Funny how freedomista books can turn up out of the blue, disguised as something else. Two such landed in my hold box at the library this week.
I went online, searching for the parody The Dangerous Book for Dogs. In the mysterious ways of the library’s search engine, the words “dangerous” and “dogs” popped up a few other titles, as well. Children’s books. Hm, I thought.
Pretty soon both Dangerous and two other titles were waiting for me. While I expected to be just mildly entertained (because a good kid’s book is a good book, and usually easy on the brain), I was blown away by a pair of freedomista stories.
Grk is a small black-and-white mutt found in the streets of London by independent 12-year-old Timothy Malt. Tim’s fussy, workaholic parents won’t even let him bring the dog in their house, and when they learn that Grk’s owner, a 12-year-old girl named Natascha Raffifi, has left London and returned to her native Stanislavia (an obscure nation somewhere near Russia), they determine to take the dog to a kill shelter.
Tim, who has a finely developed sense of right and wrong, decides that’s quite wrong. What’s right is to return Grk to young Natascha, no matter where she may be. So off he goes with the dog to Stanislavia. He is undeterred in his efforts to restore the dog to her — even when he learns that the girl and her family have been arrested by the evil Colonel Zinfandel, who has overthrown Stanislavia’s government. Zinfandel now holds the girl and her brother in prison and unbeknownst to them has killed their parents.
Tim lets nothing stop him — not Authority, not border crossing procedures, not carefully staged governmental PR events, not even the fact that flying a real helicopter isn’t exactly like “flying” one via computer simulation.
Adults will recognize … well, a certain lack of regard for reality. Kids should have a blast. And there were a couple of scenes that, if they appeared in a more conventional, explicit freedom novel, would have you cheering the courage and integrity of the characters. What the heck; they’re worth a cheer here, also.
A Dog Called Grk turns out to be book one of a growing series of comic adventure books featuring Tim, Grk, Natascha, and her older brother Max. And I say let me at ‘em!
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The second book is entirely different. Stormy is hyper-realistic. It’s also old enough to be called a classic. It was originally published in 1959, the 46th (and final) novel by outdoorsman and children’s author Jim Kjelgaard.
Kjelgaard (whose most famous work was Big Red, which became a Disney movie) believed you should never talk down to children, that in fact you had to live up to their expectations. And he does in this ultimate guy book.
Teenager Allan Marley is living alone in subartic wilderness. He and his father once earned their living guiding hunters who came to their lodge. But now his hot-tempered father is in prison for nearly beating a neighbor to death, and the neighbor’s vengeful family has cut off vehicle access to the lodge so hunters no longer come. Allan survives by hunting, fishing, and raising his own crops. He earns money by trapping and selling pelts, but his funds are rapidly diminishing.
Then, as winter sets in, early and harsh, Allan discovers a magnificent mixed-breed retriever, wounded (but dauntless) in the snow and ice. He learns that the dog is an “outlaw,” to be shot on sight for having attacked its last master. But Allan quickly realizes the dog, which he names Stormy, is not vicious at all, but an independent soul like himself, whose trust must be won and who will tolerate no mistreatment.
One of the things I enjoyed about Stormy is that, even though Allan interacts frequently with people in the nearby town, including authority figures like the local game warden, no one ever questions his right to be on his own or suggests that he needs any help or care. Everyone — including Allan himself — implicitly understands that he’s perfectly capable.
The novel is as much survival manual as story; you may get more information about wilderness living than you really want to know. But there are valuable lessons here, including think rationally and don’t panic even when a situation looks dire. Oh, and there’s a decent, if thin, plot in there, too.
Stormy is available via Amazon, but you can also read it free online via Project Gutenberg Canada.
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The Dangerous Book for Dogs (a comic twist on the famous Dangerous Book for Boys) turned out to be entertaining — anything from howlingly funny to mildly lame and doggily gross. But A Dog Called Grk and Stormy were the real prizes of the week’s book haul.
Speaking of creepy: Skype. It could have been very non-creepy. But it’s a M*******t product; so what can you say? It’s creepy. (H/T Wendy McElroy)
Oh, that laugh-a-minute IRS. Turns out they also gave supposedly “private” info on conservative groups to a liberal group. And there’s so much more of this tale still to come out. Does Big O really think it can be hushed up with a couple of IRS resignations?
I’ve been meaning to do something deep and profound with that excellent PBS piece on the Stockholm Syndrome and money printing. Since I’m not brilliant this week, I’ll just link for the edification of anybody who hasn’t already seen it. Good one, definitely.
Dan Brown’s got a new potboiler coming out. I like Dan Brown. I wish I could boil the pot like he does. Critics disagree. One says so in a familiar voice. :-)
Okay, so we’ve all heard about how the IRS illegally targeted tea party and related groups around the 2012 election. And they are so very, very sorry. And we’ve heard how they were actually targeting them for much longer than they originally admitted. And it’s no big news because the IRS has been a political tool since it was only the irs and hadn’t earned its capital letters yet, so you have to wonder what everyone’s getting so flapped about. What’s really mindboggling is that any reporter or editor could quote this with a straight face: “…the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias.” Wow. Orwell! Thou should’st be living at this hour.
So, is the movie of Ender’s Game going to be good? The trailer has possibilities. But I was never a fan of the book. Sorry, Orson Scott Card; you always put me to sleep. Doesn’t look like a sleepy film, though.
Anybody hereabouts use Jitsi? A friend’s working on a project with it and recommended it. But I don’t do any of the things it’s noted for (online chat, video or VOIP calls), so I dunno. He says it’s got super-good encryption.
I watched Les Miserables earlier this week. I had never seen the stage musical or even heard any of its songs. Although I read Victor Hugo’s book many moons ago, back then I probably would have simplistically considered Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman in the film) the “good guy” and his relentless pursuer Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe) the “bad guy.”
Watching the movie, I was struck instead by how much alike they are. Both are diligent, dutiful men. Both have an extreme sense honor, honesty, and justice. Each believes he’s doing God’s work and refuses to be deterred from doing it, no matter what the cost or danger.
The one thing that divides them is that Valjean has to break the law to live as a good man. And Javert — to whom the law is a sacred principle — absolutely can’t conceive that Valjean, a lifelong lawbreaker, could possibly be a good man.
He repeatedly refers to Valjean as dark, evil, thieving and dangerous. He asserts that bad men like Valjean never change. Even after Valjean has saved his life, he calls him a devil; after that he just can’t understand what kind of “devil” Valjean is.
And of course, Outlaws like Valjean are dangerous — to the systems men like Javert stand for. And perhaps all the more dangerous when they’re as strong and principled as Valjean.
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In the opening scene, when Valjean is being paroled after 19 years on a prison slave gang, Javert insists on calling him “24601″ (his prison number), refusing to give him his name, no matter how strongly Valjean asserts his identity. (Is that familiar, or what?)
He’s not only reminding Valjean “You’re a prisoner forever,” he’s telling him, “To me, you’re not even human.”
In his final moment in the story, Javert, realizing that Valjean is truly something that doesn’t fit into his rigid, law-and-order worldview, can’t bear to live with the revelation. He can’t change. He can’t flex. He can’t function.
And of course one key to Javert is that, while Valjean was born a peasant, Javert himself was born to a prisoner in a jail.
So Javert, who perceives shame in being so lowborn, gains all his personal validity from one thing: the state. Specifically the state in the form of its laws. Without their surity, he’s nothing. He’s extinguished.
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Aside from inflexibile attachment to false beliefs, the problem with being Javert — a hauntingly contemporary problem — is that even if law were a good thing in theory, being a rigid law enforcer in an unjust society, is a terrible thing.
Unlike the honorable Javert, to “control crime” today’s law enforcers constantly commit crimes. Like Javert, they serve as functionaries to those who obliterate the greatest universal principles of justice in rigid, fanatical pursuit of unjust laws.
The more that modern-day Javerts and their masters subvert justice, the more dangerous they perceive We the Outlaws to be. Because we see as clearly as Jean Valjean did that law never defines justice. That in an unjust society like France’s in 1832 or ours now, defying or ignoring law is the true course of justice.
If they understood what was going on, they’d see that we don’t threaten them (no matter how often or forcefully they define us as criminals and “domestic terrorists”). We threaten their flawed and rigid worldview.
There’s nothing new in this observation, I know. It was just intriguing, and moving, to see it played out so plainly on the big screen.
And of course, while Javert eventually did the honorable thing (which I’m trying not to spoil too badly for anyone who hasn’t seen or read Les Miserables), the Javerts who govern us are more likely to take an opposite course.
