Can anyone suggest a good novel by Charles Williams? I’ve been interested in giving him a try, but don’t know where to start.
-Ben
I haven’t read him yet, but I recently got my hands on a stack of his books, and I’ve heard “The Greater Trumps” and “Many Dimensions” are excellent. They’re where I plan to start.
Um…you DO mean Charles W. Williams who hung out with Tolkein and Lewis (as one of the Inklings), right? Apparently there’s a mystery novelist with the same name. I know nothing about that one.
Fenris
The only novel by Charles Williams I’ve ever read is The Major Trumps. It was weird. It’s about the figures on tarot cards come to life, living hidden away in a secret room (they’re miniature gold figures dancing in intricate patterns on a tabletop). They have occult powers and wreak havoc in people’s lives if you cross them. They can seriously bugger the weather if they get pissed off.
I have a volume of his poems, The Region of Summer Stars, one of his Arthurian-inspired books of poetry about Taliesin and Guinevere. The impression I get of Williams is that he cared most about poetry and poured his strongest creative juices into it. I decided to check him out after reading The Inklings and wondered how come Tolkien and Lewis became so famous while Williams languished in obscurity. He was the only one of them who came from a working-class background. He educated himself (not so easy for the working class in England in those days) and taught adult-education evening courses in poetry. I went searching for Charles Williams works but they’re all out of print and my public library didn’t have any. I had to borrow The Major Trumps through interlibrary loan and by chance found The Region of Summer Stars at a usedbookstore. Somehow there is a Charles Williams fan page out there on the Web.
The Inklings also turned me on to Owen Barfield, and I’m glad I got to know him. He wasn’t a professional writer like the other Inklings, he was a barrister. However, he published lots of philosophical essays that are admirable for their depth and insight. The Owen Barfield Reader was recently published, so he hasn’t been completely forgotten.
Here I come, all excited, into the thread because I’ve read THE GREATER TRUMPS and MANY DIMENSIONS. Poop.
I read TRUMPS first because of a passing interest in the Tarot about 20 years ago; I was alarmed that this guy Williams had been published at ALL. Ghastly book. Character development nil. He’d build up to something actually HAPPENING in the plot, then would stop it dead and meander off in another direction.
MANY DIMENSIONS is much better. The plot involves ad-men marketing the Tetragrammaton, or Philosopher’s Stone, to the man in the street…pretty damn funny!
There may be better Williamses yet. But if you’re picking between those two, I’d go for DIMENSIONS.
Why not hit Amazon and see what other people thought there?