel Overdorf. A Death Well Lived. Crosslink, 2020.

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the son of man is?” (Matthew 16:13)

It takes a little while to get into A Death Well Lived. There are a number of characters introduced and whom we follow, but it becomes clear that the story centers around one Lucius, a Roman centurion stationed in Caesarea in the Holy Land at the time of Christ.

Much of the dynamic in the story comes from the interaction between the Jewish residents of the Holy Land and their ruthless Roman rulers. Lucius himself practically kills a Jewish demonstrator in Caesarea. The man is holding a piece of bread, but it looks like a rock to Lucius. But, hey, he is only a Jew, one of many conquered peoples the Romans look down upon.

Also figuring in the story are Lucius’ common law wife Nona (Roman soldiers could not marry); Tullus and Paulla, their two children; Septimus, Lucius’ overbearing boss; Decius, Lucius’ longtime friend and fellow soldier; and Avitus, a Roman soldier with a Syrian background who has a helpful understanding of Hebrew customs. Pontius Pilate makes an appearance, and Jewish mobs in various places around Palestine are complaining and demonstrating against some of his policies.

That brings Lucius and his century (100 men) to Jerusalem. People are complaining about some of Pilate’s building projects that do not respect Jewish custom and law. More soldiers are needed to keep the peace there. Here we meet some important Jewish characters: Tobiah and Deborah, the victim of Lucius’ beating and his pregnant wife; Ephraim and Miriam, who operate a popular inn; and peripherally, the rabbi Jesus of Nazareth.

Because of the Roman perspective, the Roman-Jewish interaction, and Jesus in the background, this reader cannot help think of Ben-Hur. That is perhaps an unfair comparison, though. Ben-Hur is epic in scope. A Death Well Lived covers less than a year. While there are a couple of riots and plenty of conflict, much of the conflict in this new novel is internal. We see a gradual change in Lucius as he begins to see Jews as real people not all that different from him or anyone else.

Like Judah Ben-Hur, though, Lucius does encounter Jesus because they are both in Jerusalem during Passover. Jesus is observing the holiday and teaching his followers. Lucius is patrolling the streets to make sure that order is maintained.

Another novel that a reader might be reminded of is The Robe. The main character of that novel is a Roman soldier who wins Jesus’ robe in the dice game at the crucifixion (See Matthew 27:35, cf. Psalm 22:18). That also has much more scope than A Death Well Lived.

A Death Well Lived is not so much a sword and sandal epic as a historical novel focusing ultimately on the changes taking place in a battle-hardened Roman soldier as he witnesses the religion of the Jews and the works of Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps more so than either of those two classic novels, this confronts the reader with a very important question: Who is Jesus? What difference does it make? Or, as Jesus Himself asked, “Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:13)

Disclosure of Material: We received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through the BookCrash book review program, which requires an honest, though not necessarily positive, review.

Randy Petersen. The Printer and the Preacher. Nelson, 2015.

We recommend The Printer and Preacher to anyone who teaches American Literature or American History. It gives us some important clues as to what even today makes the United States different from other places. The author uses two important figures from eighteenth century America to illustrate his point: Benjamin Franklin, the printer; and George Whitefield, the preacher.

Petersen makes a reasonable case that Franklin and Whitfield were the first two American celebrities. Yes, there were early colonial founders like the Winthrops, William Penn, Lord Baltimore, Roger Williams, John Smith, and so on. There were some other writers like the Mathers and Jonathan Edwards, but they and their work tended to be localized. Franklin and Whitfield were the first names widely recognized among all of the thirteen colonies.

For years I have shared with my classes what Franklin said about Whitefield in his autobiography. Franklin admired and respected him, even if he did not always agree with him. But what is written in his autobiography does not tell the full story of their relationship.

Petersen notes that their relationship was not only cordial but symbiotic. Franklin made money selling Whitfield’s sermons and reporting on his travels. Whitefield preached at evangelistic rallies in every colony from New Hampshire to Georgia. (Readers may recall that Maine was part of Massachusetts before 1818, and Florida was Spanish during most of the Colonial period.) There was probably no contemporary figure, except for the King, better known in the colonies than Whitfield. No one except for the King made the news more.

Except for, possibly, Franklin. His Poor Richard’s Almanac was a best seller, and as he began his scientific experiments and political involvement, he became more famous. Petersen reminds us, for example, it was Franklin who coined the terms positive and negative for electrical charges along with his various electrical experiments and inventions like the Franklin stove and bifocal glasses.

Whitfield also stuck up for Franklin. In the 1760s when Franklin was in London representing several colonies, he opposed the Stamp Act and was able to work out a compromise to repeal it. Many in the colonies thought he still gave up too much with the compromise, but Whitefield wrote a letter that was reprinted in many newspapers defending Franklin’s actions. Thanks largely to this letter, the controversy over Franklin’s actions blew over.

In his autobiography Franklin tells how he supported the building of a protected theater that could be used by speakers of all religions. Whitefield would use that and become a supporter. That lecture hall became the foundation of the University of Pennsylvania. Both men are included when naming its founders. Both men would correspond with each other until Whitefield’s death in 1770.

Whitefield was far and away the best-known itinerant evangelist of the Great Awakening. He was a personal friend of the Wesley brothers and corresponded with Jonathan Edwards. He was a native of England and traveled all over the British Isles, but he spent a lot of time in North America and died in 1770 in Newburyport, Massachusetts, where he is buried.

What distinguished him in this time period was that, though he was ordained by the Anglican Church, he did not promote a particular denomination or theology. He tried to emphasize the necessity of committing to Jesus Christ, regardless of church affiliation. That was something new and different. It would become the precursor of many evangelists and movements in America. I am reminded of a Christian men’s organization which had a song that said, “I don’t care what church you belong to, as long as at Calvary you stand.” For probably a century or so, that idea would only take root in America.

Franklin liked that about Whitefield. His autobiography tells us that by the age of thirty he had given up his deistic ideas, but he said he could never join a particular church because do so would seem divisive. Petersen does note also, though Franklin came to understand that God took an active part in history, he was unsure about Jesus’ divinity. Still he would promote religious freedom. By the time the United States’ Constitution was ratified, most Americans acknowledged the idea of religious liberty. We have both the printer and the preacher to thank for that.

Petersen also notes something else very distinctive about the American colonies. There was no established aristocracy. In England, the concept of a gentleman was someone who did not have to work for a living. He could live off rents, investments, and inheritances. While there were men who tried to live that way in America, Franklin showed there was perhaps a better and more honorable way: work hard. Even today, if America has an immigration problem, it is primarily because people want freedom and want a chance to succeed in life. Franklin in his writings and in his life showed how this was possible. While he did know how to relax, he was never idle for very long.

Plymouth, Massachusetts, bills itself as America’s Hometown. It has a good case for that title: early religious tolerance, no state church, and a representative form of government patterned after the Congregational churches. But if you were going to speak of colonial celebrities who both influenced and demonstrated directions that the English speaking colonies in North America would take, take a look at The Printer and the Preacher.

G. K. Chesterton. Eugenics and Other Evils. 1922. Amazon Digital, 2012.

G K. Chesterton is one of those writers who is frequently quoted but seldom read—except perhaps for fans of Father Brown mysteries. Eugenics and Other Evils still has a lot to say, even if contemporary readers might not know some of the politicians and journalists he refers to.

Eugenics and Other Evils still deserves to be quoted. Chesterton here is pointed and logical. It also might make the reader a bit wistful. This 1922 book ends on a positive note that the Allies defeated the Germans, the source of Nietzschean philosophy and the pseudo-science of eugenics. We in the Western world have learned our lesson.

Except, of course, that we didn’t. We had to fight a Second World War against enemies that took eugenics to an extreme unimagined by the Kaiser and his Prussian professors.

Today’s reader can easily note how much of Chesterton’s argument today applies to abortion. Abortion, at least in the West, is a holdover from the eugenics movement. While most abortions in the United States stem from male chauvinism—the father convinces the mother to abort because he wants to avoid responsibility—we know that many abortions come because the infant’s genes indicate some kind of abnormality or the mother is persuaded she cannot afford to raise it. Those were both arguments the eugenists used.

In Chesterton’s day, the discussion included the idea of government-sanctioned marriages and other techniques for reducing the number of lower class people having children. He points out that poverty does not necessarily mean bad genes, or even a lower class. Many people in England can point to nobility somewhere in their family trees. Not that that means superior genes, but simply that poverty or wealth of parents is not a way to predict the financial status of the children.

One of the ostensible reasons given in the Roe vs. Wade ruling which overturned abortion laws in our country was that abortion would reduce the number of poor people. It has not. Chesterton would say:

I know it is praised with high professions of idealism and benevolence, with silver-tongued rhetoric about motherhood and happier posterity. But that is only because evil is always flattered, as the Furies were called “The Gracious Ones.” (3)

Chesterton makes us chuckle as well. For example the term eugenics itself (“good or blessed birth or race”) is not an accurate term for an opponent to use. He simply notes that chivalrous is not the French for “horsy.” (The root of the word comes from the French cheval, which means “horse.”)

He also notes something that Orwell would develop in more detail in his essay “Politics and the English Language”:

Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of translating one into the other…

Eugenists are as passive in their statements as they are active in their experiments. Their sentences always enter tail first, and have no subject, like animals without heads. (22)

This sounds so much like Orwell; I wonder if Chesterton influenced him. It no different today when abortion promoters speak of their work.

He notes that there is a problem any time someone proposes a reform that calls for more government:

Autocrats…are those who give us generally that every modern reform will “work” all right because they will be there to see.

The problem is that most times a law “will do as a dog does” and “obey its own nature.”

Chesterton says that because eugenics disrupts the family and raises moral questions, those who propose it are at heart anarchists. He notes that historically anarchists are rare. They are not the same as rebels—even the devil expects his followers to recognize his authority. Eugenists and their pro-abortion allies recognize no authority except a vague subjectivity. I wonder what he would say about postmodernism! We are reminded of Judges 21:25.

Unfortunately, this sense of anarchy has taken root in the West even without the extremes of death camps, forced sterilization, and government-sanctioned marriages. Chesterton notes that this could lead to a problem in sexual relations. It has. As I write, many people maintain that sex is not something someone is born with but is based on subjective feelings and behavior. Among other things, it results in a lack of self-control, something we seem to read about every day in the news.

Anarchy…is the loss of self-control which can return to normal. It is not anarchy when men are permitted to begin uproar, extravagance, experiment, peril. It is anarchy when people cannot end these things. (11, emphasis in original)

“The modern world is insane, not so much because it admits the abnormal as because it cannot recover the normal.” (11) As I write this, a lawsuit in my state is trying to get boys who identify as girls to not compete against girls in high school sports. The local newspaper puts “biologically male” in quotation marks whenever it uses that term, as if to say alleged or so-called biological males. Anarchy, indeed.

Just as the newspaper editors ask “what is maleness?” so Chesterton says that the anarchist will ask “what is liberty?”

It leaves the question free to disregard any liberty, in other words to take any liberties. The very thing he says is an anticipatory excuse for anything he may choose to do. (65)

When Pontius Pilate shrugged off his sentence upon Jesus of Nazareth, he said something very similar: “What is truth?” No matter, he could do what he wanted.

Chesterton notes that “The thing that really is trying to tyrannise through government is Science.” He calls Science “the creed that is really levying tithes and capturing schools.” (34)

If it means the imposition of by the police of a widely disputed theory, incapable of final proof—then our priests are not prosecuting, but our doctors are. (34)

When we have Science trying to shape politics, we not only get eugenics, we get Socialism. Neither eugenics nor Socialism “destroy inequality.” They destroy security. “The ideal of liberty is lost, and the ideal of Socialism is changed, till it is a mere excuse for the oppression of the poor.” (72)

In spite of our historical record of fighting against the National Socialists in World War II and the subsequent obvious shortcomings and problems with other socialist societies, it seems like many in the West have not recognized that Socialism does not work in the long run. And the poor suffer the most under it.

There is much more. Chesterton reminds us that the poor and disabled are as human as anyone else. That argument still stands. May our liberty stand as well.