The League of Bearded Catholics

Foxfire Books

 

Cool! I remember these books from my youth, my parents having had them in their library. These are a couple of the once well-known Foxfire books, a series of 12 anthologies published in the 1970s, from articles published in the Foxfire magazine. I borrowed these from my Mom.

Wikipedia describes the series;

The Foxfire magazine began in 1966, written and published as a quarterly American magazine by students at Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, a private secondary education school located in the U.S. state of Georgia. An example of experiential education, the magazine had articles based on the students' interviews with local people about aspects and practices in Appalachian culture. They captured oral history, craft traditions, and other material about the culture. When the articles were collected and published in book form in 1972, it became a surprising best-seller nationally and gained attention for the Foxfire project.

I remember being fascinated with the articles and the Foxfire project itself. It's an entirely different educational paradigm from what we see in most institutional schools (public or private) that is based on learning traditions, history and culture first-hand (or as close as possible) from previous generations.

The Foxfire books are still as helpful as ever for learning how to, for instance, build a log cabin or butcher a hog (though one could recently have learned a good deal about hog butchering just from reading Gilbert magazine!). They would no longer be the best resource for this kind of knowledge, however, since we have the internet, now, and through it a whole universe of useful, esoteric information. I've gone to the internet recently to get instruction on everything from knife-sharpening to fixing our washing machine. Video makes these things that much easier to learn, too. But the books are still neat and fun to browse. The article format makes them great for bedtime reading, and the whole outlook of the books makes them inspirational. Seems like they would be a great supplement for home-schoolers or scouts.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. - G.K. Chersterton, The Observer, 1924

(NOTE: Foxfire is not to be confused either Firefox, the popular internet browser, or Firefox Starfox, the awesome video game, wherein I beat the evil Andross and saved the entire Lylat system. You're welcome...).

Taming Aslan

I like the Lord of the Rings movies. Sure, there is plenty at which devoted Tolkien fans may legitimately chafe and grumble, but overall, a very respectable piece of work, and - for a major motion pictute based on a book - very faithful to the source material. Thumbs up, and all that.

The Narnia movies, though, I have found personally underwhelming. I was just not whelmed, at all. The first movie started strongly enough, but I lost interest by the middle. The White Witch is defeated and Narnia is set free in the end, but somehow... Meh. What bothered me seemed to be more than just the watery Disney-fication of the story, but involved something off key.

I could not at the time put my finger on any one reason for my ambivalence, but have just found a dandy article by Steven D. Boyer at Touchstone that I think sums it up, or begins to. In short, the modern world (and so the movie) rejects the very idea of hierarchy;

 

We can see Lewis’s strategy at work if we just think for a moment about what his original stories are like. Narnia is a great repository of hierarchical images and relations—of good kings and noble knights, of laborers who are not disgruntled and servants who are not demeaned, of Aslan the great Lion who rules over all, who is never safe, but always good.

One can hardly turn a page of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or of Prince Caspian without encountering compelling images of royal authority and knightly virtue—and we see now that both of these themes are intimately connected with Lewis’s positive construal of hierarchy, which in turn is foundational to his distinctively Christian vision of reality.

A Strange Sign of Maturity

...the movie as a whole consists in Peter learning to think and act independently... By (the end of the movie), he has grown enough to realize that receiving orders and following them is a sign of immaturity and weakness, whereas independent action, especially when it involves not doing as you’re told, is the sign of strength, maturity, and success.

Note well: disobedience is the sign of real maturity. This quiet, unobtrusive devaluation of humble submission to rightful authority is a significant omen of things to come in the later film.

...One could look at Caspian himself, who is transformed from a noble and honorable young king in Lewis’s telling, into a tortured warrior whose unchecked desire for personal revenge against his father’s murderer leads to the deaths of scores of his Narnian subjects. Or again, one could look at the virtuous Red Dwarf Trumpkin, whose cheerful, good-humored embrace of obedience in Lewis’s story is quietly dropped from the film, replaced by the more modern virtues of sarcasm, irony, and cynicism.

(emphasis and italics mine)

In addition to the problem with hierarchy, there is a general chipping away, or erosion, of the story at a myriad of points. For one, the Narnia in which the children find themselves is just... smaller than the one in the books. Not geographically, but less grand, less noble. Lewis' Narnia was suffused with spiritual and moral energy and significance. Something in the Narnian air made the importance of every action (or inaction) somehow closer to the surface. Courage grew more courageous, friendship more dear, sacrifice more costly, there. The Narnia of the films is... an admirably worked-up fantasy world, but where the most important thing is the children - that they have a Big Adventure and come out safe by the end of the movie. Whew! Now, wasn't that fun?

In the books, rather than being the Center of Everything, the Pevensie children play an important part in what they know is a story much bigger and more magnificent than themselves.

In the movies, Aslan's voice is not, as one might expect, the rumbling basso of a Giant Lion, but the velvety, soporific baritone of a kindly uncle. He seems not so much to have supernatural significance, but simply to have Super Powers. And he is very importantly, not known or referred to as the Son of the Great Emperor over the Sea - who as far as the films are concerned, apparently doesn't exist. The importance of that ommission is really difficult to overstate. Without God, there is no Son of God. Jesus becomes not the Maker of All Things and Savior of Mankind, but a great teacher... a kindly uncle. Without the Great Emperor Over Sea, Aslan becomes a kindly talking lion with super powers. He is shrunk.

In other words, the makers of the first two Narnia films, at least, just do not GET Lewis' story. They have never fallen in love with Narnia, though they may have read it fifty times. Like the wicked Uncle Andrew in The Magician's Nephew, they have only a surface understanding of Narnian events, and so they feel the need to juice the story up with invented rivalries, contrived teen romance, tone deaf melodrama and sturm und drang that not only gets in the way, but at times positively cuts against the grain of Lewis's story.

As Boyer observes;

 

In Lewis’s telling of all of the Narnia tales, the children’s experiences as kings and queens in Narnia consistently transform them into nobler, more virtuous people in their own world. They are not spoiled children wanting to be kings again; they are noble kings who carry that very nobility back into their non-royal roles as schoolchildren.

In the Narnia films, the children do not carry the spirit of Narnia with them into our world, but instead carry their childish pettiness into Narnia.

But, I mean, after all... you can't expect modern audiences to believe all that Pollyanna rubbish that Lewis put in there. So, we can dream of a place where the very land, the animals, the sky and the sea are better-than-real, but we must not do the same for people. People must always be portrayed with dull and cynical realism.

Inklings Cage Match!

A while back there was a string of posts on the Christian Pipe Smokers forum, each pitting one sort of thing against another in an online poll. Kind of a Que Es Mas Macho? sort of thing. For those of you who don't remember, Que Es Mas Macho? was a Saturday Night Live sketch featuring Bill Murray as the host of a Mexican TV game show by that name. He would ask contestants "Que es mas macho?" ("What is more macho?") and then they had to choose between two seemingly completely random and unrelated things, like "knife, or pineapple?". The answer was always seemingly random, too, except that where famous people were concerned, Ricardo Montalban was always more macho than anyone.

That's the way I feel about a lot of such contests, which is why a show like Spike's Deadliest Warriors fails to hold my interest. It's all fantasy. It sounds for all the world like the concept was hatched by two potheads in their dorm room, "Okay... okay, like... Samurai vs. Viking... who would win?... No! No!... Ninja vs. Spartan. Ninja? No way. Yer so wrong. A Spartan would totally OWN a ninja...". Of course, it's on Spike, so that's about what one would expect.

So when "J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis?" came up as a poll topic, I kind of rolled my eyes, but weighed in anyhow;

Unfair! This is like asking me which Siamese twin I will allow to live.

That being said, I voted for Tolkien (though I love Lewis).

I certainly owe my reversion to Christianity more to Lewis, since his books were a big influence and were more openly apologetic works. I actually discovered him and Tolkien at about the same time, and had no idea they were friends or that they influenced one another so greatly.

I just had to take into account that Tolkien wrote one of the pivotal works of fiction of the twentieth century, a model for what Christian culture should be like, as opposed to the hamfisted, lowbrow kitsch that is so often foisted upon us (and on a watching world) in the name of JAY-zussss.

Tolkien's tales soak into an unsuspecting heathen's bones and begin to convert his subconscious mind before he ever begins thinking in concrete terms about religion or philosophy. Lewis articulates a meaningful universe, but Tolkien makes you long to live there.

Not everyone makes these connections, of course, or follows through on them, but I think Tolkien's work prepares the soil for those who may later cultivate and harvest.

That's an over-simple analysis, of course. Lewis wrote some marvelous passages that made heaven seem almost palpable. What thinkest thou?

(incidentally, I'm beginning to figure out that part of what has cut into my blogging of late has been a growing Facebook habit, as well as the CPS forum. I react more readily than I invent. I will endeavor from now on to save more ascii and precious brain power for TLBC)

Backing into Father Brown

Most people, I believe, come to the writing of G.K. Chesterton through his Father Brown mysteries. I have done G.K.C. all backwards, only lately having read much of the exploits of his sagacious little priest/detective.

I remain a greater fan of Chesterton's non-fiction and poetry, but in the Father Brown stories have enjoyed Chesterton more just for his brilliant prose.

Chesterton sets the stage for The Sign of the Broken Sword;

The thousand arms of the forest were grey, and its million fingers silver. In a sky of dark green-blue-like slate the stars were bleak and brilliant like splintered ice. All that thickly wooded and sparsely tenanted countryside was stiff with a bitter and brittle frost. The black hollows between the trunks of the trees looked like bottomless, black caverns of the heartless Scandinavian hell, a hell of incalculable cold.

The story is worth reading for the first paragraph alone.

Another example reminds us that Chesterton is thought to have suffered bouts of depression now and then. From the opening scene of The Perishing of the Pendragons;

He heard the most trivial things and the most important with the same tasteless absorption... All these trivialities Brown heard and saw; but heard them as a tired man hears a tune in the railway wheels or saw them as a sick man sees the pattern of his wall-paper.

I think we've all been there at some point.

Reading these tales intended for a broad, secular audience helps me to appreciate a little more how many who would reject his philosophy might still cherish him simply as a writer.

2 Years...

... to get ready for seventy-fifth anniversary of Tolkien's The Hobbit!

 

The book jacket of The Hobbit as I first read it. It belonged, as a matter of fact, to my wife, who bought it before she met me. It has her maiden name written on the inner cover, which is cool.

Things are snowed under at the homely office at present, but couldn't let the day go by without some acknowledgement. This calls for some Navy Flake in the old Churchwarden!

(That's pipe-smoking talk. Navy Flake is supposed to be pretty much the same kind of tobacco Tolkien smoked, and "churchwarden" is the style of pipe with the long stem everyone seems to smoke in Middle Earth. BTW, I don't remember any huge protest about all the smoking going on in the movies... you know, the dangerous example for the young sprouts of the nation, yada, yada... are the anti-smoking puritans falling down on the job?)

Tolkien on Tolkien on Film

Thank you, BBC, for posting this short (26 minutes) 1968 documentary about J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, featuring interviews with the author himself, some of his fans, students and a couple of amusingly tedious detractors. The film is also kind of a neat time-capsule of 1960s culture. I was seven at the time. I wonder what became of those fresh-faced college kids?

You might need to pay close attention, and ear buds might also help. Tolkien was a notorious mumbler, I'm afraid.

There was quite definitely a Tolkien craze in the late Sixties ("Frodo Lives!"). Then, as perhaps now, a large number of fans didn't get much past the flashing swords and fantastic creatures to what Tolkien was ultimately driving at. That's okay. As with fairy tales and nursery stories, the moral might slip in the back door and do some good down the road, just as there are many atheists who have been deeply influenced by the Gospel in ways they will never know or wish to acknowledge. They might one day be surprised to find themselves acting with heroic self-sacrifice and not completely understand why. It's in the air more than we might imagine... especially in America, I think. I hope.

That Hideous Strength

Hideously cheesy cover art, dontcha think? I picked it up for $.75 at a used book shop.

Just finished reading That Hideous Strength, the last of C.S. Lewis' space trilogy, and while a fuller discussion will have to wait, I have a few observations.

For one thing, each of the three books of the trilogy - Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength - is a very different kind of work from the others. Whereas, for instance, in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (and even including The Hobbit) there is a continuity of structure, style and rhythm, in Lewis' space trilogy, each novel is a completely different literary approach to the common material of the story.

Out of the Silent Planet is an outer space adventure romp, Perelandra is a gripping spiritual thriller and a deep meditation all in one (as I expanded on here), and finally That Hideous Strength bends the story arc into a complex and layered tale of intrigue and suspense, expanding at points into full blown satire, rolling the elements of the first two books into an apocalyptic ending.

Anyone who read one book of the trilogy and picked up another expecting more of the same might be confused for a few chapters, at any rate.

Each is worthwhile reading on its own, yet even with these very disparate approaches, the trilogy does hang together.

I have, myself, referred to Lewis now and then as Chesterton Lite, but his insights into human nature, sin and the walk of faith are at times astonishingly vivid and repeatedly call for deeper reflection.

More later. What are your impressions of the trilogy? ...What should I read next?

Strange Preface

I've been reading some of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries, lately, keeping a volume on my bedside table. I had only read a couple before now, and so I'm enjoying getting to know the sagacious little priest better.

The volume that I'm now reading begins with a preface by Auberon Waugh, and it strikes me as having been written by someone who had read Chesterton - and read about him - a good bit, but who had simply never understood him. He seems unable to see past Chesterton's ample surface, and weaves from his imagination a caricature of GKC that exaggerates all the wrong things.

So, he states that Chesterton "learned" Distributism from Hilaire Belloc, that he "drank himself into a state of corpulent immobility" while living in London, that because of this his wife "banished" him to Beaconsfield, and that she thereafter virtually forbade him to visit his "old haunts".

He speaks of Chesterton "churning out elegant paradoxes", and drily notes that he is certain to be forgotten except for his Father Brown stories and a few obscure bits of his poetry. He sums up Chesterton's brilliant essays as " ...pretty good rubbish, some of it repetitive, some contradictory, some nearly incomprehensible, with just the occasional flash of light that makes the reader gasp".

In other words, Waugh sounds like a thoroughly worldly modern trying to explain Chesterton's rather other-worldy and timeless thought in ways he and his more jaded peers can relate to.

The last laugh is Chesterton's, though. There has just concluded the twenty-ninth annual Chesterton Conference of the American Chesterton Society, and GKC is being read and quoted and considered more now than at any time since he was alive.

I haven't discovered, yet, when the next Auberon Waugh conference might be, but I'll keep you posted.

Not Necessarily a Book Review - Perelandra

Let me offer a big disclaimer here at the beginning of this post; I am not a literary critic... or a literary anything, for that matter. I'm not qualified even to do real criticism in my own field (fine art). I do offer social criticism pretty often, but I feel more comfortable in that role, as I have a fair amount of experience with society, having lived in it nearly every day.

What follows, then, is no more a real book review than my posts on movies could be considered movie reviews. I don't know enough about either books or movies to put things in proper perspective. If I want real movie reviews, I try to find out what pros like Steven Greydanus or Barb Nicolosi are saying.

So consider this a kind of loose recollection of how one average schlub felt about reading C.S. Lewis' space trilogy.

I knew almost nothing of the story before I began (I have yet to read That Hideous Strength, so shaddap, already, and no spoilers please). My ignorance may be confirmed in recalling that not long ago, I spoke of the entire trilogy as being "about Mars", which is only partly true of the first book, Out of the Silent Planet.

Out of the Silent Planet was a fun read, imaginative, and profound at points. Certainly as serviceable a "let's pretend we're on another planet" tale as one could reasonably ask for. It was a pleasure to read a space story written before (but not too long before) we actually did begin to go into space, when the Unknowns were so much bigger (this begs to be made into a cool Steampunk graphic novel).

That said, I wasn't bowled over. I was surely engaged enough to pick up book two, but I did not have extremely high expectations. Then Perelandra (the aforementioned "book two"), over the course of a couple of chapters, became one of my favorite books ever (not that I'm widely read).

More after the break. AHOY!! SPOILERS AHEAD!

Grey-Bearded Catholics At Play

©1999 Top Meadow

The irascible John Kasian (may his beard grow ever longer) sends this link - (through Top Meadow) - to G.K. Chesterton's first published book... and it's got beards!

Greybeards at Play is a book of nonsense verse and sketches, and the entire thing is available for viewing through the above link.

Chesterton said of the book, which was not that enthusiastically received, "To publish a book of my nonsense verse seems to me exactly like summoning the whole of the people of Kensington to see me smoke cigarettes.".

His version of "What was I thinking?", I guess.

Had he published it later, as an established author, the public might have been better able to appreciate it. It's great fun, but wisdom bubbles up everywhere.

Read it here.