C. S. Lewis Archives - James E Hartley

Is Phantastes Worth Reading?

“Yet I know that good is coming to me—that good is always coming; though few have at all times the simplicity and the courage to believe it. What we call evil, is the only and best shape, which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good. And so, Farewell.”

That is the end of George MacDonald’s Phantastes: A Faerie Romance.

Phantastes has a fame that far outstrips the number of people who have read it. Why? Because one cold evening at the bookstall in a railway station, C.S. Lewis picked up a copy in a “dirty jacket.” (The “dirty jacket” is a really odd detail to mention.) Lewis marks that moment as one of the biggest events of his life. As he later reminisces in Surprised By Joy, “I had not the faintest notion what I had let myself in for by buying Phantastes.” “That night my imagination was, in a certain sense, baptized; the rest of me, not unnaturally, took longer.”

With that note in his autobiography, Lewis inaugurated an eternal interest in MacDonald’s book. The book that sent the great Christian apologist on the path of conversion to Christianity! What could be more exciting than that? To those for whom Lewis is their Patron Saint, Phantastes is like a Holy Relic. But wait, there is more! In The Great Divorce, Lewis has MacDonald play the role of Beatrice, his guide to Heaven!

But, truth be told, the three pages in Surprised By Joy which describe Phantastes do not exactly make the book come alive. In describing the book, Lewis gets completely wrapped up in his mystical language of Joy. Piecing it together, it is obvious that this book is in the genre of fiction Lewis had grown to love—tales of faeries and Norse Gods and medieval legends—and that somehow this book made all that realm he loved seem more real than reality. But, Lewis never really explains the book. His description was just enough to make me think, “I should probably read Phantastes someday,” but not even remotely enough to make me want to rush out and track down a copy.

Interestingly, I do not seem to be alone in that reaction. I never saw a copy in a bookstore or ran across any mention of the book outside of discussions about Lewis. Sure enough, when Lewis would get discussed, sooner or later a mention of Phantastes would be made. But, again, I never met anyone who said that they had actually read the book, let alone that it was life changing or even recommending that I should read it.

I finally read it. Having done so, I finally understand its strange reputation.

The quick evaluation: it’s good, but not great. [Insert gasps of horror from those addicted to Lewis.]

It is really obvious why Lewis loved it, why it had such a huge impact on his life. It is a very self-conscious book, a painstakingly deliberate attempt to take the genre of the fairy story and use it to convey the essence of Christianity. It contains a nonstop series of episodes, every one of which tries to capture the inexpressible parts of the nature of God and what Christ has done. It’s not exactly a Christian allegory. It is more a mystical book which conveys the same impression as the mystical parts of Christian theology. You read it and you recognize the religious feeling.

I am well aware that the last paragraph makes zero sense to anyone who has not read MacDonald. Indeed, it probably makes less sense than Lewis’ attempt to explain the impact of the book. Phantastes seems to defy explanation, which is exactly the point of the book.

Here is another way of describing it. Take any Neil Gaiman book and make it far less concrete. There is a real world and there is this other world lingering right outside the real world; this is, by the way, a summary of every story Gaiman ever wrote. But Gaiman explains the connections between the worlds. Phantastes conveys a sense one gets when contemplating things that are there but just beyond our comprehension; the connections of the fairy world and the real world are just hovering there, incapable of being explained.

You, Dear Reader, are now exclaiming, “Enough with the mystical feelings stuff. What is the book about?”

Plot summary: Anodos, our hero, wakes up one morning in Fairy Land. He wanders around the land for many days. Then one day he wakes up back in the real world.

Ah, but what does he do in Fairy Land? Therein lies the problem with describing the book. Anodos really does simply wander around. It is just a steady stream of episodes, with no apparent forward motion. A few characters show up more than once. But, there is no quest, no grand thing that Anodos must accomplish. There are villains, but they also just wander in and out. There are also allies who join Anodos every now and then. Some inexplicable episodes are later explained when a character pops back in for a chat.

I enjoyed reading the wanderings of Anodos. But, if I had read this when I was younger, back when I was obsessed with fantasy literature but before I knew how to read well, I would not have enjoyed the book at all. As a straight fantasy story, it is a miserable failure. This is undoubtedly why the book is not nearly as popular as Lewis would have liked it to be. Nobody coming from The Lord of the Rings and picking up Phantastes looking for more of the same is going to be impressed at all.

Since the book doesn’t make it as a ripping good yarn, how does it rate as a disguised work of philosophy? Again, it is good, not great. It echoes a lot of the themes that Lewis promulgated—the influence of MacDonald on Lewis’ thinking is obvious.

Consider:

Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call the reality?—not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier? Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still. Yea, the reflecting ocean itself, reflected in the mirror, has a wondrousness about its waters that somewhat vanishes when I turn towards itself. All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass….In whatever way it may be accounted for, of one thing we may be sure, that this feeling is no cheat; for there is no cheating in nature and the simple unsought feelings of the soul. There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning. Even the memories of past pain are beautiful; and past delights, though beheld only through clefts in the grey clouds of sorrow, are lovely as Fairy Land. But how have I wandered into the deeper fairyland of the soul, while as yet I only float towards the fairy palace of Fairy Land! The moon, which is the lovelier memory or reflex of the down-gone sun, the joyous day seen in the faint mirror of the brooding night, had rapt me away.

That is a nice description of the idea that this world is not all there is. That world of reflections is showing us a glimpse of heaven, a world more beautiful than anything contained in this world. That feeling that the reflection world is more beautiful than the real world is not a cheat; “there must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning.” Though now we see through a glass darkly…

Or this:

They who believe in the influences of the stars over the fates of men, are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who regard the heavenly bodies as related to them merely by a common obedience to an external law. All that man sees has to do with man. Worlds cannot be without an intermundane relationship. The community of the centre of all creation suggests an interradiating connection and dependence of the parts.

Again, MacDonald draws out that sense that the physical world, the laws of nature, are only a part of the great cosmic dance in which we participate.

There are also the moral lessons:

Then first I knew the delight of being lowly; of saying to myself, “I am what I am, nothing more.”…I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal. Now, however, I took, at first, what perhaps was a mistaken pleasure, in despising and degrading myself. Another self seemed to arise, like a white spirit from a dead man, from the dumb and trampled self of the past. Doubtless, this self must again die and be buried, and again, from its tomb, spring a winged child; but of this my history as yet bears not the record. Self will come to life even in the slaying of self; but there is ever something deeper and stronger than it, which will emerge at last from the unknown abysses of the soul: will it be as a solemn gloom, burning with eyes? or a clear morning after the rain? or a smiling child, that finds itself nowhere, and everywhere?

That passage the sort of thing that gives the sole reason for reading Phantastes. If you like the sudden appearance of moral lessons drawn from the Bible and then dropped into a tale, lessons that make you long for greater understanding, lessons that make you think you are surely missing something important, then Phantastes is a book you should read.

Just don’t mistake the book for something by Tolkien or Gaiman. Don’t expect that the lessons will be succinctly explained. Don’t expect that the allegories will be clean and obvious. If you are willing to go along for the ride with an interesting raconteur telling tales that are somehow larger than life, then you will enjoy Phantastes. And maybe, if you are a lot like Lewis, it will change your life.

Related Posts
Gaiman, Neil Fortunately, the Milk “Fortunately, the Milk”
Lewis, C. S. The Silver Chair “Can’t You Read the Sign?”

C. S. Lewis and the Reading Life

“If only one had time to read a little more: we either get shallow & broad or narrow and deep.”

“A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling.”

C.S. Lewis

The hobby of reading has a curious feature. All hobbies have books written to explain how to more fully enjoy the hobby. But reading is the only hobby where the act of reading about the hobby is the same as the hobby itself. Hence books about reading are quite common. Indeed, as you read more and more, it is hard to avoid reading books by enthusiasts for your hobby.

C.S. Lewis has become an Institution. In many Christian circles, he is the theologian for people who don’t really want to read theology. He is a genial writer, making deeply substantive points in a winsome manner. You can read Lewis quickly for the joy of his prose and the flashes of insight littering the book. You can read Lewis slowly, taking apart his arguments in detail and trying to fill in the gaps. He has fiction and non-fiction, both dense and light, but always written in a prose which just carries the reader along. People find Lewis in all sorts of ways—through Narnia or science fiction or Screwtape or grief or The Abolition of Man. Once you find him, you notice you find him everywhere.

Couple the last two paragraphs together and you have an obvious book, indeed one it is a wonder is only being published now. As I mentioned in a recent newsletter, C. S. Lewis’ The Reading Life is a collection of excerpts about reading which are scattered among Lewis’ voluminous output. If you like Lewis and if you enjoy reading, you have already clicked the link above to buy the book. It is an irresistible title.

But, is the book any good? (Is it heretical to even ask if a book of Lewis’ writings is good? In some circles, yes.) It is, as you might expect if you are not in the Church of Lewis, a mixed bag. There are some really great essays in here and some fun short excerpts. But there is not enough to fill a whole book. It isn’t hard to see why. Lewis actually has a whole book on reading which explains his ideas at length. An Experiment in Criticism is rather good; I’ve used it in reading groups as a way to kick off the discussions. But, given that Lewis published his fully developed thoughts on reading in a book of their own, is there enough left over in the rest of Lewis’ corpus for a full anthology?

The present anthology kicks off with a couple of excerpts from An Experiment in Criticism, which would be hard to avoid. Then we move to a bunch of hits and pieces from elsewhere, some gems, some obvious filler. Lots of blank space and pages with the super large fancy italicized font of an excerpt from the excerpt you are reading. The real market for this book is when you need a gift for a friend who likes reading. The format and contents of this book scream “Present for the Reader in Your Life.” Not a bad gift, by the way.

What about the content? Lewis makes a distinction between True Readers and people who happen to read. “How to Know if You are a True Reader” is the title of the second selection. It is a four part test:

1. Loves to re-read books
2. Highly values reading as an activity (versus as a last resort)
3. Lists the reading of particular books as a life-changing experience
4. Continuously reflects and recalls what one has read

If you hit on all four, congratulations, you are a True Reader (but you already knew that). If not, well, it’s not too late to join our cult.

And yes, the Cult of Readers is a real thing. As Lewis notes:

Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realize the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated.

It is often difficult to explain the pleasure of reading to those not as enamored with it. For many, maybe even most, people, reading is a chore. It is something you do to learn something. This is even true of reading fiction; many people read fiction as if they are accomplishing the chore of learning the plot. I suspect this is why many book clubs fail; if reading is a chore and you are reading a book purely for the task of going to your book club, there is something lacking in the experience. Sure, getting together with your friends is fun, but if reading the book was a chore for everyone involved, it is no wonder the conversation feels stilted.

For Lewis’ True Reader, the act of reading is not a chore you do in order to accomplish another end. One reads because in doing so, one is catapulted into a pleasure that is literally unattainable in any other way. Perhaps it is best explained by noting that the way to attain the pleasure of reading is to realize that reading is not a serious hobby. It is a light-hearted and fun hobby.

For a great deal (not all) of our literature was made to be read lightly, for entertainment. If we do not read it, in a sense, ‘for fun’ and with our feet on the fender, we are not using it as it was meant to be used, and all our criticism of it will be pure illusion. For you cannot judge any artifact except by using it as it was intended. It is no good judging a butter-knife by seeing whether it will saw logs. Much bad criticism, indeed, results from the efforts of critics to get a work-time result out of something that never aimed at producing more than pleasure.

This is not just true of schlocky genre fiction, by the way. Dickens also should be read with your feet on the fender. So should Plato. For those for whom reading is a hobby, the whole point of reading Thucydides or Chekhov is simply that it is fun to go along for the ride. Imagine starting Ivanhoe or Middlemarch in exactly the same relaxed mode you had when you picked up Good Omens or Harry Potter. If you can do that, you are a True Reader.

Books are not death marches. “It is a very silly idea that in reading a book you must never ‘skip.’ All sensible people skip freely then they come to a chapter which they find is going to be no use to them.” I acutely suffer from this failing, by the way. I have pushed my way through far too many books I knew I should have abandoned. I blame Moby Dick. I forced myself through an endless amount of whaling trivia, wondering why I was reading all this, only to find that it all came to a magnificent end in which all that lore was suddenly necessary to appreciate the epic clash at the end of the book. Ever since then, I have pushed through many a book, thinking, “Maybe this is like Moby Dick.” Decades later, I have no other examples of when not skipping was worth it.

If you want to cultivate the hobby of reading, how do you do it? It’s remarkably simple. Find a book you really want to read, put up your feet, and start reading. The trick is not to wonder if you have picked the right book. If you enjoy it, it is the right book.

After a certain kind of sherry party, where there have been cataracts of culture but never one word or one glance that suggested a real enjoyment of any art, any person, or any natural object, my heart warms to the schoolboy on the bus who is reading Fantasy and Science Fiction, rapt and oblivious of all the world beside. For here also I should feel that I had met something real and live and unfabricated; genuine literary experience, spontaneous and compulsive, disinterested. I should have hopes of that boy. Those who have greatly cared for any book whatever may possibly come to care, some day, for good books. The organs of appreciation exist in them. They are not impotent. And even if this particular boy is never going to like anything severer than science-fiction, even so,
The child whose love is here, at least death reap
One precious gain, that he forgets himself.

When you forget yourself in a book, you know the feeling. Then start another book and forget yourself again. When you do this, you’ll notice something else wonderful; there are other bookish people around you. “When one has read a book, I think there is nothing so nice as discussing it with some one else—even though it sometimes produces rather fierce arguments.”

Why do I have a blog? Why do I send out a newsletter? There is nothing so nice as discussing books with someone else.

Can’t You Read the Sign?

“Signs, Signs, everywhere there’s signs.”

Thus saith Tesla. And before that Five Man Electric Band. And before that C.S. Lewis. And before that John.

Not to disparage the first two, we’ll start with Lewis.

The Silver Chair is book 4 in the Chronicles of Narnia. (Yes, I know saying it is the 4^th book is fightin’ words in some circles.) If you haven’t read the Chronicles of Narnia, you really owe it to yourself to do so. They are all very quick reads which can be enjoyed by children as nice fantasy tales and by adults as a font of philosophical asides. But, (hopefully) you knew that already.

I just reread The Silver Chair, and this time out it got me to pondering the nature of signs. Hang out in religious circles long enough and you will hear many times that something or other was a “Sign from God.” Hang out in non-religious circles and you’ll hear the same thing without the “of God” part. The implication is the same in either case. Someone was faced with a decision and along came this external event which told the person what to do.

The intriguing thing about Signs from God or from some Undefined Sign-Generating Force is the need for interpretation. Signs of this sort do not show up in Red Hexagons. This type of Sign is something that is not obviously a sign at all. The question is how to interpret this thing that may or may not be a Sign.

The Silver Chair provides a marvelous example. Jill Pole shows up in Narnia and meets Aslan, who gives her Four Signs to aid her in the quest he has set for her. The Signs all seem pretty straightforward. Yet, as the story proceeds, Jill and her companions (Eustace Scrubb and Puddleglum) completely miss the first three signs. The signs pointed to things which were only obvious in retrospect. And therein lies the first problem with Signs. ”Find the ruined city of Giants” seems like a pretty straightforward command, but if the city is really, really ruined and it is dark and snowing, you may not recognize that those heaps of stones around you are actually the ruined city of Giants. You imagined something looking like a slightly ruined city with obvious buildings missing a few windows or a collapsed roof; you were not imagining large rocks in your way as you try to find a path.

Having missed the first three signs, our heroes reach the moment of crisis with the Fourth Sign. The sign was that the person for whom they were searching would be the first person who asks them to do something in the name of Aslan. Suddenly a raving lunatic who is tied to a chair utters that request.

“It’s the Sign,” said Puddleglum. “It was the words of the Sign,” said Scrubb more cautiously. “Oh, what are we to do?” said Jill.

Are the words of the sign the same thing as the Sign? How do you know? Maybe it is a coincidence? Maybe it is an accident? Maybe the Evil Queen knew about the sign and arranged this as a fake Sign?

“Oh, if only we knew!” said Jill.
“I think we do know,” said Puddleglum.
“Do you mean you think everything will come out right if we do untie him?” said Scrubb.
“I don’t know about that,” said Puddleglum. “You see, Aslan did not tell Pole what would happen. He only told her what to do. That fellow will be the death of us once he’s up, I shouldn’t wonder. But that doesn’t let us off following the Sign.”

In the fantasy land of Narnia, it all worked out nicely once they followed the Sign. As a children’s story it has a nice message about following directions.

But, Lewis is playing a deeper game than just thinking of this as a children’s story. It is the use of the word “Signs” that tips it off. The story would work just as well if Aslan had given Jill four instructions or directions or tasks; indeed all those words would fit the matter better than the word “Signs.” So, why use “Signs”? Why the repeated emphasis on the word “Signs”? Look at the discussion above and note the prominence and repetition of the word “Sign.”

Lewis is clearly referencing the Gospel of John in this matter. One of the (very many) fascinating structural details in the gospel of John is the author’s use of the word “sign.” At the end of the first miracle in this gospel (changing water into wine at the wedding in Cana), John writes, “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.”

A bit later on we get “This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.” Later still, “When people saw the sign that he had done, they said, ‘This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world.’” Towards the end of the gospel, we get Johns summary:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

The prominence of the word “sign” in John’s gospel prompted people to start counting, and there is widespread consensus that John carefully constructed the story to have Seven Signs, seven being one of the numbers of perfection. Alas, there is not total agreement on which seven events in the book are the Seven Signs—but that is a matter for another day.

It is the connection between Lewis and John that is of interest here. In what sense are the events in John actual signs? As John explains, they are signs because they point to something else. It looks like Jesus is just doing a miracle or a magic trick, but John wants the reader to realize that if you are focusing on the event itself, you are missing the thing to which the sign points. Jesus feeding 500 people with trivial amount of food is a sign pointing to something much larger.

Is it obvious that these events in John are actually signs? Is the fact that John tells us that something is a sign proof that it is actually a sign? Johns says that healing a kid in Capernaum was a sign. Is he right about that? I say that the fact that it is sunny outside today is a sign; am I right about that? The debate on either of those events between a believer that it is a sign and a skeptic is inevitably tedious. “Yes, it is a sign.” “No, it is not.” Repeat.

This is where Lewis enters the conversation. Is it a Sign or just something that looks like a Sign? How do we reason this out? There are, after all, truly many ways to interpret this event, only one of which is that it is an actual Sign. Some of those other ways of interpreting the event are every bit as reasonably and logically consistent and believing it is a Sign. “Oh, what are we to do?” asks Jill (and you). “Oh, if only we knew!” exclaims Jill (and you).

Puddleglum has the only possible answer. You don’t try to reason it out. You just decide. Is this a Sign or not? If so, do what the Sign indicates you should do. And then take the consequences. Figuring out if something is a sign, Puddleglum implicitly argues, is not the sort of thing you reason out through logical argument. You either believe or you do not. It’s faith.

This is why discussions about signs are so frustrating to people. Someone comes along and says they have a sign from God that they should do something which you know is preposterous or silly or wrong. So, you try to reason them out of it, but all your fine reasoning falls on deaf ears. The person who believes in the sign, by the way, is every bit as frustrated as you are; why can’t you read the Sign?

We often don’t recognize the prominence of faith in our understanding of the world. Sometimes the signs are right there in front of us, with John pointing to them in big letters saying “Look, here is a Sign.” We can spend a lot of time like Jill agonizing over what to do about those Signs. That agonizing will get us nowhere. Some things are not amenable to reason. Instead, we can do something much better. As Lewis writes in big letters: You have no choice; Embrace your inner Puddleglum.