Reviews for Michael's Crag

The average rating for Michael's Crag based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-07-23 00:00:00 Tonje Fallan Isaksen Published in 1910, this story about a Zulu uprising in South Africa as experienced by a young Scottish immigrant, is a good read, in the spirit of Rudyard Kipling or H. Rider Haggard: adventure in the furthest outposts of the British Empire. But what makes this book worth reading is how many things the author takes for granted that we now know aren't so, and even find distasteful. The racism of the book is shocking precisely because it is so casual and thoughtless, the innate assumption of superiority. It makes me wonder what people a hundred years from now will think of our popular fiction, our popular movies. What do we take for granted that they will find odd, and perhaps even distasteful. You can already see some obvious candidates in things that are still accepted, but barely, like smoking. How curious it is to see a movie in which everyone is puffing on a cigarette - for example, in Good Night and Good Luck, where Edward R. Murrow is shown delivering prime time television news with a cigarette smoking between his fingers. What will people think of our enormous steak dinners and obese portions of food? That's on the cusp of changing. What will they think of our profligate use of fossil fuels? Our assumption that the American way of life will go on forever, just as it is, much as the British thought their empire would go on forever? What about our assumptions about unlimited technological progress? Will science fiction visions of star flight or "the Singularity" seem as quaint as "the White Man's Burden"? There's also a particularly sweet class of novel that is on the cusp of awareness of a profound change in social mores, but one that doesn't quite have the courage of its convictions: the proto-feminism of Anthony Trollope's Can You Forgive Her And there's the delight to be found in one that explores the nuances of a change as it is unfolding, like Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse. This is why I love old literature: it provides a dimensionality to who we are, who we have become, and who we might become. The human spirit is the same, but the forms with which we express it do evolve. Understanding what people took for granted in the past that "just ain't so" helps us to accept the possibility that we too are subject to change.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-01-01 00:00:00 Drahoslav Reznicek I first read about John Buchan a few years ago in an article entitled "G.A. Henty and the Tradition of Adventure Writing for Boys" by Martin Cothran. You can read it here: (I recommend it highly!--even if you don't have boys) Since the first reading of "The Thirty-Nine Steps" my husband and I have fallen in love with the John Buchan. Graham Green said that "John Buchan was the first to realize the enormous dramatic value of adventure in familiar surroundings happening to unadventurous men." It's totally true and it is so easy to identify with the characters. They don't really long for a good scrap, but they're courageous and wise when stuck into the middle of one. Synopsis from a John Buchan website: "'Prester John' (1910) was based upon [Buchan's] experiences in South Africa. It is the story of a Scots lad, David Crawfurd, who travels to South Africa in the turn of the century seeking his fortune after his studies are interuppted by his father's death. Dark deeds and treacherous intrigues are afoot at the lonely trading post where he is assigned by his employers and these are bound up with the mysterious, ancient African Kingdom of Prester John. David stumbles on to the key to the mystery and becomes involved in the ensuing warfare." Of course it's much more than that! I suppose that Prester John would be called "dated" today (as would many of Buchan's books, I suppose). John Buchan was very nationalistic (but not in the nasty way we think of that phrase today). He loved his country and wasn't afraid to say so. Anyway, he was also a product of his times in some ways, such as the idea that the White British Male was pretty much the bomb. However lame that may seem to us today, he really doesn't write it that way. He had a very healthy respect for all people, he just saw them in different ways than perhaps we do today. Buchan was a Christian and wrote Christian characters who believed in grace and works. There isn't a lot of religion, per se, but it underlies the characters compositions. "Prester John" was a very fun read. It was counted one of those schoolboy favorites way back when. We'd like to resurrect Buchan in the states, as he isn't very easy to get a hold of for decent prices. So far most of the Buchan books we've read can't really count as life-changing, but if you need thrilling, adventurous stories without a trace of garbage (in detail or creed) Buchan's a great one to go for. Some favorite quotes: "But behind my thoughts was one master-feeling, that Providence had given me my chance and I must make the most of it. ...I looked on the last months as a clear course which had been mapped out for me. Not for nothing had I been given a clue to the strange events which were coming. It was foreordained that I should go alone to Umvelos', and in the promptings of my own fallible heart I believed I saw the workings of Omnipotence. Such is our moral arrogance, and yet without such a belief I think that mankind would have ever been content to bide sluggishly at home." "...God had preserved me from deadly perils, but not that I might cower in some shelter. I had a mission...I had been saved for a purpose, and unless I fulfilled my purpose I should again be lost..." David wins the day and at the age of 19 becomes a fabulously wealthy young man... "The wealth did not dazzle so much as it solemnized me. I had no impulse to spend any part of it in a riot of folly. It had come to me like fairy gold out of the void; it had been bought with men's blood, almost my own. ....I saw my life all lying before me; and already I had won sucess. ...I was a rich man now who could choose his career, an dmy mother need never again want for comfort. My money seemed pleasant to me, for if men won theirs by brains or industry, I had won mine by sterner methods, for I had staked against it my life. I sat alone in the railway carriage and cried with pure thankfulness..." And by the way, he does much good with his cash:)