This is the last bit of stuff from The Lion's Club.  Containing summaries written by sandicomm, cahobbit, and arevanye. Heh, actually, I never wrote anything, I just slapped everything together. And came up with titles for each person's sections.

Sandicomm's Summaries

That Hideous Strength

Published 1945, Allen & Unwin

Synopsis

That Hideous Strength begins differently than its companions. Instead of continuing with the story of Elwin Ransom, as Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra have done, That Hideous Strength begins with a young married couple: Jane and Mark Studdock. The two seem thoroughly typical: For starters, they are both very much not in love with each other. Jane is trying to continue with her scholarly work that she had started before the marriage, and Mark has just begun his job as a fellow of Bracton College and a professor of sociology.

Jane begins to have strange dreams--visions, even-- that then turn out to be true. At the same time, a corporation, the N.I.C.E., are looking to buy the property of Bracton College solely for the piece of property in the adjoining grounds called Merlin's Well.

For reasons unknown, the N.I.C.E. become extremely interested in Mark and wish to recruit him. They try to lure him with all sorts of attractions and vices, as Mark wishes to become part of the most innermost circle of all. Jane goes to her longtime friends, the Dimbles, to ask if they know of a doctor who could help her with her visions. When she visits the doctor, she soon becomes entangled with a secret organization called Logres. But things are not as they seem.

How are N.I.C.E. and Logres connected, and will Mark and Jane rediscover their religion and love for each other to overcome their own personal obstacles? In this fairy-tale for adults, English history and Arthurian lore are combined to produce a thrilling and eerie tale.

Review

Although I personally enjoy Out of the Silent Planet best, That Hideous Strength is easily the most complex, layered, and mature volume of The Space Trilogy. On the surface, it can be read as a simple morality play, as all fairy tales are, in which the two lovers must find themselves and each other. Yet there are many different sides to this tale. The N.I.C.E. easily represent the evils and soullessness of corporations. While perhaps this might seem a dated or cliché subject now, we must put the book into historical perspective: it is right after the War, and America is increasing its commercialism. Nothing like a corporation has ever been seen in the world before.

Other contrasts include that, while Logres (which is headed by none other than Elwin Ransom) is a society based on religion and faith in the eldil, or angels, N.I.C.E. is a purely scientific organization. The members of Logres speak Latin, while one member of N.I.C.E., a scientist, speaks Italian--the corruption of Latin. While Logres is mainly composed of women, N.I.C.E. is almost completely men. There are, of course, many other layers to be discovered, but that is for the reader to interpret.

One of the frightening aspects of the book is how eager and competitive people can be. Mark is still consumed of the grade-school desire that pretty much everyone is guilty of: the need to be popular, to be powerful. Mark is so consumed by his greed that he forgets the beautiful things in life. Jane is ignorant and therefore blind; she notices neither hers or Mark's true needs.

Another thing that scared me is how some of the predictions and inventions in the book became true. The N.I.C.E. want to build their corporate headquarters to be part of the New York City skyline (the World Trade Center--everyone just wants to be cool like us New Yorkers, I guess), a Pragmatic machine (the Internet), an organization of psychics who want to film a documentary about theirs and N.I.C.E.'s search for Merlin's Well (the Blair Witch Project). Heck, I'm surprised that there wasn't a mention of something similar to Microsoft, but of course Lewis wouldn't have known about computers.

In my personal experience, I first read That Hideous Strength when I was in fourth grade, so when I first read the book I was very unsatisfied with its ending, and there were obviously things that flew way over my head. In each successive reading, and as I have grown older (it's been about five years since I read That Hideous Strength), I have noticed more themes and learned to appreciate the book more.

Readers will notice that Middle Earth and Numinor are mentioned several times during the book (even by Merlin himself!). Numinor is spelled wrong, but you can imagine my surprise when I read about how "Numenor was the True West" and all that. There is also plenty of Arthurian myth (Bragdon Wood, which is connected to the college is mentioned in Roger Lancelyn Greene's King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table as one of the spots where Merlin might be buried), and Merlin is a central part of the plot. At this point in Lewis's life, he was befriending and becoming influenced by Charles Williams, who apparently wrote a lot about King Arthur, but he was also trying to hold on to his friendship with Tolkien. I think that That Hideous Strength was rather an unsuccessful marriage of the two authors' different mythologies, but as Tolkien said, he would have rathered that Lewis had continued with his own mythology that was developing in the other books of The Space Trilogy. Oh, well.

But fear not! There is a short story, "The Dark Tower", that can be found in The Dark Tower and Other Stories. It is apparently about Elwin, and was supposed to be a link between Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. If you happen to come across this book, then you should buy it right away, as it seems to be impossibly hard to find.

That Hideous Strength, since it is so different from the other two books of the trilogy, can be read on its own, but it is best to read it after you have read the other two books of the trilogy.

Stormhobbit's Synopsizes

A Grief Observed

In 1960 Helen Joy Gresham, the love of CS Jack Lewis life, died of cancer.  Consumed with grief, Lewis took to recording his sadness, his pain, and most importantly his anger at God in a set of old exercise books.  Already established as a leading Christian theologian and author of the seven Narnia chronicles, Lewis chose to have his diaries published under a pseudonym, lest readers feel his previous works were undermined by this very questioning book

However, A Grief Observed is not an exercise in blasphemy so much as a tortuous reworking of preconceptions that Lewis called his houses of cards.  Lewis writes at his best and most personal, his characteristic incisiveness and logic combining with a poignancy of emotion seen nowhere else in his works.  The book, his diary, begins abruptly:

"No-one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.  I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid.  The same fluttering in the stomach, restlessness, the yawning.  I keep on swallowing."

Very quickly Lewis comes to his real fear:

"Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God.  The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him.  The conclusion I dread is not So there's no God after all, but So this is what Gods really like.  Deceive yourself no longer."

One is reminded of Tirian's horrified reaction to the pseudo-Aslan in The Last Battle.

"Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun.

I know, said Jewel. Or as if you drank water and it were dry water."

As Lewis' dialogue with himself continues, we see him constantly deflate his own thoughts and posturing as he continually comes back to the fact that his wife is dead.  Paragraphs extolling Joy's virtues (she is referred to throughout the published book as H, her first initial) are followed by reflections such as this:

"Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on my image of her.  The real shape will be quite hidden in the end The rough, sharp, cleansing tang of her otherness is gone."

As he does elsewhere, Lewis is describing a common occurrence, unusual only in that he recognizes it for what it is and can step outside it.  Like the children under the influence of the Lady's spell in The Silver Chair, Lewis does not allow this process to take over by being aware of it.  However, there comes a moment when he can no longer step outside his own feelings.  His bitterness swells as he reaches a terrifying conclusion: that either God is not good or there is no God.  He refers to the Crucifixion as a vile practical joke and calls God the Cosmic Sadist.

These feelings shock him and he retrenches, looking at the mater rationally when he next returns to his diary.  Lewis attempts different viewpoints is humankind so unutterably evil that what we see as evil in God may be good?  But then, Lewis counters himself, we would have no motive for obeying Him.  Lewis decides that his previous view of God may have been only a house of cards, a fools hope.  Later, he apologizes for his vindictiveness, calling it telling God what I thought of Him.  Again he began to revisit the problem of panwas God the vet or the vivisectionist?

"And I can believe He is a vet when I think of my own suffering.  It is harder when I think of hers.  What is grief compared to physical pain?

The terrible thing is that a perfectly good God is in this matter hardly les formidable than the Cosmic Sadist Suppose you are up against a surgeon whose intentions were wholly good.  The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting."

A Lewis comes round to believing once more in a good, if not necessarily comforting, God, he begins to remember Joy ore clearly.  Without diminishing of grief there is the beginnings of acceptance.  Yet he realizes that what he has lost will never be regained in the same way. 

"So many roads once; now so many culs de sac."

He theorizes that death may be merely another stage in his courtship and marriage, not it termination. 

"'How far have I got?' he asks.  About as far, I think, of a widow of another sort who would stop, lean on his spade, and say Thank ee.  Mustn't grumble.  I do miss her something dreadful.  But they say these things are sent to try us."

Lewis begins now to realize that passionate, uncontrolled grief could in fact keep the dead dead; that getting on with life may in fact be the best way to remember Joy. 

"The less I mourn her the nearer I seem to her."

Grief, he concluded, was not a circle but a spiral; not a state, but a process.

 "Turned to God, my mind no longer meets that locked door; turned to H., it no longer meets that vacuum"

Lewis also discovers that his love for Joy was due to her resemblance to God, and that he need[ed] Christ, not something that resembles Him. 

"But later, Lord, are those your real terms?  Can I meet H. again only if I learn to love you so much that I don't care whether I meet her or not?  Consider, Lord, how it looks to us"

Again, Jack Lewis is meeting in real life a situation he sketched in one of his books.  The Great Divorce tells of a woman who journeyed to Heaven solely in search of her son.  In The Great Divorce, she is seen as pitiable for not recognizing the true value of Heaven; now, Lewis knows what his character felt.  Yet rather than failing, as she did, he looks beyond his own grief to Gods reasons.

Can a mortal ask a question with God finds unanswerable?  Quite easily, I should think.  All nonsense questions are unanswerable.  How many hours are there in a mile?  Is yellow square or round?

Perhaps, Lewis reasoned, all our moral and philosophical questions are really like that compared to Gods greatness, we cannot even begin to comprehend the right questions.  Painfully and with sadness, Lewis begins to see that what was is gone, and perhaps, after all, for the best.  Joy is happy now, he reasons, and if he could add a greater splendour to her being by agreeing to never see her again, he would do so.  By the same argument, should he not accept her leaving a painful life?  His diary concludes not with a pat answer to his grief, nor a despairing wail, but a piece of Lewis logic:

"How wicked it would be, if we could, to call the dead back!  She said not to me but to the chaplain, I am at peace with God. She smiled, but not at me.  Poi si tornò all eterna fontana."

This book, questioning God as it does, is neither politically correct nor intended as a kind of Christian Living with Bereavement self-help book.  Instead it is a mature, personal and heartfelt chronicle of grief which describes Lewis feeling so accurately that anyone who has ever lost a loved one cannot help but be moved.  Taken in conjunction with Lewis other writings and any of the excellent CS Lewis biographies available, and also perhaps the stage play and two movies entitled Shadowlands, telling the story of Lewis and Joy Gresham, this book gives a more personal and intimate look at the life of an extraordinary man than even his autobiographical Surprised by Joy.  Defenseless, disarmed, the master theologian questions his core beliefs and dares anyone to cast the first stone as he wrestles with is grief.

CAhobbit's Commentary

The Great Divorce

A most fascinating story of a man who goes from

hell/purgatory to the first reaches of another world.

 Angry, enlightened, an artist, a mother, and angels

are just a few of the interesting people/beings our

main character comes across on his journey.  He soon

discovers that some people, no matter where they are,

never change and the ones who choose to change or

rather accept a new “life” go onto wonders that none

of the living (and some dead) could never imagine.  In

this tale we learn only little snippets of this “other

world” and some of the beings that inhabit it.  We

also are shown possible aspects of ourselves

(jealousy, anger, vanity, willingness to accept,

etc...) in all the characters our main character comes

across.  

Unfortunately almost as soon as our main character’s

adventure begins it ends abruptly in his study when he

awakes.  So was all of what we saw (as the reader)

just a crazy dream of our main character?  Or was it

much more?  I’ll let you decide.

If you ever have a couple of hours one day I recommend

this book to fill those hours.

And since I love to pull quotes...here are a few that

(I hope) will peak some interest for those who haven’t

read this tale.

--“I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches

Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in

plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that

the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his

most depraved wishes will be there, beyond

expectation, waiting for him in ‘the High Countries’.”

--“we must all live by hope, must we not?”

--‘No atmosphere of inquiry, for I will bring you to

the land not of questions but of answers, and you

shall see the face of God.’

--‘But they aren’t distinguished no more than anyone

else.  Don’t you understand?  The Glory flows into

everyone, and back from everyone: like light and

mirrors.  But the light’s the thing.’

--’...All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your

earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this

world, the Real World.  Look at yon butterfly.  If it

swallowed all Hell, Hell would not be big enough to do it any harm or to have any taste.’

Arevanye's Analysis

The Four Loves

Published 1960

    Let me begin by commenting that “The Four Loves” is not a quick read.  It is not the type of book to take to the beach or poolside, and enjoy in snatches.  For me, it was the sort of book that required my full attention, with note-taking alongside to keep his points clear in my mind.  His writing style is more academic and quite long-winded at points than other books of his that I have enjoyed, but at no time did I get exasperated and give up.  Rather, C.S. Lewis shows here his depth of understanding for human nature in all its emotions, motivations, and mistakes.  Many of his anecdotes and illustrations brought forth an “Aha!  So true!” recognition from me, in that he quite accurately describes lives and loves witnessed or experienced.

    This book is about love in all its manifestations:  affectionate love (storge), friendship (philia), romantic love (eros), and charity (agape).  His definitions also encompass the love of country, and the love of the natural world, and many other shades of love besides.

    He begins by discussing the ability of love to bring us closer to God and to His Image.  First, however, he defines two different types of nearness:  that of nearness by likeness or proximity, and nearness by approach.  Hmm…whatever does he mean?  He illustrates by talking about hiking towards a village, and coming to the top of a cliff where the village can be seen at the very bottom.  Near in proximity, yes, but one can come no nearer because there is no path to reach it.  The hiker is obliged to take the “long way ‘round” and perhaps be geographically further away during the process, yet closer to actually reaching the destination.  Therefore, while some aspects of love bear resemblance or proximity to God’s love, the way to reach Him is not by the cliff, but by the “slow and painful approach which must be our own task”.

    Affectionate love, he observes, is that which arises when people are “thrown together” by chance of family, college, church, and the like, but over time have developed an appreciation for each other, quirks and foibles included.  “In my experience it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who “happen to be there”.  Made for us?  Thank God, no.  They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.”  He notes our chosen friends are much easier to like, having something in common with us in the first place.  The affection that arises out of proximity is much more tolerant and patient with differences.

    I really enjoyed his discussion of the love between friends.  In my opinion, the book is worth reading for this chapter alone!  He discusses the tiresome tendency of modern theory to classify every firm and serious friendship between two people of the same sex as homosexual at the root.  “Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend”.  He also talks about the nature of admitting others into a circle of friendship “In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out.  By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets…Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves.”  In this portion of the book, I think Lewis reveals the gregarious side of his nature.  It strikes me that he was a very welcoming and non-possessive person who derived joy from “sharing” his friends with other friends and benefiting from their interactions. 

    When he speaks of Eros, his observations about lovers and falling in love are challenging to follow, yet amazingly accurate.  He discusses the pitfalls of Eros--that of deifying Eros without reservation so that it becomes a demon.  His advice on enjoying a sensible and decent marriage relationship by knowing the tricks that Eros can play is especially candid and very near the mark, in my opinion.

    Of Charity, he observes that, like a garden that needs tending to bring forth the ultimate harvest of beauty and bounty, so does our human love need the boundless love of God to reach its full potential.  His discussion about the man who, in protecting himself from sorrow refuses to give love to any human (since humans are destined to pass away, and thereby cause sorrow and pain) is very profound.  “The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell”.

    This is only a small sampling of the wisdom in this book.  After finishing “The Four Loves”, I feel a greater appreciation for the mind of C.S. Lewis and his ability to bring to clarity the foibles of human nature and the many aspects of God’s Love for his children.   This is definitely one I will keep on my bookshelf—there are concepts and quotes in it worth visiting again and again.

Again, I don't know whats with the stray html, no matter what I do it doesn't seem to go away!