RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
Williams, Charles. Descent into Hell. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1966.
Williams’ prose has never struck me as direct. I’m not sure at this point whether that is good or bad. It’s always quite fascinating, but I am not always sure why. A case in point is his first chapter, “The Magus Zoroaster.” Already the title suggests to us Eastern deserts and ominous figures. That’s not what the chapter is about, though. Maybe that’s the point. The chapter is about some playwright inviting people to his estate to “screen his play.” I think there is more to it. There is something in the background stalking our heroine Pauline. And then the chapter ends.
I think that is a fair summary of Williams’ prose style. Now to the specifics. There isn’t always a continuous narrative. For example, Williams will jump from a dead man’s experience of the afterlife to Pauline’s frustration with herself. He also has the dead man interacting with his wife, and presumably she with him, yet Williams hasn’t given us a reason on how this is possible.
We are not always given adequate background to key characters. After a few chapters Stanhope is revealed to be a Gandalf-like mentor. Sammile is a witch. (Her identity is revealed at the end of the book.) I think. It’s never quite stated at first.
Williams’ prose is quite fine. Every paragraph is elegant and reminiscent of Tolkien or Lewis. While the novel itself suffers in terms of narrative, it delivers in psychology. It is, quite simply, a spiritual nightmare. It is Dante’s Inferno from the point of view of one of the denizens.
Nota Bene
A succubus/incubus is an “image without incarnation” (127).
Williams’ prose has never struck me as direct. I’m not sure at this point whether that is good or bad. It’s always quite fascinating, but I am not always sure why. A case in point is his first chapter, “The Magus Zoroaster.” Already the title suggests to us Eastern deserts and ominous figures. That’s not what the chapter is about, though. Maybe that’s the point. The chapter is about some playwright inviting people to his estate to “screen his play.” I think there is more to it. There is something in the background stalking our heroine Pauline. And then the chapter ends.
I think that is a fair summary of Williams’ prose style. Now to the specifics. There isn’t always a continuous narrative. For example, Williams will jump from a dead man’s experience of the afterlife to Pauline’s frustration with herself. He also has the dead man interacting with his wife, and presumably she with him, yet Williams hasn’t given us a reason on how this is possible.
We are not always given adequate background to key characters. After a few chapters Stanhope is revealed to be a Gandalf-like mentor. Sammile is a witch. (Her identity is revealed at the end of the book.) I think. It’s never quite stated at first.
Williams’ prose is quite fine. Every paragraph is elegant and reminiscent of Tolkien or Lewis. While the novel itself suffers in terms of narrative, it delivers in psychology. It is, quite simply, a spiritual nightmare. It is Dante’s Inferno from the point of view of one of the denizens.
Nota Bene
A succubus/incubus is an “image without incarnation” (127).
