Still reading That Hideous Strength, so what shall I blog about? Are you interested in the fact that I fell down the basement stairs the other day? Moving too fast for a man my age; I’d just come inside and my rubber shoe soles were wet. One of them slipped on a stair tread, because I took it too close to the edge, and I went down a few steps.
No major damage that I could tell. Nothing seems to be broken. I can’t even see any bruises; maybe they’re in back, out of my view in the mirror. But I assume there’s a muscle bruise in one of the stabilizing muscles on the left side of my trunk. Walking’s a little painful, but it’s getting up and sitting down that hurt most. Today I did some shopping, and I took my cane. It helped. Surprisingly, I’ve been feeling a little better each day (isn’t the third day supposed to be the worst?), so I expect I’ll be fairly mobile by the weekend.
I did some noodling on the internet and found the “trailer” above – a fake somebody mugged up. I like it, though I can’t endorse all the casting. Hopkins is way too old to play Ransom, and where’s the sweeping golden beard? Gielgud is dead, always an inconvenience. I used to dream of doing a film of the book myself – even had the first shots planned out. I wanted Orson Welles as Merlin – he’d have done it too, if we’d had the money; he’d take any role at the end. I’m glad other people feel the same way about THS; I’m always surprised when anybody likes the book – I’ve encountered so much hostility to it over the years.
Reader’s impressions: First of all, we’re told that Jane Studdock’s maiden name was Tudor. That’s significant for any Arthurian – the Tudors were the dynasty that really promoted the revival of the Arthurian legend in the late Middle Ages. As a Welsh family, and thus Celtic/British, they claimed through Arthur a prior right of sovereignty over the upstart Normans.
I expect it’s the character of Jane that offends people the most in our time – the idea that she’s missed her true vocation by refusing to bear children. But in the context of the book, Jane is far less in the wrong than her husband Mark. She’s merely petty; Mark runs the danger of genuine corruption, becoming part of something worse than the Nazis.
Anyway, I’m enjoying my reading.
When you review this book, will you address the relationship between it and The Abolition of Man?
I’ll try to remember. I’m noticing the “Inner Ring” theme most of all.
That Hideous Strength is Lewis’s kitchen sink book, as in everything-but-the-kitchen-sink. No other work of his fiction is as loaded with things that Lewis loved. Good conversation, the English countryside, the Arthurian legends, the medieval-Renaissance “image” of the cosmos, the beauty of women, themes of courage and faith, language and poetry, animals and nature, weather and slow train rides on rural routes, the dignity of the scholar’s calling, the thought of Barfield and the secondary world of Tolkien, good books for all ages, Milton and Coventry Patmore (the bit of text that Jane happens to read at St. Anne’s is a pastiche of Patmore), gardening and the semi-self-sufficient household, place-names, quietness and music… and more. To read it is to inhabit a little a Christian consciousness for our time when so much is ugly, phony, and dead-set on perversity. THS is one of the most refreshing books for my whole reading life. It has certainly influenced me for good.
I read somewhere that THS was Lewis writing a Charles Williams novel. Just a thought.
I’m very sure you’re correct.