The Dark Tower (C. S, Lewis)

 C. S. Lewis. The Dark Tower. Edited by Walter Hooper. (1977) A posthumous collection of miscellaneous works, some rescued from the bonfire Lewis's brother made of unpublished drafts and other papers. They demonstrate Lewis’s inventiveness, and his ability to make abstractions concrete. I did not read the (incomplete) title story past the first two or three pages, but the shorter pieces held my interest.
      It’s a pity that Lewis was unable to finish his riff on Menelaus and Helen of Troy. He posits that Helen has aged, as have Menelaus and the other Greek heroes. Trouble is, the Greek soldiers would never accept a plain(ly) middle-aged woman as a prize worth their ten years hard fighting, not to mention the deaths of their comrades. So what’s Menelaus to do? He hopes that Egyptian sorcerers can provide him with a beautiful counterfeit, but just as they call on the new Helen to appear, the manuscript breaks off. Bummer.
      Mixed recommendation of ** to ****.

Education Substitute: And Now All This (Sellar & Yeatman)

 Sellar & Yeatman. And Now All This. (1932) A follow-up to 1066 And All That. This copy is from the 3rd edition, also of 1932, so the work enjoyed a certain popularity. Whether that derived from the success of the previous volume, or from genuine enjoyment and admiration is difficult to say. The premise is that Education consists of What We All Know. Hence a book that retails this information will make expensive schooling obsolete. I found the humour generally tedious, depending on puns (obvious), misspellings and garbled recall (usually strained), and deadpan absurdities (some quite witty). I guess you had to be there. See the sample page.
     This copy has been very thoroughly read: The spine is

broken, most gatherings are loose, and a couple of torn pages have been mended with sticky tape. The decorations are pleasant enough. The casual racism of text and pictures is jarring nowadays, but does serve to remind us that some of what any given generation takes for granted will certainly offend their descendants. Recommended as a soporific, and as a curiosity demonstrating that fashionable humour ages quickly. *

A Comic Ride: John Gilpin

  William Cowper. Illustrated by C. Gifford Ambler. The Diverting History of John Gilpin (1782/1947) John and wife decide to celebrate their 20th anniversary at The Bell in Edmonton (north of London). Because the chaise will not accommodate the whole family, Gilpin decides to ride. Unfortunately, the horse has other ideas. William Cowper heard the story and made a ballad of it. C. Gifford Ambler created an illustrated edition for PM Productions in 1947. My copy was a gift from Aunt Anne to my late brother Peter in 1948, probably for his birthday.
It’s a charming book, and a charming ballad. I liked it well enough back then to remember John Gilpin as the hero of a strange story about a ride that went wrong. Rereading it now clears up my confused and gappy memory, and confirms my impression of a gem of comic verse. Out of print; used copies sell for £5 and up. Plus shipping.
     Recommended. ***

Appleby's Other Story (Innes) & Compartment K (Reilly)

 Michael Innes. Appleby’s Other Story (1974) An undemanding and forgettable read.

Appleby’s retired, but is drawn into a problem involving dubiously provenanced paintings, shady art dealers and dealings, insurance scams and such. The owner of a possibly unrecognised Old Master painting is shot just before Appleby and his friend Chief Constable Col. Pride arrive to see the painting. Despite his retirement, Appleby tackles the case. Much tugging of local cops' forelocks ensues.
     The puzzle is fair, the solution somewhat strained. I enjoyed reading enough to keep going, but the only impression that now remains is that Innes wrote a lot of dialogue. The characters are barely more than 2D, and Innes is relying on his fans’ knowledge of the Appleby series to flesh out the ambience. Good of its kind. **½

Helen Reilly. Compartment K (1955) Three murders, in New York, on a Canadian train, and at a lodge in the Rockies, are tied together by one man’s desperate need for money to satisfy his materialistic wife. A complicated plot, characters that are approximately 1.5 D, a style laden with ascriptive adjectives, told through the focus on a young woman who almost loses the man she truly loves. What kept me reading was the puzzle, which I partly solved not because of the clues but because of the vague impressions of the character who done it. The denouement relies heavily on facts which were at best hinted at but not fully disclosed until explained by the redoubtable Inspector McKee, who spent most his time at the other end of a phone line.
     I had tried to read this book several times in the past. I decided I’d better read it all the way through this time, and have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I can claim some kind of success in getting through it. On the other hand, one can hardly claim credit for enduring self-chosen tedium.
     I bought the book second-hand because the first third or so is set on train. One doesn’t get much of a sense of a train ride, though, mostly because Reilly doesn’t (or can’t) describe anything other than the clothes, which she details with a fashion-reporter’s eye. The cover’s misleading: the Canadian train was hauled by diesels, not steam; North American trains don’t have buffers; and the blurb is too complimentary. That it’s from a New Yorker book note is an even greater puzzle than the one McKee solves. Not recommended, except perhaps as a curiosity. *

Freedom: We don't agree (Lapham's Quarterly 25 01)

Lapham’s Quarterly 25-01 Freedom (Spring 2023). This collection shows that there has beenprecious little consensus on what  freedom means. Most of the pieces assume a political context. Some discuss the moral meanings, usually in contrast to licence. There’s a good deal of story-telling about the effects of oppression, of the struggles for political freedoms. There’s some discussion of self control versus external control. But most of the pieces explicitly or implicitly assume that freedom means the ability to do what one wants to do, with as few constraints, limits, or consequences as possible. Some think that freedom means no consequences whatsoever. But most writers recognise that, since we live with other people, our freedoms and theirs may conflict. Freedom has limits.

    None of the writers refer to the engineer’s concept, which (briefly) refers to how much the design parameters may vary. In practice, it means that the fixing of some variable limits the range and even the availability of some other variable(s) in the design problem. Decide X’s value, and Y’s value is limited, or fixed. Or Y may be impossible to include.  That’s an operational definition, one that I see applicable to politics, social relations, career decisions, and so on. For example, if you decide that a free market means minimal regulation by the government, then only customer demands or preferences will influence such things as a business’s labour or waste disposal practices, etc. In short, you can’t have it all. Exercising your freedom to choose X limits or prevents your freedom to choose Y.

     Many people believe that unpleasant consequences of some choice are limits on their freedom. That belief animated the protests to the covid-19 pandemic measures imposed by governments and businesses. Taken to its logical conclusion, that belief implies that the criminal is an oppressed victim of unjust law, a conclusion that the protesters would not, I think, accept. Thus, reasoning about freedom becomes a nice example of why reason isn’t always reasonable. That also explains why people have disagreed about the concept. Every definition of freedom implies unreasonable conclusions.

     A good collection, as always. ***

Give the Devil His Due: The Screwtape Letters (C S Lewis)

C S Lewis. The Screwtape Letters (1942) A re-read. The letters tell the story of a recent convert to Christianity that Screwtape wants to recapture for Hell’s delectation. Unfortunately, despite his excellent advice on how to exploit the weaknesses of human nature, his nephew Wormwood fails. The object of his devilish affections dies in a bombing raid after achieving another step on his journey to full discipleship.
     Ah, those weaknesses in our nature. They’re all caricatures or dark inversions of our strengths and virtues. Lewis understands that only too well. For example, the false humility of wanting “just a little toast and tea” instead of the three course dinner on offer, which imposes extra work on the host. The apparent self-abnegation disguises the actual selfishness of the perpetrator. Lewis also understands the difference between genuine pleasures and their counterfeits as labelled in the list of seven deadly sins. Enjoying food is good. Gluttony is bad. The book is worth reading merely for these and many other psychological insights.
     For Christians, the extra dimension of theology adds more insight. For example, Lewis believes that pleasure and joy are divine gifts. The Devil can’t produce anything like them; at most he can misdirect the desire for these gifts. Simple pleasure is beyond the Devil's power. Thus, Screwtape loses his temper when contemplating the innocent pleasure of a human splashing about in his bath. How dare the Enemy endow this abominable mix of flesh and spirit with the ability to enjoy mere sensations! At best, the Devil can pervert pleasures, or encourage over-indulgence, or shift the focus from the pleasure itself to the ego, thus making them means instead of ends.
     The letters also hint at Hell’s political ideology, which bears an uncomfortable resemblance to fascism and other totalitarianisms.
     One of Lewis’s best. I’ve read it several times now, and every reread reveals more subtle insight and wisdom. Recommended. ****