Reply by email

I would prefer to combat the “I’m special” feeling not by the thought “I’m no more special than anyone else” but by the feeling “Everyone is as special as me.” In one way there is no difference, I grant, for both remove the speciality. But there is a difference in another way. The first might lead you to think, “I’m only one of the crowd like anyone else.” But the second leads to the truth that there isn’t any crowd. No one is like anyone else. All are “members” (organs) in the Body of Christ. All different and all necessary to the whole and to one another: each loved by God individually, as if it were the only creature in existence. Otherwise you might get the idea that God is like the government which can only deal with the people in the mass.

Agreed.

Reply by email

Today’s release: David Lindsay’s novel A Voyage to Arcturus. It’s a rather odd book which I first heard of via C. S. Lewis. I’ll let him tell you about it (these are from his collected letters):

To Arthur Greeves on 26 Dec 1934:

I wish you had told me a little more about Voyage to Arcturus. Even if you can’t describe it, you could at least give me some idea what it is about: at least whether it is about a voyage to Arcturus or not. I haven’t come across the book yet, but will certainly read it if I do.

To Arthur Greeves on 7 Dec 1935:

I have tried in vain to buy Voyage to Arcturus but it is out of print.

To Roger Lancelyn Green on 28 Dec 1938:

You are obviously much better informed than I about this type of literature and the only one I can add to your list is Voyage to Arcturus by David Lyndsay (Methuen) wh. is out of print but a good bookseller will prob. get you a copy for about 5 to 6 shillings. It is entirely on the imaginative and not at all on the scientific wing.

To Eliza Marian Butler on 18 Aug 1940:

If you don’t know David Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus (Methuen. Out of print, but not hard to get) you might find it very interesting. It is mere ‘popular’ fiction, but this kind of writing (like religion on the one hand and pornography on the other) cuts across the ordinary stratifications.

To E. R. Eddison on 19 Dec 1942 (apparently Lewis and Eddison wrote this way to each other, and yes, the macrons are supposed to look like that):

Mary, as for yo¯ hono¯s metaphysick mistresses, beatificall bona robas, hyper-uranian whoores, and transcendentall trulls, not oonlie my complexioun little delighteth in them but my ripe and more constant ivdgement reiecteth, esteeming them in truth no more but what Geo: Macdonald bringeth us in as Lilith in his nobly inuented but ill-languaged romans of the same name, or David Lyndesay of late, under the name Sullenbode, in his notable Voiage and Travell to Arctur¯.

To Charles A. Brady on 29 Oct 1944:

Space-and-time fiction: but oddly enough not Rice-Burroughs. But this is probably a mere chance and the guess was a sound one. The real father of my planet books is David Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus, which you also will revel in if you don’t know it. I had grown up on Well’s stories of that kind: it was Lindsay who first gave me the idea that the ‘scientifiction’ appeal could be combined with the ‘supernatural’ appeal — suggested the ‘Cross’ (in biological sense). His own spiritual outlook is detestable, almost diabolist I think, and his style crude: but he showed me what a bang you cd. get from mixing these two elements.

To Ruth Pitter on 4 Jan 1947:

No, I have yet another humiliation to undergo. Can you bear the truth? — Voyage to Arcturus is not the parody of Perelandra but its father. It was published, a dead failure, about 25 years ago. Now that the author is dead it is suddenly leaping into fame: but I’m one of the old guard who had a treasured second hand copy before anyone had heard of it. From Lyndsay I first learned what other planets in fiction are really good for: for spiritual adventures. Only they can satisfy the craving which sends our imaginations off the earth. Or putting it another way, in him I first saw the terrific results produced by the union of two kinds of fiction hitherto kept apart: the Novalis, G. Macdonald, James Stephens sort and the H. G. Wells, Jules Verne sort. My debt to him is very great: tho’ I’m a little alarmed to find it so obvious that the affinity came through to you even from a talk about Lyndsay!

For the rest, Voyage to A is on the borderline of the diabolical: i.e. the philosophy expressed is so Manichaean as to be almost Satanic. Secondly, the style is often laughably crude. Thirdly, the proper names (Polecrab, Blodsombre, Wombflash, Tydomin, Sullenbode) are superb and perhaps Screwtape owes something to them. Fourthly, you must read it. You will have a disquieting but not-to-be-missed experience.

To William Kinter on 28 Mar 1953:

My real model was David Lyndsay’s Voyage to Arcturus wh. first suggested to me that the form of ‘science fiction’ cd. be filled by spiritual experiences.

To Joy Gresham on 22 Dec 1953:

As far as I can remember you were non-committal about Childhood’s End: I suppose you were afraid that you might raise my expectations too high and lead to disappointment. If that was your aim, it has succeeded, for I came to it expecting nothing in particular and have been thoroughly bowled over. It is quite out of range of the common space-and-time writers; away up near Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus and Wells’s First Men in the Moon. It is better than any of Stapleton’s. It hasn’t got Ray Bradbury’s delicacy, but then it has ten times his emotional power, and far more mythopoeia.

To Ruth Pitter on 9 Jul 1956:

Thank you for the Voyage returned. I felt pretty sure you couldn’t think it vulgar once you read it: diabolical, mad, childishly ill-written in places — almost anything you like rather than vulgar.

To Alan Hindle on 31 Jan 1960:

Voyage to Arcturus was reprinted by Messrs Faber and Faber within the last 20 years. The original edition (I forget who published it) is still sometimes obtainable. Rogers of Newcastle on Tyne is quite as good a bookseller for hunting out old books as any London or Oxford firm, and usually charges less. The author, David Lindsay, is dead. If you get the book, I shd. think twice before introducing it to the young. It is very strong meat indeed and the philosophy behind it is that of Schopenhauer or the Manichaeans. A youngster unless in perfect psychological health (and what youngster is?) cd. damage himself with it a good deal.

To Robin Anstey on 2 Nov 1960:

You probably know David Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus (Faber)? If not, don’t overlook it. This is the fullest example of what I mean — tho’ the message he is putting over is a v. horrible one — Schopenhauer if not Manes himself.

To Joan Lancaster on 27 Mar 1963:

So you are, like me, in love with syllables? Good. Sheldar is a boss word. So are Tolkien’s Tinuviel and Silmaril. And David Lindsay’s Tormance in Voyage to Arcturus. And Northumberland is glorious; but best of all, if only it meant something more interesting, is silver salver.

To Father Peter Milward SJ on 27 Jun 1963:

My stories were not influenced by any of the authors you mention. The first impulse came, I believe, from H. G. Wells. More important was David Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus.

To Joan Lancaster on 11 Jul 1963:

I think the poetry is developing alright. You’ll be enchanted with imaginary names for a bit and probably go too far, but that will do you no harm. Like having had measles. I don’t think Joyce is as good at them as David Lindsay (Voyage to Arcturus) or E. R. Eddison in The Worm Ouroboros.

A Voyage to Arcturus is available to download in EPUB or Kindle formats.

Reply by email

It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at that moment, we expected some other good. Do you know what I mean? On every level of our life…we are always harking back to some occasion which seemed to us to reach perfection, setting that up as a norm, and depreciating all other occasions by comparison. But these other occasions, I now suspect, are often full of their own new blessing, if only we would lay ourselves open to it. God shows us a new facet of the glory, and we refuse to look at it because we’re still looking for the old one. And of course we don’t get that. You can’t, at the twentieth reading, get again the experience of reading Lycidas for the first time. But what you do get can be in its own way as good….

It would be rash to say that there is any prayer which God never grants. But the strongest candidate is the prayer we might express in the single word encore….

And the joke, or tragedy, of it all is that these golden moments in the past, which are so tormenting if we erect them into a norm, are entirely nourishing, wholesome, and enchanting if we are content to accept them for what they are, for memories. Properly bedded down in a past which we do not miserably try to conjure back, they will send up exquisite growths. Leave the bulbs alone, and the new flowers will come up. Grub them up and hope, by fondling and sniffing, to get last year’s blooms, and you will get nothing. “Unless a seed die…”

Reply by email

Last year I wrote 355 blog posts, which seemed like a lot until I went back to my 2006 New Year’s post and found that I wrote 452 in 2006. Goodness. But I do think this year’s posts were better, at least to some degree. I hope.

With Riverglen Press I published only Phantastes and Beowulf: Student Edition, both way back in January, but I also designed Lorin Farr: Mormon Statesman and Niels and Christiane Christensen (two family histories), and I’m in the middle of designing books by Truman Madsen and M. Catherine Thomas.

As for the rest of life, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English Language, got an exceedingly cool job at Special Collections going through all the treasures in the vaults, started my MLS (master’s of library science), and got a staff position at Special Collections processing manuscripts (which means I can check out 100 books at a time for six months each :)).

And now for the list:

1. Didn’t quite get all A’s my last semester at BYU, but I did graduate.

2. Turns out being graduated didn’t quite give me all the free time I expected; I only read 60 books this year. And 28 of those were by the end of April — how on earth did I read more books in school than out? Sixty isn’t bad, but it’s nowhere near 100.

3. I wrote a whole novel, Out of Time, in November. (Finally!) And while I didn’t write a full-length play, in August I did write a 20-minute play Candle in the Darkness, and it even got produced in October.

4. Riverglen Press published two titles, not 10. ~sigh~

5. I did get a job at the library (two, actually) and not only figured out where I was going, but also started. (I’d originally planned to work for a year and then start my master’s, but life threw me a twist in the road.)

6. The study program didn’t happen.

7. My planning sort of got better, but it’s still far from perfect.

8. Didn’t really save money at all. And I bought 137 books in 2007.

9. I eat marginally better than I did last year (I usually get a salad for lunch now).

10. It’s hard to measure a goal like this (focusing on others and serving more). I still have much improvement waiting for me here.

11. I give more compliments than before, but not by much. Needs improvement.

12. This one’s even harder to measure.

And in with the new…

This year I think I’ll keep to the more quantifiable goals, since I seem to make more progress with them than with vague goals like “eat better.” I have a few more resolutions than I’ve listed here, but thirteen was just too good of a number to end on, so we’ll cap it there.

1. Read 80 books. I figure I may as well be realistic (though considering the trend, being perfectly realistic would mean setting a goal for 50). Sure, I do have free time, but these other goals (like writing novels and plays) take up a lot of reading time, so it’s okay if I don’t read quite as many books as I’d like. It’s the whole consumption v. production balance thing.

2. Read all the C.S. Lewis books I haven’t yet read.

3. Read all the Jane Austen books I haven’t yet read.

4. Polish Out of Time and write another novel (as part of NaNoWriMo).

5. Write three short plays and one full-length play. I’m planning to do the full-length one as part of Script Frenzy in April, and the three short plays will be for the New Play Project. (I’m already almost done with the first draft of my next short, which I’ll submit to NPP in a week and a half.)

6. Write a full-length screenplay.

7. Write five songs.

8. Publish five Riverglen Press titles. (This’ll probably include Pride & Prejudice, Words of the Prophets: Selected Sermons from the Book of Mormon, and the Welsh Book of Mormon.)

9. Redesign the look of this blog (Top of the Mountains) and BenjaminCrowder.com.

10. Produce a short film in 3D.

11. Post a drawing to BenjaminCrowder.com each day in January, a painting each day in February, a 3D render each day in March/April/May (focusing on modeling, texturing, and lighting, respectively), and a logo a day in June.

12. Reply to all incoming correspondence within a day or two.

Reply by email

I know myself what others know far better — how unfailingly courteous Lewis was in answering letters. I think I corresponded with him on three or four occasions… But there was a reply every time — it might be quite brief, but it was always written for you and for nobody else. I think this was his greatest secret. He hated casual contacts; human contact must, for him, be serious and concentrated and attentive, or it was better avoided. It might be for a moment only, but that was its invariable quality. That is not only why so many people have precious memories of him; it is also why he couldn’t write three words without the reader’s feeling that they were written for him and him alone. It’s why his massive books of scholarship read as delightfully as his children’s stories, and why he’s one of the few preachers who can be read without losing their message.

Reply by email

But that’s not what I’m going to talk about. It’s that time of the year again, time to review the past year and make resolutions for this one. So, 2006. It was, overall, a good year. I can’t tell if that’s because it’s an even year or not. :) (I apparently have a subconscious dislike of odd numbers, which is only now surfacing.) Anyway, I started Riverglen Press and published two books (The Book of Mormon: Reader’s Edition and A Christmas Carol), began blogging in earnest (452 posts on here in 2006), got a camera and started learning photography, became president of the C.S. Lewis Society on campus, and did lots of other stuff.

What do I expect this year? Well, foremost in my mind is graduation in April. After that, I’ll try to get a job at either BYU Library or Provo Library, work for a semester or two, and then apply to library school (either online or at UNC Chapel Hill, most likely). Hopefully I’ll get married somehow. :P (But that depends on a planner which I don’t really have access to. ~sigh~) I’m sure I’ll blog a lot. No worries there. I’ll save the rest of the expectations (er, goals) for this next part.

But first, here’s a review of last year’s resolutions:

1. I’d forgotten that I set the real goal for 70 (I thought it was 100 all along). And voila, I read exactly 70 books in 2006! Fancy that.

2. I’m not sure exactly what’s happening with Beyond. Last week I had a change of heart, and was determined to revive the project, but I’m getting rather tired of programming in general. We’ll see.

3. My only exercise has been walking to and from campus. Yay.

4. Well, I now alternate between pasta, baked potatoes, and frozen burritoes for dinner, so I guess that’s some small improvement. Not really. ~sigh~

5. Still haven’t done this…

6. I made a dent with reading the rest of the C.S. Lewis corpus but there’s still a fair amount left to read.

7. Haven’t done this either. But I’m taking Latin 302 starting in six days, so hopefully my memory of Latin will rescue me until I get my head above water.

8. Haven’t done this.

9. Or this.

10. Or this. ~sigh~

11. Well, I have posted almost every day, but I don’t know if the quality of posts has changed much.

12. Haven’t done this either. But I did try.

Resolutions for 2007:

1. Get all A’s this last semester. Fight apathy and senioritis as if they were a two-headed dragon. Strive for excellence in all I do.

2. Read 100 books. From January to May of 2006 I only read eight books; from June to December I read 62, average of 10.33 a month. (In December I read 14, or about one every two days.) I’m tempted to bump the goal up to 120, especially since I won’t have homework after April, but I don’t know what the year will bring.

3. Write either a full-length novel or a full-length play, or both.

4. Publish at least 10 books via Riverglen Press.

5. Get a job at a library, and figure out when I’m going to go to library school (and where).

6. Set up a study program for expanding my knowledge and skills in a variety of areas (languages, history, art, music, etc.).

7. Plan better. Don’t waste time.

8. Save money. (And try not to spend it all on books.)

9. Eat better. If not…well, I guess they have Internet access in hospital rooms, right? Right? (Just kidding.)

10. Focus more on others; serve more.

11. Say more nice things about people. I often think them, but for some reason they scarcely leave my lips. The absence of mean words doth not warm fuzzies make.

And finally, 12. Be more like Christ than I’ve ever been before.

It’s all quite doable, I think. And this post is plenty long. The End.

Reply by email

“What was said of C.S. Lewis could aptly be said of Neal: ‘Behind a compulsive writer usually sits a compulsive reader.’ And Neal’s writing taste clearly reflects his reading taste. He’s had little interest in fiction, preferring ‘things concerned with the issues of the day.’ For years he has devoured biographies of political leaders, works of military and political history, and religious essays, especially those of such British ‘believers’ as George MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton, and C.S. Lewis. One senses a connection here in his curiosity about able leaders, their lives and their language. He has instinctively wanted to learn from and about people of influence who drew with good motives on the power of the word (see Alma 31:5). A leader’s biography should teach us how to be leaders, just as a disciple’s biography should teach us how to be followers of Christ.” (A Disciple’s Life, chapter 48.)

Reply by email