"The Colour Out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft and Sara Barkat

I’m a words guy. I’ve always been a words guy. Yep, I collected comic books, including Classics Illustrated, and I was an avid fan of Mad Magazine, the operating manual for adolescent boys from the 1950s to the 1970s. And, of course, there was television and movies. But still, I was a words guy – all through high school, studying journalism in college, and making a general career of words. 

The arrival of audiobooks and graphic books barely made a dent in my consciousness. Their fans are legion, but I was never among them, although I do enjoy my Kindle e-books (more words). But two things happening almost simultaneously pitched me headfirst into graphic books. First, a friend recommended a new book on the friendship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien called The Mythmakers. I ordered it because I implicitly trusted her judgment on books. When it arrived, I discovered it was a graphic book, combined both non-fiction and informed fiction. Reluctantly, I read it. Enthusiastically, I read it right to the end. I was blown away.

 

Almost within hours of my graphic book initiation, TS Poetry Press announced a graphic version of The Colour Out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), the famous writer of horror and gothic stories. Lovecraft’s original version was all text; this new edition was illustrated, and a bit more than illustrated, by Sara Barkat. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings 

 

Triptychs: Interview with Poet Megan Merchant – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

How France uncovered the mystery of the forbidden photos of Nazi-occupied Paris – Eleanor Beardsley and Nick Spicer at NPR.

The Sweet Agony of Waiting

A publisher asks to see your full manuscript. You read it three more times, trying to eradicate all typos, missing words, unclear passages, and confusing lines. You attach it to a politely professional email, which you hope disguises what you’re experiencing in equal measure: hope, fear, and anxiety. 

You hit send.

 

And then you wait.

 

Waiting may be as much or more exhausting than the writing itself, but it is a fact of life in book publishing.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog. 

 

Photograph by David Taffett via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Samuel Pepys at St Olave’s – Spitalfields Life.

 

Meaning in Mystery: Why Noir Speaks in a Morally Ambiguous World – Adam Hill at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Mississippi Heat: Stops along the Vicksburg Campaign – Nathan Provost at Emerging Civil War.

 

“The Rejected Member’s Wife,” poem by Thomas Hardy – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poets and Poems: Robert McDowell and "Sweet Wolf"

Like most people, I love a good story. But I’m a sucker for good stories written in poetry. One of my favorite works to reread is Robin Robertson’s The Long Take, an entire noir novel written in poetic form. 

I hadn’t previously read poetry by Robert McDowell, so I closely read poet Chad Abushanab’s introduction to McDowell’s Sweet Wolf: Selected and New Poems. Two phrases leaped off the page at me – lyrical poetry and, even better, narrative poetry.

 

And I thought, “A storyteller!”

 

I was not to be disappointed. Not at all. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The Unsung Shakespeare – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Prompt Celebration! The Colour Out of Space – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Sonnets for Michelangelo – 41 – Vittoria Colanna at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

That’s My Heart Right There – Willie Perdomo at Every Day Poets.

 

“First Time In,” poem by Ivor Gurney – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

"The Mythmakers” by John Hendrix

It was a Facebook post that did it. A fellow book lover recommended The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien by John Hendrix. I highly value her judgment and opinion, and I flipped over to Amazon, pulled up the book, glanced at the price, and ordered it. I went for the hardcover, because my friend’s description sounded like it would be a keeper. 

I didn’t read the details.

 

When the book arrived, I opened it up to discover it was a graphic work. It’s officially a graphic novel, but there’s enough actual statements by both Lewis and Tolkien (and fictional comments informed by what they said) to make The Mythmakers a blend of fiction, non-fiction, and graphic design.

 

I was not a fan of graphic novels. There’s nothing wrong with them, but I have never been seriously interested in them.

 

Until now.

 

The Mythmakers is a “knocked-it-out-of-the-ballpark” kind of work.

 

Almost reluctantly, I began to read, my lack of interest almost noticeable. Until it disappeared. And then I devoured it. 

 

Hendrix tells the story of how Lewis and Tolkien had World War I experience in common, how they met at Oxford, how they became friends, and how their friendship, or “fellowship,” as Hendrix describes it, transformed fantasy literature forever. With Lewis’s encouragement, Tolkien would likely have never published The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Because of pointed criticism by Tolkien, Lewis almost didn’t publish The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Their friendship grew and remained solid, until the years of World War II. And then, to the sorrow of both men, it grew strained. But they continued to support one another’s work.

 

The Mythmakers uses a journey of two fictional characters, a lion (shades of Aslan) and a wizard (shades of Gandalf), through the story of the friendship. And it works. It works beautifully. I laughed, I grinned, I nodded my head, and at one point I even choked up and wiped away tears. The book is that good. Yes, I knew the story of their friendship, but I hadn’t seen it visually portrayed in illustration like it is here.

 

And while The Mythmakers doesn’t make a major case out of it, it does agree with my own assessment after reading so much about both men: Lewis was the truer friend.

 

John Hendrix, the illustrated man

Hendrix has written and illustrated numerous books, including The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler, Drawing Magic: Discovering Yourself in a Sketchbook, Miracle Man: The Story of Jesus, and others. He’s also created a comics collection entitled The Holy Ghost: A Spirited Comic and produced illustrations for numerous comic books and publications. He was named Distinguished Educator in the Arts for 2024 by the Society of Illustrators and currently serves as the Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art and the founding Chair of the MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture program at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. He lives with his family in suburban St. Louis (in a suburb so close to mine that we could be neighbors). 

 

The Mythmakers may be aimed at middle grade readers, but it offers a great deal to readers of all ages. And it helped me, or shoved me, away from my apathy about graphic novels.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Best – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

An Astronomer Was Able to Pinpoint the Mystery Location Depicted in a Van Gogh Masterpiece – Jackie Appel at Popular Mechanics.

 

All the Saints, and All the Ones They Leave Behind – Logan Hoffman at Plough Quarterly on Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin.

 

10 Composers to Listen to While Studying – Andrew Benson Brown at The Epoch Times.

 

The Pubs of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

Theft

After Exodus 20:15 and Luke 18:18-30 

It raises a question,

telling us not to steal,

the question being is it

really that simple? If

we don’t shoplift or

rob or burgle or take

what isn’t ours, that

fulfills the command,

right? Theft, however,

comes in many forms,

the most obvious being

the taking of something

we don’t own, something

physical. But there are

other things that can be

stolen, like credit for

something, a reputation

or good name. An opportunity.

A reward. A friend, A place.

A position. And more than

this, there is the theft 

of not giving, of ignoring

a need while having the means

to meet it, turning our faces

away as if we never saw it,

so it doesn’t exist. Remember:

thou shall not steal. Thou

shall not take what isn’t

yours. That shall not ignore

the need you can meet.

 

Photograph by De An Sun via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

“Queen-Anne’s Lace,” poem by William Carlos Williams – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Difficult, Possibly Unfixable Lot of Chronic Illness… in This Life – Jess Habib at The Gospel Coalition.

Saturday Good Reads - Nov. 9, 2024

As you can tell from often-included links here at Saturday Good Reads, I am a subscriber to The Free Press. It’s edited by former New York Times staffer Bari Weiss, who quit the Times when it was clear it had abandoned journalism, not unlike most of the legacy media (print and television). The Free Press still practices traditional journalism, ignores sacred cows, doesn’t make itself an extension of a political party, tackles serious and often underreported stories, and doesn’t think its most important audience is itself. Weiss was one of the journalists who reported on the Twitter files, when Elon Musk opened them up, and we all got to see just how much the major social media took their marching orders from the federal government. So, if you were a Free Press reader, the outcome of the Tuesday’s election was no surprise. 

As more information about the COVID pandemic makes its way into the public domain, we’re now seeing some of the damage that was done, how many dissident voices turned out to be correct, and how little of what was forced on us turned out to be based on science. Matt Taibbi at Racket News discovered that, despite the warnings of the head of the CDC and the President, there was no “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” William Briggs at Science Is Not the Answer considers what the panic did science.

 

Did you know that there’s an annual convention for the fans of Nancy Drew mysteries? Jadie Stillwell and Nicole Blackwell at Literary Hub attended one to find out what it was all about.

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

A Warning About Having Children – Jessica Burke at Story Warren.

 

Donald and the Pincer: 'Why did this happen?' and other obvious questions – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

Israel

 

Last Night’s Pogrom in Amsterdam – David de Bruijn at The Free Press.

 

Poetry

 

Cosy – Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Auden’s Island: The poet in the postwar era – Alan Jacobs at The Hedgehog Review.

 

“A Chubby-Cheeked, Shabby-Blazered Colossus.” How Dylan Thomas Influenced Generations of Poets – Dai George at Literary Hub.

 

“A Poet to His Baby Son,” poem by James Weldon Johnson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Origin Story – Kelly Belmonte at Kelly’s Scribbles.

 

Faith

 

Nadya Williams and the Good News – Jon Schaff at Front Porch Republic.

 

How to Pray After Election Day – John Pletcher at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

All Will Be Well – Andrew Klavan at The New Jerusalem.

 

The Church’s Unsung Hero: The Sunday School Teacher – Trevis Wax t The Gospel Coalition.

 

British Stuff

 

Why was I the only reporter? On the sentencing of the Rotherham grooming gang – Charlie Peters at The Critic Magazine.

 

We Shall Fight in the Buttery: Oxford’s War 1939–1945 by Ashley Jackson – review by Nicholas Rankin at Literary Review.

 

Writing and Literature

 

A Name Nerd’s Guide to Agatha Christie – Naomi Kaye at CrimeReads.

 

B&N on Track to Open 60 Bookstores This Year – Jim Milliot at Publisher’s Weekly.

 

News Media 

 

The Game Really Is Up for the Mainstream Media (Just Like Last Time) – Stephen McAlpine.

 

Nah Neh Nah – Vaya Con Dios

 Painting: Portrait of a Man Readings, oil on canvas by Paul Kotlarevsky (1883-1950).

Five words

After Exodus 20:14 and Matthew 5:27-28 

A message telegraphed

in five words, miscroscoped

like so many messages

into summary simplicity,

meaning more than

its words say. That word,

adultery, means what it

says, its formal definition

of being unfaithful to the one

selected for you, the one 

you loved, the one who loved

you, the one provided to you

to come alongside to be one,

one flesh, the oneness pointing

to the kingdom.

 

And it means more, a synonym

for faithfulness in life, faithful

in all things, to all people,

faithful to your spouse,

your children, your family,

your parents, your friends,

your church, your work,

your society, your culture,

your God. An impossible

standard, only brought

to reality by the One.

 

Photograph by Clay Banks via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Four Years After Our Hardest Day – Tim Challies.

 

The School of Faith – When God’s Ways Are a Mystery – Sarah Walton at Set Apart.

 

The Flight from God, & a Flight into the Country – Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Psalm 23 – Megan Willome.