06/19/13: A Tribute to Vince Flynn

I was doing what teachers should be doing on a Wednesday in the summer: golfing. My brother and I had just finished 18 holes, and while he shot better, I was feeling pretty good about my own score. Such is the easy pleasure of golf, that you can be the loser of the day and still feel good about yourself, perfect for a non-doer.

As we were unloading our gear from the cart, I unzipped a pocket on my golf bag, grabbed my phone, and checked for messages. There was one message waiting for me. Only one, from my wife:

I have some bad news for you. Call me when you get a chance... Nothing too serious so don't panic.

Well, gentle reader, I panicked. You see, my wife is currently 7 months pregnant and she sometimes has a habit of understating things. My brother was mid-sentence talking about who-knows-what when I dialed home and held a hand up in his face, giving him the "not now" look. He understood, returned to loading his gear into his car, keeping a furtive glance my way for any sign of what was going on. "I have some bad news for you" was floating in the hazy dusk air, and I couldn't dial fast enough.

She picked up on the second ring and told me. No, nothing about the baby. No really, just listen. Vince Flynn died today. I'm so sorry. He's dead.

Gentle reader, this is upsetting. For those of you unfamiliar, Vince Flynn was a political thriller writer, author of 14 books--all best-sellers--which have sold over 15 million copies worldwide. Vince Flynn was a giant in the book world, and I loved reading his stuff. A real life author who maintained communication with his readership, who embedded real-world concerns into his fictitious reality of the CIA and American politics, who started off in the business by self-publishing and struggling and persevering. Flynn created the now famous CIA super-spy, Mitch Rapp, one of the coolest badman good guys in fiction. He was good at his craft, and he enjoyed it, and if you were a fan, you knew it.

My favorite authors list is not exclusive. I love Tolkien, Steinbeck, Lewis, Shakespeare. I love Gardner and McCarthy, Atwood and Crichton.

I love Flynn.

To all you other Vince Flynn fans, feel free to post your favorite Mitch Rapp moment in the COMMENTS section.

Why Unferth?

Someone recently asked me, "Why Unferth? I mean, if you're going to write about somebody from another story, at least pick someone we know!"

Well, there's the rub.  First, let us all agree that this "someone" could not have been one of my students. You faithful troops all know Unferth. You are forced to. We read and reread Beowulf's boast and counter-boast; we focus on Unferth to study his role as a foil. We dissect what he says and how he says it. In fact, we hit that section so hard that my classes are typically recast afterward as those who love Unferth and those (select few, Student H...) who hate him.

But to answer this question:

It is precisely because people don't know him that I chose him. And not to play some high-brow literati game with you, gentle reader. Consider this simple truth, one that is highlighted in the "Introduction" section of Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf: everyone knows the other myths (Helen of Troy, Jason and the Golden Fleece, killing the Kraken); and everyone knows the other heroes (Achilles, Hector, Odysseus), the other villains, etc. In short, everyone can rattle off, or at least nod at, the Greek and Roman canon of mythology. Very few recognize names like Hrothgar, Sigemund, Heremod, Unferth.

What happened to the English canon? Why don't we know about Unferth?

Beowulf stands as the oldest surviving story written in Old English. Our language. It is one of four pieces of literature captured in a single document now called the Nowell Codex. This document can still be viewed in the British Library in London. Important names like Shield Shiefson and Billa Celest and Hrunting are printed in that document. Names like Breca and Beowulf and Grendel.

Names like Unferth.