This forum was closed on October 1st, 2010. However, the archives are open to the public and filled with vast amounts of good reading and information for you to enjoy. If you wish to meet some Wardrobians, please visit the Into the Wardrobe Facebook group.

Dark Tower now verified as authentic?

Comprising most of Lewis' writings.
Forum rules
Please keep all discussion on topic and in line with our code of conduct.

Postby jo » January 9th, 2007, 6:15 pm

"I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die"

User avatar
jo
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 5167
Joined: Aug 1999
Location: somewhere with lots of pink

Postby Pete » January 10th, 2007, 7:00 am

If vulgarity is anything to go by, maybe it should also be noted that as well as THS and The Dark Tower, Perelandra also contains some vulgar scenes. In fact the only one that doesn't have any vulgarity would be Out of the Silent Planet
Member of The 2456317 Club

User avatar
Pete
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 4469
Joined: Aug 1996
Location: Cranbourne West, Victoria, Australia

Postby jo » January 26th, 2007, 2:10 pm

"I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die"

User avatar
jo
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 5167
Joined: Aug 1999
Location: somewhere with lots of pink

Postby Adam Linton » January 27th, 2007, 1:17 am

As far as I read, I couldn't say that there was anything vulgar in Perelandra, either.
we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream
User avatar
Adam Linton
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 981
Joined: Jan 2005
Location: Columbia Falls, MT

Postby Stanley Anderson » January 27th, 2007, 3:37 am

…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
User avatar
Stanley Anderson
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 3251
Joined: Aug 1996
Location: Southern California

Postby Adam Linton » January 27th, 2007, 3:49 pm

I think that we might be dealing with slightly different understandings of "vulgar." For myself, a suggestion that obscene things are being done, without explicit decription, is rather different from literary vulgarity per se - and also, for that matter, can be much more effective, as writing, than directly specifying the details. This is the case, I'd say, Stanley, in the passage you reference, which is, as it's meant to be, chilling and disturbing.

Regards.

P.S. And, of course, there's the sense of "vulgar" that we don't use so much anymore in everyday speech; i.e., written in the common language.
we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream
User avatar
Adam Linton
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 981
Joined: Jan 2005
Location: Columbia Falls, MT

Postby Stanley Anderson » January 28th, 2007, 4:20 am

…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
User avatar
Stanley Anderson
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 3251
Joined: Aug 1996
Location: Southern California

Postby jo » January 29th, 2007, 1:16 pm

I probably wouldn't have used the word vulgar for either book, actually. Suggestive, perhaps.
"I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die"

User avatar
jo
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 5167
Joined: Aug 1999
Location: somewhere with lots of pink

Postby Stanley Anderson » January 29th, 2007, 2:02 pm

…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
User avatar
Stanley Anderson
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 3251
Joined: Aug 1996
Location: Southern California

Postby Karen » February 2nd, 2007, 7:11 pm

in Christianity Today. (Note: if it doesn't load for you at first, hit 'Refresh' and it should come up fine).
I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. -- Jorge Luis Borges
User avatar
Karen
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 3733
Joined: Jul 2002
Location: Pennsylvania, USA

Postby Stanley Anderson » February 2nd, 2007, 8:44 pm

…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
User avatar
Stanley Anderson
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 3251
Joined: Aug 1996
Location: Southern California

Postby Pete » February 3rd, 2007, 8:18 am

Member of The 2456317 Club

User avatar
Pete
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 4469
Joined: Aug 1996
Location: Cranbourne West, Victoria, Australia

Postby jo » March 1st, 2007, 2:18 pm

"I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die"

User avatar
jo
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 5167
Joined: Aug 1999
Location: somewhere with lots of pink

TDT vindicated? Not so fast!

Postby larry gilman » March 20th, 2007, 6:40 pm

I acknowledge that Fowler's testimony should be weighed in the balances with all the other evidence, and certainly works in favor of the authenticity of TDT, but I do not take it as definitive for several reasons.

First, pro-Hooper folks have never taken Fred Paxton's word that the "bonfire of [CSL] papers" from which Hooper says he rescued the Dark Tower MS and many other papers never occurred, so why this sudden rush to cite someone's unsupported, 50-year-old reminiscence as definitive truth? Human memory is fallible. We recall memories that we have repressed, but we can also manufacture memories of what never happened.

I find it bizarre that Fowler only spoke up about seeing the TDT manuscript in 2003, some 26 years after the whole broo-ha-ha about TDT began in the late 1970s. Fowler was of course aware of the publication of TDT, since a piece of his writing appears in the book (comments on "After Ten Years," pp. 157-158). In those comments Fowler did not say when he had seen that MS; nor did he mention having seen any other MSS, such as that of The Dark Tower. Both editor Hooper and the two authors discussing "After Ten Years," Green and Fowler, seem to have been unaware of any contradictions or confirmations afoot.

Fowler is now a quite elderly man and his 55-year-old memories of Lewis seem questionable on several points:

First and most importantly, Fowler says that he saw the "After Ten Years" fragment on the same occasion he saw the Dark Tower MS. But Roger Lancelyn Green says that Lewis began that fragment in 1959 (The Dark Tower, p. 155). If Green is correct---and he says he remembers Lewis reading him the first chapter aloud, and having extensive conversations with Lewis on the subject---Fowler could not have seen the "After Ten Years" fragment in the early or mid 1950s, when he was a graduate student of Lewis's.

Interestingly, on pp. 1668-9 of Collected Letters III, Hooper quotes Fowler's 2003 statements about seeing manuscripts and says that "Of great importance and interest is the discovery that the manuscripts of 'After Ten Years' and The Dark Tower . . . were examined by Dr Fowler in Lewis's company as far back as 1962." First, note that 1962 is a typo for 1952 (compare p. 1667 and Fowler essay: also, Till We Have Faces, which Fowler also remembers seeing in MS form on the same occasion, had already been published in 1956, and so would not have been displayed as an incomplete manuscript in 1962!). Hooper seems not to recall, here, that Green was of the opinion, when The Dark Tower was published in 1977, that "After Ten Years" was commenced in 1959. Whose account is inadvertently distorted, Green's or Fowler's? Do we just authorize the one we prefer?

Second, Fowler says he remembers Lewis being engrossed in Astounding Science Fiction during the visit when he saw the Dark Tower and other incomplete manuscripts. Now this was in the early 1950s. I happen to have read a great deal of that magazine from that period (for 20 years I owned most of the issues). It contained none of that mythopoeic science fiction that Lewis reveled in, but was almost exclusively devoted to that "engineer's fiction" which Lewis said (in the essay "On Science Fiction") he had no interest in at all. On the other hand, Lewis praised The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (founded 1949) as the best of the genre. If Lewis was engrossed in any science-fiction magazine on a random winter morning in the early 50s, it is highly probable that it was The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I think it likely---though of course there is no proof in such a thing---that Fowler is misremembering this detail too.

Third, Fowler remembers (http://www.solcon.nl/arendsmilde/cslewi ... fowler.htm) that "Lewis saw the theory of natural selection as threatening religion." This directly contradicts what Lewis said in print on several occasions (references available on request). He also remembers Lewis doubting that fossils are real: yet Lewis repeatedly wrote as if the "prehuman past" were an established scientific fact. All this, again, sounds to me like Fowler's memory is suspect.

Finally---this is a relatively minor point----in the same Christianity Today article that has brought Fowler's 2003 reminiscences to fresh attention, he says that "Like many fantasy writers, Lewis wasn't much interested in the question of the literary quality of his writing." Indeed? That seems to me not only a condescending and silly thing to say about fantasy writers, at least those in Lewis's league (Wm. Morris? Tolkien? Eddison? Lord Dunsany?), but in contradiction to everything we know about the pleasure Lewis took in language, his reading his stories aloud for hard-hitting criticism by the Inklings, and his belief (viz. "Good Work and Good Works" essay) that Christians should do all their creative work as well as possible, whether it was explicitly religious or not.

Sorry, it won't do. Fowler's reminiscences are not definitive. They are evidence, but not conclusive evidence, not proof---far from it. It seems quite possible to me that he was indeed shown some manuscript material, but that half a century later his memories MAY be mingled with later ones.


Larry

PS. The sexuality of the imagery in the Dark Tower is beyond dispute because the text itself draws attention to the obvious: see page 63 of the book.
larry gilman
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 233
Joined: Jul 2004
Location: Sharon, VT

Postby larry gilman » March 21st, 2007, 7:26 pm

Regarding the textual and historical points I’ve raised in my last message, I propose the following three alternative timelines. I do not know of any concrete evidence available at this time that could definitely rule out any one of them. More could be constructed, but would I think be trivial variations on these three.


TIMELINE A

Lewis did write The Dark Tower in the late 1930s. He also commenced “After Ten Years” before 1952. He showed a typescript of TDT and the existing fraction of “After Ten Years” to Alastair Fowler in 1952.

In 1959, Lewis began conversing with Roger Lancelyn Green about the “After Ten Years” fragment and was moved to recommence it. Despite their extensive conversations on the subject, Green received the mistaken impression that Lewis had just begun the story.

In 1963, Lewis died and Walter Hooper came into possession of the autograph (handwritten) MS for “After Ten Years” and the autograph MS of TDT as well. However, he apparently did not come into posssession of the typescript MS of TDT that Fowler remembers seeing in 1952 (he is specific in correspondence with Prof. Joe Christopher that it was a typescript), because the published version of TDT is dependent on handwritten folios, some of which are missing (as noted on pp. 29 and 73 of TDT). Hooper has apparently shown a TDT typescript to some people but has not, to my knowledge, deposited it at the Bodleian or elsewhere: whether that typescript was made by Hooper from the autograph MS or is the original Lewis typescript is unknown, as Hooper has not revealed anything about it publicly, to my knowledge.


TIMELINE B

Lewis did not write The Dark Tower. He commenced “After Ten Years” before 1952 and did show it to Alastair Fowler in that year. Later, Green formed a mistaken impression about when Lewis began “After Ten Years.”

In 1963, Hooper came into possession of the “After Ten Years” manuscript. The Dark Tower was manufactured in the 1970s.

In 2003, Fowler, then an old man, for the first time mentioned in writing that Lewis showed him manuscripts in 1952. He thought he remembered seeing TDT along with the others, but was back-projecting later memories into a conversation then half a century past.


TIMELINE C

Lewis did not write The Dark Tower. He showed manuscripts to Fowler in 1952, but neither TDT nor “After Ten Years” were among them. Green was correct in thinking that “After Ten Years” was commenced in 1959. TDT was manufactured in the 1970s. By 2003, Fowler was erroneously remembering that he had seen both TDT and the other fragment in 1952, both of which he actually first saw in the 60s or 70s.

Any other suggestions? Any concrete reason why we should take Timeline A over the others, sans further evidence?

Larry
larry gilman
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 233
Joined: Jul 2004
Location: Sharon, VT

PreviousNext

Return to Apologetics & Other Works

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered members and 10 guests

cron