Category Archives: Books
THREE ROADS TO THE ALAMO
This is an extremely interesting combined biography of David Crockett, James Bowie and William Barret Travis. It follows their lives up to the moment they all found themselves with two hundred or so others inside the Alamo compound early in 1836, prepared to defend it against a Mexican army ten times as large.
Dying there, when they could easily have chosen not to make the stand, they became martyrs to liberty, in some sense transcending their troubled pasts, living on as myths.
That they were all flawed men, impelled out to the Texas frontier by humiliating failures, for motives both idealistic and self-serving, doesn’t really lessen their stature as American icons — in a way it enlarges it, showing how imperfect men can rise to great occasions.
The book is invaluable as a survey of the American frontier in the 1820s and 1830s, a rambunctious time when the common man, under the inspiration of Andrew Jackson, took hold of the reins of America and illuminated some of the fundamental contradictions of the American character.
Personal honesty and honor counted for much, except when big schemes were afoot, in which case skulduggery was tolerated, even admired. Notions of liberty were inextricable from notions of gain, a capacity for sacrifice inextricable from a capacity to bully and bamboozle.
The moral landscape of the frontier was as wild as the physical landscape — anything was possible, reinvention of the self and a renewal of one’s dreams lay just beyond the next river, the next mountain range.
Dying at the Alamo seemed to confirm that the journey for Crockett, for Bowie, for Travis, had always had a noble destination somewhere up the trail — a reassurance that America needed back then, and still needs.
A PULP WESTERN COVER FOR TODAY
With thanks to Bryan Castañeda . . .
ANOTHER AMAZON CUSTOMER REVIEW
Settle down with some popcorn, because
. . . reading this delicious adventure is like watching a classic 50s noir movie that was produced with racy pre-code sensibilities. Vivid locations, snappy dialogue. Great characters. Lots of action (ahem… all kinds). An hour and 10 minutes of big time fun.
For all the reviews and book details, go here:
LATEST AMAZON CUSTOMER REVIEW
Sure it’s a yarn but it’s a good one
A South Seas island tale with mystery, magic, murder and a hard-boiled guy with a heart. Both new- and old-fashioned, Fonvielle writes well and with style about adventurous characters with spirit (and a spirit with character). This book is fun to read.
For all the reviews and book details, go here:
VIRGINIA WOOLF ON STYLE
Style is a very simple matter: it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my present belief) one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it. But no doubt I shall think differently next year.
ANOTHER AMAZON CUSTOMER REVIEW
Five Stars
A Mysterious, Dreamlike Thriller
Lloyd Fonvielle has crafted another excellent story with his latest novella, “Black Pearl”. It’s an expertly-told adventure tale and mysterious, dreamlike thriller, with colorful characters, exotic settings, and surprising twists with a supernatural element that will keep you hooked.
For all the reviews and book details go here:
NEWS FLASH
Emperor Julian, Constantine’s nephew, rejects Christianity, which in posterity will earn him the epithet The Apostate, but turns out to be a pretty good guy, at least as Roman emperors go, which is not saying much.
Although he despises Christianity and wants to re-institute Paganism throughout the empire, he issues an edict that all Roman citizens can practice the religion of their choice, while keeping most Christians out of positions of official authority. His harshest measure against Christians is forbidding them to kill each other for heresy, which by the time of Julian has become one of the most enthusiastic enterprises of the various Christian sects and which they will cheerfully resume after a Christian emperor is restored to the throne.
Source — Edward Gibbon.
AN A. E. HOUSMAN POEM FOR TODAY
With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.
By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.
NEWS FLASH
Constantine embraces Christianity — no good comes of it.
Constantine delayed his actual baptism until he was on his deathbed — a practice followed by many in his time, who wanted to continue sinning as long as possible before taking advantage of the one-time-only guaranteed means of forgiveness for past sins.
The bishops railed against this practice but couldn’t find a theological rationale or a workable process for prohibiting it.
Source — Edward Gibbon.
NEWS FLASH
Constantine has just reunited the Roman Empire under a single head and is now expanding his new seat in Byzantium into what will become Constantinople. At this stage of Roman civilization he can’t find artists capable of making suitable statues so he plunders Greece for its old ones.
Source — Edward Gibbon.
PREPARE
Gibbon’s great work presents a staggering parade of crimes and horrors throughout the “civilized” world over the course of a thousand years or so. It makes the crimes and horrors of ISIL seem mild and contained by contrast — but also gives a harrowing preview of what the world could easily become again if fanaticism and negotiation through unrestrained violence take the upper hand. Throw in the crimes and horrors that will ensue from the effects of global warming, and The History Of the Decline and Fall Of the Roman Empire becomes essential reading to prepare ourselves for a new millennium of ubiquitous human catastrophe.
You and I will see only the beginning of this epoch of catastrophe, but it will go harder with ours than with later generations because we will remember a time before the calamity became irreversible.
THE HOUR OF OUR DEATH
Edgar Allan Poe had a good death. He was found lying in a gutter in Baltimore, wearing someone else’s clothes, too delirious to explain how he’d gotten there in that condition. He died in a hospital four days later, never recovering sufficiently to explain the course of his latter days. He kept crying out for “Reynolds”, a person whose identity has never been established.
If you’ve got to go, that’s the way to do it.
ANOTHER AMAZON CUSTOMER REVIEW
Fun, weird, wonderful
Really fun! A highly entertaining story which starts off pretty funny and then grabs you by the throat! Mr. Fonvielle is clearly in his element here, which is good news for the rest of us. His detective fiction is every bit as strange, moving, sweet, scary and resonant as his Westerns. A whopping good tale with characters that kick around in your head for a while, and which you know you’re going to miss when it’s all over. I wanted to inhabit the story a little while longer, maybe hang out at The Shipwreck, order a beer, and ask everybody, “What did you guys think of that? Pretty wild, huh?” Instead, I’ll just have to wait and hope the writer sends more stuff like this our way.
For the review and book details go here — Black Pearl.
ONCE UPON A TIME
. . . on a boat in the South Seas.
Click on the image to enlarge.