Dear friends & supporters:
In October, I’m heading off to Chicago to do some research for my Charles Williams projects. I’ll be at Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College for a week–that wonderland of archival material related to the Inklings and some of their influencers and influenced. The lovely stone cottage, heralded by a lamppost, features a wealth of works by and about Owen Barfield, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Charles Williams.
My goal is to make headway on my future book An Introduction to the Oddest Inkling. I’ve been sort of working towards this book for years by blogging my way through his works, but as you’ll see if you look at the index, I haven’t finished that massive project. I need to rewrite many of the posts, delete irrelevant ones, and continue writing book summaries. But I’m not sure whether that’s the most effective use of my time. And that’s where I need your help–well, one area in which I need your help!
If you were to read An Introduction to the Oddest Inkling, how would you want it to be organized? What would be most helpful to you? Would you want a kind of encyclopedic work, with lots of different sections, essays, and entries, in which you look up a person, title, or topic as needed? Or would you want something in nice prose that you can read from cover to cover? Or something else? Please let me know in the comments!
I don’t want to duplicate existing work. I’m not writing a biography, since the very finest work of that sort already exists. I don’t just want to write summaries of the novels with simple glosses, since that already exists, too. I want to write something that people will flock to read, because it introduces them to this strange, contradictory man and his beautiful, bizarre works. I’d want to cover themes, main ideas, most important works, lesser-known works worth reading, suggestions for how to approach various books, discussions of his problematic aspects, and a grounding in enough theology and occultism that readers can at least begin to understand him.
But how to structure such a book? Share your ideas!
My trip to the Wade at that time is in part thanks to Northwind Seminary, which specializes in Romantic Theology à la Williams and Lewis et al. I’ll probably join a discussion about Williams with Terry Glaspey, maybe give a lecture, and enjoy the company of some of the students and faculty.
If you think this is good work, you can help cover the costs of this rather expensive trip. THANK YOU! ❤
The Oddest Inkling 
My preference would be for an encyclopedic work, something well cross-referenced that I could refer to when reading his books or biography. But I wouldn’t sneeze at a prose version either!
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Since you recommended the Lindop biography and linked the Amazon source, my suggestions for your effort can perhaps be most clearly expressed in my Amazon review of his book. The questions I raised there do suggest some lines of inquiry which I would appreciate seeing some work done on.
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I would appreciate at least a component of narrative to deal with the so called “problem” of Williams’ occult interest. I apologize in advance for this long winded outline of the problem as I see it, maybe suggesting extra background work. The problem, to me, seems to emerge in the fact that while Lewis and Chesterton were creedally orthodox, some of the others like Williams and Barfield were more exploratory. The importance of the Inklings largely stems from the relationships between those more classically orthodox in the group and those like Williams and Barfield who were less mainstream: such that they all enjoyed the company and the new (to them) insights into what I might call the esoteric or hermetic Christian wisdom of several members.
Within relationships among the Inklings, the conflict between the hermetic “faerie wisdom” and the traditional orthodoxy softened and the barriers to the occulted (hidden/suppressed) Christianity became more translucent. The often missing elements of enchantment, mysticism, and a sense of adventure, novelty, and experiment briefly and partially re-entered the Christian mainstream through Lewis for instance. This longstanding barrier became (within the Inklings) translucent and some forgotten things passed through it. This resurfacing of rejected elements of the (more creative, rather than protective) faith often revitalizes the creeds, but also threatens them with “unknowns.”
So there were strains of Christianity (often to this day idly dismissed as Gnostic, heterodox, syncretist, even occult) that, though suppressed early in the history of the church, maintained themselves outside of the orthodox institutions in their many forms – and yes, some of them maybe problematic, reactionary, and even as manipulative and dismissive as the elements of orthodoxy.
I am no scholar, but I think this conflict between Christianity as stable and protective and Christianity as enchantment and exploration, is an unfortunate dichotomy with vast repercussions. Part of our enjoyment of the Inklings comes from their ability to regard this less as dichotomy (as did the Council of Nicea) and more as dialectic or rhythmic breath.
I am happy that there are serious people working to understand this problem. Books that have helped me are The Wisdom Jesus, ynthia Bourgeault and Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, Valentine Tomberg. As one explores this side of Christianity, we find less familiar “workers in the field” that include such as Nicholas de Cusa, G. I. Gurdjieff, Rudolph Steiner, the Rosicrucians, Jacob Boehme, Jung, the many religious medieval practices such as alchemy that eventually resulted in chemistry and other sciences – or the hermetic marriage wisdom – or the apophatic mystical traditions that questioned the abilities of language anticipating postmodernism. Alfred North Whitehead and friends (including process theology and their constructive postmodernism) perhaps constitute the most recent nexus of these hidden Christian traditions calling for a renewal of dialog with them.
While I don’t know nearly as much about Williams as you do, I suspect the problem he presents to us has a structure similar to this broader conflict. The Inklings showed us a different way and hint at the benefits of dialog.
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Prose I can read cover to cover for me.
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