XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.fan.tolkien, alt.books.cs-lewis   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   On Mon, 19 Jul 2010 09:55:55 -0700, Paul S. Person   
    wrote:   
      
   >On Mon, 19 Jul 2010 02:42:17 +0200, Steve Hayes   
   > wrote:   
   >   
   >>On Sun, 18 Jul 2010 10:15:23 -0700, Paul S. Person   
   >> wrote:   
   >>   
   >>>It;s been several years (decades?) since I last read William's novels.   
   >>>That was a second reading, so the impression left is, perhaps, a   
   >>>little more balanced than one from a first reading would be. The   
   >>>impression I recall getting is that they are /nothing like/ the works   
   >>>of JRRT or Lewis -- that is, that they just aren't fantasy or science   
   >>>fiction in the same sense as the works of JRRT (fantasy) or Lewis   
   >>>(fantasy or science fiction).   
   >>   
   >>With the possible exception of "That hideous strength", which has been said   
   to   
   >>be Lewis's attempt at a Williams-type novel.   
   >   
   >It is hard for me to be sure one way or another. I do recall that   
   >/That Hideous Strength/ was a bit different in style from /Out of the   
   >Silent Planet/ and /Perelandra/ but then, I seem to recall that those   
   >were not exactly in the same style either, making them a trilogy of   
   >three novels each, to some extent at least, in its own style.   
   >   
   >>Williams's novels can be described as "fairy tales" in Chesterton's sense of   
   >>"extraordinary things happening to ordinary people" (as opposed to   
   "superhero"   
   >>comics, for example).   
   >   
   >If I understood Chesterton's sense better, I might agree; IIRC, the   
   >impression I got with Williams is that they were perfectly ordinary   
   >novels, except, of course, for the extraordinary elements found in   
   >them, which the reader was expected to just accept, no attempt being   
   >made by the author to assist in suspending disbelief. With Lewis, the   
   >reader is clearly in a different reality; with JRRT, the reader is   
   >clearly in either a different reality or this world so far in the past   
   >that it might as well be a different reality.   
      
   In "Out of the silent planet" and "Perelandra" the action takes place in other   
   worlds, whereas in "That hideous strength" the action takes place in our   
   world, with powers from beyond our world breaking in to it, and that is what   
   happens in Williams's novels.   
      
   >I tend to think of "fairy tales" as characterized by an ending in   
   >which everything works out nicely very quickly at the very end. Thus,   
   >the Ron Howard film /Gung Ho/, which for most of its length appears to   
   >be a very funny film about culture clash, with a few serious   
   >sub-themes involving honesty, turns out, at the end, to actually be a   
   >fairy tale. IMHO, of course.   
      
   As for Chesterton, he says:   
      
   My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty,   
   I learnt in the nursery. I generally learnt it from a nurse; that is, from the   
   solemn and star-appointed priestess at once of democracy and tradition. The   
   things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things   
   called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. They   
   are not fantasies:  compared with them other things are fantastic. Compared   
   with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is   
   abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but   
   the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but   
   heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised   
   elfland, but elfland that criticised the earth. I knew the magic beanstalk   
   before I had tasted beans; I was sure of the Man in the Moon before I was   
   certain of the moon. This was at one with all popular tradition. Modern minor   
   poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook; but the singers   
   of the old epics and fables were supernaturalists, and talked about the gods   
   of brook and bush. That is what the moderns mean when they say that the   
   ancients did not "appreciate Nature," because they said that Nature was   
   divine. Old nurses do not tell children about the grass, but about the fairies   
   that dance on the grass; and the old Greeks could not see the trees for the   
   dryads   
      
   But I deal here with what ethic and philosophy come from being fed on fairy   
   tales. If I were describing them in detail I could note many noble and healthy   
   principles that arise from them. There is the chivalrous lesson of "Jack the   
   Giant Killer"; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a   
   manly mutiny against pride as such. For the rebel is older than all the   
   kingdoms, and the Jacobin has more tradition than the Jacobite. There is the   
   lesson of "Cinderella," which is the same as that of the Magnificat--EXALTAVIT   
   HUMILES. There is the great lesson of "Beauty and the Beast"; that a thing   
   must be loved BEFORE it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the   
   "Sleeping Beauty," which tells how the human creature was blessed with all   
   birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be   
   softened to a sleep. But I am not concerned with any of the separate statutes   
   of elfand, but with the whole spirit of its law, which I learnt before I could   
   speak, and shall retain when I cannot write. I am concerned with a certain way   
   of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since   
   been meekly ratified by the mere facts.   
      
      
   --   
   Steve Hayes   
   Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/litmain.htm   
        http://www.goodreads.com/hayesstw   
        http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Methodius   
      
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