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Post by cato on Dec 20, 2017 18:00:29 GMT
Lewis can come across at times as preachy and a bit of a prig but I wonder is that partially the passage of time and a change in tastes? Overall I think he gets the balance right. I love his Great Divorce which is a fabulous meditation on a particularly Lewisian version of Purgatory and his powerful and unsentimental A grief Observed . The geography of Narnia is supposed to be modelled on his native Ulster landscape. If I remember right (I don´t have time to check it just now) that book on Purgatory was from a period when he was, according to Joseph Pearce, as close as he ever got to actual conversion to Catholicism. I haven't read Pearce but Lewis specialised in medieval and early English and had a fabulous knowledge of the medieval world. Lewis said the book was based on the notion of Refrigerium where souls got realeased from hell for brief holidays . You can see it in the Irish life of St Brendan for example when Brendan sees Judas cooling off on an iceberg for a day ,but it never became formal doctrine. Lewis used this idea which strictly speaking only recognises heaven and hell (and breaks) which is good protestant belief but modifies it by giving the souls the option of changing their minds after death , which is his own literary idea. The souls suprisingly to us are so trapped in sin they prefer to go back to hell and spurn God's mercy.I think he makes very perceptive points about God and human freedom that are absent from current catholic discussions on the subject of mercy and repentence. I think in his heart of hearts Lewis was a good Ulster prod and could never have crossed the Tiber even though he had no truck with orangism or bigotry.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 20, 2017 18:30:31 GMT
He lacked what you might call an ecclesial sense. It's not that he doesn't affirm the importance of the Church (the Anglican church in his case) but he is very focused on ethics, almost to the exclusion of other aspects of Christianity, such as worship or grace.
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Post by Tomas on Dec 20, 2017 21:33:36 GMT
"I think in his heart of hearts Lewis was a good Ulster prod and could never have crossed the Tiber even though he had no truck with orangism or bigotry." In the conclusion I believe Pearce thought exactly the same!
"He lacked what you might call an ecclesial sense." You know him better than me and it seems fair as generalisation. Nobody´s perfect, not even this good samaritan :-)
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Post by cato on Dec 29, 2017 21:13:44 GMT
After reading that Lewis article I finaĺly decided to stop buying the Irish Times. I have been a reader of it for over 30 years but have become disillusioned with its' transformation into a propaganda sheet for feminism and leftist secular ideologies. The hypocrisy of seeking to remove the most fundamental right of all from the constitution by undermining the 8th ammendment for decades while constantly preaching Equality is breath taking. The paper had a nauseous tradition of printing a Christmas religious image and poem on the front page of its' Christmas edition. Subsidising this trash is something I can no longer justify. A friend of mine has said the Irish Times management are worried about the drop in readership. I will drop them a little line to let them know they have lost another customer and a little more money...
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Post by Deleted on Jun 18, 2018 21:32:41 GMT
I have a friend who's a big fan of Lewis, bur who dismisses That Hideous Strength as his Ulysses (and he thinks Ulysses is impenetrable bilge). I read it once, thought it rather overblown but good on the whole. I read That Hideous Strength about once a year. A story of how dystopia descends on the planet through a door opened by the cabals of petty modernist academics busy promoting nonsense seems one of the most prophetic things ever written! I love the weaving of old myths into the tale and character sketches of academics. I am in the small minority camp that rate it as Lewis' greatest fiction masterpiece. The book of course fictionalizes the themes set out in The Abolition of Man and came 2 years later. Both were published in wartime. The Abolition of Man is consistently in the top 10 of the 100 best book lists complied by American conservatives and for me it is THE book which explains the destruction of Western culture better than any other. f'Man
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Post by cato on Aug 6, 2018 18:55:06 GMT
I have a friend who's a big fan of Lewis, bur who dismisses That Hideous Strength as his Ulysses (and he thinks Ulysses is impenetrable bilge). I read it once, thought it rather overblown but good on the whole. I read That Hideous Strength about once a year. A story of how dystopia descends on the planet through a door opened by the cabals of petty modernist academics busy promoting nonsense seems one of the most prophetic things ever written! I love the weaving of old myths into the tale and character sketches of academics. I am in the small minority camp that rate it as Lewis' greatest fiction masterpiece. The book of course fictionalizes the themes set out in The Abolition of Man and came 2 years later. Both were published in wartime. The Abolition of Man is consistently in the top 10 of the 100 best book lists complied by American conservatives and for me it is THE book which explains the destruction of Western culture better than any other. f'Man I have dusted off an old copy of That Hideous Strength that I had always been meaning to read. I am very impressed so far. It's stange to see how many modern problems attacked by conservatives today in academia and social policy were identified by Lewis in the 1940s. There is nothing new under the sun.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Aug 6, 2018 19:52:46 GMT
I read it a second time only recently-- a few weeks ago. It's really excellent. As with many novels, the "dark" parts are much better than the "bright" parts-- the evil of GLAD is portrayed in a very frightening and convincing way, but the good guys are somehow less satisfying (and I don't mean because they are good). All I can say is that the novel seems to lose something whenever the scene changes to the base of the good guys-- it becomes less vivid.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2018 20:41:44 GMT
Yes — The bad guys are more fun to read about. On the other hand I liked a couple of things about the Saint Anne’s crowd. One was mental clarity. They saw the world as it was and the proper role of the Christian in it. The other was a role for each and a respect and encouragement for each in his role. The old conception of the body politic. If all do their bit surely it will all work out.
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Post by cato on Aug 18, 2018 14:23:13 GMT
I finished the Hideous Strenght during the week and enjoyed it. It is an unusual dystopia with its' hopeful ending and the eventual triumph of goodness. It is a good book to read in these dispiriting times.
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