Category Archive: Literature
Far-Fetched Poetry
Yesterday, I started reading Charles William’s second novel (well, second published, but first written), Shadows of Ecstasy. In connection with it, I’ve also been reading Thomas Howard’s wonderful The Novels of Charles Williams. Here’s something Howard says about Williams and about poetry:
What Williams is interested in is heaven or hell; or, to put the same thing another way, he is interested in human behavior. This looks like a conundrum. How can we say that heaven and hell are the same thing as human behavior? If Williams really thinks they are the same thing, his imagination must be very far-fetched indeed.
It is. It is “far-fetched” in the sense that any great poetic or prophetic imagination is, in that it is fetched from afar. The noblest poetic imaginations have persisted in seeing the commonplace routines of human experience against an immense backdrop. Eliot spoke of “the fear in a handful of dust,” referring to the enormous and alarming significance lying just under the surface of even the most ordinary things. Scientists see one aspect of this when they tell us about the subatomic activity raging and swirling about in the merest handkerchief. Prophets see another aspect of it when they tell us that modest items like casual oaths and cutting remarks and icy silences will damn us to hell. Poets see yet another aspect of it when they see the whole Fall of man in a fieldmouse’s scampering away from a farmer’s plough, or a world of hypocrisy in the fur trim on a monk’s cuffs.
The ordinary stuff of our experience seems both to cloak and to reveal more than itself. Everything nudges our elbow. Heaven and hell seem to lurk under every bush. The sarcastic lift of an eyebrow carries the seed of murder, since it bespeaks my wish to diminish someone else’s existence. To open a door for a man carrying luggage recalls the Cross, since it is a small case in point of putting the other person first. We live in the middle of all of this, but it is so routine that it is hard to stay alive to it. The prophets and poets have to pluck our sleeves or knock us on the head now and again, not to tell us anything new but simply to hail us with what has been there all along (pp. 17-18).
Charles Williams
Before I left for Oregon, Carmon asked if I would comment on Charles Williams when I returned. I’m back, but I’m not sure what to say.
I read a few of Williams’s novels several years ago, though I remember little about them. I figured I would start reading (and in some cases rereading) Williams chronologically (can you say “obsessive-compulsive”?), starting with the first novel he published, War in Heaven.
In many ways, it’s a delightful book. It starts out with the discovery of a dead body, but just as you’re thinking it might be something of a mystery novel, things begin to change, and I’m not going to tell you exactly how, except to mention that it involves an old chalice in a small church in England which might be the Holy Grail (or, as Williams prefers to spell it, the Graal). Here’s one of my favourite paragraphs:
So through the English roads the Graal was borne away in the care of a Duke, an Archdeacon, and a publisher’s clerk, pursued by a country householder, the Chief Constable of a county, and a perplexed policeman. And these things also perhaps the angels desired to look into.
In all the fun, there’s also a lot of serious weirdness. Williams’s prose isn’t always crystal clear and there are moments when the story bogs down momentarily or loses one in bafflement (“What is he on about here?”). Perhaps the best thing I can do is recommend Thomas Howard’s The Novels of Charles Williams, which I have but haven’t read. It appears, however, to be a helpful guide to what’s going on in the novels and how it relates to Williams’s views about theology and the nature of charity and whatnot.
Since finishing Williams and Wodehouse (see my last entry), I’ve also read Walker Percy’s The Last Gentleman, his second novel, which I greatly enjoyed, though with Percy, too, albeit in a completely different way than with Williams, I’m never entirely sure where the story is going and I’ve been musing over the ending. What is the last question Will Barrett wants to ask Sutter just before Sutter drives away?
And now I’m reading C. S. Lewis’s first narrative poem, Dymer. I’ve also been reading some stuff on preaching in preparation for a lecture on liturgical preaching at the upcoming Biblical Horizons conference. I need to get that talk prepared before I leave for my vacation.
Fairy Tales
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten” — G. K. Chesterton, cited as the epigram in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, a fairly decent (and spooky) children’s fairy tale which I read this afternoon while sitting in Chapters.
Trinity vs. Paganism
Tonight, I finished reading Heroes of the City of Man by Peter Leithart. It’s a very helpful introduction to Greek and Roman literature from a Christian perspective. He starts with classical epics — The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid — and then deals with Greek drama, covering a play each by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, and Aristophanes. It took me a long time to read the book, since I was also reading the works he discusses, but it was well worth it. Here’s a quotation to whet your appetite:
Classical epic … leaves us with three fundamental theological options: Heaven rings with the petty squabbling of adolescent gods, which means the world is not under control at all, or heaven and earth are ruled by a heavenly Fuhrer, or things are governed by an impersonal and faceless power that grinds along, indifferent to humanity or justice. Take your pick: chaos, totalitarianism, or determinism. Whichever you choose, the world is a pretty grim place, with no hope for redemption….By contrast, the Bible proclaimed from the beginning that there is one God, Yahweh, who created the world good and rules all things. Violence and evil are not written into the fabric of creation but are due to sin and His righteous judgment on sin, and therefore there is hope of redemption from evil. Ultimate reality is not a gaggle of gods, nor an autocrat, nor an impersonal Fate. Rather, ultimate reality is Three Persons in an eternal communion of love. Above us is a God who is love, whose love overflows in creating a world He did not need and in redeeming a world that had turned from Him. Heaven is not a battlefield or a prison; it is a dance hall filled with song. And, one day, earth will join in (p. 21).
The Man Who Owned Vermont
Today, I finished reading Bret Lott’s The Man Who Owned Vermont. Lott, I’m told, is a member of a PCA, and this was his first novel. He does a very good job of getting us into the lives of ordinary people, people who make the same kinds of blunders and commit the same kinds of ordinary (but no less harmful) sins most of us do.
Rick Wheeler is an RC Cola salesman whose wife has left him. He doesn’t know why, or so he tells himself (and us). Aching from what he sees as the failure of his marriage, he tries to cope by throwing himself into his work, making new friends, and even meeting someone new. But as the story progresses (and as Rick fills us in on what has happened in the past), we see that coping is no replacement for reconciliation.
It’s a heartbreaking story, and at times it frightened me. I look forward to being a husband someday, Lord willing, but I’m also aware — and books like this make me more aware — of my own inclination toward selfishness, and, as Lott shows, selfishness and a failure to give oneself to another destroy marriages.
In Acts, Larry Woiwode writes, referring to the novel which “was used to draw Kuyper over the threshold into conversion,”
The right book at the right time has that potential. It can teach us to live, or make it possible to live, or render incarnate through its characters the lived life of a Christian, or simply draw us out of bed and set us on our feet again. This can seem nearly miraculous when it happens, and this is the moment we seek, writers first of all, when we enter the first sentence of a novel: a way to live (p. 44).
Conversely, as with Lott’s novel, a story can also shed light on our lives and even move us to repentance as it shows us people living out our destructive tendencies.
Seasonal Reading and The Centaur
For the past two weeks, it has been very hot here in Lethbridge. I don’t have air conditioning, and my study is the highest (and hence, the hottest) room in the house. The two big windows facing south are wonderful in the winter, but in the summer they let in a lot of heat. (The three walls covered with bookshelves, floor to ceiling, on the other hand, are wonderful year round.) Today was a little cooler, and we even had some rain early in the morning. The sun is out now, though, and it’s starting to heat up.
Which leads me to this question: Do you categorize books as “winter reads” and “summer reads”? I can’t say that I have every book categorized that way, but there are certain books that just seem as if they would be better read when the weather is cold and there’s snow on the ground. Take The Lord of the Rings, for example: I could certainly read it during the summer, but there’s something about it that calls (to my mind, at least) for cold weather. The same is true of The Book of the New Sun: I deliberately chose to read it in the winter. Mind you, the sequel, The Urth of the New Sun, made a great spring read for some reason.
I just finished reading John Updike’s The Centaur, probably the Updike book I’ve enjoyed the most so far (more than Rabbit Run). The book is somewhat odd. The main character, George Caldwell is a teacher at the high school in Olinger, a setting to which Updike has frequently returned. That part of the story seems pretty straightforward, but in a couple of chapters, the story is told as if Caldwell is Chiron, a centaur, and the whole story is linked in some way to Greek mythology. In fact, Updike, at the request of his wife, even included an index at the end, showing all the references to various mythological figures. But when you look up those references, you don’t see, for instance, the name “Venus” on the page to which he refers you; rather, you might see a reference to Vera Hummel.
Sometime, it might be worthwhile for me to re-read the book and look at those connections more carefully. For now, I just enjoyed the story and the beauty of Updike’s poetic prose. I suppose I could have read it comfortably in the winter — the description of the falling snow toward the end of the book is beautiful — but it made a pretty good summer read, too.
Mysteries I could read in any season. Just recently, I read and enjoyed Dorothy Sayers’ The Documents in the Case, written, interestingly enough, as a collection of letters and other documents.
Well, my company has just arrived home. Alex and Calvin Barendregt and Tim Gallant, all from Grande Prairie, are down for the weekend. Gotta go!
“Chivalry”
Every now and then, you come across a story which is almost perfect: the tone, the characters, the atmosphere, the little details, the plot — everything seems to come together to make the story just right. That’s the case with Neil Gaiman’s “Chivalry,” one of the stories in Smoke and Mirrors. The story opens with this line: “Mrs. Whitaker found the Holy Grail; it was under a fur coat.” It’s not long after she brings it home from the thrift shop that Galaad comes looking for it, and Mrs. Whitaker invites him in for tea…. Gaiman says that the story is “very friendly,” and it is. It was a delight to read. (Alas, some of the other stories in that volume look horrid.)
I read “Chivalry” while sitting in Chapters up in Calgary this weekend. I had a pulpit exchange with Theo Hoekstra, the pastor of Emmanuel Reformed Church in Neerlandia, a small town about seven hours northwest of here. On the way, I stayed overnight with my parents in Red Deer and did some book shopping in Edmonton at a store that buys and sells seconded books at greatly reduced prices. Heavily laden with books, I arrived in Neerlandia, preached twice on Sunday, led the Young People’s study at their request, and visited several old friends. I arrived back in Lethbridge this evening. Now it’s time to read a bit and head to bed. Good night!
Recent Reading
Last week, I read N. T. Wright’s Holy Communion for Amateurs. It’s meant to basic introduction to the Lord’s Supper, but it covers a lot of ground in a helpful and very readable way. There are certainly spots at which one might quibble. My friends who’ve studied liturgics more than I have might question the liturgical order Wright presents toward the end of the book, for instance. I’m surprised that Wright didn’t include anything about the efficacy of prophetic symbolic action (e.g., Ezekiel beseiges a clay tablet he calls “Jerusalem” and the city itself is beseiged), since that’s something Wright discusses elsewhere. But I appreciated what Wright did include. Now I’m wondering whether Wright’s forthcoming The Meal Jesus Gave Us is the same book with a different title or perhaps a larger work on the same subject.
The other book I read last week was Tim Power’s Dinner at Deviant’s Palace, a fairly light bit of science-fiction, set in a future California (Irvine, Venice, and Ellay). Powers’ presentation of the seductive power of evil is okay, but a little clunky in places. Still it was an enjoyable read.
Gevers on Wolfe
Here is a new article about Gene Wolfe by Nick Gevers. He provides a helpful summary of Wolfe’s Three Suns cycle, ending with this statement:
Gene Wolfe has taken science fiction to its highest artistic pitch, transcending genre, creating a literary monument unlike any other. He is sf’s greatest novelist, and overall one of America’s finest; he may at times be obscure in his writing [you’re not kidding!], but his public obscurity is wholly undeserved. Modernist or postmodernist, formal allegorist or anatomist of the deepest complexities of the human soul, he is a wonder, yes, a genius, with a crooked lupine smile.
In related news, I’m nearly finished reading Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun.
Wolfe’s Ambiguity?
Speaking of Wolfe, as I was at the end of the last post, there’s an interview with him here with a few items of interest. He talks about how he came up with the idea for New Sun (it all started with a costume), though Wolfe goes on to say that people often think they have a story idea when they have only an opening or a character. You don’t really have a story idea, he says, until you have the conclusion.
He responds to the charge that his writing is obscure and complex:
I get a lot of people complaining about my ambiguity, often in cases in which there is nothing ambiguous at all. As far as I can see, people read it when they were half stoned and listening to the TV. Then they come back and say gee, it’s impossible to figure out what’s going on in a story.
He also says that out of all his novels, his favourite (at the moment) is There Are Doors, which might surprise some of his fans. That’s actually the first Wolfe I read! Nothing like starting at the top, eh?
Tolkien and Wolfe
Several of my friends and acquaintances are fans of the science-fiction and fantasy writer Gene Wolfe. I’ve been working my way through Wolfe’s works, and last night I started what appears to be Wolfe’s deepest and most difficult work, The Book of the New Sun, the first volume of which is Shadow and Claw.
I was able to read only the first chapter last night, and I was pretty tired at the time, so I suspect that I’ll read that first chapter again tonight. Mind you, in “The Best Introduction to the Mountains,” an essay on The Lord of the Rings, Wolfe says,
You are not likely to believe me when I say that I still remember vividly, almost 50 years later, how strictly I disciplined myself with that book, forcing myself to read no more than a single chapter each evening. The catch, my out, the stratagem by which I escaped the bonds of my own law, was that I could read that chapter as many times as I wished; and that I could also return to the chapter I had read the night before, if I chose. There were evenings on which I reread the entire book up the point — The Council of Elrond, let us say — at which I had forced myself to stop.
I suspect that wouldn’t be a bad way to read The Book of the New Sun either. Wolfe doesn’t always explain what’s happening in the book, let alone the significance of the events, and I usually finish a Wolfe story with the sense that there’s a lot I haven’t caught yet. I’m not going to adopt the Wolfe method this time; instead, I’ll read the whole thing straight through. But I may start keeping a Wolfe journal, jotting down some things I’ve noticed or things I need to think about more. For instance, the story begins shortly after the narrator, Severian, has nearly drowned, which I suspect is a baptismal image, and all the more so since the title of the chapter is “Resurrection and Death.” And here’s a paragraph worth thinking about:
We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life — they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious form of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all.
Poise
Here’s a quotation from P. G. Wodehouse’s Uneasy Money:
At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.