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

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm in favor of you doing this, definitely. Here, on Twitter, whereever. If you do end up recording thoughts someplace other than LJ, I hope you'll tell us so we can follow along.

Thought processes may not have much point but they can be interesting all the same--and that's kind of a point, right?

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Jot!

Nine

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

The only Charles Williams I've ever read is /Many Dimensions/, which is conceptually brilliant but has somewhat unconvincing characters.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

When I read War in Heaven I had to get it out of my house afterwards.

[ericmarin.livejournal.com]

You could write a poem or two, based on some of these swirling thoughts of yours--maybe even send one my way.

Er, sorry. I went from constructive to selfish. :-)

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I read Descent Into Hell in university, and got a really great quote from it, but otherwise can't recall much. I do think he has dicey issues with women, though.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

"All Hallows' Eve" is probably the best of his books, according to me. They're all wildly uneven, but All Hallows' Eve has a large number of good parts. I should warn you that it has anti-Semitism and the sort of religious jingoism that didn't bother me in C. S. Lewis but does get on my nerves coming from Williams. However, the clever ideas and good lines are well-done enough that you might enjoy it nonetheless. If you do read it, I'd be interested to hear what you think.

There's one called "The Place of the Lion", where Platonic ideals of animals appear in a small town and menace the villagers. That one was kind of weak, but it had a nice feeling of a religious monster movie. Help! God is stalking the earth! He looks like a giant lion and some butterflies!

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Your thought processes are never pointless, but by all means post the things of which you think. We're looking forward to seeing them.

No idea about Charles Williams' novels, unfortunately--I need to read some of his, myself.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I've read a couple of Williams' novels - used to have a housemate who was a Williams obsessive, indeed - but that was a long time ago, and I'm not even sure which ones they were. They were powerful, but left a rather strange taste in the mouth. Quite apart from the issues with women, etc. (see Lewis's That Hideous Strength for a Williams-saturated novel that has even more of those, but which I quite like), he seemed almost too, how I shall I put it, wholehearted in his depictions of evil. Suck it and see, but don't be surprised if it cuts your tongue.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Must re-read some Charles Williams. There aren't that many novels, actually, and my recollection is that the things I liked about them and the things I disliked about them were pretty constant from one to the next. 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.

[clarionj.livejournal.com]

I like hearing people's stray ideas, and the little things like cough drops always make people more real to me. Looking back on them yourself, yeah, I think you can find things in there that didn't mean much on the day they were written. But stray thoughts collected ... that could become something.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Charles Williams didn't write many novels so my advice is read them all. Except for the one about Zulus- which is as racist as you'd expect from a mid-century English guy who grew up reading Rider Haggard and had never been to Africa.

His characters are weak and his dialogue often impossible, but no-one ever wrote more convincingly about magick.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I read half a ton of Charles Williams because he was an Inkling, but I never managed to like any of them despite trying really hard. They had nightmarish imagery and implausible women and villains (but I repeat myself). Wonderful sentences, though.

I didn't much like his poetry either.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

You never did answer me about the Voynich MS. I think you should look it over for fun. And I am on twitter. Nothin' wrong with twitter. You could twitter as the Dickensian avatar of the author of the Taaffe papers.