Month: May 2013

Review: ‘Inferno’ by Dan Brown

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, reviews6 Comments

InfernoThree things are clear about Dan Brown’s novels: The reviews don’t matter because fans are more addicted to them than drugs. Years from now, his fiction will comprise the body of work most-often associated with the spate of globe-spanning puzzle novels linking historic events to  modern day criminal plots, even though the form was pioneered by Katherine Neville in The Eight. And, while his style continues to evolve, every book he writes will forever be chasing the sensation of The Da Vinci Code.

Inferno is another Robert Langdon thriller that mixes exotic locations (Florence and Venice) and ancient symbols and texts (Dante and The Divine Comedy) with a world shaking danger (the threat of a plague). Brown uses an interesting plot device here: Landgon wakes up in a Florence hospital with a head wound and retrograde amnesia. He has no idea why he’s in Florence and who may or may not be trying to kill him. (It becomes clear before he leaves the hospital room that somebody is.)

He must simultaneously solve the puzzle of symbols linking a prospective plague threat from a genetic engineer concerned about reducing the world’s population and the personal puzzle about his nightmarish dreams and how they’re connected to the story’s prospective heroes and villains. While solving the puzzle, Langdon and Dr. Sienna Brooks find numerous secret doorways and panels, life threatening moments and people who are determined to stop them for reasons as yet unknown.

In the past, Brown has been criticized by using endless historical and cultural monologues from Langdon and others to fill secondary characters in on the importance of historical events and their related symbolism. Obviously, this device was used as a way of telling the readers how centuries old stories and symbols played into the solution of an urgent problem of the present day.

Brown has toned down those monologues a great deal in Inferno and provided dialogue that more naturally fits into a story with one chase scene after another. You will no longer find five-hundred-word Langdon lectures being delivered while the bad guys are only seconds away. You will find a lot of Florence and Venice travelogue.

Brown describes the streets, museums, and ancient buildings in exhaustive detail. Imagine being chased across a town by the bad guys while having the luxury to notice every building, monument and street corner along the way, including those that don’t pertain to the story. The descriptions slow down the action but are easy to skip.

The descriptions also serve the plot because they tie into Dante and to the mad scientist who’s a Dante aficionado. The travelogues allow physical time to pass in the novel so that Langdon will have an opportunity to process the symbolism as well as the returning snippets of his fragmented memory.

Brown has done a good job stirring the characters into an ever-changing  mix of people who–at any given moment–might be trustworthy or untrustworthy. The characters’ motivations and allegiances aren’t engraved in stone. The novel’s over-arching themes are the dangers of overpopulation to humankind’s survival and whether or not one should use cutting-edge advances in genetic engineering to “fix” the problem before Mother Nature solves it by purging the planet of a lot of people.

Since the themes are real, they add a compelling dose of prospective reality to a story filled with symbols, iconography, Italian art and architecture, and the multiple meanings of Dante’s levels of hell. For Langdon and the other characters, a real or figurative hell may well be the story’s destination. Brown, I suspect, hopes readers will ponder whether hell is also Earth’s destiny.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of contemporary fantasy novels, including the recently release story of love and destiny, “The Seeker.”

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Navy to Scrap Historic Aircraft Carrier – 2015 UPDATES (now in Port of Brownsville)

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn history, USS Ranger9 Comments
Ranger - Wikipedia Photo
Ranger – Wikipedia Photo

“The seventh USS Ranger (CV/CVA-61) is one of four Forrestal-class supercarriers built for the US Navy in the 1950s. Although all four ships of the class were completed with angled decks,Ranger had the distinction of being the first US carrier built from the very beginning as an angled deck ship.” – Wikipedia (See continuing updates at the end of this post.)

In matters of war, I am a pacifist.

That said, I believe our troops merit our support whether or not the war they’re fighting in is popular or not.

I also think history and historical artifacts, objects and memorabilia are important, for they help communicate the stories of other eras. It’s been a pleasure working with museums as a grant writer and as a collections manager and seeing first hand how excited people can get when shown historic equipment, documents and photographs.

RangerPosterI served aboard the USS Ranger (CVA-61) during the Vietnam War. The war was probably the country’s most unpopular war. When I appeared in public wearing my uniform, I was intentionally bumped into on the street, spat on, and called a baby killer. Yet our history and memories of that time must be preserved.

So, in matters of history, especially those that focus on museums and other educational experiences, I am an activist. In Charleston, I have seen the displays on the USS Yorktown and I have seen the reactions of tourists and school groups as they toured the flight deck, the hangar deck, the mess decks, bridge and ready rooms of the old ship.

When the USS Ranger Foundation was formed in Oregon with the hope of following the examples of those who saved the USS Yorktown in Charleston and the USS Midway in San Diego as museums, I was happy to join up even though I don’t have the financial means to donate money nor the proximity to the ship and selected museum site to volunteer.

Ranger in 1961 - Kemon01 photo on Flickr
Ranger in 1961 – Kemon01 photo on Flickr

First, the educational opportunities here are immense. It’s one thing to read about military history. It’s quite another to walk through a fort, battlefield or restored ship. Aircraft carriers have evolved since the Vietnam War—I can hardly even recognize the modern navy uniform. As I write this, there have been tests of flying drones off of carriers rather than expensive manned aircraft. As a museum, Ranger could have been a piece of history on the Columbia River at the donated site in Fairview for many years to come.

Second, museums and other cultural tourism sites bring dollars and jobs into communities. Many studies have been done showing that a tourist destination such as the USS Ranger can bring in a higher percentage of every tourist dollar than other attractions.

Apparently this is not to be

USS Ranger Public Affairs Office on the 03 level. I am second from the right.
USS Ranger Public Affairs Office on the 03 level. I am second from the right here in 1968.

I salute the long hours and dedicated efforts of the volunteers and directors of the USS Ranger Foundation. But I think I missed a memo.

The application process for the acquisition of a decommissioned navy ship is difficult, expensive and lengthy. Unfortunately, the Foundation’s application was rejected by the Navy last October. (See Foundation to Fight NAVSEA Decision to Scrap Ranger) At that time, the Foundation was looking for ways to have that decision reversed.

Over the Christmas holidays, the Foundation said that constraints were keeping them from having more time to develop their application. Here’s where I missed the memo, I think.

I never heard what those constraints were, what (if anything) was missing or incomplete in the Foundation’s original application, or whether or not the support of influential people in and out of government could influence the Navy to provide more time, reconsider, or otherwise work with the Foundation to save the ship rather than scrapping the ship.

rangerlogoNow, the Foundation is looking for another ship. That’s probably a reasonable backup approach. Nonetheless, I think we need to know:

  • Why the application was rejected.
  • What, if anything, could be done to make the application acceptable.
  • Who, if anyone, could be enlisted to garner political and public attention to urge the Navy to delay the scrapping schedule and,
  • Who, if anyone, could raise additional funds and increased public support within the State of Oregon to save the ship and bring it to the Portland area.

We don’t know any of these things. Perhaps, in knowing them, we would see that placing a historic aircraft carrier in a Columbia River museum site had too many insurmountable obstacles in it to ever succeed even if the navy waited five more years or ten more years.

A-4 Skyhawk landing in 1980 - Kookaburra2011 photo on flickr
A-4 Skyhawk landing in 1980 – Kookaburra2011 photo on flickr

I have worked with museums and I have seen the impossible done before. Those in the know said “It will never happen.” But it did happen, with money left over and with the partnering help of those who had been thought, by those afraid to ask, to be the least likely to assist a museum.

So it is, that I do not like seeing this project fade away without a ramped up, viral PR campaign and without the help of high-level thought leaders and influencers who might be able to make a USS Ranger museum a reality. A successful aircraft carrier museum helps everyone, including the Navy. A scrapped ship frees up space at a pier and brings in a few dollars, but otherwise helps no one.

Worse yet, our history is lost in the bureaucratic shuffle. Rather than fading away, I would have preferred seeing this project end, if it had to end, with nothing less than a noisy, failure-is-not-an-option, Hail Mary, damn-the-torpedoes effort.

As always, I wish the Foundation fair winds and following seas.

Malcolm R. Campbell, Journalist
USS Ranger Public Affairs Office and Naval Station Great Lakes  1968 – 1970

Update – January 9, 2014

Those of you who live in the Bremmerton area may have a better means of finding out whether the ship has been scrapped already than I do. However, I have checked with the Navy about the rationale for disposing of the ship (in addition to the costs of maintaining mothballed ships).

From the Navy’s perspective, the USS Ranger Foundation’s progress throughout the entire application process was slow and it finally appeared that little or no progress was being made on some fairly large obstacles:

  • En route to the ship’s proposed mooring site, the BNSF bridge at river mile 80.9 had not been solved. Basically, the ship couldn’t clear the bridge without a major effort on the railroad’s part.
  • The foundation’s cost estimates for the project were incomplete. They gave an overall figure to the Navy about projected costs, but only documented a fraction of those costs.
  • The USS Ranger was placed on a donation hold in 2004. Even though the foundation had expressed an interest in the ship in 2003, the application wasn’t filed until 2009. With the ship available for an eight-year period and with major obstacles not being resolved, it seemed unlikely that the foundation would ever present a complete and viable application. Unfortunately, the Navy’s assessment about this is probably correct.

Update – February 3, 2014

More Updates:

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell, who  served on the USS Ranger during the Vietnam War, is the author of the Jim Crow era novella “Conjure Woman’s Cat.”

Memorial Day, a Day of Memories Sweet and Sad

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire4 Comments

At first light, the memories will find us. They are infinite and deep, though time has stripped away the individuals’ names, their faces even, who fell lifetimes ago on our behalf. Those who fell, fell for the future, for generations hardly close enough to dream about, for worlds not yet born and hopes not yet conceived.

Following the journeys of the fallen, we cannot help but think of Lincoln’s Words, “we can not dedicate…we can not consecrate…we can not hallow this ground.” It has already been consecrated, and we cannot add or detract from it as we keep the sweet and sad memories close in our hearts.

Before the twilight’s last gleaming, we will have followed our fathers and grandfathers, our mothers and grandmothers, our friends and our neighbors’ friends down the long miles of Memorial Day. It is, as Lincoln said in 1863, the “unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

Our dedication comes at a great expense of time and money as we walk the aisles our ancestors walked according to the customs of their times. The aisles are more modern now: the pickle barrel and the checker board have long since been replaced with the folkways of a new century. But we are diligent. We soldier on from appliances to apparel, from tools to jewelry, from sports and fitness equipment to automotive sales.

When evening comes, the remains of the day will sit upon tables and counter tops in either paper or plastic comprising our developing memories, both sweet and sad, of our trek across the sacred ground, kept pure and holy for those whom we follow into the night.

–

JTpoliticspushcartCopyright (c) 2011 by Malcolm R. Campbell

Excerpted from the Pushcart nominated Jock Talks…Politics

Stephen King, Joyland and the Lure of Pulp

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn fiction10 Comments

joylandA haunted carnival funhouse gives a supernatural spin to events in Thriller Award–winner King’s period murder mystery with a heart. In the summer of 1973, 21-year-old college student Devin Jones takes a job at Joyland, a North Carolina amusement park. Almost immediately, a boardwalk fortune-teller warns that Devin has “a shadow” over him, and that his destiny is intertwined with that of terminally ill Mike Ross, a 10-year-old boy who has “the sight.” – from the Publishers Weekly review of Stephen King’s “Joyland” (June 2013 release)

Anyone Stephen King’s age or older has been impacted by pulp fiction whether we’ve read any of it or not. Pulp, referring to the cheap paper, covered a lot of genres from westerns to mysteries to sports to gangsters. It was cheaply produced and, so some people say, never could have seen the light of day in the up-scale “slicks” or “glossies”—the magazines and books printed on better paper.

The cover art, which was usually suggestive, garish, colorful, and over the top, meant that readers typically wouldn’t let their parents, teachers, office workers, pastors, and spouses see the books. In terms of magazines, most pulps died out during the 1950s as the sixty-year-old publishing approach began to run its course. Today, the book covers that were once considered scandalous are now considered “camp” and/or treasures of a bygone era that began with Argosy Magazine and included authors H. Rider Haggard,  Edgar Rice Burroughs and Talbot Mundy.

“Undeniable…charm [and] aching nostalgia…[JOYLAND] reads like a heartfelt memoir and might be King’s gentlest book, a canny channeling of the inner peace one can find within outer tumult.” – Booklist

The cover of Stephen King’s upcoming novel Joyland screams PULP. Published by Hard Case Crime, the look of the book is intentional as its author takes a nostalgia trip back to his roots and the fiction he grew up reading. The publisher is a friend of pulp:

Hard Case Crime brings you the best in hardboiled crime fiction, ranging from lost noir masterpieces to new novels by today’s most powerful writers, featuring stunning original cover art in the grand pulp style.

Though King embraced e-books early on, Joyland will be available in paperback only. That’s made bookstores happy and caused other people to wonder what King is up to when he says, “I have no plans for a digital version. Maybe at some point, but in the meantime, let people stir their sticks and go to an actual bookstore rather than a digital one.”

Pulp seems to be less pulpy on a Kindle or a Nook. Perhaps that, and the nostalgia of those pulpy old days is sufficient rationale for the paperback-only release. Personally, I would like to see some other major writers delay the release of the digital versions of their books. Only the prosperous could afford to do that, to go against the tide that often washes e-books up on shore before the paperback and hardcover releases.

Some years ago, literary agent Mort Janklow said of King, “That’s a fellow sitting up in Maine having fun, but it’s not a way to run a business.”

No, it probably isn’t. But I like it. I like it even on a day when I’m talking to the regional library system about including e-book editions of my novels on their e-lending lists. I like it because it’s fun. And yes, I’ll buy a copy at a bricks-and-mortar bookstore because that’s part of what pulp fiction is all about, walking in, making sure Mom, Dad or the school teacher aren’t around, and grabbing a copy of the latest hardboiled story off the spinning rack of books.

I remember the thrill of all that and I’ll enjoy going back in time to renew my memories. Unlike the old days, this book has glowing reviews from mainstream reviewers. I almost wish it didn’t.

–Malcolm

Review: ‘Suffering Succotash: The Comic Life of Molly Maise,’ by Lula Mae Barnes

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing4 Comments

Satire from the archives

Suffering Succotash: The Comic Life of Molly Maise,” by Lula Mae Barnes (Corn Fritter Press, September 2012), 4,837pp with illustrations, index, maps, and bibliography.

SufferingSuccotashAs time goes by, fewer and fewer people remain on this Earth who suffered through depression-era and Thanksgiving meals constructed substantially of succotash.

“As far back as the Revolutionary War,” writes Lula Mae Barnes in her new and overly definitive biography of the 1770s Rhode Island innkeeper, dancer and lady of the evening Molly Maise, “people were thankful to live off succotash when times were hard and just as thankful to get rid of the vile mixture when good fortune smiled upon them again.”

Barnes, who spent the last fifty years uncovering the obscure details of the inventor of succotash, claims that the mixture of corn, various forms of beans and minced oaths is far too improbable a concoction to have occurred by accident.

Young Molly Maise, an innkeeper on Aquidneck Island who supported the “divine cause of everything that wasn’t British,” devised succotash as a “devious treat” for British sailors enjoying her favors in the days leading up to the 1778 Battle of Rhode Island. Ever after, she claimed her succotash made the sailors so ill, they scuttled their own fleet to kill the pain. While historians agree that the fleet was scuttled, they do not cite succotash as a cause.

According to Barnes, Maise spent a lifetime giving humorous talks, some bawdy, about the ills of succotash and the role it had in the war. While her speeches and dance routines, including “The Succotash Rag” (which pre-dated the American Ragtime boom by one hundred years) were well attended, she failed to gain the validation as a soldier and inventor she was seeking.

In fact, the biography’s references clearly indict most, if not all, of the United States’ founding fathers, soldiers, newspapermen and historians of a “treasonous level of guilt” for their roles in covering up the role of Molly Maise and succotash in “the cause of freedom.”

Barnes’ epic work clearly shows that every human’s recipe for defeat is based on the foods they eat, how they mix them together, and what they name the resulting entree. Had Maise called her corn and beans a Corn & Bean Medley, history might have duly honored her for the suffering her invention caused herself and all the generations that followed.

The epitaph on Maise’s tombstone reads: “Loose corn and beans sink ships faster than loose lips.”

—Jock Stewart

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Review: ‘Butterfly Moon,’ by Anita Endrezze

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, Fantasy, reviews2 Comments

butterflymoonThe fifteen stories in this finely honed and well-polished collection have the power to cut away assumptions and alter a reader’s focus and direction as only a storyteller’s magic can do. Borrowed and reshaped from older folktales out of Anita Endrezze’s heritage and imagination, these stories take on new life in their contemporary settings.

In her author’s note, Endrezze writes, “I hope Butterfly Moon will take you adrift in another world that challenges and transforms your perceptions, yet leads you back home to yourself.”

Reality, the oldest shapeshifter we know, dances lightly on the pages of Butterfly Moon and often gives way to enchantments, supernatural events, and the whims of gods and fate. As prospective blessings for the reader’s journey, these stories don’t necessarily fit the traditional narrative arc of a problem leading to a climax. Endrezze’s tales are often unresolved slice-of-life glimpses into her characters and settings that end with a dire occurrence, an acceptance of fate, a troubling paradox or the workings of karma.

The joy, anger, life, and death in Endrezze’s vision are not bound by time, nor are they distinctly separate from the active and sentient world in which they’re set. “On This Earth” begins with the words, The house was a forest remembering itself. The pine trees that held up the walls dreamed of stars dwelling in their needles. When Desetnica leaves home to roam the world in “The Dragonfly’s Daughter” because she is the tenth child, it’s clear that the forest is watching when The blackberry bushes parted their thickets as I waded through green knots of fruit. After I passed, still following the dragonfly, the vines knitted together again, so that I was lost to the other side of kinship and orphaned into the unnamed forest.

While tightly knit into the stories’ plots, myth and symbolism add depth without intruding into the author’s economy of words, understated approach and matter-of-fact reverence to the cultural origins of her material. Endrezze does not explain or editorialize, but her omniscient care is everywhere through this collection from the paradoxes of “Raven’s Moon” to the grim unfolding of “The Vampire and the Moth Woman” to the humor of “Jay (Devil-may-care!)”

For the lovers of myths, legends, and folktales, this collection is highly recommended and a unique delight.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of paranormal short stories and contemporary fantasy novels, including the recently released mix of love and fate called “The Seeker.”

Mortsafes: Protection FROM the Dead or FOR the Dead?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Cemetery5 Comments

diannephotoI am happy to welcome Dianne K. Salerni (“We Hear the Dead,” “The Caged Graves”) with a somewhat spooky guest post about Mortsafes. I first met Dianne when we were both book reviewers for the same site. Since then, I’ve greatly enjoyed her books.

Mortsafes

Given the current popularity of vampires and zombies, it’s no wonder that anyone stumbling across a mortsafe would automatically think of the undead. But these iron cages, found mostly in the U.K. and especially Scotland, were designed to protect the dead, not the living.

Mortsafe in Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh - Wikipedia Photo
Mortsafe in Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh – Wikipedia Photo

In the early 19th century, fresh bodies were in great demand in medical schools, where students practiced dissection to learn anatomy.  The lack of any legal way to acquire such bodies led inevitably to grave-robbing, which for a time became a rampant problem near places with medical schools, like Edinburgh. “Resurrection men” were forced to widen their net, transporting bodies across great distances, as people caught on and took steps to prevent their loved ones’ bodies.

Iron cages, ugly, practical, and effective, started appearing in Scotland around 1816. The general practice was to remove them after six weeks or so, although some survive in various cemeteries around the U.K., left in place and forgotten.

Asenath grave Sarah grave in background in PA - Bob Salerni photo.
Asenath grave; Sarah grave in background in PA – Bob Salerni photo.

In the United States, to the best of my knowledge, there are only two mortsafes in existence – a pair of lovely, iron cages over two graves in Catawissa, Pennsylvania, a town nestled between the Susquehanna River and the Pocono Mountains. These mortsafes are quite different, and a bit of a mystery surrounds them.

First of all, they are decorative, which suggests they were meant to stand more than the usual six weeks – and in fact, they have done so. Secondly, they are the only mortsafes ever reported in this region, which is located nowhere near a medical school. Grave-robbing did occur in 19th century America.  One particularly gruesome incident occurred less than five months before these mortsafes were built, but it happened 275 miles away in Cleveland, Ohio.

Sara Ann grave in PA. Bob Salerni photo.
Sara Ann grave in PA. Bob Salerni photo.

The graves belong to two young women, Sarah Ann Boone and Asenath Thomas. They were sisters-in-law, and they died within a couple days of each other in June, 1852. The cause of death is not recorded, and I find it strange that – although they were both married – there are no graves for their husbands nearby. In fact, the whole cemetery is odd, in that all the headstones seem to belong to women and children. I examined every headstone left standing and found only one for a grown man.

It has been suggested that these two mortsafes were merely decorative, meant to display the affluence of a grieving family burying two young women in such a short span of time. However, decorative or not, they are definitely cages, and they are odd. In order to trim the grass, it would have been necessary to unlock the cage doors and crawl inside, which violated a contemporary taboo about walking over graves. This seems like a very bizarre way to memorialize beloved members of one’s family.

One has to wonder: Why cover the graves of these women – and only these two women? Who were they in life, and how did they die? I can only assume something very unusual happened in Catawissa, Pennsylvania during the summer of 1852. We may never know the truth, but I certainly did my best to create an entertaining story out of it.

cagedgravescoverDianne K. Salerni is an elementary school teacher in Pennsylvania and the author of two historical novels, WE HEAR THE DEAD (Sourcebooks 2010) and THE CAGED GRAVES (Clarion/HMH 2013), and a middle grade fantasy series, THE EIGHTH DAY (forthcoming from HarperCollins beginning 2014).

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Author’s website

Hello Pinterest Fans

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life6 Comments

joyoftravelEver cautious, I was the last to arrive on MySpace. “What is Facebook all about?” I used to wonder. I’m “on” Twitter, but there are days when I don’t know how to keep up with the tweets. True to form, I didn’t show up on Pinterest’s doorstep the day they opened for business.

In fact, I stayed away until this past weekend. All my colleagues at Vanilla Heart Publishing were all already creating boards and pins (whatever that meant) and wondered why I wasn’t.

This weekend, I was too tired to do anything else after mowing the yard, so I looked at Pinterest. Hmm, not too bad. I set up boards called Joy of Travel, Books for Fantasy Lovers, This and That from My Blogs, and Resources for Writers. Things went smoothly. It was fun. Here’s the link.

–

Coming up Next: Author Dianne Marenco Salerni (“We Hear the Dead,” “The Caged Graves”) will be here in several days with a great guest post. With today’s zombie fad, we usually hear about protecting the living from the dead.  However, there have been times when the dead needed to be protected from the living.

—Malcolm

seekergiveawayStop by GoodReads for a chance at winning a free copy of my new novel about love, magic and fate. The giveaway ends May 21, 2013.

The seared images of ‘Body Heat’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn fiction, Film4 Comments

bodyheatposterNed: I need someone to take care of me, someone to rub my tired muscles, smooth out my sheets.
Matty: Get married.
Ned: I just need it for tonight.

–from “Body Heat” starring William Hurt as Ned and Kathleen Turner as Matty

From the sex to the crime to the moody saxophone music to Florida’s hot summer days when small-town lawyer Ned Racine meets the married, but overtly sexual Matty Walker, “Body Heat” was, in 1981, the kind of film everyone talked about. Men wanted to be Ned even though things ended up badly. Women wanted to be Matty because she got everything she wanted.

When I watch this film today on DVD, it still plays well. I do like noir films. I did grow up in Florida in the days before air conditioning when everyone sweated when the temperature outside reached 98.6 degrees or higher. And, John Barry’s music is the kind of music I remember hearing in blues bars on those summer nights when I was hoping to meet somebody like Matty Walker who didn’t want me to kill a husband for her. But it’s more than that, though what is is, is hard to define

Movies have become more permissive since 1981. Skimpy clothing, more innuendos, racier language than Ned Racine ever used, and more body heat than most people experienced in “real life.” Think of it: The near-nudity on “Survivor” is more extravagant, the language on “Hells Kitchen” is more profane, and the urgent sexual encounters on “Grey’s Anatomy” are more frequent than in most of the films we saw thirty-two years ago.

My wife and I saw “Body Heat” in a packed theater with another married couple. Afterwards, all of us commented about the same sexual encounter when the audience was stunned into an overt hush. When Ned throws a porch chair through the front door of Matty Walker’s house while she stands inside at the foot of the stairs waiting, leading to wildly hot sex in the foyer, nobody in the audience moved, chewed popcorn, breathed, looked at anyone else, or even risked allowing a tangible thought to enter their brains.

If you saw this film thirty-two years ago or even last week, that scene may well be hard-wired into your memory of movie moments. Watching the movie now, my experience of the film is partly based on how I reacted to it with five hundred other people that night. I can still feel that stunned hush.

As an author, I look closely at what produces a stunned hush in readers and movie goers. It need not be sex. It may be a car chase, a serene moment in a beautiful setting, or a conversation in a bar while a a bluesy enchantress sings out her troubles. What exactly makes for the perfect combination of setting, action, and words to thoroughly capture (and control) the heart and soul of a reader or a viewer?

Perhaps you remember a film or a novel with a scene that has stayed with you long after you first saw it or read it. Maybe the scene is tied together in your memory with the weather, the daily news, the people you were with, and the kind of day you were having when that fictional moment stopped you in your tracks. We know it when we see it and we know it when we read it…

Ned: Maybe you shouldn’t dress like that.
Matty: This is a blouse and a skirt. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Ned: You shouldn’t wear that body.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of four novels, including the recently released “The Seeker,” a story with a high degree of body heat between the covers.

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Review: ‘The Best of Glacier National Park,’ by Alan Leftridge

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, Glacier National Park, reviews4 Comments

The Best of Glacier National Park, by Alan Leftridge, Farcountry Press (April 30, 2013), 136 pages, photographs, maps, resources

BoGlacier cover flat r1.indd“We’re here! What should we do, what is there to see?” In the preface to his practical and well-illustrated Glacier National Park guidebook, Alan Leftridge writes that as a park ranger, he often heard those questions from excited visitors who “wanted to start making memories.”

Many of Glacier’s two million annual visitors travel a long way to reach northwestern Montana, and when they arrive, they are not only in awe of the scenery but of the scope of the prospective activities that await them in a 1,012,837-acre preserve with 762 lakes and 745.6 miles of trails. While Glacier is best experienced without hurry or stress, the economics of vacation travel make it necessary for visitors to maximize their time in the park.

The Best of Glacier National Park highlights, as Leftridge puts it, the park’s “iconic features.” The book begins with an overview of park facts, geology, and cultural history. This is followed by twenty-six “best of” chapters describing everything from scenic drives, picnic areas and nature trails to wild flowers, birds and photography opportunities.

Each chapter includes a map, color photographs and clearly marked headings and subheadings that make the information easy to find. This book is meant to be used as a quick and easy reference whether you are stopped at an overlook on the Going-to-the-Sun Road or standing in a subalpine fir forest on the Swiftcurrent Nature Trail. The hiking sections, which are broken down into nature trails, day hikes and backpack trips, include directions and special features you’ll want to see and photograph.

Glacier’s rangers, naturalists, boat crews and saddle tour operators are probably asked more questions about the park’s flora and fauna than anything else. The “Best Wildlife” chapter includes a mammal checklist and tells you where to find marmots, deer, elk, bighorn sheep, moose and bears. The book includes appropriate warnings about Grizzly bears, suggesting that they be observed at a distance. “Best Birds” highlights ospreys, eagles and ptarmigans, among others.

Naturally, “Best Wildflowers” begins with beargrass. Leftridge notes that “It is a myth that bears rely on this lily to satisfy their diet. If you see beargrass’ tall stalks with missing flower heads, know that other animals, including rodents, elk and bighorn sheep, nibbled here.”

According to the National Park Service, there are 1,400 plant species in Glacier. While “best” is a subjective term, this guidebook focuses on such popular and showy wildflowers as the Glacier Lily, Indian Paintbrush, Lupine and other visitor favorites.

Naturalist John Muir said Glacier National Park includes the “the best care-killing scenery on the continent” and suggested that visitors  “Give a month at least to this precious reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead…it will make you truly immortal.”

Whether you have a month, a week or a only few days for the high country known as the Crown of the Continent, The Best of Glacier National Park is an excellent all-purpose, general guidebook for discovering everything to do and see when faced with thirty-seven named glaciers, 175 mountains, and 151 maintained trails of waiting memories.

—Malcolm

TSScover2014A former Many Glacier Hotel summer employee, Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of nonfiction and fiction with a Glacier Park focus, including Bears; Where They Fought: Life in Glacier Park’s Swiftcurrent Valley and three contemporary fantasy novels set in the park, “Sarabande,” “The Seeker” and “The Sun Singer.”