Summer Reading Goals, year 3 - "Out of the Silent Planet"

There is only one day left in August, one day until the deadline for my summer reading goals. It's been a busy summer, and I have completed 3 out of 5 goals so far. I will continue on with the last 2  - I know what I'm going to read for those goals, I just haven't completed them yet - and will hopefully complete them within the next week or so.

The third goal completed from my list was to read the first in a new series. Technically it's an old series, and technically I have read this first book before, but it was many years ago and my memory of it was very, very vague, so I decided to start anew. The series I decided to tackle this summer was C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, and the first in that series is called Out of the Silent Planet. 

Out of the Silent Planet was published in 1938, one year after Lewis's good friend J.R.R. Tolkien published a little book called The Hobbit. Both of them were respected professors who shared a love of science-fiction and fantasy, and they would often bounce ideas off each other and share rough drafts. Lewis's Space Trilogy is less well-known than his remarkable fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia or Tolkien's incredible epic The Lord of the Rings, but this "harder" sci-fi trilogy was published and acclaimed during a period now known as the Golden Age of Science Fiction (1920s-1930s).

Out of the Silent Planet is a fairly straight-forward work of sci-fi. An academic named Dr. Ransom is kidnapped by two scientists and forced onto a spacecraft bound for Mars. He soon discovers that he is to be presented to the planet's natives as a sacrifice and manages to escape his captors upon landing on the red planet. Alone in the wilderness, he realizes there are several different species on this planet, some to be avoided and some to befriend, and is soon taken in by a native race that live near the water and vaguely resemble otters. Aided by these kind creatures, he begins to learn the language and customs of this strange new world, better preparing him to face his human enemies as they creep ever closer. 

This book is slim - only about 200 pages - and enjoyably paced. Lewis introduces us to some very compelling creatures and customs, and I wish there had been more time spent with them. There is action, suspense and incredible descriptions. The landscapes he describes are colorful and strangely beautiful:

- It was this which finally convinced him [Ransom] that the things, in spite of their improbable shape, were mountains; and with that discovery the mere oddity of the prospect was swallowed up in the fantastic sublime. ...Here in this riot of rock, leaping and surging skyward like solid jets from some rock-fountain, and hanging by their own lightness in the air, so shaped, so elongated, that all terrestrial mountains must ever after seem to him to be mountains lying on their sides. He felt a lift and lightening at the heart.  -

The story culminates rather quickly and (spoiler alert) with Ransom safely back on earth. I felt rather sad that Lewis had taken all the time to create these creatures and landscapes and languages when he was not planning to return to them...for as I proceeded to the second book in the series, I realized it was taking a very different turn indeed.

I will not spend time on Perelandra right now, but it was not what I expected and definitely not the sequel I was looking for at the time. If you read this trilogy, take to heart the opening note which says that each book in this series can be read independently. The protagonist - Ransom - is the same in Perelandra, but his adventure is very different, his enemies fiercer, his surroundings stranger and the allegorical themes much, much stronger. 

I have not yet read the final installment, That Hideous Strength, but I will make time for it this fall. C.S. Lewis has the uncanny ability to go from light adventure to heavy theology in mere pages, and while it can be startling, it is never without purpose. Lewis's deeply allegorical style can take some getting used to, and not everything he writes will hit you with the right message every time. I don't think it was the right time for me to read and fully understand Perelandra. I'm sure that at another time in my life it will have a more meaningful impact on me. I still struggle to understand the deeper meaning of his re-imagined myth Till We Have Faces, while his descriptive and fantastical journey through heaven and hell in The Great Divorce is one of the most beautiful works of theological fiction I have ever read.

To conclude, Out of the Silent Planet is a solid work of science-fiction written at a time when the stars and planets held infinite possibilities. Space was the ultimate adventure for writers and dreamers in the early 20th century, and traveling with Dr. Ransom was an enjoyable and imaginative ride. 

Book review: Go Set a Watchman

As you have already heard through numerous news stories and media blasts, Go Set a Watchman is not exactly a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. It contains familiar faces, places and situations but is, in many ways, a work of its own. Most reports say that this is an earlier version of Mockingbird that was relentlessly revised by Harper Lee and her editors to become the novel we know and love. And with the reclusive author in such poor health and the murky details surrounding Watchman's publication, many believe this new book was published without her consent. I feel like in her mind, it is still the rough-draft of a story that she never felt confident enough to share.

To me, the biggest detail that sets this novel apart from its predecessor is that fact that Jean Louise (Scout) remembers her father’s famous court case differently than it is portrayed in Mockingbird. In a brief, fleeting memory, she recalls that her father once represented a black man accused of raping a white girl and that he won an acquittal for his client. Having just re-read and re-lived the heartbreaking details of the case in Mockingbird – the case that Atticus Finch lost– this plot deviation was rather shocking to me. If Atticus had won, so many of the most potent scenes in Mockingbird would never have happened. There would not have been the silent salute of respect from the balcony once the verdict was read and Atticus walked alone from the courtroom. There would not have been the heartbreak of Tom Robinson’s desperate and fatal escape attempt. And perhaps most importantly, Atticus's oldest child Jem would not have struggled with the bitter realization that the justice system is not always just.

Atticus losing that case was the catalyst for a huge leap in Jem’s mental and emotional growth in Mockingbird. Without the lost case and the resulting conversations he had with Atticus, Jem would have been in the same place where Jean Louise finds herself in Watchman: still caught in the illusion of youth that justice is always just, fathers are perfect and truth will always prevail. And even though Jem is dead and gone in Watchman and the story focuses wholly on a grown-up Scout, I wish his memory could have been more thoughtfully preserved and his importance not cast aside.

Also, contrary to popular media buzz, the Atticus Finch portrayed in Watchman is not a racist or bigot. Watchman is the story of a young woman coming to terms with the fact that her father is human, imperfect and simply doing the best he can do in an angry, troubled town filled with angry, troubled people. Atticus does not always make the right decisions. He is a good man, not a perfect man. To 9-year-old Scout, he was a knight in shining, flawless armor. To a 26-year-old Jean Louise, he must come down from his high horse and don simpler garb. He does not have all the right answers, but he is trying to fight the good fight.

Taken as a whole, you could say that Watchman is a second chapter in the lives of Scout, her father Atticus, and the town of Maycomb, Alabama. I enjoyed grown-up Scout and her observations of a tiny Southern town stuck in their tiny Southern ways. Her many childhood memories help fill out a life just glimpsed in Mockingbird, and her grown-up conversations and observations are thought-provoking. Two new characters are introduced in this story: Henry Clinton, childhood friend and now almost-fiance to Jean Louise, and wise uncle Jack, bachelor brother to Atticus. Both fit easily into the familiar scenery and fill gaps left by Jem, Calpurnia and other beloved faces.

I don’t think I would tell a high school student to read Go Set a Watchman immediately after finishing To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time. Watchman is, in many ways, a necessary story. But Mockingbird is a better novel in style and structure as well as heart and soul.

In Memory

I did not know you, and yet you were an incredibly important influence on my life. By college I had assembled quite the collection of your movies. During psychology class one day I told my professor about your little-known psychological thriller "The Final Cut," and she borrowed and enjoyed it and we were able to discuss it academically. Your uncredited appearance in Kenneth Branagh's "Dead Again" was brilliant, as well as your hilariously awkward Osric in his version of "Hamlet." You could be serious, funny, intellectual and thought-provoking. You helped me love film and the arts. Your work helped me think critically and deeply.

I first fell in love with you in the magical "Hook," which was watched yearly as a New Year's Eve tradition for several seasons during my childhood. Your thoughtful journey in "Bicentennial Man" brings me to tears. Your manic joy doing voice work in "Aladdin" and countless others is infectious. And your quieter performances - like the ones in "Dead Poet's Society" and "Good Will Hunting"  - just makes me want to give you a hug.

You had your misses. You had work that was too crude for me to enjoy; your stand-up was avoided at all costs. But I always loved the moments when I felt I could see your heart; when the mania slowed and the jokes took a step back and the man beneath the laughter shone through. When "The Crazy Ones" premiered in 2013 I watched the first few episodes, but something felt wrong to me. I'm not at all trying to say it was prophetic. I'm not at all trying to say I saw it coming. But as I commented to my husband and my mom and others, the comedy in that show felt painful. It felt unhappy. It felt like something else was trying to be said, but was lost.

I ache to think how much of your life was spent trying to say something that was never heard. It's almost a physical pain to me, thinking of your sadness, thinking of your hidden hurts and battles. I don't know how I can feel so deeply for someone I never knew. But I do. And I miss you.

Robin Williams

July 21, 1951 - August 11, 2015