[Bananafish] Spirit on a Mast

Tue Oct 16 17:34:02 EDT 2007

What about the rest of you lay-abouts, what are you reading?

Mike,

According to Humphreys and various other Inklings Lewis and Tolkien were
complaining about the lack of good books in fantasy and scientification
(science fiction), this was back in the 30's I think.  So they decided
to write them themselves, Tolkien a natural for fantasy (the father of
modern fantasy) and Lewis for science fiction.  Tolkien was way ahead
with the Hobbit for his children and his epic poetry he played with
being a philologist and a fan of all the pre-English ancient myths and a
member of the coal-biters.  Lewis fiddled with a few short stories until
he got on with his space trio.  Dark Tower was an attempt to make good
on a decision to write a time travel story but he eventually gave up on
it.  Kathryn Lindskoog claims that it is a forgery, an elaboration on a
Lewis fragment, Walter Hooper being accused of the forgery or rather
elaboration. I don't know.

Lewis fought in the trenches at the Somme during World War I and was
wounded, he wrote a narrative poem called Spirits in Bondage, he was an
atheist at the time.  It is interesting stuff.  Tolkien was in the
trenches too.  According to King his Dark Tower was inspired by the
intersection of Tolkien's stuff and Clint Eastwood's Django spaghetti
westerns.  I'm a fan of Spaghetti Westerns especially the Trinity series
that is why the Dark Tower caught me.

Donaldson spoke about how he got his ideas and they all his stories are
intersections of two or more ideas, This is true in my (humble) efforts
as well.

The Narnia stuff was written for the children who stayed in his home who
were evacuated from London during the Blitz, and that is how he bonded
with his step sons, one became an evangelical preacher and the other an
Orthodox Jew.  His wife Joy was Jewish and wrote an interesting book
called Smoke on the Mountain.

I groove on Flannery O'Connor's stuff too, she is better than Faulkner
with Numinousness.

I found Don Camillo on our base Library swap shelf years ago and read
the entire Don Camillo series plus everything else published in English
by Giovanni Guareschi.  He is a favorite too.

A Fan's Notes?  Never heard of it, I'll look for it.

The authors (fiction) I enjoy reading are, in other words - I re-read;

Salinger, HEY!

Helprin

Steinbeck

Cervantes

Kafka

Singer (Bashevis)

Borges

O'connor

Guareschi

Lewis

Charles Williams

Tolkien

Sir Walter Scott

Coleridge

Blake

Frank Herbert (Dune Series)

Donaldson

Orwell

Bradbury

Fray Angelico Chavez

Forester

Wallace

Golding

Nichols

Probably a few other that escape me.

Daniel

-----Original Message-----
From: bananafish-Michael Anello
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 11:01 AM

"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.

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