It’s Friday, and I haven’t had the time to even look at the blog, much less write something for it.
But today is a rather auspicious day, in a rather sad way.
Seventy years ago on this date, the author Charles Williams died.
Many people will not have heard of him, and surely many, many more will not have read him.
They are to be pitied, in the same way that children who have never had the sheer joy of running through a pristine forest, or of having taken a running plunge into the ocean are to be pitied.
They know not what it is they miss.
I have written about his English Poetic Mind, but he also wrote seven remarkable novels, which were my introduction to his work – oh, so many years ago.
He wrote poetry, which was successful, and which gave his words on other poets an added extra weight.
He wrote plays, he wrote literary texts on other authors, and he wrote treatises on theology.
And he was a regular member of the Inklings.
He had a profound influence on C.S. Lewis, though if you go to Williams expecting the same populist tone, you’ll be somewhat disappointed.
Tolkien is said to have deplored Williams’ influence on Lewis’ writing.
Such is his effect on me, that he’s supplanted Lewis in the pantheon of those whose writing have had a profound impact upon my thinking.
I haven’t the time for a considered post – a post which will usually gestate for anywhere up to two weeks, or more.
I must once more be off and about my business – which, as always, is really about someone else’s business.
But as I said in a post about the Bard, back on the twenty-sixth of April…
Some days should not be allowed to pass unremarked.
Image found here.
I feel your pain, although not for the writer you mentioned, but because of the death of the blues icon BB King who died at age 89 on Thursday.
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