Platypus of Truth

This post is edited from a letter on Hope Mirrlees' Lud in the Mist First, thanks for passing on "Lud in the Mist". It's the kind of book I'm constantly hunting for and have increased trouble finding lately (Phantasties, Idylls of the King, The Last Unicorn, Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, The Queen of Elfland's Daughter, anything by William Morris, and the short stories of Clark Ashton Smith having already been encountered). There are very few books that I read at a positively leisurely pace for pure pleasure anymore and this was one of them. Second, I'm a historian and connector by nature and training, so I often access a book by linking it in with everything I've already read and letting my thoughts whirl like the music of the spheres. It seems like to immediately jump in to discussing Lud like that does violence to the Art. I feel the same way about Phantastes. I don't even know if Phantastes can be discussed in that way. Hope Mirrlee...

This year marks the completion of Houston Grand Opera's staging of the complete Ring Cycle  by Richard Wagner. My wife and I have been able to attend all four operas and have witnessed Wagner's retelling of the creation and destruction of the Nordic World. I haven't seen anything like it. The La Fura Dels Baus  staging HGO used seemed to swirl the Volsungsaga  with The Orestiea , Final Fantasy , Mad Max: Fury Road ,  The Wasteland , The Dry Salvages and The Abolition of Man . It was a heady cocktail that appeared to leave those over forty cold while it made the twenty-somethings I know weep with rapture. So you know where I fit in, I bought the boxed set on DVD. Wagner's work is a paean to the power of Nature and a warning to those who would use power over Nature to gain power over others. It's a timely message for the city of Houston, a place that worships unbridled wealth, revels in the wholesale destruction of the natural world, builds its low-cost of living...

Well, I've done it: I've finally finished Robert E. Howard's entire Conan oeuvre. The journey has been several years long, and I've also taken side trips to cover Howard creations Kull, Solomon Kane, and Bran Mak Morn, but I have finally reached the finish. What do I say now that I have reached the end? When I began this journey, one of my friends quipped that Conan should be known as "the venerially diseased" instead of "the barbarian". Others told me that they had simply given up along the way -the racism and misogyny were too much. I did give up on Howard's younger contemporary, Fritz Leiber, for about that reason. Having read to the end, I can confidently say that these criticisms are true: Conan is not a good man, and Robert E. Howard was a cynical nihilist out to earn a buck -but that's not the whole story. Conan and his creator also reflect the realities of the Great Depression and a life on America's not-so-tamed former frontier...

This post will cover two of Robert E. Howard's Conan short stories: Beyond the Black River and The Black Stranger . Prior posts on Conan and his world can be found by following the "Howard" tag at the bottom of this post. Beyond the Black River : The last phase of Howard's Conan stories find him transitioning from the world of oriental adventures to the American frontier. Beyond the Black River owes more to books like Buchanan's A Salute to Adventurers than to Chesterton's The Ballad of the White Horse . Nonetheless, Howard still preserves the ancient world setting by calquing the American frontier onto the Roman frontier and cover the whole thing with a facade of Hyborian places and peoples. The author's commitment to side with barbarism over civilization comes to the fore here and the lesson seems to be that of the noble savage showing up the folly and weakness of society. One wonders, given Howard's deification of the "barbarian," how ...

There's nothing quite like arriving late to the conversation. It's why I don't like being late to Christmas parties if I can help it. When I began reading Inklings scholarship (Tom Shippey on Tolkien, Doug Gresham on Lewis), I knew that I'd arrived late to the party. Things were being referenced or scoffed at that I didn't fully understand. Over time, I began to pick up on elements of the earlier conversation and orient myself. Recently, however, I've been able to go back and look at that earlier part of the discussion; specifically, the parts before the coming of Humphrey Carpenter and his monolithic J.R.R. Tolkien , and The Inklings . The particular works in question come not from Oxford insiders or authorized biographers but academics on this side of the pond who were willing to risk professional scorn by asserting the literary greatness of the Inklings and their associates. They are, respectively, Understanding Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings  (copyright...

The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings  is the first major comprehensive study of the influential group of Oxford writers since Humphrey Carpenter's The Inklings . This is above all a book whose time has come. Since Carpenter's initial study, a veritable floodwater has passed under the academic bridge. Philip and Carol Zaleski do a fine job of organizing and synthesizing this vast body of literature into an appropriately hefty (644 pages with the notes) portrait of the group that not only covers the Big Four (Tolkien, Lewis, Barfield, Williams), but also the second tier and allied-periphery (Warnie, Coghill, Dyson, Havard, Wain, Dundas-Grant, Cecil, Christopher Tolkien, Hardie, Sister Penelope, Ruth Pitter, Eddison, Sayers, and Eliot). The Zaleski's are at their best when they are weaving the complex stories of these authors' individual biographies and group interactions into a coherent narrative. They do have a bad habit of repeatedly snipping(making sharp,...

We continue our journey through A Treasury of Modern Fantasy  edited by Terry Carr and Martin Harry Greenberg with tales by C.M. Kornbluth and Clark Ashton Smith. Thirteen O'Clock by C.M. Kornbluth The rise of modern Fantasy has been closely linked with that of Science Fiction.  In some pieces, it's hard to tell them apart.   Thirteen O'Clock  by C.M. Kornbluth is one of those pieces.  I'm not sure whether we're in a bad parody of Phantastes  or an episode of Buck Rogers ; possibly, we're just in a seeder part of Oz.  I think this confusion may be intentional.   Thirteen O'Clock  has all the hallmarks of a story meant to sell: genre mixing, thin characters, fast-pacing, a little sex, and lots of surprises.  This isn't a work of carefully crafted epic fantasy, but a quick yarn meant to bring home the bacon in a crunched publishing market.  In that respect, Thirteen O'Clock  reminds us that American Fantasy grew up in a v...

What could be cooler that J.R.R. Tolkien brandishing the Lance of Longinus along with a Grail-toting C.S. Lewis, and an apparition of Charles Williams, riding on a rocket bear with dual chain guns for arms? Pro-mo for the school's Inklings reading club.

This Christmas season's " wintry read " has been George MacDonald's Lilith .  Written as part of the grieving process for MacDonald's dead daughter, the whole book is suffused with a cold, quiet, strangeness that pairs well with the waning of the year.  It's no small tribute to the eeriness of the work that H.P. Lovecraft singled it out as one of the landmark achievements in the development of the "weird tale."  Paying the book equal homage from the other side of the pond, C.S. Lewis contributed a brilliant forward to one of the reprints (W.H. Auden has the honor of another).  Though I could compare the mesmeric effects of the work to Lovecraft's Dream Quest of Unknown Kaddath , which owes even more to Lord Dunsany, I'd like to focus in on Lilith's legacy to C.S. Lewis. Lewis quite openly referred to George MacDonald as his master and claimed that there was some direct borrowing form MacDonald in everything he wrote.  This comes as lit...

Reading about the Inklings, the informal literary circle that gathered around C.S. Lewis in the thirties and forties, gradually begins to feel like adjusting the focus on a camera lens.  You start with a single figure in hazy focus, say J.R.R. Tolkien.  Picking up Humphrey Carpenter's biography draws the professor in a few stark lines.  A person, a personality begins to emerge.  To begin to see Tolkien, however, is for others figures to become perceptible on the edges of your vision.  C.S. Lewis enters into the picture, and Charles Williams hovers, indistinct around the edges.  Seeking to know the relationship between the three men better, you may pick up Carpenter's second work, The Inklings .  Suddenly, Lewis and Williams jump sharply into view as characters and Tolkien continues to take on life and weight.  New personages flit through the frame: Hugo Dyson, Humphrey Havard, Dorothy L. Sayers, T.S. Eliot, Warnie Lewis.  Carpenter's Lewis do...

Recently, I've been re-reading one of the stranger works of C.S. Lewis, Pilgrim's Regress .  Pilgrim's Regress was Lewis' first attempt at trying to explain his new-found faith in literary form.  Following the lead of Puritan writer, John Bunyan, Lewis decided to recast his own Christian journey as a work of allegorical fiction.  Lewis and his friends promptly decided that the work was a failure, but that didn't keep him from other imaginative forays into the world of literature. Looking back on the work, Lewis decided that its major fault was two-fold: obscurity and a lack of charity.  As to a lack of charity, Lewis knew better than I do -I can't detect anything particularly spiteful.  As to obscurity, that hits nearer the mark.  However, if you are familiar with the intellectual climate of first third of the 20th century, then the book is actually quite a romp.  Even if that's not the case, there are still many elements of Lewis' spiritual journey...

C.S. Lewis talks about the effect myth has on ordinary things: it hands us back a sense of wonder.  As an example, he takes a child at play pretending that lunch is actually buffalo meat that he, as a Native American warrior, has killed while hunting out on the plains.  Lewis calls the child "wise" because his make-believe recaptures the truth that all of us once only knew the joys of food through the thrill of the hunt.  The ordinary is seen to be extra-ordinary, the food is seen to be more than mere calories. I was looking at a stump the other day that several friends were endeavoring to dislodge from the box in the church parking lot.  As the strange and spiky roots peeped through the surface I couldn't help thinking that it was like a little creature that might scuttle off at any moment muttering imprecations at the humans who so had so rudely grabbed it by the head.  The thought, of course, should be familiar to anyone who played "The Legend of Zelda: A L...

I mentioned reading a passage from J.R.R. Tolkien's "Leaf by Niggle" several days ago and immediately thinking of "The Legend of Zelda."   Now "Leaf by Niggle" is heavily platonic in its conception of the afterlife; advancing toward the divine through an ever more real series of images.  We see this also in C.S. Lewis' Narnia where at the end of the ages the cast are invited "further up and further in."  Now there's something in this idea of advancing through stages or levels towards a fulfillment or consummation that put me in mind of video games.  The player works his way through a series of worlds, or as Miyamoto calls them "gardens," toward some desired object, the goal of the quest and the end of the game.  In the Legend of Zelda series, this goal is often the mystic Triforce, a tripartite object representing the balance between wisdom, courage, and power.  To master this object, the one who seeks to win it must brin...

* All Images Copyright James R. Harrington 2011

I had my directorial debut this year as a drama teacher.  The play we chose to do was Aurand Harris' adaptation of C.S. Lewis' "The Magician's Nephew."   It was well received by the school community.  While pictures are pending, here is the director's note that I whipped together (last minute) for the program.  (nota bene: I am heavily indebted to Dr. John Mark Reynold's lecture on the Magician's Nephew for the Torrey Honors institute for pointing out that "The Magician's Nephew" revolves around our response to pain.) Welcome to our 2010/2011 Drama performance of C.S. Lewis' "The Magician's Nephew."  "The Magician's Nephew" was originally meant to be the second installment in The Chronicles of Narnia.  During composition, however, Lewis found himself increasingly unable to continue and thus shelved the manuscript for a number of years.  The reason for this may be that the story was becoming too perso...

My wife and I were discussing our favorite books from the Chronicles of Narnia on our way back from lunch.  My wife, true to her sunny personality, is a staunch fan of "The Voyage of the Dawntreader."  I can't argue with that choice but, when push comes to shove, "The Silver Chair" has always been my favorite. I have a bit of a theory.  I think "The Voyage of the Dawntreader" is Lewis' grail legend.  If that's so, then I'd hazard a guess and say that "The Silver Chair" is his "Pilgrim's Progress." -just think about the shape of Puddleglum's hat and the fact that he lives in the Fen Country and you'll see what got me thinking down this line. That brings me to why I like "The Silver Chair" so much.  When I was little, we had a children's version of "Pilgrim's Progress" that my mom used to read to me.  I lived in New England and the Christianity I was raised with had a heavy tin...

The kingdom of Hyrule has one castle, one village, one church, and a myriad of ruins left from an older civilization. Evidence suggests that the primary industries of Hyrule are logging and fishing. No evidence of large-scale agriculture exists and, as such, we must conclude that a large portion of the kingdom's foodstuffs are imported. Hyrule makes Lichtenstein look large. On the other hand, maybe asking where Link gets his rice balls is like asking where the Narnian factory is that supplies Mrs. Beaver with her sowing machine. A friend of mine, staring at the map of Mordor that hung on the wall in our bachelor apartment, once asked how Sauron could feed all his orks. Another friend and I quickly pointed to the sea of Nurn and explained that there was an agricultural region on its banks and that additional foodstuffs could be imported from the tributary states in the south. It wasn't the answer he expected. The point is that Tolkien had an answer for just about everyt...

Reading "This Discarded Image" this summer has deepened my respect for the Medieval model of the cosmos. So, to honor the imaginative achievements of my ancestors, I have decided to end off this summer by posting my awards for "The Seven Heavens of Summer Reading." Sun: The heaven of scholars could be monopolized any summer by C.S. Lewis, but as he seemed to prefer the sphere of Jove, how about an author that uses C.S. Lewis for a character? For giving us a thoroughly believable Lewis, the Sphere of the Sun goes to Peter Kreefte for "Between Heaven and Hell." Moon: For all its twists and turns, one book this summer deserves the honor of being paired with the Sphere of Luna; and it even shares her name: "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," by Robert Heinlein. Mars: Last year's martial book "A Princess of Mars," is a hard act to follow. I think this year's winner is up to the task, however. In the category of glorifying coura...

I was sitting in my office the other day in a rather downcast mood. With all the reading I had been doing lately, I’d amassed quite a list of duties that all seemed to jostle and push about for first place in my attentions. It ran something like this: Read the Bible more Pray more Make sure to stay as active as possible in Church Keep up on current world politics to be a good citizen Follow current American political scene and develop positions on key issues Continue research into global slavery and consumer products Make more time for spiritual disciplines such as silence and fasting Give Kreeft’s Catholic arguments in “Ecumenical Jihad” a fair hearing Increase exercise and modify diet to deal with stomach trouble Keep up on “hard” reading to stay sharp Of course the list could have gone on longer, and my main feeling after I’d set it down was embarrassment at how short it was. Surely, I had no right to feel in the least perplexed or overwhelmed. After all, these thin...