index to CW book summaries

I had begun summarizing CW's works in chronological order and posting the summaries on this blog. However, since I am launching my brand-new CW blog, THE ODDEST INKLING, next week, I will post these summaries there from now one. Enjoy! 
 

Index to summaries of books by Charles Williams:

1912 -- The Silver Stair -- poetry (sonnet sequence)

 1912 -- The Chapel of the Thorn -- unpublished play ("dramatic poem")

1917 -- Poems of Conformity -- poetry on love and war

1920 -- Divorce -- poems



Index to summaries of books about Charles Williams:

1983 -- Hadfield, Alice Mary. Charles Williams: An Exploration of His Life and Work

The Doctor Diaries III: Xmas special

“The Runaway Bride” and The Ultimate Things

What makes a work of fiction terribly powerful? What makes it memorable? What makes it emotionally wrenching? One factor is often how it deals with The Ultimate Things: birth, death, and the end of the world. I've written a bit about The End of the World in fiction previously.

According to Christian theology, there are either Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell, or Seven Last Things: the second coming of Christ, the defeat of antichrist, the binding of Satan, the millennial kingdom, the release of Satan, the last judgment (a.k.a. the end of the world), and the revelation of the new heaven and the new earth. These are often presented archetypally in fiction, especially the defeat of antichrist: the protagonist and antagonist are often presented as being equal-but-opposite to each other, necessary to one another's continued purpose and/or existence. This is presented most clearly in fiction of the comic book, superhero, and epic kinds. See, for instance, the (SPOILERS!) ending of Unbreakable

or Sherlock and Moriarty's last conversation. Since the “good guy” and the “bad guy” are presented as complimentary opposites, or foils for one another, this is typologically resonant with the theological concept of Christ defeating Antichrist.

Another factor in making a work of fiction terrifically powerful is how it pushes its characters to the extremes of human action and emotion, which might be considered another set of Ultimate Things: murder, suicide, star-crossed love affairs, betrayal, loss of a child, loss of the beloved, salvation, and damnation.

The characters in Doctor Who encounter one of the Ultimate Things in nearly every episode. That's as much part of the genre as the fights with silly aliens or the Doctor's obsession with picking up pretty young companions.

In “The Runaway Bride,” the Doctor takes Donna to witness the beginning of the Earth. It turns out that the particularly overdone villain in this episode (a giant red spider who apparently can't walk and just stands in place listening to all her children being murdered) was there at the creation of earth—in fact, she caused earth's beginnings by using her spaceship as the first rock in the center of a cluster, thus creating a gravity field that began drawing in all the other rocks and space debris around it. All this rubble eventually coalesced into the planet we know and love.

Anyway, the point is that Donna gets to witness the birth of the Planet Earth. This is obviously quite a ultimate Ultimate Thing. And it has on her exactly the effect the Doctor planned; Donna is singularly gifted at missing the Big Picture. She missed the invasion of the Sycorax because she had a hangover. She was unaware of World War Three because she was scuba diving off the coast of Spain. So the Doctor decides she needs a little perspective in her life. And what better way to infuse a bit of Big-Picture Perspective than to shove a little human right into the middle of one of the Ultimate Things? And which Ultimate Thing could be better than one that no human has ever seen before, which is beyond human ability to observe? It's like watching one's own birth—only it's more like watching everyone's birth, at once.

And it works. Donna says, “That puts the wedding into perspective.” Indeed it does. It puts most everything into perspective. That what The Ultimate Things does, and I believe that is one reason that fiction of the epic, fantasy, and comic book types are so popular, and always will be—at least until we experience the Ultimate Things themselves directly, without fictional mediation. /

The Doctor Diaries: Interim

As a late-blooming Whovian, I made an awkward entry into the series by watching Seasons Five, Two, and One—in that order. I had actually tried Season One, but was so turned off by Christopher Eccleston's big ears and funny face, Billie Piper's unclassy accent, and the absurdity of the plots in the first three episodes that I quit watching. It was such awful B-movie scifi. But then, on the advice of several very savvy friends, I randomly jumped into Season Five. I don't know whatever possessed me to skip The One and Only Doctor, David Tennant. But even sweet, silly Matt Smith got me over the goofy stories and into the profound depths of the Steven Moffat stories.

All that to say: I haven't been blogging the Doctor for a while because I went back and watched Season One. And of course, I fell in love and got my heart broken with the rest of you. Yet not journalling about those episodes is no great loss, I think, because of the cyclical nature of the series. Each deep theme gets revisited at some point in the “future” (funny how the very nature of the Doctor messes with the meanings of words like “future”).

This also gives me a chance to blog about another Big Idea the Doctor has given me. I'm calling it Retrospective Linearity.

That's a big name for a fairly basic idea. The idea is that at the end of the whole Doctor Who experience, you could go back and reconstruct human history, in order, from beginning to end, to show how the Doctor created that history. He does not visit historical events in order—that is, in order from his perspective, according to when he encounters them relative to his personal chronology—but the chains of cause-and-effect he puts into motion end up spanning human history.

Here are the historical events and people he has visited, in his order, since the reboot:
1. Charles Dickens
2. World War II, the London Blitz
3. Queen Victoria
4. Madame de Pompadour
5. the coronation of Elizabeth I
6. the 2012 London Olympics (although this was in the future when the Doctor visited)
7. Shakespeare
8. the construction of the Empire State Building
9. 1913, right before the start of World War I
10. HMS Titanic
11. Pompeii, A.D. 79
12. Agatha Christie
13. Winston Churchill
14. 16th century Venice
15. Vincent van Gogh
16. 17th century pirate ship
17. Christmas Eve, 1938
18. Queen Nefertiti
19. American Wild West in the 19th century
20. London, 1892
21. the Cold War

Now let me re-order those to match earth's history: 

1. Queen Nefertiti
2. Pompeii, A.D. 79
3, 16th century Venice
4. Shakespeare
5. 17th century pirate ship
6. Madame de Pompadour
7. Charles Dickens
8. Queen Victoria
9. American Wild West in the 19th century
10. Vincent van Gogh
11. London, 1892
12. HMS Titanic
13. 1913, right before the start of World War I
14. Agatha Christie
15. the construction of the Empire State Building
16. Christmas Eve, 1938
17. World War II, the London Blitz
18. Winston Churchill
19. the coronation of Elizabeth I
20. the Cold War
21.the 2012 London Olympics

This, of course, doesn't include any time the Doctor visited in his first eight regenerations. Here is my point: The show gradually, non-chronologically reveals that the entirety of human history was written by the Doctor. At every moment, he stepped in to save earth, to save the human race.

At least, that's what I think the show could do, or should do, over time, as it layers more and more historical visits on top of one another. You'll notice that in 7 seasons, well over 70 episodes, he has only visited 21 times in the past—all the rest have been in the future. If they play it right, they could reveal how history was, at every moment, about to be different—disastrous—ending! —but the Doctor stepped in and made it what it now has been. And Steven Moffat & Co. are perfectly capable of constructing this elaborate historical revisionism.

So, I rather hope that's part of their grand scheme. We'll see.

Announcing the Charles Williams blog

Hear ye, hear ye! 

On Wednesday June 5th, 2013,

a new venue for Inklings information, discussion, and interaction 
will appear. 

It is my new blog, entitled:

THE ODDEST INKLING

An Exploration of the Works of Charles Williams (1886-1945)

This new blog is hosted by WordPress, and you can see the dummy site here. 
I will begin by offering weekly posts 
-- "Charles Williams Wednesdays" ! -- 
covering the following topics:

1. The Life

2. His Themes
3. The Works (summaries of CW's books, in chronological order)

4. Bibliography (Secondary Sources)

5. Influencers and Influenced

6. Arthuriana

7. Rosicruciana

8. Academic Articles (Paper Abstracts, Selections, and Links)

9. News (Calls for Papers, new links, media, etc.) 

I will begin by collecting, revising, and tidying the Charles Williams-related material on this blog and moving it over to that one in a neat and organized fashion. Then I will start generating new content, especially book summaries, with the goal of one post a week
-- "Charles Williams Wednesdays"--
Meanwhile . . . 
please contact me  
(iambic[dot]admonit[at]gmail[dot]com) 
if you have ideas for posts, themes, discussions, books to summarize, books to review, guest bloggers, material you would like to post, etc. 
Thank you, and I hope you join me in exploring 
THE ODDEST INKLING, 
Charles Walter Stansby Williams.

  

This article should be illegal.

I have just had a piece entitled "Arthur, Adapted" published in Curator.

It should be illegal because it is a "review" of a book that has not yet been released and which I have not yet read. 

The book is The Fall of Arthur by J.R.R. Tolkien, scheduled for release from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on May 23rd, 2013. You can pre-order it on Amazon.

So in my little Curator piece, I go through a little bit of literary history and a little bit of literary analysis about the story of King Arthur, about adaptation, and about urtexts. I talk about why the King Arthur story is perennially popular.

Then I provide some "semi-oracular statements" about what I think Tolkien’s work will contain and what it will be like. Please read the whole article and give me your thoughts! Thank you. 

The Doctor Diaries II.12-13b

"Doomsday" 

I wrote yesterday about similarities between the TARDIS and the Narnian wardrobe. Now, let's talk about Lovers divided by a wall between parallel universes. 

Basically, the ending of "Doomsday" (Doctor Who Season Two episode 13) is exactly the same as the ending of The Amber Spyglass, the final volume of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. In yesterday's post, I asked: 

were the writers of Doctor Who inspired by Philip Pullman -- or vice-versa -- or were all of them inspired by Classical antecedents -- or are there certain archetypes within fantasy that are inevitably explored over and over again -- or are these just the fundamental questions and images of the human mind, so they are going to come up over and over whenever imaginative writers are given rein? 

First, the facts. 

This Doctor Who episode was first broadcast on 8 July 2006. 
The Amber Spyglass was published in 2000. 

Therefore, like with yesterday's discussion of Narnia, it appears that the authors of the Doctor are ripping off someone else's idea. 

But let's look a bit closer. 

First, the endings are not really exactly the same. Yes, two people in love (in some sense or other! -- age is obviously a complicating concern in both cases) are separated by being trapped in different parallel universes, more or less permanently. But there are a few differences. 
1. In the Pullman story, the two characters are originally from different universes. Rose and the Doctor are both from ours, albeit from wildly different planets in that universe (we think). 
2. In the Pullman story, Lyra and Will voluntarily choose to separate, to prevent their two universes from being destroyed by leaving the gap open. Granted, they wouldn't have much of a life if they stayed together, since each one could not survive in the other's world, so they didn't really have much choice. The Doctor has to close the gaps between the worlds for much the same reasons, but they choose to stay together in their own world, and Rose is taken to the other world more or less by accident (or at least against her will). 
3. Pullman has a very specific theological (or anti-theological) message to communicate in his novels, about the dangers and evils of Theism and the power and value of free love, even pre-adolescent sexuality. The Doctor's separation has a narrative function and, sadly, a marketing goal. The Doctor, being immortal, can never stay with one human woman for very long, so this was perhaps the kindest way of separating him from Rose without killing her off. AND one actress had to be got out of the way so the next actress could be introduced by the end of the season. Ah, pragmatics. 

But I'd also like to inquire, as I did before, whether there are Classical precedents for this idea. Well, sure. The idea of other worlds or parallel universes is probably as ancient as the human imagination. Orpheus and Eurydice were separated by something very like different universes. More recently, Lewis Carroll's worlds behind the Looking Glass are much like parallel universes, though there is not separation of lovers that way.  

And of course, the theory that there really ARE parallel universes -- the multiverse theory -- is gaining credence in the sciences right now, and the idea is an old one. Democritus of Abdera (c.460–c.370 BC) put forward some version of this idea.William James coined the term "mutiverse" in 1895. Richard Feynman proposed a "multiple histories" idea, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1965. And now, Andrei Linde and Brian Greene have been working on (and popularizing) this idea for the last two decades or so.

All that to say this:

1. The idea of parallel universes is as old as the human imagination. 2. This is a common theme in imaginative literature of all kinds. 3. The specific concept of the multiverse was heating up in the decade right before Pullman, and then Russell T Davies, wrote their stories. 4. It is an easy imaginative leap to start with the concept of multiple universes, populate your stories with characters from different universes or different ends of the same one, have them fall in love, and then realize that the greatest tragedy would be for them to get caught in separate universes.

All that to say, finally: I don't think Doctor Who is ripping anybody off. I think it is tapping into deep, common archetypes in the human imagination and deploying them in creative, yet inevitable, ways.

The Doctor Diaries II.12-13a

"Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday"

Sigh. Amazing. Perfect.  

That's one heck of a narrative frame! It's not every day you get a work narrated by someone dead. I can think of The Lovely Bones, The Sixth Sense, Pincher Martin, and ... that's all that comes to mind. What other stories have you encountered that are narrated by a dead person?

But, oh, my heart! This separation story is, of course, horribly heartbreaking, beautiful, tragic, and perfect. I hate a story like that. Stories of lovers divided, or mothers and children divided, are the most painful to read or to watch, I think. I'll never recover from the horror of the scene in The Duchess when her baby is taken away, for instance, or from the end of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Which leads me to the literary discussion I want to have today about Season Two overall:

Which came first, Doctor Who or all the other fantasy stories it resembles? 

In other words, who's ripping off whom?


You see, there are several plot elements throughout this series that I have encountered before, in the same or nearly the same form. So I got to thinking: were the writers of Doctor Who inspired by C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman -- or vice-versa -- or were all of them inspired by Classical antecedents -- or are there certain archetypes within fantasy that are inevitably explored over and over again -- or are these just the fundamental questions and images of the human mind, so they are going to come up over and over whenever imaginative writers are given rein? 

Here are the two particular plot elements I want to talk about: 
1. It's bigger on the inside than on the outside. 
2. Lovers divided by a wall between parallel universes. 

I'll talk about #1 in this post and #2 tomorrow. 

1. It's bigger on the inside than on the outside. 

This concept, of course, occurs throughout Doctor Who, since the TARDIS is most notably bigger on the inside than she is on the outside. In C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, of course, there is a small compartment (a wardrobe) that is bigger on the inside than on the outside. Indeed, this idea becomes a theme throughout Lewis's Narnia stories, culminating in the last book, in which Queen Lucy points out that “In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.” This is a beautifully Whovian idea: a little material object contains something bigger than itself, bigger than its entire universe! Gorgeous. What's even more gorgeous is that this is not only fantasy, it's DOCTRINE! Whew.

So, then, who inspired whom? Well, I am determined that this little diary project of mine won't turn into "research" (goodness knows I have enough *real* scholarly research projects going on). Therefore, everything here is readily googleable and wikipediafied. Feel free to modify, correct, supplement, etc.

C.S. Lewis began thinking about the Narnia stories in 1939, completed the MS of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe in 1949, and published on 16 October 1950. The Last Battle was published in 1956. 

Doctor Who first aired on 23 November 1963. Do I think the writers probably read Narnia? Yeah, I do. Do I have any proof? Nope. However... there are classical antecedents to this concept, which probably inspired both of these series. Here are a few: 
- the Slavic witch Baba Yaga has a tiny hut that is a great hall inside.
- there is a tent in A Thousand and one Nights that's bigger on the inside.
- In Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, an immense appears behind the door of an ordinary Soviet apartment--but I doubt that either of our writers had this in mind, given this books' complicated publication history.

Does anyone know if there are other, more Classic[al] instances? I'm trying to recall any in Milton, or Dante, or the Greeks? Are there any such? 

(Side note: There's a Doctor Who episode entitled "The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe", but I haven't seen it yet).


Tune in tomorrow for how the ending of Season Two parallels the ending of The Amber Spyglass.