I have just read what I think a really great book, ‘The Place of the Lion’ by Charles Williams.
Lewis summarizes it succinctly in a Feb 26th, 1936 letter to his good friend, Arthur Greeves: Now, it isn’t the story that is difficult. I finished reading late last night, and I was still reeling the next day. I would put it in league with studying Jean Baudrillard, negotiating the price of a Tuk Tuk in Bangkok, or visiting the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship. Well, frankly, The Place of the Lion is one of the most disorienting things I have ever read. Plus, I’m always game for a good book, and I’ve heard this is one of Williams’ best. This is why I have picked up this Charles Williams thriller. So is Aslan conceived (or pre-conceived) during Lewis’ first reading of The Place of the Lion? Plus… well, it is kind of obvious: the image of the Lion ends up being pretty important to Lewis later in life. You have to ask: What caused that great shift? Instead of a career as a public academic and literary controversialist, Lewis becomes a storyteller and faith-sharer. He writes a SciFi thriller, Out of the Silent Planet(1938) and begins working on his first books defending Christianity to the general public. It is at this point, though, that Lewis takes an abrupt shift in direction. Moreover, Lewis discovers the Lion at a key point in his life: his academic career is building with the release of The Allegory of Love (1936) and his continual work on The Personal Heresy (1939). I know that Williams had a great influence upon Lewis, and I am determined to find out how deep that influence really is.
I came to Charles Williams’ The Place of the Lion because of my work in C.S. My question in this blog is what role it played in Lewis’ own fiction writing. Lewis had ever encountered, and it was transformational for him. This was the first Williams book that C.S.
A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of being a guest blogger for The Oddest Inkling in a series on Charles Williams’ The Place of the Lion.
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