/lit/ - Literature

>>23602461
God why did the middle of the 20th Century feel so fucking comfy? Pic related, the pics of Lewis and Tolkien and such, they all evoke the same vibe. Every photo of some Anglo or German or Frenchman or Dutchman from that period, even the Americans, carries a vibe of comfort and safety. Like it was all going to be all right, in the end.

>>23133303
You're welcome, Anon.

As far as where to go from here I think you might actually benefit from reading C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. It, too, is space sci-fi fantasy, and deals with spiritual matters. You will greatly enjoy it, and it might give you some inspiration about where to go next in your writing.

>>23093753
Anon you should read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. It's essentially "Christianity for dummies," but as you are just starting out, that is precisely what you need.

I also recommend the Jesus Of Nazareth books by Joseph Ratzinger.

>>23072477
It is legitimately cool, isn't it? I feel like to properly write fantasy, or sci-fi, or any fiction that steps outside the bounds of normality, you've got to have a sense of whimsy. Lewis had it, Tolkien had it, hell, Borges had it. I'm not sure GRRM has any whimsy to him. A kind of fancy, a sense of fun. Even if you're writing "serious" fantastical fiction you must have that element if you're going to carry it over to the audience, I think.

>>22774862
He is completely right, even after the soification and the redditification of modern men he's still right. His whole point is that caring about being "adult" is actually very childish, and a real adult's attitude towards your passions and dreams should be one of not caring what other people think of them.

Frankly, you can view Lewis' quote as a critique of the "masculinity crisis" guys, too. I'm not saying that boys don't need up-to-date guides on how to be good men, but so much of what passes for "how to be a man" in the modern, like, right-wing blogosphere is just fucking childish. Whiskey? Cigars? Pipes? Facial hair? Overtly tailored clothes? It's all fucking goofy. I say this as someone who does like nice clothes and does like whiskey, but these guys are doing it performatively. They're concerned with looking "manly" in the same way Lewis is criticizing people being concerned with looking "very grown up."

The idea is not to make a performance of it. Not to make a costume of it, not to be a cartoon character. That's what makes someone REALLY an adult, when they're fully actualized at something rather than just playing pretend. And that's what makes someone really a man, too.

Till We Have Faces
Perelandra
The Abolition of Man
Hideous Strength
Thulcandra or Out of the Silent Planet
The Chronicles of Narnia: Dawn Treader
The Chronicles of Narnia: Silver Chair
The Chronicles of Narnia: Magicians Nephew
The Chronicles of Narnia: Witch and Wardrobe
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

In short, there is still life in the tradition which the Middle Ages inaugurated. But the maintenance of that life depends, in part, on knowing that the knightly character is art not nature—something that needs to be achieved, not something that can be relied upon to happen. And this knowledge is specially necessary as we grow more democratic. In previous centuries the vestiges of chivalry were kept alive by a specialized class, from whom they spread to other classes partly by imitation and partly by coercion. Now, it seems, the people must either be chivalrous on its own resources, or else choose between the two remaining alternatives of brutality and softness. This is, indeed, part of the general problem of a classless society, which is too seldom mentioned. Will its ethos be a synthesis of what was best in all the classes, or a mere “pool” with the sediment of all and the virtues of none? But that is too large a subject for the fag-end of an article. My theme is chivalry. I have tried to show that this old tradition is practical and vital.

The ideal embodied in Launcelot is “escapism” in a sense never dreamed of by those who use that word; it offers the only possible escape from a world divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable. There was, to be sure, a rumor in the last century that wolves would gradually become extinct by some natural process; but this seems to have been an exaggeration.

>I know that there are moments when the incessant continuity and desperate helplessness of what at least seems to be animal suffering make every argument for theism sound hollow, and when (in particular) the insect world appears to be Hell itself visibly in operation around us. Then the old indignation, the old pity arises. But how strangely ambivalent this experience is... If I regard this pity and indignation simply as subjective experiences of my own with no validity beyond their strength at the moment (which next moment will change), I can hardly use them as standards whereby to arraign the creation. On the contrary, they become strong as arguments against God just in so far as I take them to be transcendent illumination to which creation must conform or be condemned. They are arguments against God only if they are themselves the voice of God. The more Shelleyan, the more Promethean my revolt, the more surely it claims a divine sanction. That the mere contingent Joad or Lewis, born in an era of secure and liberal civilization and imbibing from it certain humanitarian sentiments, should happen to be offended by suffering—what is that to the purpose? How will one base an argument for or against God on such an historical accident!

>No. Not in so far as we feel these things, but in so far as we claim to be right in feeling them, in so far as we are sure that these standards have an empire de jure over all possible worlds, so far, and so far only, do they become a ground for disbelief—and at the same moment, for belief. God within us steals back at the moment of our condemning the apparent God without. Thus in Tennyson's poem the man who had become convinced that the God of his inherited creed was evil exclaimed: 'If there be such a God, may the Great God curse him and bring him to nought.' For if there is no 'Great God' behind the curse, who curses? Only a puppet of the little apparent 'God'. His very curse is poisoned at the root: it is just the same sort of event as the very cruelties he is condemning, part of the meaningless tragedy.

>From this I see only two exits: either that there is a Great God, and also a 'God of this world', a prince of the powers of the air, whom the Great God does curse, and sometimes curses through us; or else that the operations of the Great God are not what they seem to me to be.

Sounds about right, go to your local parish this Sunday.

What books/writers do you disagree with but still think are worth reading?