Serious Discussion-Stress and Psych Disorders- Page 2

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 2:46pm

Hawthrone was Puritan congregationalist New England. That's a whole different story!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 2:47pm

I loved the Narnia books as a child before I knew anything about Lewis's deep-rooted (and questioning) faith.

So imagine my surprise when as a Jewish adolescent, I was informed by a teacher that Aslan the Lion was an allegorical representation of Jesus. I think I said, "Yeah, RIGHT!"

Years later, after seeing Shadowlands, I reread the entire series and gained new respect for Lewis as a writer. Then I started reading about his life and understood how complicated a man he was.

Updated On: 1/19/06 at 02:47 PM

[bwaysinger]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 2:52pm

The best writers always are, aren't they, PJ?

Oh, Cookie, I know he was a Puritan and he was certainly more focused on guilt than Dickens, but the values of Puritanical society in the US have remarkable ties to the social restrictions of English society. I'd just say the puritanical religious strangehold has remained stronger in the US than in England and Europe in general, where a more secular view of values has taken hold as opposed to the "grasp onto 1700s values and hold on for dear life" attitude that the US has embraced.
Clearly, I need to go restudy some historical backgrounds and societal influences on some of ym favorites. But that's why I'm happy to have this thread up here. I want to challenge what I think I know about certain subjects and learn new things about subjects unknown to me!

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 2:56pm

Oh, yes, of course! The Puritans were an outgrowth of the Revolution that dethroned Charles I and established a quasi-theocracy during the Republic. That translated to the meeting house/town hall aspects of New England colonial government. The guilt aspect is even stronger, I think, given the belief system that they were amongst the chosen, and served as a beacon on a hill to other communities. Though the harshness of Puritan life is often overstated, as they did believe in moderation.

[bwaysinger]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 3:00pm

I, personally, love the Quakers. then, viewed as such a curious and differently odd religion, today they're pretty amazingly progressive. Sad, then, that they didn't really have much of an impact on society in the US or in its art.
Thanks for pulling in a lot of the historical aspects of these writers, Cookie. I can't do it off the top of my head without preparation or some serious Googling at the very least!

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 3:02pm

I am already addicted to this thread, in anticipation of future insights.

I think it is because of his "theological/ non fantasy" works that Lewis is held in higher esteem today. Tolkien's style is also more technical and less "literary" to the minds of those who need to make categories and force great literature to fit it.

So in the end people think of Lewis as a Theologian who wrote allegorical children's books, (Which is a devastating oversimplification of Lewis' genius in both areas.) and they think of Tolkien as a technician, crafting a world to fit his interpretation of Catholic Theology sure, but mainly to give birth to his languages, or just as a big story of "Elfs" (misspelled on purpose ) and dragons.

As PalJoey indicated there is much more, and much that is still groundbreaking theologically in Lewis. We need to start with Mere Christianity and analyse the love and dissection of the Christian belif system that prevades his work. Another misunderstood fellow in that regard is John Calvin, a read of his Insititutes reveals a brilliant, questioning mind.

The Tolkien idea that sticks with me the most is the since of melancholy within the passing of time. Even when things are perfect, the pains of temptations past, the roads we took and those that were denied, is not far beyond the surface.

Quickly on Dickens and Hawthorne. I love Dickens, especially the depths to which he sometimes goes to describe the melachonlia of life. Hawthorne I simply detest in every way.

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 3:04pm

Total off tangent...

The Quakers were beautiful woodcraftsmen. Such simplicity but well designed pieces. Not to mention, the interiors of some of their prayer houses were beautiful. If you've seen the last revival of "Carousel" on Broadway (at Lincoln Center), Bob Crowley's vision of heaven was based on a Quaker prayer house interior. That deep cobalt blue...

The blessings (or curse, depending on how you look at it) of just being able to remember random things...

[bwaysinger]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 3:05pm

I'm sorry you detest Hawthorne, Pengy, as he is perhaps among my favorite authors.
I LOVE (although, to emote a bit, it does sadden me), his intense desire to purge the demons of his life and belief system through his writing. I can feel the torment he's trying to exorcise as I read each word. It's remarkable and palpable.
As for Tolkien being more a craftsman, I've never thought of it that way, though certainly his critics do take issue with his narrative meanderings. But, always, he seems more interested in the minutia and the relationships of people (you could definitely find correlation to the blossoming friendship of Legolas and Gimli as indicative of two human races - black and white, perhaps? - coming together through finally recognizing their common bonds) than any kind of plot structure. It creates for some boring passages in the rings trilogy.

[bwaysinger]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 3:10pm

Cookie, that kind of tangent is MOST welcome here and DEFINITELY on topic. I really envision this thread as meandering in and around the topic and, since Quakers came up within the literary discussion, it's a worthwhile departure.
I didn't see Carousel and so I don't know Crowley's design, but I do love when a designer goes with a very unique and, perhaps, personal theme to bring a scene to life.
I actually met some modern Quakers. Great people.

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 3:11pm

Ah, but that kind of verbosity that Tolkien has still strives to say something. As opposed to Dickens and Madame Defarge, rocking in her chair for multitudes of pages...

We get it. She's knitting the coat of arms of all the French nobility to be executed...

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 3:12pm

I could be persuaded to give him another shot, but my initial exposure was on a decidedly "antagonistic" level.

It is exactly that attention to the minutia that I love about Tolkien, the idea that no one could possibly want to know who was king of Gondor during the 300th year of the second age, but he tells you anyway.
The idea that the characters individual moments are the important pieces and that they are overlayed onto an epic story, yet it is the moments that are important, not the epic, is the genius of the story. Of course the same attention to details in Melville bores me to tears.

I have a deep affinity for the Quakers, both in their current incarnation, and thier oft misunderstood (paricularly here in Seminary) historical journey.

[bwaysinger]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 3:15pm

Pengy, I've often found a great way to appreciate an author for whom I have not much joy is to read a short story or two of theirs if they have written them, or else stick to a lesser-known book of theirs.
For instance, I really don't like Jack London all that much. That said, I read "The Sea Wolf" and absolutely ADORED it. off the top of my head, I can't tell you why, but I devoured the book in one day.

I love that minutia as well in Tolkien, Pengy, because, to him, he had created a REAL world, one in which he felt compelled to educate you.

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 3:18pm

Have you read London's Martin Eden, bway?

[bwaysinger]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 3:20pm

No, I have not. However, I'm putting it on my Amazon wishlist now, along with Solitude.
That's my holding pen for all the books I want to get.

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 3:23pm

Unfortunately, I have to go again, but I love the thread.
I'm shiver with anticipation, both about catching up again later, and tomorrow's topic.

I tried that with "Bartelby," it was a miserable experience.

I am very fond of being educated, and I hate not knowing something, so I may go find a Hawthorne to devour and change my mind with.

[DG]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 3:25pm

Don't want to break any rhythms of the thread - just want to thank BSinger for the idea, and he and everyone else for its execution.

Bravo!

[bwaysinger]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 3:25pm

Peng, seriously, pick up something small. Just try to focus on the themes he writes on. I'll admit his style is VERY difficult (as are most writers from that time) but you might, if not find love, then find some form of appreciation for what he was doing.

And now I have to go, too, a hot chocolate date awaits me! But I look forward to this as well and hope some of our other best and brightest minds are getting ready to join in on the discussion or find a great new topic for tomorrow!

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 3:28pm

peng: "Twice Told Tales" or "Young Goodman Brown" for some Hawthorne short stories...

[sweetestsiren]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 3:59pm

I agree about Dickens's verbosity. Though there are times when I really admire his style of prose, there's just so much detail that it's difficult to get through. I loved Great Expectations, but I found that the wordiness and five-page scene descriptions interfered with my enjoyment of A Tale of Two Cities. Those are the only Dickens novels that I've read.

I REALLY need to read something by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I checked out Love in the Time of Cholera from the library and started it, but it was due back before I'd really gotten into it. This is why I much prefer buying books.

I was sort of wondering today what my favorite authors, though they have wildly divergent styles, have in common that I enjoy them so much. I had a brilliant English teacher who was totally baffled by the fact that on one hand I adore Jane Austen, and on the other I'm drawn to authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edith Wharton. I suppose all have the social commentary angle, though it's done more humorously by Austen and cynically by the others. Or maybe Austen's just a fluke, because reflecting on it now I'm most interested in stories that depict the darker side of human nature (and, honestly, I'm a hopeless sucker for angst).

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 5:46pm

sweetsiren: Oh, I think Wharton and Austen are two sides of the same coin! If you compare much of their novels, Austen's ends happily, whereas Wharton's have an air of tragedy. Yet both deal with the social status of women in a tiered society where they were simply required to marry, lest be a financial burden on their families. Lily Bart in The Age of Innocence in contrast to Emma. Sense and Sensibility in contrast to the girls in The Buccaneers.

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 5:48pm

I notice that the one prevading undercurrent of my favorites is the same, an abiding skepticism about existence (yet never quite cynical) backed up with biting social commentary.

Or intensly personal tales of depression and madness. I love those.

Also on the "Fantasy" subject has anyone read much Stanislaw Lem?
The Cyberaid short stories about two robots trading tails on the pitfalls of existence and nature of God, is a major favorite of mine, in the genre.

[kissmycookie]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 5:50pm

is that more along the Fantasy/SciFi genre, SP?

[NYadgal]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 10:35pm

The themes of fantasy, religion and imagination which are woven throughout this thread remind me of a recent New Yorker article about CS Lewis. I share with you an excerpt from the article which is of particular interest to me and involves many of these topics:

It was through the intervention of the secretive and personally troubled Tolkien, however, that Lewis finally made the turn toward orthodox Christianity. In company with another friend, they took a long, and now famous, walk, on an autumn night in 1931, pacing and arguing from early evening to early morning. Tolkien was a genuinely eccentric character—in college, the inventor of Lothlorien played the part of the humorless pedant—who had been ready to convert Lewis for several years. Lewis was certainly ripe to be converted. The liberal humanism in which he had been raised as a thinker had come to seem far too narrowly Philistine and materialist to account for the intimations of transcendence that came to him on country walks and in pages of poetry. Tolkien, seizing on this vulnerability, said that the obvious-seeming distinction that Lewis made between myth and fact—between intimations of timeless joy and belief in a historically based religion—was a false one. Language, and the consciousness it reflected, was intrinsically magical. One had to become religious to save the magic, not to be saved from it. (It was, ironically, the same spirit in which the children of the nineteen-sixties felt that the liberal humanism in which they had been raised failed to account for the intensities of another kind of trip—and that led them, too, to magic, and to Lewis and Tolkien.) All existence, Tolkien insisted on that night ramble, was intrinsically mythical; the stars were the fires of gods if you chose to see them that way, just as the world was the stories you made up from it. If you were drawn to myth at all, as Lewis was, then you ought to accept the Christian myth just as you accepted the lovely Northern ones. By the end of the walk, Lewis was, or was about to become, a churchgoer.

I continue to read, re-read, study, discuss and think about the work of C.S. Lewis. This thread is a gift!

Updated On: 1/19/06 at 10:35 PM

[Chloe]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 10:47pm

When I was a teen I read almost all the popular (as opposed to scholarly) writing of CS Lewis, and also Tolkien's trilogy. The biggest distinction between them in my mind has been that for Lewis, as well-written, erudite and amusing as they are to read, his adult fiction is dominated by the didactic element. Wriiting for children may have freed him to give his imagination more scope, it seems to me, even though there are allegorical elements in the background.

Tolkien, on the other hand, seems above all possessed by the world he created, and like all good writers, he allowed it to carry him where it needed to go.

[NYadgal]

Posted: 1/19/06 at 10:55pm

What is so moving about the Narnia stories is that, though Lewis began with a number of haunted images—a street lamp in the snow, the magic wardrobe itself, the gentle intelligent faun who meets Lucy—he never wrote down to, or even for, children, except to use them as characters, and to make his sentences simpler than usual. He never tried to engineer an entertainment for kids. He wrote, instead, a real book for a circle of readers, and the result is a fairy tale that includes everything he feels most passionate about: the nature of redemption, the problem of pain, the Passion and the Resurrection, all set in mystical English landscape.

The trouble, many feel, was that though he could encompass his obsessions and he could not entirely surrender to his imagination. The emotional power of the book, it is felt, diminishes as the religious part intensifies.

Updated On: 1/19/06 at 10:55 PM