I remember how they took you down

[sovay]

I need to start writing things down again. I seem to have slid back into the state where I consider all my thought processes pointless. I am curious to try—not Twittering, but posting more of the stray ideas that cross my mind, writings that strike me, meme-answers that I owe friends from months back, just to see what I have at the end of the day. I'm sure a substantial amount of trivia, but probably not as much as I believe. Meanwhile, I am off to watch another batch of Avatar. This post brought to you by the thoughts Can anyone recommend novels by Charles Williams?, What I wouldn't have given to see Ernest Thesiger play Andrew Ketterley, and My God, I just cut my tongue on a cough drop.

Comments

[sovay]

I think The Place of the Lion was frightening, and that I liked The Greater Trumps, but that's as far as my recollection goes.

It's still information, which is what I'm looking for. Thanks. What did you like and dislike about his novels overall?

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Well, it was a long time ago, so a) my memory is not to be trusted and b) a certain amount of racism and sexism was - oh, just one of those things that you automatically filtered out, because otherwise you wouldn't read anything at all. papersky is right about the congruence of Williams' novels and The Hideous Strength, though.

His magic, as poliphilo says, is truly magical. Deeply but also highly, exaltedly magical. It scared me (in the same way as the magic in Elidor scared me, but it made the books rich and vivid.

My main problem, or the one I recollect most clearly, was with the endings: these tended to be along the lines of Galahad finding the Holy Grail and expiring on the spot. I wanted the characters to have happy endings in this world, failing which I'd have settled for unhappy endings. I didn't respond well to being given an unhappy ending (by my reckoning) and being told it was happy really.

You make me want to re-read them, and see if this is still the case. (But you also make me want to pick up my still-pending re-read of the Narnia books. You temptress, you!)

[sovay]

I didn't respond well to being given an unhappy ending (by my reckoning) and being told it was happy really.

I feel that way about The Last Battle. What if you didn't want to be transported to Aslan's Country at age sixteen?

(But you also make me want to pick up my still-pending re-read of the Narnia books. You temptress, you!)

Hey, was Eleanor Cameron so bad?