Thanks v. much for yr. letter and for the E to A.,38 wh. I look forward to with pleasure. I meant the English cognoscenti of course: I don’t see American papers.
If you will let me know which bits of my letter your people want to use,39 I am sure I shall have no objection–as you know one doesn’t like to give a free hand for selection. It is sometimes so done as to credit one with ungrammatical or even nonsensical sentences. Are you ever in this city? If so, be sure to let me know and we will make a tryst. I know where the best beer & the best cider and the only draught stout are.
It was a grand book and I shall be interested to see where you go from there. Not, I devoutly hope, into the kind where we leap forward to a date at wh. space-travel has become as common & dull as tramways and within that framework we get an ordinary spy-story, or wreck-story, or love-story wh. might as well, or better, be located in present-day Hampstead. With all good wishes.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO ARTHUR C. CLARKE (BOD):
Great Western Royal Hotel
Paddington, London, W.2 Jan 20/54
Dear Clarke–
This is about 2 hours later, having read If (I.2)40 in the train, and feeling how well it illustrates what is to me a bad tendency in modern S-F Your Jupiter 541 is good: but–forgive me–even there, what a pity that the lost reptilian culture (a glorious idea) which is what you really want to tell us about and we really want to hear about is almost thrust into a corner by the little drama about a theft and a hoax. Similarly in M. Clifton’s42 The Kenzie Report the really interesting thing, & well worth the whole story, is the ants. Why, in heaven’s name, shd. [it] be pushed out of the centre & the centre taken up by an unutterably banal little laboratory intrigue?
With K Neville’s43 She knew he was coming we touch rock-bottom. The old theme of the sentimentalised brothel & the whore-with-a-heart-of-Gold is mawkish anyway, but tolerable; but what, in heaven’s name, is the point of locating it on Mars! Surely in a work of art all the material should be used. If a theme is introduced into a symphony, something must be made of that theme. If a poem is written in a certain metre, the particular qualities of that metre must be exploited. If you write a historical novel, the period must be essential to the effect. For whatever in art is not doing good is doing harm: no room for passengers (In a good black and white drawing the areas of white paper are essential to the whole design, just as much as the lines. It is only in a child’s drawing that they’re merely blank paper). What’s the excuse for locating one’s story on Mars unless ‘Martianity’ is through & through used*
Stockham’s44 Circle of Flight, tho’ not at all well executed, is the real thing: i.e. the thing he professes to be doing is the thing he is really doing. And there, for once, the love interest is relevant. By the way do readers of S-F really want a ‘heart-interest’ as they call it (‘crutch-interest’ wd. be more accurate) always dragged in? Am I missing some relevant point? I’d be glad to know your views on the whole subject of this letter.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO PAULINE BAYNES (BOD):
Magdalen College,
Oxford. 21/i/54
Dear Miss Baynes
I lunched with Bles yesterday to see the drawings of The Horse and feel I must write to tell you how very much we both enjoyed them. It is delightful to find (and not only for selfish reasons) that you do each book a little bit better than the last–it is nice to see an artist growing. (If only you cd. take 6 months off and devote them to anatomy, there’s no limit to your possibilities).
Both the drawings of Lasaraleen in her litter45 were a rich feast of line & of fantastic-satiric imagination: my only regret was that we couldn’t have both. Shasta among the tombs (in the new technique, wh. is lovely)46 was exactly what I wanted. The pictures of Rabadash hanging on the hook and just turning into an ass47 were the best comedy you’ve done yet. The Tisroc was superb:48 far beyond anything you were doing 5 years ago. K. Lune etc.–were, this time, really good.49 The crowds are beautiful, realistic yet also lovely wavy compositions:50 but your crowds always were. How did you do Tashbaan?51 We only got the full wealth by using a magnifying glass! The result is exactly right. Thanks enormously for all the intense work you have put into them all. And more power to your elbow: congratulations.
What are you and I and the firm going to do now that Bles is retiring? Shall we seek a Literary Agent or just go to whoever buys his business? I shd. be interested in your views.
I hope you’ll have a nice 1954. I did acknowledge your v. beautiful card, didn’t I? If not, I’m a Pig, for I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Yours ever
C. S. Lewis
TO DOM BEDE GRIFFITHS OSB (W): PC
Magdalen College,
Oxford. 23/i/54
I have a taste for Dickens but don’t think it a low one. He is the great author on mere affection
But Thackeray I positively dislike. He is the voice of ‘the World’. And his supposedly ‘good’ women are revolting: jealous pharisiennes. The publicans and sinners will go in before Mrs Pendennis and La. Castle-wood.55 In haste.
C.S.L.
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):
Magdalen College,
Oxford. 24/i/54
Dear Mrs. Shelburne
Thanks for the lovely bundle of letters and pictures from the Kilmer family which, as you anticipated, I revelled in: I have written them a joint letter56–not mentioning the poem as I gather you are not supposed to have a copy. They sound a delightful family.
But surely you are not going to put the whole trilogy in their hands? I shd. have thought That Hideous Strength both unsuitable and unintelligible to children, and even Perelandra rather doubtful.
I hope you have got rid of that