[Bananafish] Spirit on a Mast

Tue Oct 16 13:00:56 EDT 2007

*"I like Perelandra best, I love how Ransom's expectations concerning his
confrontation with Weston are more complicated then they had to be."*

Spot on.  The way Ransom ended up handling things with Weston got me wanting
to do same, to be honest.  I'm not sure what else to say about me and
Ransom, other than I should probably reserve judgement until I've finished
the book.  And even then...judgement is not mine, sayeth the me!

I wasn't sure I'd like Lewis, as I have not usually been a fan of the
fantasy genre (LOTRings, TCONarnia), but after I fell in like with the short
stories in The Dark Tower and Other Stories, I knew I had to try something
else by him.  Turns out "The Dark Tower" story was an aborted attempt at a
book to follow the space trilogy.  I may have to read it again with the
trilogy behind me for more perspective, as Ransom is a main character in
it.  That story alone was really good, except that the compilation contained
stories that were either unfinished or came from incomplete manuscripts, and
this one was one of the unfinished.  Got you going, left you hanging.  The
parallels between it and Stephen King's Dark Tower series are there somehow,
and I'm not sure how, as it was published after King had started his series
out I believe.  Strange coincedences abound though, perhaps because I was
looking for them.

The "Other Stories" in that compilation were what really grabbed me.  It was
that short story writer in Lewis that made me want to read more.  And these
were the stories that he didn't really like all that much, or his muse was
going away during.  Just the same, I thought they were great.  Same thing
happened to me with Fitzgerald.  I read "The Price Is High" (50 short
stories he wanted released only after his death because he thought they were
crappy) before everything else and thought, man, if his worst are this good,
I've got to read the rest!

I have a book of all Flannery O'Connor's stories, so I'll probably be doing
that next, though I do look into everything suggested to me.  ;)

The Watchmen won't disappoint if you like 50's type comic book heroes.  It's
supposed to be the "holy grail" of graphic novels.  I thought it was pretty
good.  As I said, Hellboy tells the stories my heart wants to hear.

Did you ever get into the Don Camillo series?  I ended up buying all the
books, they were that special to me.

And you skipped my question in regard to Fred Exley's "A Fan's Notes."  Did
you ever try that one?  Seems like a book you'd like somehow.  Just a hunch.

On 10/16/07, Yocum, Daniel R Civ 21 CES/CEOE <daniel.yocum at peterson.af.mil>
wrote:
>
> Mike, I'm a big fan of Lewis.  It happened by accident.  My mother in
> law had one of his books laying around and I would sneer at it, then I
> decided to crack into Tolkien after a couple of decades and discovered
> the whole Inklings thing so I picked up that book and read almost
> everything the man published.  That trilogy ranks up there among my
> favorites.  I like Perelandra best, I love how Ransom's expectations
> concerning his confrontation with Weston are more complicated then they
> had to be.
>
> In fact I drove up to Denver last night to see Stephen R. Donaldson
> speak.  It was enjoyable.  The man likes to talk.  He spoke about the
> importance of literature and the importance of fantasy or romanticism as
> Lewis, Tolkien, and Helprin would call it.  He spoke about the
> relationship between the world inside your head and the world outside
> and where they come into contact with each other and their
> disjointedness, the "absurd", as it is called now days - a term he
> dislikes, but an area of his interest.  He spoke of the importance of
> fantasy and how this disjointedness has been key to world literature for
> all of history until just recently (say last 80 years).  All the
> enduring literature is anchored there.  Seeing the numinous in the
> mundane or like CS Lewis says "catching a glimpse of the dryad in the
> tree, that is when you really have seen a tree." (Paraphrased).  It
> reminds me of Seymour's and Buddy's superlative marble playing in the
> streets of Manhattan.  It is funny but I mentioned to him (Donaldson)
> that Chasidut (Hassidic world view) is anchored in this very concept as
> well.  I've been reading Nachman of Bratslavs' stuff and it whirls
> around the transcendent in the mundane, the shimmering luminosity of the
> daily immediate world around you.  And to end a good night I listened to
> the Rockies win the pennant on my long ride home last night.  I love
> radio, I grew up without electricity for part of my childhood and
> developed a keen appreciation of listening to radio drama/comedies and
> sports on the radio.  The night began and ended with a magical quality.
>
> I'm reading The Narrow Bridge (Bratslav stuff), Heschel stuff,
> Donaldson's Gap series (I'm on book 3 of 5), Steele's Coyote, Helprin's
> Winter Tale, thinking of starting Brother's Karamazov, an old collection
> of literary essays about Kafka's castle, I finished a Noah Gordon book
> called The Last Jew (loved it), and I picked up Seymour an Introduction
> again.  No graphic novel stuff right now, I might check out Watchman
> though, they started filming the movie in Albuquerque recently.
>
> Tell me more about you and Ransom.
>
> Daniel
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bananafish - Michael Anello
> Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 11:47 PM
>
> C. S. Lewis' space trilogy actually.  I'd never read anything by him
> before, until I'd picked up The Dark Tower and Other Stories.  Blew me
> away.  As this trilogy is now doing.  I'm on the last book, That Hideous
> Strength.
>
> I also read a couple graphic novels.  Hadn't read any for years and
> years, then I picked up V for Vendetta and The Watchmen from my brother.
> Great stuff.
>
> But I still like Hellboy comics best.  That Mike Mignola can tell a
> great ghost story.
>
> Read The Fabulist by Stephen Glass after seeing the movie Breaking
> Glass.  Both good.
>
> Read Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel, because the dvd of
> Casino Royale I got had a scratch and it wouldn't play the end of the
> movie.  The book wasn't bad.
>
> Read A Fan's Notes by Fred Exley a long while back, don't know if you'd
> read that one?
>
>
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-- 
Two amoeba walk out of a bar.
One amoeba says to the other, "Say, is that the sun or the moon?"
And the other amoeba says, "I don't know, I don't live around here!"
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