Charles Williams

Daniel Petersen · 17 Dec 2012, 16:02 · from 2012-December.txt.gz

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From: danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com (Daniel Petersen)
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:02:07 +0000
Subject: (urth) Charles Williams
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Yes, those were two novels by each of them that I hadn't yet read, so I
read them both recently, hoping for resonances.  My first impression is
that they each took their own uniquely weird take on the tarot (about
which, though, I know little) with about zero overlap!  That's probably the
best I've read by Powers so far - excellent.  Williams's was a more minor
effort in my opinion but had one of my all-time favourite theological moves
(reminding me very much of the Wolfe's Outsider) and one of the best
freakish visions in the Williams canon - whole novel was worth it for that
alone.

(I was subsequently weirded out to see the tarot feature in Cormac
McCarthy's *Blood Meridian* as well!)

-DOJP

On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 3:54 PM, Antonin Scriabin
<kierkegaurdian at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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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>
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-- 
Daniel Otto Jack Petersen
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