Pleantville, NY

Like “Till We Have Faces”, I think this is better than Narnia. (Surprised By Joy was kind of a meandering, neutral experience for me.) Jack was obviously a conservative, and Narnia is For Children, so despite Jack’s talents and the potential of lit for kids, I think it could kind of bring out the worst in him, the Things We Tell To Children In the 50s stuff. Of course, Narnia isn’t all bad, it’s just a mixed bag, and I guess the real reason I deleted it and won’t read it to finish it is I feel for some reason that I should either read all of it or none—I don’t know why—and there are just too many of them, and as a single volume it’s too long and too expensive, you know…. I just want to love Jack so much, because I want to love everyone and Jack is like the best, the kindest among those who look back, but sometimes I guess I overdo it maybe. But he has some talent and has a heart, so, I don’t know.

But it works better than the worst of Narnia, where it’s like Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Sin, alternately a pretty girl dancing in the snow, and a stern man with a spear from the desert. But you know, there are also ‘good bits’—I don’t know why anybody has to go through life maximizing the number of their enemies, and their enemies’ rage and militancy against them, you know, like, internetcommierage.com, do the revolution by saying snide things on Facebook—there are good bits, you know, the relatively accurate rendering of the relations between the male English, even between elder and younger and things like that, and the nonviolent stance on modest English girls, often with something approaching appreciation, if not freedom, you know.

But here he lets all that go in the main body of Screwtape and goes for the other classic modern conservative thing: religion is your daily life, not your political life. And there is certainly an element of truth in that. Trump, for example, caused some distress in my life, though not as much as he did for the people who troll news forums and subscribe to newspapers, and despite my making fun of the Great Troll himself from time to time internally I have tried to refrain from formal trolling of the old goblin, and so 2016 for me will always principally stimulate memories of being 27 and deciding to make changes in my personal life re: growing up, and not so much about, gosh….

So there’s an element of truth in it, and Screwtape is funny, and sometimes he’s probably right from his own point of view, and sometimes it’s a little more grey how clever he is; and Jack went on this whole shadow side exploration of creating a wise old-fashioned devil, and talked about demons without making it principally about other people, you know. I mean, he notices other people’s problems, but he REALLY notices that this person whose metaphysical skin he can wear can be the servant of Satan, you know. It couldn’t have been an easy thing to write, although Jack even in his mistakes is usually never Completely facile, you know.

…. Of course, the thing about it to remember is that it’s a little abstract. Relatively often some abstract thing that he strategizes sounds foolish, until you remember something of Midcentury Man, and then it rather makes sense, you know. I mean, you’d have to actually read or watch something from the 40s, 50s, or 60s, some novel or TV or something. Our stereotypes of that period aren’t what Jack’s devil is reacting to, but the thing itself.

…. I suppose a book can be called a classic if it’s better than the imitations of the admirers; Jack in that case would certainly be the author of classics. Of course all works even classics usually bear some scars from their own age, but then one cannot sit around paranoid about what people will say about us when we are dead, only do our best to the living and the dead and the yet to be (I don’t mean that in the party sense—like, what does climate change have to do with the yet to be, I wanna blow up an ab—)…. And God knows what any admirers or imitators would make of my work if I had any. Maybe someday, but it’s not a bed of roses even then, is it! Anyway, Jack doesn’t say that the sin is in the pleasure like he would if he were a sword-fighter or something, you know. Going after pleasure can (like sitting around marking time) bring an admixture of sin, but the sin isn’t in the pleasure or in taking one’s own choice the way that the village theocrats and swords-men always said. It’s the admixture of pain, unnecessary pain, unproductive pain, for oneself and (inseparably) others. I think Jack would agree with that…. If Fox News knew some of the things I’ve been interested in, they would troll me out of fear that they’re as bad or worse, and be totally uninterested in getting me to a state of zero pain, zero waste, zero un-fulfillment , you know…. But Jack like me came to whatever errors he came by honestly, and it’s not easy even to say always what is and isn’t the error, in my opinion. Maybe he would disagree with /that/, but I never took him to be my model, you know.

…. But he sorta gets it. I don’t want to sin, to make a moral mistake, but worse than almost any particular mistake is to be so afraid of love and so reject it, out of a selfish desire to be better than other people, or even to avoid necessary pain, you know…. He sorta gets it. We disagree about particulars. It would be better if the world system could just let Jack be Jack and goosecap be goosecap, without, I don’t know—but we shouldn’t get into particulars, since we are probably both wrong on many.

…. I mean, the world system did create ‘you’ve got to get married people’ who were very cold, /and also/ ‘gotta fall in love’ people who sneered at people who wanted to raise a family, and sometimes just not having a partner or a good place in society leads to things you don’t like, too…. I know it sounds like I’m being facile. /troll/ He’s being facile! He’s making excuses for unchastity! Wench, bring my dinner over here! I want to tell you about how there are no other real men left!—…. But I mean, I still think, or I’m starting to think, lately—you don’t really get into the limits of scholarship until you’ve read a book or two— that the thing to really avoid is just to live without love, to live without really living; contrariwise, you should live so as to love, you should live so as to be alive…. And like Jack’s devil says, so far as ruining it goes, no need to go all the way to murder if getting really really good at bridge will also cancel out and nullify the life that is in you. What you really want to do, that, if you are all sorted out, you really should do.

…. It’s a nice book. 👹

I read it rather quickly; I felt like I had to get it up (I know, strange little goals I set myself), because I just couldn’t give him Narnia anymore. 🧝‍♂️

We certainly do grow and change and evolve in time and history, even if that very thing can be used as a license to focus on the container and the wrapper of our life, instead of the content, you know. (One of the reasons I use emojis even though I put a lot of thought into these things: my name is Professor Krautmeister and I come from Upper Class University, because I got /very/ good grades….. 👨🏻‍🏫 😹)

…. ‘The libertarians are all being crushed to death by Mr Fatty’ stuff is fun, and it has a grain of truth to it, but you know what really would have been fun would be a whole dialogue or regular novel with the different kinds of devils and tempters in the hell-school; the only problem with that is that people would assume (some people would think it a swell idea!) an attack or whatever on Wimpy Young English Boy And The Portals of Eternal Doom, you know—the school of magic and (cross your fingers!) unusual people! (And normies!). But, you know: an invisibility cloak: you’re probably just smuggling porn with it! Ten Points From England! 🧛‍♂️

A whole range of different tempters would have helped the political/social supplement, but it would have taxed Jack’s ability to imagine people unlike himself and not just good and bad versions of himself and people he knew,

I’m actually somebody’s uncle too, you know,

goosecap

11 copies

A one sided conversation between Wormwood and "Your affectionate Uncle Screwtape." Screwtape responds to letters written by Wormwood, we never see the letters the nephew has written. This book is very well written and surprisingly is still relevant today, especially towards the end with some of Screwtapes comments. ( )

Excellent book on how a devil is trying to think how to fool humans. This leads to great little sermonettes in the form of letters. ( )