Diana Glyer's The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community argues, in the face of almost unanimous scholarly opinion, that the members of the informal Oxford club known as the Inklings greatly influenced one another's writing. To accomplish this feat, she offers the reader at least two wonderful gifts: a new tool for thinking about the Inklings and a creative treatment of the idea of "influence." Along the way, she invents a new category of literary influence and sparks hopes of an ongoing conversation with other Inklings scholars.
Those Who Have Nothing Can Share Nothing: The Inklings as a Writer's Group
"Is there any pleasure on earth," C. S. Lewis famously and rhetorically asked, "as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?"
Two observations on this quotation in light of Glyer's work. First, Lewis makes the statement in the context of a letter describing to another friend, Dom Bede Griffiths, what an evening with the Inklings was like. Second (and quite important in this regard), Lewis declares two sentences earlier, "What I owe to them all is incalculable."
These data factor into Glyer's overall argument that the Inklings were not just "a circle of Christian friends by a good fire" (contra Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings) nor a faith-based sleeper-cell plotting subversion in the midst of pagan Oxford (on which more in a moment). Glyer offers a fresh way to look at this now-famous coterie of remarkable men by providing the opportunity to consider the Inklings specifically as a writer's group.
To make her case, Glyer cites her research into such legendary writer's fellowships as the Bloomsbury Group, the Transcendentalists, the Brideshead Generation, and the Lost Generation, (xviii) along with her own experience as a member of such fellowships. In these instances, she discovers, the members of the circle - and the critics - took influence for granted. In light of these facts, "the emphatic denial of influence expressed by Inklings scholars and by the Inklings themselves just didn't make any sense to me." Her book, she explains, attempts to reconcile the quandary of "the persistent claims that the Inklings did not influence one another and my sense that they must have." (xviii-xix)
Glyer's method consists of in-depth research into the concept of influence, drawing particularly from the work of Karen Burke LeFevre. In her study, Glyer discovers four specific roles played by writers who work in concert: resonators, opponents, editors, and collaborators. (40) She then writes one chapter for each role-designation and argues from primary sources that the Inklings served one another in this way.
Space does not permit - nor does the book require - an in-depth review of each section. It is enough to say that Glyer's arguments are clear, compelling, and readable. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this overall structure is that Glyer contributes a sixth category of her own, "Referents," to round out LeFevre's five. Referents means "writing about each other" and she makes the bold (but, once made, stunningly obvious claim) that "literary reference is a form of influence in its purest sense: without the presence of the other individual, these allusions, tributes, character studies, and works would not exist. " (167)
Glyer makes it plain that the core of what went on among the Inklings was the reading and critiquing of one another's writing. Warren Lewis has recorded his brother's famous method of calling an Inklings evening to order: "Well, has nobody got anything to read us?" (17) In other words, the members could only share anything (i.e., Christian friendship by a good fire, certain unpopular scholarly, religious, and cultural views) by virtue of having something specific to share, their latest article or poem or chapter. By opening up the possibility of seeing the Inklings as primarily a writer's group, and then analyzing their work in the same way one would the work of other similar sets, Glyer makes plain much that might otherwise seem obscure about them.
Of Bandersnatches and Semantics: Redefining and Rehabilitating "Influence"
"No one ever influenced Tolkien - you might as well try to influence a bandersnatch." This line from C. S. Lewis' May 15, 1959 letter to Charles Moorman has been considered the last word on the subject of influence amongst the Inklings. But it isn't. It isn't even the last word in that letter, or even that paragraph. Immediately before Lewis writes, "Charles Williams certainly influenced me and I perhaps influenced him." Immediately afterward Lewis says of Tolkien, "We listened to his work, but could affect it only by encouragement." These statements, forming as they do a sort of cage for the bandersnatch, demonstrate Glyer's creativity in dealing with the concept of influence.
She rightly complains that "Influence Studies" (Really? That's an actual Thing?) limit "influence" to "similarity." And while That Hideous Strength may be a Charles Williams novel written by C. S. Lewis (Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography [San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1974], 174.), Narnia and Middle Earth have very little in common. If similarity defines influence, Lewis' remark about Charles Williams proves its presence among the Inklings. If one sets aside similarity, Lewis' statement about encouraging Tolkien fits Glyer's category of "Resonator" and thus proves the presence of influence again. By pointing out the multifaceted ways in which one writer can influence another, Glyer counters even the Inklings' own statements on the subject. If it is indeed true that That Hideous Strength is a Charles Williams novel written by C. S. Lewis, it is equally true that The Lord of the Rings is a J. R. R. Tolkien novel that could not have been written without C. S. Lewis!
Glyer also attempts, in her final chapter, "Creativity: Appreciating Interaction," to rehabilitate the whole idea of influence. She argues from history that the term only became pejorative after the Renaissance. In a brief but highly informative review of Western literature, Glyer makes the case for influence as a legitimate - and indeed a vital - part of the creative process.
Inner Rings and The Lord of the Rings: The Inklings as Subversives
A few brief observations and I have done. First of all, I am intrigued by considering Glyer's arguments in light of the views expressed by Malcolm Guite of Cambridge in the introductory lecture of his series, "The Inklings: Fantasists or Prophets?" (For the entire, highly valuable series, see http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/the-inklings-fantasists-or-prophets-the-complete-set/.) Guite commends Glyer's work in moving beyond Carpenter's reigning "just friends" take on the Inklings, and agrees with her about their mutual influence, but goes on to argue that the group saw themselves in conscious and deliberate reaction against the high modernism that ultimately won the day. It would be a great favor to Inklings students if some enterprising blogger (say William O'Flaherty's "All About Jack" or Lancia Smith's "Cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful) would bring the two together for an MMA smackdown on the subject.
Next, there is the matter of Glyer's notes. If you are one of those readers who habitually skips footnotes, this book is a good place to begin breaking that habit. Glyer's notes are extensive and informative and one who does not read them has not truly read the book. I could find it in my heart to wish that they were actual FOOT-notes, coming at the bottom of the page, instead of less-convenient END-notes appearing at the close of each chapter, since this results in a lot of bothersome page-turning and page-marking, but that is a mere quibble.
Finally, Glyer provides a series of biographical sketches on each Inkling. Since the dynamic duo of Lewis and Tolkien (rapidly morphing these days into the Fab Four with the renewed attention being given to Charles Williams and Owen Barfield) occupy so much attention, it is useful to have these brief insights into those who provided such rich texture to the group.
In all, The Company They Keep is not a book to be missed. Those already well-fleshed in Lewis-Tolking-Williams-Barfield-Inklings will find new information and old information in new settings. Those who may have read a few things by one or two of the authors will find this book a helpful introduction into the rich context out of which some of their favorite books grew.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Friday, May 24, 2013
A Review of Alister McGrath's "Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet: C. S. Lewis - A Life"
There's not much new here.
I don't mean that as a criticism. The author himself admits as much in his introduction: "I have," he confesses, "no illuminating memories, no privileged disclosures, and no private documents on which to draw. Every resource used in this biography is either already in the public domain or available to public scrutiny and inspection." Rather than give us "the real C. S. Lewis," McGrath states that his work "sets out, not to praise Lewis or condemn him, but to understand him - above all his ideas, and how these found expression in his writings."
All of this is really quite welcome. Roger Lancelyn-Green, Walter Hooper, and Jack Sayer have given us biographies illuminated with the bright beams of memoir. We are grateful, or we should be. But we are also cautious, or we should be. These men admired Lewis greatly and, while willing to deal realistically with the richness of his entire personality, are somewhat likely to call a fault a foible. On the other hand, A. N. Wilson has inflicted on the world a biography with a definite debunking agenda. Wilson largely ignores what his subject actually wrote and opts instead for strapping a fictional Lewis to a Freudian couch. Perhaps a better image would be the rack, for certainly Wilson tortures his Lewis into admitting things that the real Lewis would never have said even in delirium.
So McGrath's personal distance and careful scholarship give us a needed corrective to valid praise on the one hand (as my friend Andrew Lazo once pointed out to me, hagiography is an entirely appropriate genre when writing about a saint!) and jaundiced slander on the other. McGrath is also highly readable. The pages pass of their own volition as the reader delights to invest the energy required by a complex and engaging argument. With that general commendation of this valuable and delightful book, let me proceed to a few quibbles before offering a few bullet-points on just some of its many positives. Several of these, as it happens, revolve around his treatment of the Chronicles of Narnia.
For openers, McGrath offers - I will be bold and say "imposes" - an idea about the Chronicles of Narnia which I have not found elsewhere and which I reject. "At one level, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is about the testing of these characters and their stories about Narnia. Who is to be trusted? Which story about Narnia is to be believed? To make the right judgements about what they should do, the children need to discover and trust the true master narrative of the mysterious world into which they have stumbled, and within which they seem destined to play a significant role." (267) McGrath contrasts Narnia with Oz, where "Dorothy is told which witches are wicked, and which are good. In Narnia, characters do not wear name tags declaring their character. The children (and readers) ave to work these things out for themselves. The characters they encounter are complex and multifaceted. Their true moral character has to be discovered." (268)
In fact, only one child ever suggests any question about whom to trust, and that is Edmund who, by the time he offers his brother the "nasty idea" that their feathered guide may be an enemy, is coked to the gills on enchanted Turkish Delight and fully under the spell of the White Witch. Lucy never hesitates in assuming the essential goodness of Mr. Tumnus and Peter and Susan join her in accepting Mr. Beaver's guidance at once. I don't think Lewis is challenging his readers with the ambivalence of moral evidence so much as with the starkness of moral choice. I even disagree with McGrath about how the children know whom to choose. Peter dismisses Edmund's suggestion about the robin with the simple observation, "Still, a robin, you know. They're good birds in all the stories." Not the Narnian stories, and not the particular winter-without-Christmas story into which the children have blundered. I think Lewis' comment is about a larger, more universal concept of the good (or the Tao, see The Abolition of Man) than McGrath's comment suggests.
Another point of disagreement I find is McGrath's high praise of Pauline Baynes' illustrations of the Chronicles. He cites unnamed friends of Lewis who considered the drawings so good as to reduce Lewis' text to commentary. (271) He grudgingly allows that the story itself "laid the foundation" for Lewis winning the British Booktrust's title of best children's book of all time but insists that the illustrations were the true deal-closers. (271) He admits that Lewis' praise of the sketches was faint to the artist' face and that his criticism was more robust behind her back but dismisses this as "a signifiant misjudgment." (271) This allows me an opportunity to say what I have thought since first reading the Chronicles: Pauline Baynes' drawings are a distraction at best and an irritant at worst. I have never felt that they capture anything like the magic of their subjects. Her drawings of dwarves (dwarves are a favorite mythical creature of mine; I've attempted to draw a few myself) are particularly offensive: They are slim (Lewis repeatedly describes them as broad, even fat), and their beards and hair sprout from their noggins like the quills upon a particularly fretful porpentine. They are also given, for reasons that escape me, to wearing what appear to be flannel work shirts, when they aren't wearing some sort of shoe or sock arrangement with long, flapping toes.
I will also note - mostly to aggravate just about anyone who happens to read this review - that McGrath offers a complete endorsement of Michael Ward's seven-planets reading of the Narnian series. . .and that I do not buy it. This is, however, less a critique than a confession, since first of all McGrath's treatment is necessarily too brief to do more than state the basic case without engaging any arguments to the contrary, and second of all because, in regard to Ward's theory, I find myself on an increasingly small hummock of disagreement surrounded by a rapidly rising tide of acceptance.
And then there's Joy Davidman. I tend to divide Lewis biographers and commentators into two camps: There are the pro-Mrs. Moore/anti-Joy writers (Or "Old Mintonians," as I style them), and the anti-Mrs. Moore/pro-Joy writers (aka the Joyfuls). Wilson may be the ubermensch of the Old Mintonians, portraying her as a woman sexually wronged when Jack began an unseemly affair with God. Hooper, Green, and Sayer lean, I think, toward being Joyfuls. McGrath, while no Old Mintonian, is clearly not a Joyful. That's all right - my system does not mean to prescribe a false set of alternatives, only to describe what I have encountered. However, McGrath's presentation of Joy as a predatory American adventuress does not save all the appearances. While he deals with Lewis' grief at this wife's death, he does not really give us a convincing reason for it. Indeed, he avoids completely Lewis famous comment, "I never expected to have in my 60s that happiness that passed me by in my 20s."
Now on to a few of the very many positives. It is not news to Lewis readers that he spent time in the trenches of World War I. McGrath, however, does a better job than any writer I have encountered in making the horror of the experience real, and he does this without sensationalizing or psychoanalyzing.
The same can be said for McGrath's treatment of the wartime radio talks that became Mere Christianity. Having encountered this book in college, I have often regarded it simply as part of the "given" in my Christian world. It never occurred to me that the book might not have existed. McGrath makes the reader uncomfortably aware that the whole thing could have ended up otherwise. The result of this, at least in my own case, is to give me a new and deep sense of gratitude and praise to God that I ever held the book in my hand in the first place. Along the same line, McGrath deals with the fact that C. S. Lewis ultimately became C. S. LEWIS! He tracks Lewis' decline from the public eye following his death, his resurgence sometime around the '70's, and Walter Hooper's role in all of this. It all drove me to say (although I hope in an entirely different spirit!) with Flannery O'Connor's Mrs. Turpin, "I just feel like shouting, 'Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!' It could have been different!"
There could be others: McGrath's very sane treatment of the Anscombe debate and Lewis' actual reaction to it and the related theme of Lewis' turn away from syllogistic to imaginative apologetics, for instance. Time and space, however, prevent delving into these. I will say in passing that as a former pastor, current seminary professor, and the father of two sons who have turned away from the Christian faith, I bless McGrath for pointing out Lewis' own "acute awareness that he had failed as an apologist towards those who were closest to him - Arthur Greeves and Mrs. Moore." (259)
McGrath also offers to re-calibrate the chronology of Lewis' conversion both to theism and to Christianity. He does this well, in an argument that is both easy to follow and compelling. For a more detailed treatment with additional data, see Andrew Lazo's article, "Did Lewis Get it Wrong?" in the current edition of VII: An Anglo-American Literary Review.
One final quibble and I have done: I commend McGrath for sticking to, as it were, the literary Lewis, attempting to understand the man the way he himself said an author should be understood: through the texts he produces. At the same time, this is a biography and not a literary analysis. That said, I must note that, to phrase the sentiment as honestly as I can, I prefer my Lewises happier than the one McGrath offers. His very insightful, very helpful, and - for anything I can say to the contrary - very accurate treatment of Lewis' professional isolation at Oxford, his worries over the reception of his writings, his various domestic dramas, and his final illness seem to overshadow the consistent testimony of those who knew him personally to Lewis' deep and underlying joviality.
I heartily recommend the book to those interested in Lewis. To those new to Lewis, I still recommend it, but only after an initial trip through Surprised by Joy and at least either Hooper & Green or Sayers' biographies.
I don't mean that as a criticism. The author himself admits as much in his introduction: "I have," he confesses, "no illuminating memories, no privileged disclosures, and no private documents on which to draw. Every resource used in this biography is either already in the public domain or available to public scrutiny and inspection." Rather than give us "the real C. S. Lewis," McGrath states that his work "sets out, not to praise Lewis or condemn him, but to understand him - above all his ideas, and how these found expression in his writings."
All of this is really quite welcome. Roger Lancelyn-Green, Walter Hooper, and Jack Sayer have given us biographies illuminated with the bright beams of memoir. We are grateful, or we should be. But we are also cautious, or we should be. These men admired Lewis greatly and, while willing to deal realistically with the richness of his entire personality, are somewhat likely to call a fault a foible. On the other hand, A. N. Wilson has inflicted on the world a biography with a definite debunking agenda. Wilson largely ignores what his subject actually wrote and opts instead for strapping a fictional Lewis to a Freudian couch. Perhaps a better image would be the rack, for certainly Wilson tortures his Lewis into admitting things that the real Lewis would never have said even in delirium.
So McGrath's personal distance and careful scholarship give us a needed corrective to valid praise on the one hand (as my friend Andrew Lazo once pointed out to me, hagiography is an entirely appropriate genre when writing about a saint!) and jaundiced slander on the other. McGrath is also highly readable. The pages pass of their own volition as the reader delights to invest the energy required by a complex and engaging argument. With that general commendation of this valuable and delightful book, let me proceed to a few quibbles before offering a few bullet-points on just some of its many positives. Several of these, as it happens, revolve around his treatment of the Chronicles of Narnia.
For openers, McGrath offers - I will be bold and say "imposes" - an idea about the Chronicles of Narnia which I have not found elsewhere and which I reject. "At one level, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is about the testing of these characters and their stories about Narnia. Who is to be trusted? Which story about Narnia is to be believed? To make the right judgements about what they should do, the children need to discover and trust the true master narrative of the mysterious world into which they have stumbled, and within which they seem destined to play a significant role." (267) McGrath contrasts Narnia with Oz, where "Dorothy is told which witches are wicked, and which are good. In Narnia, characters do not wear name tags declaring their character. The children (and readers) ave to work these things out for themselves. The characters they encounter are complex and multifaceted. Their true moral character has to be discovered." (268)
In fact, only one child ever suggests any question about whom to trust, and that is Edmund who, by the time he offers his brother the "nasty idea" that their feathered guide may be an enemy, is coked to the gills on enchanted Turkish Delight and fully under the spell of the White Witch. Lucy never hesitates in assuming the essential goodness of Mr. Tumnus and Peter and Susan join her in accepting Mr. Beaver's guidance at once. I don't think Lewis is challenging his readers with the ambivalence of moral evidence so much as with the starkness of moral choice. I even disagree with McGrath about how the children know whom to choose. Peter dismisses Edmund's suggestion about the robin with the simple observation, "Still, a robin, you know. They're good birds in all the stories." Not the Narnian stories, and not the particular winter-without-Christmas story into which the children have blundered. I think Lewis' comment is about a larger, more universal concept of the good (or the Tao, see The Abolition of Man) than McGrath's comment suggests.
Another point of disagreement I find is McGrath's high praise of Pauline Baynes' illustrations of the Chronicles. He cites unnamed friends of Lewis who considered the drawings so good as to reduce Lewis' text to commentary. (271) He grudgingly allows that the story itself "laid the foundation" for Lewis winning the British Booktrust's title of best children's book of all time but insists that the illustrations were the true deal-closers. (271) He admits that Lewis' praise of the sketches was faint to the artist' face and that his criticism was more robust behind her back but dismisses this as "a signifiant misjudgment." (271) This allows me an opportunity to say what I have thought since first reading the Chronicles: Pauline Baynes' drawings are a distraction at best and an irritant at worst. I have never felt that they capture anything like the magic of their subjects. Her drawings of dwarves (dwarves are a favorite mythical creature of mine; I've attempted to draw a few myself) are particularly offensive: They are slim (Lewis repeatedly describes them as broad, even fat), and their beards and hair sprout from their noggins like the quills upon a particularly fretful porpentine. They are also given, for reasons that escape me, to wearing what appear to be flannel work shirts, when they aren't wearing some sort of shoe or sock arrangement with long, flapping toes.
I will also note - mostly to aggravate just about anyone who happens to read this review - that McGrath offers a complete endorsement of Michael Ward's seven-planets reading of the Narnian series. . .and that I do not buy it. This is, however, less a critique than a confession, since first of all McGrath's treatment is necessarily too brief to do more than state the basic case without engaging any arguments to the contrary, and second of all because, in regard to Ward's theory, I find myself on an increasingly small hummock of disagreement surrounded by a rapidly rising tide of acceptance.
And then there's Joy Davidman. I tend to divide Lewis biographers and commentators into two camps: There are the pro-Mrs. Moore/anti-Joy writers (Or "Old Mintonians," as I style them), and the anti-Mrs. Moore/pro-Joy writers (aka the Joyfuls). Wilson may be the ubermensch of the Old Mintonians, portraying her as a woman sexually wronged when Jack began an unseemly affair with God. Hooper, Green, and Sayer lean, I think, toward being Joyfuls. McGrath, while no Old Mintonian, is clearly not a Joyful. That's all right - my system does not mean to prescribe a false set of alternatives, only to describe what I have encountered. However, McGrath's presentation of Joy as a predatory American adventuress does not save all the appearances. While he deals with Lewis' grief at this wife's death, he does not really give us a convincing reason for it. Indeed, he avoids completely Lewis famous comment, "I never expected to have in my 60s that happiness that passed me by in my 20s."
Now on to a few of the very many positives. It is not news to Lewis readers that he spent time in the trenches of World War I. McGrath, however, does a better job than any writer I have encountered in making the horror of the experience real, and he does this without sensationalizing or psychoanalyzing.
The same can be said for McGrath's treatment of the wartime radio talks that became Mere Christianity. Having encountered this book in college, I have often regarded it simply as part of the "given" in my Christian world. It never occurred to me that the book might not have existed. McGrath makes the reader uncomfortably aware that the whole thing could have ended up otherwise. The result of this, at least in my own case, is to give me a new and deep sense of gratitude and praise to God that I ever held the book in my hand in the first place. Along the same line, McGrath deals with the fact that C. S. Lewis ultimately became C. S. LEWIS! He tracks Lewis' decline from the public eye following his death, his resurgence sometime around the '70's, and Walter Hooper's role in all of this. It all drove me to say (although I hope in an entirely different spirit!) with Flannery O'Connor's Mrs. Turpin, "I just feel like shouting, 'Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!' It could have been different!"
There could be others: McGrath's very sane treatment of the Anscombe debate and Lewis' actual reaction to it and the related theme of Lewis' turn away from syllogistic to imaginative apologetics, for instance. Time and space, however, prevent delving into these. I will say in passing that as a former pastor, current seminary professor, and the father of two sons who have turned away from the Christian faith, I bless McGrath for pointing out Lewis' own "acute awareness that he had failed as an apologist towards those who were closest to him - Arthur Greeves and Mrs. Moore." (259)
McGrath also offers to re-calibrate the chronology of Lewis' conversion both to theism and to Christianity. He does this well, in an argument that is both easy to follow and compelling. For a more detailed treatment with additional data, see Andrew Lazo's article, "Did Lewis Get it Wrong?" in the current edition of VII: An Anglo-American Literary Review.
One final quibble and I have done: I commend McGrath for sticking to, as it were, the literary Lewis, attempting to understand the man the way he himself said an author should be understood: through the texts he produces. At the same time, this is a biography and not a literary analysis. That said, I must note that, to phrase the sentiment as honestly as I can, I prefer my Lewises happier than the one McGrath offers. His very insightful, very helpful, and - for anything I can say to the contrary - very accurate treatment of Lewis' professional isolation at Oxford, his worries over the reception of his writings, his various domestic dramas, and his final illness seem to overshadow the consistent testimony of those who knew him personally to Lewis' deep and underlying joviality.
I heartily recommend the book to those interested in Lewis. To those new to Lewis, I still recommend it, but only after an initial trip through Surprised by Joy and at least either Hooper & Green or Sayers' biographies.
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