The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

I was referred to C.S. Lewis by my brother, through the backdoor of The Great Divorce, Lewis’ story about Heaven and Hell.   Although I had read the Elric books by Moorcock, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy (and the Silmarillion) by Tolkien, I had never read any of Lewis’ books.  I had seen “Prince Caspian” on DVD, but my impression of Lewis was that he was “Tolkien Lite”, very much a childlike, less sophisticated variant of Tolkien.  But if I could handle 7 Harry Potter books, surely Lewis was not beyond my tolerance.

 The Chronicles of Narnia are the books for which he’s most well-known. This order is completely different than the actual publishing order and was established after all seven books were published.

 The Magician’s Nephew.  Nominally the first book, Lewis wrote this after LWW as a prequel.  He introduces us to Aslan, the White Witch, Digory Kirke (the “Professor” in LWW), and Narnia, which actually Aslan brought into existence here.  I followed my brother’s advice and read this after LWW.

 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe [hereinafter, LWW].  Clearly the Dark Side of the Moon of Lewis’ series.  The Pevensie children – Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy – are introduced to the magical world of Narnia via a magic wardrobe portal.  Narnia is a magic land of centaurs, fauns, satyrs, dwarves, an evil White Witch, and the ever-popular talking lion, Aslan.  It starts out as a land of perpetual winter and snow – but no Christmas – but as Aslan’s power grows, spring returns and the snowmelts.  There is even a London lamp-post in the middle of nowhere. Theoretically you could get by with only reading this book, as it stands alone well on its own; indeed, Lewis wrote this one first and originally did not plan on writing any sequels. 

 The Horse and His Boy.  This is somewhat of a sidetrack to introduce the Calormenes to us, who are Lewis’ cartoonish, fairy-tale analogs to Earth’s Muslims/Saracens – think “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves”.  They worship Tash, a deity whose true nature is revealed in The Last Battle.  Although they seem to have a rivalry with Narnia, to call them villains or enemies to Narnia is a bit of a stretch.  Tactically, the story involves two talking horses and a “Prince and the Pauper” plot with a noble-born boy, Shasta, who escapes his humble upbringing in the Muslim world and finds his twin Narnian prince brother.  He’s accompanied by Aravis, a stuck-up little Jasmine princess trying to escape an arranged marriage to some loathsome old noble.
  

 Prince Caspian.  Narnia has been taken over by an outside king, Miraz, and his Hamlet-like nephew Caspian enlists the aid of the oppressed talking Narnian animals – and eventually the assistance of Peter, Edmund, and Lucy – in overthrowing Miraz and liberating Narnia.  This has been made into a movie by the same people who made LWW.

 The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  A punk-like kid, Eustace Scrubb, the cousin of the Pevensies, is pulled into this adventure along with Edmund and Lucy, joining Prince Caspian on a voyage to the eastern seas to find his 7 uncles, lords who were banished by Miraz, also to discover exactly what lies in the eastern seas of Narnia (possibly Aslan’s homeland).  Along the way, Scrubb turns into a dragon and learns not to be a spoiled punk-ass.  This story has a very Star Trek (original series and movie VI) kind of flavor to it; it’s one of the better ones.  Sure enough, it’s due out in digital 3D on December 10.

 The Silver Chair.  Scrubb returns and pulls in Jill Pole (I love that name – Lewis would have done well to provide stage names for exotic dancers) who are enlisted by Aslan to rescue Caspian’s grandson, who had been captured and enchanted (not yet seduced, it seems) by a successor Evil Witch to the White Witch; this one uses a magical chair instead of candy.  They are assisted by Puddleglum, a depressing, tall and skinny elf-like creature. 

 The Last Battle.  This is the last story.  Scrubb returns again with Jill to Narnia.  It seems that a talking ape, Shift, has persuaded his donkey pal Puzzle to put on a lion’s skin and impersonate Aslan.  Claiming to be Aslan’s “mouthpiece”, as it were, Shift invites the Calormenes to enslave all the talking animals of Narnia.  Tirian, a direct descendant of Caspian, gets Scrubb and Jill to assist him in the resistance to Shift’s new form of tyranny, and they manage to fix everything.  Remarkably, the deity whom the Calormenes worship, Tash, is revealed to be something close to Satan; however, Aslan explains that “good deeds done in the name of Tash are in fact done in my name, whereas evil deeds done in my name are in fact done for Tash”, echoing Dante’s concept of “virtuous pagans”. Another remarkable element is that once Puzzle is revealed to the Dwarves to be a fake Aslan, the Dwarves then refuse to accept the existence of the real Aslan.  Anyhow, Lewis wraps everything up with this story in a grand climactic finale which ties up all the loose ends and ensures there will NOT be an eighth book.  No word on a movie of this, or whether Eddie Murphy will voice Puzzle.

 The stories are nicely illustrated by Pauline Baynes, in a manner reminiscent of Tenniel’s Alice in Wonderland stories.  They were published around the same time as Lord of the Rings (early-to-mid 1950s), and Lewis and Tolkien were good friends and colleagues at Oxford.

 Narnia.  Unlike Middle Earth, which Tolkien apparently intended as a very old version of Earth, Narnia is a parallel dimension.  It gets confusing, because within the “world” of Narnia is a nation of Narnia, separate from some other nations such as the Calormenes.  The nation of Narnia is meant to be what we think of as fairy tale Europe, a romanticized and glamorized Camelot-type Euro-centric nation of blond haired, blue eyed Northern Europeans, as opposed to the swarthy, dark-skinned, Tash-worshipping Calormenes.  In Prince Caspian, the ruling class is said to Telmarines, as distinct from Narnians, but where the Telmarines come from is never quite explained. 

 Animals.  There are several classes of animals.  In Magician’s Nephew, Aslan separated the animals into talking, intelligent ones, who are slightly larger than their nontalking nonintelligent counterparts.  There are also giants, halfway between mythical giants and the Norse “jotuns”.  There are fauns, satyrs, centaurs (Greek mythology), dwarves, dragons, etc.  I don’t recognize any races or animals specifically created by Lewis; he seemed to be recycling familiar types of monsters and creatures, types the readers would probably already be familiar with from other stories.

 Cast of Characters

Aslan.  Instead of a tall guy with a beard and robes, the Jesus figure of Narnia is a huge, talking lion of immense wisdom and virtual omnipotence.  Aslan tends to stay in the background and ever-so-conveniently come out when he’s most needed.  He is the one who manages to get the Earthbound characters back and forth from Narnia.  Like Jesus, he has the ability to rise from the dead.

 The White Witch.  She is first inadvertently awakened by Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, escapes to late nineteenth century London, and returns to the newly created Narnia.  Eventually she is defeated in LWW.

 Prince Caspian.  I find the “Princes” to be fairly interchangeable, differing only by generation.  Rilian, the prince of Silver Chair, is his son, and Tirian (Last Battle) is his descendant.

 The Earth Kids. The Earth kids spend years in Narnia, grow up, and then get magically returned to England where they discover that mere minutes have passed there.  They return to Narnia after a year in England and discover that hundreds of years have passed in Narnia.  The “Prince” they befriended in the prior adventure is long dead, and the prince they befriend in the next one is his son, grandson, or heir.  The Earth period, though, is WWII England; I liked how they added the Blitz, with Heinkel He111s dropping their loads over London, to the first movie.

 Peter.  He is the eldest of the Pevensie children and the wisest.  He ends up as High King. 

 Susan.  The older girl.  Later on she’s absent and slammed as being more interested in “nylons and lipstick” than Narnia.

 Edmund.  The younger brother.  In LWW he’s seduced by the White Witch, not by sex but with “Turkish Delight”, a sugary snack popular ages ago in England.  It has an effect on him which in a modern context would be considered crack or crystal meth.  After some “Turkish Delight” rehab he recovers and is OK from there on in.

 Lucy.  The younger sister.  She is the one who initially discovers the magical wardrobe, and unlike Susan does not forsake Narnia when she grows older in England.

 Eustace Scrubb.  He is the cousin of the Pevensies.  His parents are vegetarian atheist liberals with New Age ideas, who prefer to let children do as they please (no discipline whatsoever) and send the boy off to liberal school; no wonder he’s a spoiled punk brat to begin with.  Scrubb is introduced in Voyage, and becomes the main character thereafter.  He meets Jill Pole, who has been mercilessly bullied by the other children.

 Jill Pole.   Scrubb’s female companion in the last few books, almost indistinguishable from Polly Plummer.

 Polly Plummer.  Digory Kirke’s companion in The Magician’s Nephew, a generic girl character.

 Digory Kirke.  He first appears as a boy in The Magician’s Nephew, then as the wizened Professor in LWW, and has a brief cameo in The Last Battle.  Strategically not much of an important character.

 Allegories.  My brother remarked how Tolkien hated allegories and went out of his way to make sure Middle Earth had no clear God vs. Satan; even Sauron is not clearly the Devil.  Lewis himself denied any allegorical intent, insisting that the themes wrote themselves, so to speak.  But the allegories seem too obvious to ignore.  Aslan is blatantly a Jesus-type figure.  The Calormenes are clearly Muslims.

 Occasionally I’ll be at the gym in the morning and stuck on a treadmill in front of a TV tuned to children’s programming.  Unlike movies, which have substantial elements which appeal to adult intelligences, TV shows seem to wield their morals with a sledgehammer and practically zero subtlety.  Lewis’ morality is likewise front and center, impossible to miss.  Having read the seven Harry Potter books by now, and now the 7 (same number!) Narnia books, it’s likewise impossible to miss the clear Lewis influence in J.K. Rowling, far more so than anything Tolkien may have contributed. 

The Tea Party

The election is coming up, and there’s more talk about the role of the so-called “Tea Party” movement in influencing the outcome.  There’s also been a fair amount of ridicule heaped upon it from the usual liberal quarters, particularly Doonesbury, but also Tom the Dancing Bug.  Of course, when I hear it, I recall David Hockney’s clever observation, amidst “Tonight Let’s All Make Love in London”, about bars in London having tiny chairs, so that “it like an organized children’s tea party,” (I also liked his quip about “tartan on the walls” and “a pound for a drink”).  Note: I don’t recall Doonesbury lampooning ANY of the liberal protests.  He’s clearly trying to turn the tables now that it’s the other side of the spectrum doing the protesting.

 I have not been to any of the Tea Party protests, in DC or otherwise.  Ironically, I have been to a protest in DC against Israel, although I was not particularly participating, more like observing.  And here are my observations:

 It seems that the more people you get involved in these type of events, the wider the net cast and the more variety of viewpoints end up expressed in various ways.  In particular, the lunatic fringe truly emerges.  At the World Bank/IMF protests these ended up being the paper mache puppet crowd, vying with the anarchists for shock value.  I’m sure the liberal media is going to fixate on the “It’s the WHITE HOUSE, N*gga!” goofballs who make up a small minority of the Tea Party group.  At the WB protests you end up with oddballs accusing Bush = Hitler (sorry, Saddam makes a much better comparison) or “FREE MUMIA!” 

 I didn’t vote for Obama – I voted for Bob Barr (that’s another story….).  But here’s my problem with Chocolate Jesus as of October 2010.  As far as I’m concerned, he lowballed us in the election.  Even if he didn’t expressly promise to solve every damn problem he inherited from Bush, he certainly didn’t deny anything or stop his supporters from claiming that.  This whole business of “WE CAN” had the implicit underlying message of “if we can elect a black man as President, we can do anything.”   If you’re going to promise the Moon, don’t be surprised when people are dissatisfied at getting anything less.

 Well, we’re waiting.  I think he’s certainly a smart guy, very articulate, and very likable.  But so are a lot of other guys his age.  His problem is a lack of experience: he is in over his head.  

 Would McCain have done any better? Or Bob Barr?  Maybe not.  But neither of them promised to solve everything. 

 Getting back to the Tea Party.  I find it hard to discern a consistent or coherent message or ideology amidst all the rhetoric and flag waving.  What seems to be the beef? The two most vocal “beefs” are that Obama hasn’t fixed the economy (+ bailouts), and socialized medicine.  At a very basic level the Tea Party movement considers Obama to be socialist and opposes the policies of what it perceives to be the left wing of the Democratic Party, “liberals” in general as personified by their beloved Chocolate Jesus.  In a sense, the Tea Party opposes the vague and nebulous collectives who showed up to protest the Iraq War.  So let’s look at the sides.

Tea Party.   Clearly they have found a wide range of dissatisfied people. 

            A.         Hardcore racists.  Not everyone wants a black president, no matter how articulate he may be.

            B.         Opponents to socialism.  Count me in.  While I agree that the health care system is messed up, I’m not convinced that mandatory health insurance is the answer.

            C.         Opponents to corporate welfare.  Count me in this group too.

            D.         Vague “patriots”.  Just people who love waving flags and considering themselves “true American” or “patriots” (whatever that means) and who somehow sense that Barack Obama represents something anti-American. 

            ** How can Obama be funneling $15 billion to AIG and other greedy American businesses (who presumably don’t deserve the bailouts), yet be socialist at the same time?  Aren’t socialists AGAINST big business?  Probably the more appropriate label would be fascist, in the Mussolini/corporatist sense of the word.

 Anti-War Group.

            A.         Pacifists.  These are “peace at any price” people who believe that surrendering to evil is the best policy – anything to avoid bloodshed.

            B.         Anarchists.  These guys view themselves as the radical, violent vanguard of the movement against government oppression and the capitalist system.  As you can imagine, it’s a VERY small group, too small to be of any threat to anyone except themselves.

            C.         Socialists/communists.  They rarely call themselves that.  They supported the USSR, Mao’s China, every communist regime which ever existed – and now Cuba is their favorite (for some reason they avoid mentioning North Korea).  “Trotskyist” is a label they like now that Stalin can no longer assassinate them.  Michael Moore and Ralph Nader are in this category although for public relations reasons they would never admit it.

            D.         Vague “leftists”.  This forms the majority.  These are people who simply oppose the war, not due to a sincere preference for peace or due to any explicit ideology. 

             Most liberals understand that command economies like the USSR and North Korea don’t work.  They value private property and recognize that the market usually provides the best results, they just believe that it fails too often and needs to be fixed by the government.  Given the choice between trusting the private sector to do the right thing and assuming the government can regulate away any problem (given enough money and power – and when the government “solution” doesn’t fix the market failure their “solution” is more money and power to the government, not to admit failure) they’ll trust Uncle Sam rather than Bill Gates.  Their ideal ranges from Sweden to Cuba depending on the issue.  90% taxes?  Well, we’ll take that if it means free health care.  But most Americans wouldn’t accept that tradeoff. 

 ..and faced with that prospect, many Americans get upset.  Upset enough to protest!  Thus we have…the Tea Party.  

SCTV

“…Thursday at 9!”

 I suppose this entry could be called “Canadian TV”, although it only concerns one particular variety thereof.  I mentioned earlier that American TV and movies are the only ones in the world with any reasonable expectation of being exported to foreign markets.  The TV industries of most other countries, even England and its BBC, are primary inwardly-oriented with little pretense of appealing to foreigners as a broad category (leaving aside foreigners with some particular preference, e.g. married to a Brazilian so you watch TV Globo novellas). 

 I’ll also leave aside Canadian TV actors: Michael J. Fox and William Shatner being the big two.

 So SCTV is arguably Canada’s most important TV export.  It ran from 1976 to 1984, for six seasons, and was eventually picked up by NBC.  It pretended to be an independent network.  Some of the “sketches” (which I found the weakest) were intra-studio politics between Johnny LaRue (Candy), Guy Cabellero (Flaherty) and others.  If you watch closely, you’ll notice that practically every preview for a show promises the show’s airtime to be… Thursday at 9 p.m.

 Cast: John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, Tony Rosato, Robin Duke, Harold Ramis, and Martin Short.  These names probably sound familiar!

 I liked Mel’s Rock Pile, featuring Levy as a hilariously unhip music show host (similar to his dad role in the “American Pie” films) – and the Russian TV spoof.
 Another survivor: Martin Short’s Ed Grimley character made the transition to Saturday Night Live.  Tony Rosato and Robin Duke also went on to SNL. 

 They sometimes parodied Hollywood types, with O’Hara as Lola Heatherton, Flaherty as Sammy Maudlin, and Levy as Bobby Bittman.  I thought these were just as weak as the intra-network dramas.  The impressions were the best: Dave Thomas as Lee Iacocca and Bob Hope, Andrea Martin as Barbra Streisand, Rick Moranis as Dave Cavett, Merv Griffin, or Woody Allen (surely his talents were wasted in the “Honey I Shrunk…” movies), Joe Flaherty as Gregory Peck (in “Taxi Driver”: Are you talking to me?).   Despite the low-budget look – which was all part of the charm and fun – the cast was incredibly talented and the writing was quality, in fact competitive with SNL.

 By far the most famous “skits” which survived were the Bob & Doug McKenzie “Great White North” segments, which even resulted in a full movie, “Strange Brew”.  Bob (Rick Moranis) and Doug (Dave Thomas) sat on a couch drinking Molson and generally acting stupid.  They had their own Canadian equivalent of Valley Girl slang, mainly to end sentences with “eh”, greet each other with “Good day”, and accuse each other being “hosers”.   The funny thing about this was that at the time (early 80s) we were going to high school in Paris, and several of our best friends were Canadian (all from Ottawa).   They did not talk like this, but they did find B&DM to be amusing anyway…so long as we didn’t let on that we thought these were typical Canadians (…eh).  Geddy Lee ended up helping them do “Take Off”. These skits were due to Canadian TV regs requiring “Canadian” programming.  Aside from Mounties and lumberjacks, what more could they do?  Well, they also parodied Canadian TV with such items as Monday Night Curling and Magnum P.E.I. (Prince Edward Island). 

SS vs. VC

I finished a fascinating book, The Devil’s Guard.  It had been out of print for ages, so I had to buy it used from someone selling it for less than $200.

 SS.  This was the elite organization of Nazi Germany.  No Holocaust film is complete without SS guards, guarding the concentration camps and rounding up hapless Jews; brutal guards and cynical officers – even the charismatic and articulate Hans Landa from Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds”.  With their black uniforms and dramatic symbols, the SS runes and Totenkopf (Death’s Head), the SS is certainly a fascinating incarnation of evil.  Although the SS was a vast organization with its tentacles in all walks of German life, most of what the SS is infamous for nowadays is its role in the Holocaust.  The Totenkopfverbande (Death’s Head Detachment) manned the concentration and extermination camps.  The Einsatzgruppen were special squads operating in the forests of Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Baltics mowing down Jews in vast open pits dug by the victims themselves.  After the war, the SS was seen as Nazi Germany’s primary organization responsible for the atrocities associated with the regime. Its leader, Heinrich Himmler, escaped justice by swallowing a cyanide capsule upon capture by the British; Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped from Argentina by Mossad agents and brought to justice in Jerusalem.  

Part of the SS, but not part of the Holocaust operations, was an elite army known as the Waffen SS (Armed SS).  This was originally designed partly as Hitler’s personal bodyguard (Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler), which became the First SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler (LAH), and a modest group of special disposal troops, the Vefugungstruppe (SS-VT), which later developed into the Second SS Panzer Division Das Reich. They were intended both as an elite fighting force loyal directly to Adolf Hitler, but also as a militarized police force after the war which would have gained credibility and respect on the battlefield.  Complicating the “we had nothing to do with the camps” argument, however, is the Third SS Division, Totenkopf, which was raised from concentration camp guards and led by Theodore Eicke, who was responsible for developing the camp system and establishing its rules.  The two major stains on the Waffen SS were the massacre of French civilians in Oradour, perpetrated by a unit from the Das Reich division, and the massacre of US prisoners at Malmedy, in Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge, by the Leibstandarte Division.

 The majority of Waffen SS units, however, were concerned with fighting the Red Army on the Eastern Front.  They formed ad hoc kampfgruppes (battle groups) which combined for specific operations as necessary, a flexibility unique to that army.  SS units were the scourge of the Reds and later the Allies, always feared and underestimated at their enemies’ peril.  Fortunately for their enemies, the SS was limited in number, never more than 10% of the size of the Wehrmacht, a few core German divisions and many more foreign units (see below).

 The Waffen SS attracted some German Army mavericks who had unconventional ideas for training which were frowned upon by the traditional German Army.  The Waffen SS trained with live ammunition and upgraded the exercise, fitness and calisthenics of the soldiers, plus a healthy dose of Nazi propaganda training.  Its soldiers received the first camouflage uniforms, a distinctive dot cammo (green or brown, depending on spring or fall) and also received the best weapons and equipment, and its panzer divisions received the newest tanks.  Waffen SS soldiers are the ones seen in the last third of “Saving Private Ryan” almost overrunning Tom Hanks’ small group of soldiers and paratroopers. 

 Another fascinating aspect of the Waffen SS was its multinational composition.  It initially accepted “Aryan”/Nordic volunteers from Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Flemish Belgium, plus “Reichdeutsche” (foreign nationals of German ethnicity).  Later, the SS lowered its racial standards and allowed French, Walloons (French speaking Belgians), Hungarians, Estonians, Latvians, and even Russians, Ukrainians, and other Slavs.  Leon Degrelle, commander of the SS Walloon Division, was the highest decorated non-German in the Waffen SS.  There was a Yugoslav unit, the Handschar Division, of Muslim Croatians.  However, the infamous “Britisches Freikorps” was little more than a 30 man unarmed unit which never saw combat.

 After the war, some of the Waffen SS veterans, fleeing what they perceived to be indiscriminate justice at the hands of the victorious Allies who labeled all SS personnel “war criminals”, wound up in France and received sanctuary in the ranks of the French Foreign Legion, which has a reputation for accepting disreputable characters from all over the world.  By this point the French were involved in a costly guerilla war in the mountains and forests of North Vietnam, against Ho Chi Minh’s US-trained and Chinese-supplied guerilla force, the Viet Minh.  The Foreign Legion allowed the Germans to form their own self-contained, independently operating unit.

 Viet Minh.  The precursor to the infamous Viet Cong (VC) was the Viet Minh, essentially the same organization under a slightly different name.  Without a sovereign state, North Vietnam, yet in existence, the army was purely guerilla but had substantial support from China and the USSR.

 The German unit operated behind Viet Minh lines and caused considerable problems for them.  Many of them were sharpshooters, carrying silenced rifles.  They learned fluent French and some Vietnamese, and were assisted by a Viet Minh turncoat, whose whole family had been wiped out by the Viet Minh.  Realizing that the Chinese were supporting the Viet Minh, the German unit went into China proper, dressed in black pajamas, tire sandals, the conical hats, and blew up several staging camps.  They also rescued several units of captured Legionnaires, and avenged others who were not so fortunate. 

 The Germans ruthlessly repaid Viet Minh atrocities in kind; on the rare occasion in which VM officers were lenient with French prisoners, the Germans acted likewise.  On one convoy, the Germans rounded up the wives and children of the local guerillas and used them as human shields to guarantee the safety of the convoy.  At another camp, besieged by a ruthless VM officer murdering captive Legionnaires outside the stockade of the camp, the Germans captured the VM unit’s local family and brought them to the camp, threatening to kill them if the VM officer didn’t back off.  This resulted in a mutiny in the VM ranks, who turned on their own officers.

On one remarkable occasion, one of the Germans challenged a VM officer to an open debate in front of the local villagers.  This German was well versed in Marxist ideology and ripped apart the VM’s arguments one by one; he was clearly excited and amused to engage in this battle of wits, words and ideas instead of bullets. 

  The Germans had also studied Mao’s guerilla warfare tactics and the writings of Spencer Chapman, a British officer who had been part of the UK advisors who remained in Malaysia after the Japanese took over, advising and organizing local guerillas to fight the Japanese; his book The Jungle is Neutral served as much as a primer in jungle warfare and counterinsurgency as Mao’s own teachings.  It turns out the French had done no prep work training the Legion for fighting in jungles (their training bases were in North Africa) nor had they bothered to study the tactics of the Viet Minh or of Mao himself, who literally wrote the book which Communist guerilla movements followed. 

 Unable to defeat the Germans in the forest, the Viet Minh used its political connections among the world’s Communist movement, particularly in France, to embarrass the French into disbanding the German unit.  Its men, unwilling to be parceled out piecemeal to the other Foreign Legion units, and having satisfied their enlistments, resigned from the Legion and found homes around the world.  In 1971, the leader of the unit, Hans Wagemueller (not his real name), met with the author of The Devil’s Guard and dictated his fascinating story.