Your correspondent is a tad down today. Translation work has been slow (read nonexistent), and it snowed and snowed for days and days. Stopped today, and we should be safe for a while according to the forecasts. But it’s… full out there. Chock full. This is one of those years when we don’t know what to do with all the accumulation. The piles along the driveway are nearly as tall as we are.
Of course my neighbor clears the snow for me with a machine, but it’s guilt-inducing to watch him at it.
The news is depressing too. I think I’m going to turn off talk radio again for a while (except for some hours of Prager). Listen to Pandora instead. Confession: I’d like to see my party, you know, pulling together. But I’m afraid that if I say that I’ll be accused of being a RINO. The arguments in favor of the Twenty make some sense to me, but I don’t like watching friends turn into enemies. Simple soul that I am, I don’t think that really helps in the long run.
Above, maintaining the theme of love for That Hideous Strength I’ve been proclaiming all week, here’s Andrew Klavan talking about it. Some of this is a little hard to understand (how can anybody not love Narnia? How can anybody read THS with ease the first time through?), but his opinions on the meaning of the book are spot on. They get him the all-important Walker endorsement, which is nice.
My thanks go out to the people at Shepherd.com, who asked me to select a group of five novels to promote. The idea is to push books I like, and also to give people some clue what my own books are about. You can see my selections here.
Rather a nice concept, I think. The site is worth poking around some.
I’m still working away at That Hideous Strength. My slow progress shouldn’t be taken as a sign of disinterest; I’m enjoying it quite a lot. I just have things I’ve got to do, and I’m moving slow because of the fall I took. So I don’t anticipate a review until next week.
Above, a very short clip from 9 years ago, of the mathematician John Lennox reminiscing about listening to Lewis lecturing at Cambridge. This was actually the very last lecture series Lewis ever delivered, before ill health forced his retirement. His eccentric lecturing “style” is well documented from several sources, though others report that Lewis actually starting lecturing out in the hallway before even entering the classroom. His voice carried well.
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.
Photo credit: Laura Nyhuis, lauraintacoma, under Unsplash license.
I want to tell you about my Christmas, and I worry that I’ll do it badly. I’m susceptible (as you may have noticed) to the temptation to play the martyr, but in fact the tale I have to tell you is quite a happy one. I had a blessed Christmas.
My church is one of those that only did Christmas Eve services this year, so I went to that, and then Christmas Sunday lay before me unscheduled (my family will gather next weekend). It’s something of a challenge for a Christmas-lover like me to spend the big day by himself, but I prayed earnestly for a good spirit as I went to bed.
I woke up remembering a strange dream (as if I’ve ever had a dream that wasn’t strange). I was kneeling, studying a doll house. I was certain, for some reason, that there were tiny people living in that doll house. But I’d never seen them. They were shy and they kept out of sight, frightened, no doubt, by my size.
And as I thought about that dream, lying in bed, it occurred to me that this was a parable of Christmas. God faced a similar problem when He came into the world, and He solved it by becoming small, by becoming a baby.
I thought that a rather jolly way to wake up Christmas morning. It put me in an unexpectedly festive mood. Then, as I got up, I noticed how cold it was. Our natural gas company, worried about the gas supply (Gee, I wonder how that came to be a problem), had asked us to turn our thermostats down to 65⁰, and I’d done so, like a loyal Comrade. I remembered that I’ve got a nice, hand-knitted pair of wool stockings somewhere, which I hadn’t worn in a while. Seemed like a good day for them. I poked around in some drawers, and in the bottom bureau drawer I found, not the socks (I found those somewhere else), but a pair of flannel pajamas. I hadn’t worn those pajamas in years. I’d forgotten I owned them. When I contemplate my old clothes, the question is always, of course, “From which geological era of my life do these come?” I’ve been thin and I’ve been fat, and I still haven’t lost enough weight to wear the older stuff. But I tried the pj’s on, and they fit very well. I’d been wearing ordinary cotton pajamas, but it seemed to me flannel was just the thing for current conditions. It was like getting a Christmas present, so I decided to consider them one.
Through the rest of the day I took a break from my diet, considering it a Feast. I listened to Christmas music by Sissel. And I continued reading the book I was working on, Lewis’ Perelandra(which I mean to review tomorrow).
Perelandra, it seems to me, stands alone among Lewis’ works in a particular way. I think it’s the most fully mythopoeic of his books, most closely bound to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, if only in spirit. Lewis was at the peak of his creative powers here, and he excelled at moving the heart by way of the intellect – I’ve read Perelandra several times, but this time was almost physically difficult for me. More than once I had to stop to regain my composure. Not because I didn’t like it, but because it pierced my heart again and again. So I was something of an emotional basket case on Christmas day.
But I wasn’t unhappy. In its peculiar way, this was one of the best Christmases I’ve ever spent.
Day was breaking. The dawn
Swept the last stars, bits of ashes, from the sky.
Of the vast rabble, Mary allowed
Only the Magi to enter the cleft in the rock.
He slept, all luminous, in the oak manager,
Like a moonbeam in the hollow of a tree.
Books and Meals: “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” Many attribute this to Ralph Waldo Emerson but the best source a version of this statement could also be attributed to another man also named Emerson.
Joss Ackland and Claire Bloom in the 1985 “Shadowlands”
My metaphorical Advent calendar opened today and dispensed paying translating work. This is excellent. I’ve been idle for a couple months, and I can use the income. An interesting project, too.
So, little time for reading and no book to review today. Of what shall I write?
I watched the Most Reluctant Convert movie, as I said. Then I watched it again. And last night I thought, “Might as well watch Shadowlands too, and close the circuit.” And when I say Shadowlands, I mean, of course, the original 1985 BBC production with Joss Ackland and Claire Bloom. The 1993 version, with Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, isn’t even on my radar. I watched it once and was unimpressed (except by Winger, who is much closer to the real Joy Davidman than the refined Claire Bloom. But otherwise the 1985 version is more authentic and more concerned with the characters’ Christian faith. My impression of the 1993 movie is that it portrays Lewis as an immature man rescued by True Love. And his Christianity is regarded as one of his immature traits).
Anyway, you get a pretty good overview of Lewis’ life by watching the two movies in sequence. The Most Reluctant Convert offers a fairly authentic (though necessarily incomplete) picture of Lewis’ life up to his conversion. Shadowlands (if you watch the right version) gives a broadly decent impression of what happened in his later years, when he got married and suffered bereavement and a crisis of faith.
Of course, it’s an incomplete picture, as any cinematic portrayals must be. The Most Reluctant Convert leaves out much of the story, notably Lewis’ unhappy time in English public schools (what we’d call private academies in this country). And the book it’s based on, Surprised by Joy, omits much in the first place. In particular, Lewis’ domestic life with Mrs. Moore, the mother of a friend killed in the Great War, whom Lewis cared for in fulfillment of a promise to that friend. He wouldn’t have liked that story re-told; it began in infatuation in his atheist days and was transformed into voluntary servanthood after his conversion.
Shadowlands is a moving story, but heavily tailored to its dramatic form. Jack’s and Joy’s marriage actually lasted four years – her sons were nearly grown and away at school when she died. The affecting scene at the end where Jack and the boy Douglas Gresham grieve together never happened – sadly.
Most of all I was wondering what Jack himself would have thought about all this bother. And I thought I’d ponder that tonight in this post, to see if I could figure out what I think. I’m pretty sure Jack would have been mortified by the whole business. Aside from his personal modesty, there’s the fact that he deplored any examination of a writer’s life in order to interpret his work. The work, he frequently insisted, must stand on its own. It’s not for the critic to poke around in the author’s history and personality, hunting for repressions and obsessions.
Although I’m pretty sure he didn’t object to Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Because that’s a work of literature in its own right.
However, the two films I’m discussing are works of art in their own rights too. So does that make it OK?
Well, we have to deal with things as they are, I suppose. Whether he liked it or not, Jack Lewis was an interesting man. And people who love his books frequently want to know more about the man who wrote them.
This interest, surprisingly, even generally survives their first exposure to a picture of Lewis, something he himself described as a “most undecorative object.”
Maybe – and I’m very likely projecting here – it’s the fact that people experience Lewis’ writings as letters from a friend. We’d very much like to have a friend like that. Friendship is an experience that’s fallen on hard times in our evil world. Lewis had a splendid gift for friendship, as we know from his life story.
I know what he’d say to that, though – “Do you live on a deserted island? Is there no church in your community? You might be surprised what qualities lie concealed in the people in the next pew.”
I’m almost done reading Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, and last night I thought, “Everyone should read this. They should assign it in schools or colleges. It should be something that young people should be expected to read before they are thirty.” Hundreds of churches would benefit from reading of the unmerited grace God shows the whisky priest, his duty and that of the lieutenant, and sparks of faith you can see here and there. It would stir up the pious in a way they need to be stirred.
Patrick Kurp’s son may have a better idea. He suggests making The Gulag Archipelago required reading in high school. Kurp replies, “This simple idea is too commonsensical ever to be adopted. The historical memory of many Americans has almost evaporated, leaving it eminently inflatable with hogwash.” Education, he says, is being trivialized.
Thanksgiving: In Barry Levinson’s Avalon (1990), Titus Techera writes, “Thanksgiving has a double character. On the one hand, it’s a kind of nonreligious expression of gratitude—ultimately, a form of patriotism. These are not religious people, and it seems that, without religion, Americans don’t know who is especially deserving of their thanks. They love America, but it seems no different than loving themselves. . . . On the other hand, Thanksgiving is supposed to save Americans from this individualism by forcing them at least to stop busybodying and rekindling the love of their own family.”
Paperbacks: “Around about the 1950s, the American literary establishment—never exactly nimble on its feet—noticed its world had changed a decade earlier.” And somewhat related, here are 30 fantasy book series with brief introductions.
Rings of Power: Still joking about convoluted story mess in the first season of Rings of Power. There’s a lot of material there. I’ve watched several of Ryan George’s Pitch Meetings skits and feel there’s a cumulative effect to several of the jokes. If this is the first one you see, you may that watching a few more adds to the humor of the whole.
Faithful: Pastors remain in Ukraine, leaning on the Almighty every day.
This is Pastor Mykola Savchuk of Salvation Church in Kyiv. 2nd day of war, he drove his wife & 2 kids to western Ukraine. By 3rd day, he was back in Kyiv to preach. He worried no one would show up. 10% of his church did— the others all fled— and he was pleasantly surprised. pic.twitter.com/AWiPa788SC
In the second tweet, Lee writes, “The 5th day, he woke up alone in bed at 5 am, and began weeping for an hour, for no obvious reason other than a sudden realization of his new reality. 9 months have passed. What did he learn? ‘God is good, all the time. It’s not just a slogan for me— it’s a deep conviction.'”
God have mercy on us and string Ukrainian streets with peace.
It’s easy to overgeneralize, and when someone is battle-scarred, he may overgeneralize combatively.
I worked at a men’s conference in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, several years ago, during which a speaker made some mildly controversial points in an aggressive manner. I think this man felt he was under attack because he lacked support for his work. He probably had to argue for his point of view, if not the reality of his experience (it was on the fringe). “Nobody knows what’s happening,” he’d say. “Why doesn’t anyone see this?” he might ask. And at least one time, that question would have been answered with the fact that many of those in the room knew saw what he saw. We agreed. We didn’t need to be persuaded, and we weren’t fighting him on that point.
Too many of us are willing to say no one is talking about something important, when the truth is we only know something of what’s being discussed in our small circle, including the limited amount of news we can consume. The noise or silence on select social media can convince us that everyone is or isn’t talking about something.
The solution, of course, is humility. We know what we know, and even that could be wrong. We walk on to the best of our knowledge coram Deo.
Midwesterners Unite: A review of a new history of the American Midwest. “In contrast to prevailing clichés and the modern platitudes about backwardness, sterility, racial injustice, and oppression, an in-depth look at the history of the American Midwest reveals a land of democratic vigor, cultural strength, racial and gender progress, and civic energy — a Good Country, a place lost to the mists of time by chronic neglect but one well worth recovering, for the sake of both the accuracy of our history and our own well-being.”
Reading: Contrasting styles, subjects, and tones can act as palate cleansers between books. “They have to be short, they have to be relatively undemanding, and if it’s a re-read, so much the better.”
Photo: Old gas station, Odebolt, Iowa. 1987. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
