Charles Williams

Daniel Petersen · 17 Dec 2012, 15:51 · from 2012-December.txt.gz

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From: danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com (Daniel Petersen)
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2012 15:51:06 +0000
Subject: (urth) Charles Williams
In-Reply-To: <CAM0v-i6Be2GaCqnecVLLBF7oej7_Hy1+jguyOnO5PT6utoRRVQ at mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAM0v-i6Be2GaCqnecVLLBF7oej7_Hy1+jguyOnO5PT6utoRRVQ at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAGB0RZ7yUNn7G+0BMUcADhW7SknFUbjnizTNen7zAzVXWzaE4A at mail.gmail.com>

Oh goodness, yes!  In terms of sheer intensity and originality of
imagination, I put him up there with Wolfe and Lafferty and Lewis and
Tolkien (as a theological myth-maker).  And I think he possibly veers more
into *weird* fiction (ala Lovecraft, Howard, Hodgson, Machen, etc.) than
the others.  Some of his visionary passages are flesh-crawling in their
numinous grotesquery.  He's not a great prose writer as a novelist and the
passages can come and go as to stylistic excellence.  But overall
incredibly enjoyable to me.  His tone is very middle-to-upper-class English
and and the settings are almost Edwardian - a bit like Chesterton or Sayers
if they were writing weird fiction.  In fact, Williams is one of the early
practitioners of 'Noird' fiction (noir detective + weird), at least in the
novel *War In Heaven*.  In some ways too he's a bit of a prototype for Tim
Powers's version of 'urban fantasy' or 'urban magical realism'.  Lewis has
an excellent essay on Williams's fiction in the collection *On Stories*.

I thought I remembered Wolfe mentioning Williams favourably in an interview
once.  Anyone know?

-DOJP

On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Antonin Scriabin
<kierkegaurdian at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hello!  Is anyone familiar with the work of Charles Williams?  From a
> brief look online, he seems to have some similarities to MacDonald, and I
> thought there was a good chance some of you Wolfeans (?) would have some
> input.  Any suggestions for a novel of his to start with?
>
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-- 
Daniel Otto Jack Petersen
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