The Last of the Mohicans. A tale of adventure, resolve . . . and scathing invective heaped upon the Hurons! Racial derogation isn’t easy to read. When some character in a novel slurs a people group, it makes you wince. That doesn’t mean the story isn’t worth reading. It means we need to know how […]
Category: books
Characterization, Beowulf style
Whether rearing children, growing your soul, or writing a novel, it’s hard to beat this bright line from Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf: Behavior that’s admired is the path to power among people everywhere (page 5).
Love and war
Those who discover love in the crucible of testing see through its facade. Genuine love is real. It has a will and finds a way. It is strong and good. I was moved by these expressions of love from a platoon of soldiers in Afghanistan (see War, by Sebastian Junger). Observe the weight behind these words: […]
When writing for young men
Society can give its young men almost any job and they’ll figure how to do it. They’ll suffer for it and die for it and watch their friends die for it, but in the end, it will get done. That only means that society should be careful about what it asks for.* When writing or publishing […]
The feel of a book
When an author makes you feel, she has you. I remember reading a manuscript, enjoying the characters, and wondering where the story would lead. Then, in the middle of a conversation, one of them cocked his head. Something wasn’t right. A noise that shouldn’t be there. I felt a chill. Suddenly, those wonderful characters — high […]
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