Charles Williams

Antonin Scriabin · 17 Dec 2012, 15:54 · from 2012-December.txt.gz

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From: kierkegaurdian at gmail.com (Antonin Scriabin)
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:54:09 -0500
Subject: (urth) Charles Williams
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Interesting! I am a fan of Tin Powers for sure, it would be great to check
out his precursors. I notice that Last Call and The Greater Trumps have
some similarities, for example. Thanks for the input!
On Dec 17, 2012 10:51 AM, "Daniel Petersen" <
danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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