5-Minute Brown

I'm reviewing three new Lewis biographies for Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal. Here are selections from my thoughts on the second of these. 

A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C. S. Lewis by Devin Brown is sweet and engaging, yet also insightful and well researched. Its greatest strength, I believe, is that it approaches Lewis' life through the theme that Lewis himself claimed was the theme of his earthly existence: sehnsucht or “joy.” This means that the majority of the biography veers dangerously close to being just a paraphrase of Surprised by Joy, but manages to avoid that fate by bringing in passages from all of Lewis' works and setting them against SbJ. 

Indeed, this is as much a study of Joy in Lewis' life as it is a straight-forward biographical account, weaving together light literary analysis with the story of the life.

This analytical, thematic approach means that Brown sometimes departs from a chronological narrative, occasionally relating events out of order to emphasize their relationship to the story of Joy. Yet he always signposts these with clear markers (such as “but we are getting ahead of ourselves,” 4) to avoid confusing the reader.

The style is lovely: simple, clean, elegant, and inviting. The focus on Lewis' spiritual life, while not original, is valuable. Brown takes especial care in tracing the steps of Lewis' thought (on naturalism, for instance, or in the “moves” of the divine “chess game” that brought him to faith).

While this biography is, as I have said, lively, intelligent, and informative it suffers from two enormous omissions that may very well prove fatal: Mrs. Moore and Charles Williams are almost completely erased from this account.

Leaving Mrs. Moore and Charles Williams out of the story of Lewis' life is like leaving Queen Elizabeth I and Christopher Marlowe out of an account of Shakespeare's; they were probably the fifth and sixth most influential people he ever encountered—after Warnie, Tolkien, Barfield, and Joy Davidman. (Arthur Greeves may belong in that list, but he was arguably a man more influenced than influencing).

Mrs. Moore receives less than three full pages in Brown's work (104-6). Any intelligent reader of All My Road Before Me or the Collected Letters knows that the story is very complicated and sordid.

Charles Williams did more than any other person, after Barfield and Tolkien, to form Lewis' thoughts, books, and behavior. Their friendship was extremely important. They taught one another about new theological varieties of love. They each inspired the other to be a better writer, a better friend, and a better Christian. Lewis wrote in a letter right after Williams' death: “I also have become much acquainted with grief now through the death of my great friend Charles Williams, my friend of friends, the comforter of all our little set, the most angelic man.”

All this to say: Brown's negligence in treating Mrs. Moore and Charles Williams seriously lessens the value of his otherwise excellent book. This is still the one biography I would recommend to you!

5-Minute Duriez

I am in the process of reviewing three biographies of C.S. Lewis for Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal. I'll share selections from my longer reviews here. 

I really wanted to like C. S. Lewis: A Biography of Friendship by Colin Duriez. The author is a kind person and a fine scholar/teacher. The is a pleasant retelling of Lewis' life-story, but it is sadly flawed. 

First, its writing style is quite poor, and the book is badly edited. There are odd, pervasive grammatical errors and frequent instances of strange syntax. Take this example: “The Inklings were a group of literary friends that coalesced around Lewis, and existed for around thirty years” (135) and then on the next page: “Of the more committed writers, Charles Williams's books were nearly all published before he joined the Inklings and breathed its atmosphere” (136). Is “Inklings” singular or plural? Why does that comma appear before “and existed,” when what follows is a dependent clause? Haven't we gotten away from misplaced modifiers yet? (CW's books were more committed writers? What?)

 

Furthermore, this claim about Williams' books is debatable: yes, he wrote some 36 of around 54 books before joining the Inklings (it is difficult to decide how to count some of his works, such as plays in collections), but the number of books per year went up significantly during that time: he wrote 18 books in those last 6 years of his life. Arguably, the quality and depth of his works also increased during those years. So that claim that Williams was pretty much done writing before meeting the Inklings is extremely misleading.

 

Yet there is much valuable information in this volume. The discussions of each phase of Lewis' beliefs are clear. I learned that George Orwell reviewed That Hideous Strength (176-7) and that Joy Davidman Lewis gave a lecture on Charles Williams to a group of Oxford students (215). There is a fascinating discussion of the theme of the Devil in the Inklings' works from the 1930s (172-77). The emphasis on friendship (though neither as consistent nor as well-developed as in Carpenter's or Glyer's books) is interesting. Overall, Duriez' biography is a sweet, simple, engaging look at Lewis and his friends, but it would have benefited from better editing and more rigorous scholarship.

Ekphrastic Writing at the Allentown Art Museum

Along with two other faculty members, I help to advise XANADU, the literary club at the community college where I teach. We usually produce a literary journal each semester. This semester, the students requested something different: They wanted to spend this semester workshopping their writings and works of visual art, then produce just one issue of the magazine in the spring. Of course, we were delighted! This new approach has opened up our schedule considerable and enabled us to pursue other adventures.

For the past month or so, we have been exploring EKPHRASIS: the tradition of writing about the visual arts. We had a guest poet, Lisa Alexander Baron, share six Ekphrastic poems and ideas for techniques to use when writing in response to paintings. I shared some Ekphrastic poems by the masters, along with images of the paintings that inspired them. An art teacher, Corinne Lalin, shared lots of prints. Then the next week, the students had a mini writing workshop, looking at paintings and writing pieces inspired by them. (Students! Share those pieces here if you will!)

Then today was the big event. Four students, two teachers, my husband, and my mom all went to the Allentown Art Museum this afternoon. Corinne took me around and gave me an amazing talk about modern art; she explained more to me about 20th-century painting than I have learned in my whole life. Here are some pictures of the works we discussed, followed by the poem I wrote in response.

Two-Part Invention

“Untitled,” about 1974, by Flora Natapoff

& “Moon Theater,” 1986, by Joan Snyder

Four feet stop in a gallery-space.

They point at a corner, two right and two left.

One voice asks a question, dwindles out flat.

“What makes a work like that, or like that, a work that's a work that's worth looking at?”

The other voice answers on an ascending scale,

picking out pieces of facts from her brain,

and fitting them into a musical frame.

Her own inspiration inspires her more,

and each idea strikes out another to sound.

Picking a fact, then working a theme,

she talks up a tune from the visual scene.

“The first thing we see is industrial space”—

that's tonic.

“Then notice perspectives that clash in your mind”—

that's intervals building.

“And see the confusion, our chaotic times”—

that's the melody marching, a dissonant row.

And thus the first instrument plays out its theme.

She riffs upon balance and triangulation, masses and edges, and ateliers.

She plucks out the color wheel, strums about lines,

and sets something humming in her neighbor's mind.

The other voice cannot stay silent for long.

When just the right resonance catches her up,

she offers as counterpoint differing notes.

“It's myth and tradition, this massing of gold”—

that's dominant pitch.

“The shape evokes presence and absences at once”—

that's harmonic hints.

“Both sorrow and cyclical meaning are here”—

and the voices dance pas de deux

all through the air.


After that, I went and sat in front of another painting that Corinne recommended, one about which she said, "If I were a writing, that is the one I would write about!" Here is the result:

The Glass Casts Back the Slanted Light
“Mary and the Studio,” 1924

by Sidney Edward Dickinson

In nightmares sometimes I have seen a room

where doppelgänger mirrors flank the space

and cast each other's pictures back and forth

in endless iteration. Into this scene,

the painter painted other works of art:

sketches, postcards, prints, and portraiture.

His repetition fools us into depth.

But Mary is not fooled. She knows the nude

(whose full-length figure points the artist's elbow)

is no more prop than she—no, nor no less—

and ladder, light, and skylight (all arranged)

are backdrop and reflection (both at once)

to magnify reception. Reputation.

Yes. She is amused. And she is bruised,

a little, delicate, and cool, and coldly used.

She knows her image was an afterthought.

She knows about the palette knife, the tools

for taking off the color from her face.

She knows about the angels and the beam.

And she has seen it, seen it all, has seen

why he would feign to hover in the back

when anybody knows—or ought to know—

the artists always takes the center stage.

Call all self-portraits false humility.

And so her gaze (the one thing she can will)

refuses him, amuses her, and chooses where

the viewer's gaze will linger. There,

beyond the structure of the mismatched frame,

her eyes' suggestion blanks the artist's name.

And “Mary and”—not “Mary in”—and Mary

heads the title. Not a little fame.

 

2013 movies: "The Great Gatsby"

As this year is wrapping up, I think I'll review a few of the movies I saw throughout 2013. Maybe some of them will win Oscars? 

 

Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby (2013, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby, Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan, and Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway) is a remarkably literal adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel. I have rarely seen a film that followed its source-book as faithfully, except for settings of Shakespeare's plays. Of course, Lehrmann is known for his brilliant and bizarre Romeo + Juliet (1996)--yet even his wildly original twist on the old tale followed this unspoken rule about adapting Shakespeare: You can cut out as many lines as you like, you can interpret the words as strangely as their ambiguities will allow (visually, verbally, physically), and you can even cut-and-paste the order of lines and scenes—but you may never, ever add new words to Shakespeare's text. Lehrmann followed this rule a little more loosely in The Great Gatsby, and both his additions and his wooden fidelity together constitute a commentary on the current state of American education: a song of praise for the writer's power, and a lament for the loss of Classical learning.

The most obvious departure from the book comes in the frame-narrative: the story of pathetic Nick Carraway, voyeur, pander, morbid alcoholic, locked in a sanitarium to recover from post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet Nick is an author, writing as therapy—and narrating the entire film via an invasive voice-over. As the movie closes, he finishes the typescript, revealing its title, Gatsby, before penning in The Great. Nick, then, is both a character in the story, deeply implicated in his friends' guilty actions, and the storyteller who evokes a time gone by and a man with extraordinary dreams. The impact of this trope strikes in two opposite directions: on the one hand, it reinforces the stereotype of the drunk, mentally-ill writer who can't cope with life. On the other hand, it revives the Romantic concept of the inspired writer as a sort of demi-god, creating worlds with his words. More than most screen adaptations of novels, then, The Great Gatsby screams at its audience: READ THE BOOK!

Yet, sadly, the literal, plodding nature of the voice-over narration serves as witness that people don't read books, or if they do, they don't do so with the powers of analysis that use to be expected of a literate, educated generation. Maguire explains everything, telling the viewer what to think, expounding character's thoughts and feelings rather than letting the actors reveal them through their subtle arts, and (most annoyingly) interpreting emblems. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us,” he declaims, substituting exposition of the metaphor for subtle resonance. Clearly, this movie was made for a generation that does not want to interpret visual symbols for itself.

But then again, the book rather bashes the reader over the head with its own wooden literalism, interpreting events and leaving no room for either misunderstanding or subtle application. “I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler” Nick announces after someone first asks him directions in West Egg. A more profound novelist would leave that conclusion, or some other, for the reader to draw. A more profound novelist would trust his readers more. Perhaps that is why this movie was made, now, for this generation: with our left-over poetolatry but without a classical education, what we want is literal interpretations of simple novels, narrated, interpreted, packaged, and delivered. That way we can feel sophisticated without having to think too hard.

Abstract: King Arthur was an Elf!

I will be spending the weekend of Dec 13-15 at this lovely little Tolkien conference/party: Mythgard's Mythmoot II. Should be amazing! Here is a summary of the paper I'm scheduled to give (which is the seed of my proposed book on The Inklings and King Arthur. Check it out.

King Arthur Was an Elf!
An Imaginary, Composite, Inklings Arthuriad 

 

ABSTRACT:

The recent publication of The Fall of Arthur, an unfinished poem by J.R.R. Tolkien, revealed a startling, previously-unknown aspect of Tolkien’s legendarium. The key is found in notes Tolkien left about how he intended the fragmentary Fall of Arthur to continue (included in Christopher Tolkien's editorial matter). In the final confrontation, Mordred would fatally wound Arthur, Arthur would kill Mordred, and Arthur would be carried away to the West for healing. Lancelot, arriving too late, would set sail into the West, searching for his king, never to return.

In other words, Lancelot is Eärendel. He sails into the West, seeking a lost paradise: Avalon, Tol Eressëa, or the Land of Faery. If Tolkien had finished this poem, he could have woven it together with The Silmarillion so that his elvish history mapped onto the legends of Arthur, forming the mythological and linguistic foundation on which “real” English history and language were based. In addition, he could have collaborated with Lewis and Williams on their Arthurian legends, creating a totalizing myth greater than any they wrote individually.

This paper, then, examines the theological, literary, historical and linguistic implications of an imaginary, composite, Inklings Arthuriad by comparing the Arthurian geography and characters of The Fall of Arthur, The Silmarillion, and The Lord of the Rings with “Lancelot,” Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis and Taliessin Through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars by Charles Williams.

In all three writers’ worlds, evil is in the East; this is not surprising in an England threatened by Nazi Germany. God’s country is in the opposite direction, across the sea, connected with ancient legends about Hesperus, the evening star, Venus, the light in the West.

In all three writers' worlds, heroic characters achieve a great quest and leave this earthly realm for a heavenly one, attaining a spiritual fulfillment that has both historical and personal implications for England and for the individual Christian.

If Tolkien had finished The Fall of Arthur and if the Inklings had put all their Arthurian ideas together, they could have produced the kind of totalizing English mythology that Tolkien attempted, but abandoned. But he did not, so this paper also considers why he stopped, and what the theoretical pitfalls are of examining a work of literature that does not exist.

Guest Post: "How Shall We Then Write?"

How Should We Then Write?
Guest Post by J. Aleksandr Wootton


“We can make people (often) attend to the Christian point of view for half an hour or so; but the moment they have gone away from our lecture or laid down our article, they are plunged back into a world where the opposite position is taken for granted.
 
As long as that situation exists, widespread success is simply impossible.

We must attack the enemy's line of communication. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects – with their Christianity 'latent'.”


– C.S. Lewis, Christian Apologetics (essay collected in God in the Dock)

In college I had an ethics professor who taught that the foremost task of religious persons is to relate that religion to every aspect of their lives.

Imagine someone's life captured in a series of Venn diagrams: Each circle would represent a different activity or worldview: “work,” “political outlook,” “gym,” “book club,” and so on.

Because the diagrams are made at different points over the course of this person's life, the labels on the circles and their relative positions and degree of overlap vary from diagram to diagram. When arranged chronologically, the circle labeled “religion” first appears on the periphery and barely touches any other circle.

However, as we move forward in time through the diagrams, the “religion” circle moves (we hope!) gradually towards the middle, and as it moves, it also grows to encompass every other circle. As time gets on, religion should come to centrally dominate this person's life and expand to its furthest edges, eventually providing the context that informs and explains everything else about them.

Including what and how they write.

In 2 Peter 3, the writer asks us to consider, in light of the revealed truth of God's Word, what sort of people we ought to be. Francis Schaeffer famously paraphrased the question as How Should We Then Live?

I propose to consider a much smaller piece of that question: How should we then write?

1. With Subtlety

From the opening quote it should be apparent that I do NOT believe that Christians should only write Christian books [i.e. books about Christianity; books meant primarily for Christian audiences]. Just the opposite.

Later in that same essay Lewis asks us to imagine how startling and potentially life-changing it would be to read a physics or biology textbook which inferred, in its conclusions and suppositions, that Hinduism were true.

“It is not the books written in direct defense of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist,” he writes. “It is the materialist assumptions in all the other books.”

Although these remarks were a digression from the main argument of the Christian Apologetics address delivered in 1945, Lewis would soon follow his own advice with The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, published in 1950.

Lewis famously wrote that George MacDonald's fairytales had “baptized his imagination” as a child, laying the foundation for his lifelong love of mythology and for his eventual acceptance of J.R.R. Tolkien's argument that Christianity is the True Myth. In The Chronicles of Narnia Lewis successfully replicated that experience for perhaps thousands of children around the world.

The Narnian allegories are an excellent example of a Christian fairytale. They are subtle enough that even atheists don't worry much about “exposing” children to them, delightful enough to engage those children, and deep enough that readers who return to them later in life glean theological insight during nostalgic enjoyment of great stories well-told.

2. With Discernment

I also do not contend that Christian writing must be saccharine or “squeaky-clean.” I oppose – and, as a reader, do not enjoy – gratuitous violence, sexuality, and crude language in all fiction; quite apart from any moral objection, they make for poor storytelling.

But those who argue from Philippians 4:8 that such things “have no place” in Christian art rely on a simplistic reading of that verse and on ignorance of biblical context. In the original Hebrew, the Old Testament does not shy away from recording earthy “taboo” language when those words appropriately describe the situation. The Prophets unblushingly use near-pornographic hyperbole to call out the idolatry of God's people.

(It's not until later translations that scribes apparently begin to feel a misguided need to protect God's reputation or people by watering down His Word.)

Concerning these things we are called to be both wise and innocent, not delicate and willfully ignorant.

As writers, we must exercise discernment in our portrayals of sin and evil and the moral confusion of fallen people.

As readers, we must exercise discernment regarding the media we consume and recommend, regardless of the author's religious claims.

The Church has received considerable spiritual nourishment from certain pagan authors (Plato is an obvious example). Meanwhile, some Christians are presented with significant stumbling blocks by certain popular Christian authors I could name.

There is no simple, clear, hard-and-fast rule for this. Neither is there no rule at all. “All things are permissible,” Paul writes, “but not all things are profitable.”

Writers and readers should be guided by what is profitable, rather than by what is permissible.

3. With Excellence

Quid frugiferens est? What is profitable?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn declared in his Nobel lecture that


“The convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and forces even an opposing heart to surrender.”

He argues that although Relativism has cast considerable doubt on direct claims to Truth and Goodness, Beauty, through art, retains the power to transcend cultural barriers and awaken and provoke humanity towards universal community. Art transmits truth capable of bypassing our cynical intellects to penetrate our spirits directly.

(I urge you to read the full lecture, it's absolutely beautiful.)

We Christian novelists must aspire to literary masters like Solzhenitsyn and Lewis and their peers; anything less is a disservice to our gift, craft, and heritage, not to mention our readers.

(Aspire, by the way, does not mean idly wish for or daydream about; it means to “seek ambitiously”, literally to pursue someone so closely that you “breath upon” them or “pant after” them. As a deer in the wilderness aspires for flowing streams, so my soul aspires for God.)


After twenty years as a committed Communist activist, Douglas Hyde became uneasy about the disconnect between ideology and action manifest in the Soviet Union. In March 1948, he resigned his position as editor of the London Daily Worker, renounced the Communist Party, and converted to Catholicism.


He later wrote Dedication and Leadership, an analysis of the Communist Party's methods and effectiveness in spreading its message, intending that their tactics be put to use for worthier causes – specifically, Christian evangelism. One of the primary tactics he identifies is the mantra that Communists should strive to be the best at their jobs.


“In any profession,” Hyde writes, “you will be respected if you are good at your job – not because you are good at talking about your beliefs. It may be quite irrational, but the fact is that, if you are recognized as being outstanding on one thing, you will be listened to on all sorts of subjects in no way related to it... and so, if you are going to be really effective [for your cause] in your place of work, you must set out to be the best man at your job.”

I suppose there is no need for me to repeat any of the Bible's various exhortations to Christian excellence; they are favorite passages for “Christians in the workplace” sermons. But perhaps the why of it tends to slip from our memories?

Conclusion: True Art

We should not try to boost generic “Christian involvement” in media and the arts, as if any quality of Christian-themed art will have a positive impact on anybody.

We should not suppress boredom or distaste from a misplaced sense of loyalty (although it might be appropriate to do so for other reasons).

We should not support or recommend poor and unworthy art simply because the artists happen to be Christian. It is good they are Christian, but that doesn't automatically make them good artists. All art is craft, and any craft must be learned and practiced and developed.

Tolkien observed, in his Andrew Lang lecture On Fairy-Stories, “We make in our measure and in our derivative mode because we are made: not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.”

When God looks at what He makes, He says “it is very good.”

In our measure and in our derivative mode, we should be able to say that too.

Only then are we truly imaging our Maker in what we have made.

Only that kind of art does what Solzhenitsyn describes – uses Beauty to communicate Truth Immutable, Morality Universal, and Spirituality Irresistible.

True art, then, must be our ambition and our creed. In aspiring after creative excellence as we relate the Christian faith to our writing, we reveal the refracted Light of the world.

Sehnsucht-forged, our art shall “pierce like swords or burn like cold iron.”

Our works will become islands of joy.

Writing as J. Aleksandr Wootton, Jason M. Smith is the author of the Fayborn novels Her Unwelcome Inheritance, The Eighth Square, and A First or Final Mischief (forthcoming), as well as a poetry collection, Forgetting, due out next month. He can be contacted at www.jackwootton.com.