The Beginner's Guide to Faery

    I’ll have to write a post on fairy tales, “first steps in imagination” or something thereabouts, but for now I’m going to assume that those who wish to read more fiction, or start a habit of reading fiction, have all read their fairy tales. (You know, all 466 ((give or take)) tales in those "colored" fairy books of Andrew Lang's, and that's just to get started).

    I love considering the idea that J. R. R. Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major is some kind of wonderful introduction to Fairy Land, a beginner’s guide to the kind of surroundings to expect and people one might meet. The idea occurred to me a few years ago when I had reread the little book and proceeded to George MacDonald’s Phantastes. The two books complemented each other so well I decided to see if I could flesh out some sort of guide:

The Fairy Land Curriculum 

A progressive primer from novice to sage.

    ...or something along those lines. As already mentioned, I think those with a background in fairytales would be the best equipped for the content and so would benefit the most.

On The Shortness Of Life

    "The soul of Mr. Peregrine Smart hovered like a fly round one possession and one joke. It might be considered a mild joke, for it consisted merely of asking people if they had seen his goldfish. It might also be considered an expensive joke; but it is doubtful whether he was not secretly more attached to the joke than to the evidence of expenditure. In talking to his neighbours in the little group of new houses that had grown up round the old village green, he lost no time in turning the conversation in the direction of his hobby. To Dr. Burdock, a rising biologist with a resolute chin and hair brushed back like a German’s, Mr. Smart made the easy transition. “You are interested in natural history; have you seen my goldfish?” To so orthodox an evolutionist as Dr. Burdock doubtless all nature was one; but at first sight the link was not close, as he was a specialist who had concentrated entirely upon the primitive ancestry of the giraffe. To Father Brown, from a church in the neighbouring provincial town, he traced a rapid train of thought which touched on the topics of “Rome — St. Peter — fisherman — fish — goldfish.”

- G. K. Chesterton, The Secret of Father Brown

Real Paganism

 “It must be remembered that in Mark's mind hardly one rag of noble thought, either Christian or Pagan, had a secure lodging. His education had been neither scientific nor classical — merely 'Modern.' The severities of both abstraction and of high human tradition had passed him by; and he had neither peasant shrewdness nor aristocratic honour to help him.” – C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

Mark Studdock is the postmodern man in Lewis’ fiction. Written in1947, a time when the seeds of deconstructionism and postmodern thought were only recently planted, we realize today that Lewis’ prediction was only too true.