May 24: Life on the Silent Planet: That Hideous Strength (Continued)
On Sunday, May 24, we continue our discussion of Life on the Silent Planet: Essays on Christian Living from C. S. Lewis's Ransom Trilogy. We are in the section on That Hideous Strength. We'll discuss the last three essays:
"Arthur in Edgestow" by Holly Ordway
"The Problem of Jane" by Susannah Black-Roberts
"Bureaucratic Speech in That Hideous Strength" by Jake Meador
Follow-up on something I tried to describe in our meeting: In chapter 2, section 4, of THS, Lewis, with vivid precision, shows much about the characters of Mark and Jane by sharing the atmospheres of their respective travels. Lewis's imaginary "observer placed at the right altitude above Edgestow" sees, south of Edgestow, Feverstone's speedy car that carries Mark toward Belbury, and, to the east of Edgestow, the little train that carries Jane toward St. Anne's. Lewis deftly lays the contrasts before the reader.
Also at the April meeting, Joel Heck brought our attention to Lewis's admiration of "the divine Huckleberry" (letter to Ruth Pitter, Jan. 8, 1952). And here's an excerpt from an article by Kathryn Lindskoog with a little more on the topic:
C.S. Lewis buffs are well aware of his enthusiasm for George MacDonald, but few know of his enthusiasm for what he called “the divine Huckleberry.” On 6 December 1950 C.S. Lewis wrote to an American correspondent, “I have been regaling myself on Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I wonder why that man never wrote anything else on the same level. The scene in which Huck decides to be ‘good’ by betraying Jim, and then finds he can’t and concludes that he is a reprobate, is unparalleled in humor, pathos, and tenderness. And it goes down to the very depth of all moral problems.”(33)
More follow-up from the April meeting - Colin Redemer's article "The Untabled Law of Nature" brought up discussion of Friedrich Nietzsche. In the spirit of G. K. Chesterton's "democracy of the dead," let's give space for a comment from Chesterton himself, an extended excerpt from the "The Eternal Evolution" section of Orthodoxy:
[Some] think it intellectual to talk about things being "high." . . . This, incidentally is almost the whole weakness of Nietzsche, whom some are representing as a bold and strong thinker. No one will deny that he was a poetical and suggestive thinker; but he was quite the reverse of strong. He was not at all bold. He never put his own meaning before himself in bald abstract words; as did Aristotle and Calvin, and even Karl Marx, the hard, fearless men of thought. Nietzsche always escaped a question by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet. He said, "beyond good and evil," because he had not the courage to say, "more good than good and evil," or, "more evil than good and evil." Had he faced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it was nonsense. So, when he describes his hero, he does not dare to say, "the purer man," or "the happier man," or "the sadder man," for all these are ideas; and ideas are alarming. He says "the upper man," or "over man," a physical metaphor from acrobats or alpine climbers. Nietzsche is truly a very timid thinker. He does not really know in the least what sort of man he wants evolution to produce. And if he does not know, certainly the ordinary evolutionists, who talk about things being "higher," do not know either.
A proposed reading for June is Peter Kreeft's new book, The Mirror, The Mask, and the Masterpiece: A guide to C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces. Our reading group read and discussed Till We Have Faces in 2012. So now, in 2026, we could read it under the guidance of Peter Kreeft, if desired.
"Magic, Science, Poetry: C. S. Lewis and the Battle for the Modern Soul" is a lecture to be presented by Jason Baxter on Friday, May 8, 2026, from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. A few months ago, we read and enjoyed Jason Baxter's book The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis. The lecture will be livestreamed on the Wade Center's YouTube channel. Here's a description of the lecture from the Wade Center:
This lecture will explore a mysterious scene from the final novel in C.S. Lewis’s science fiction trilogy, That Hideous Strength, in light of Lewis's historical research on magic, poetry, and science in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.
"Finding Meaning in a Confused Culture" is a free Zoom webinar with Cameroon McAllister presented through the C. S. Lewis Institute on Friday, May 8, 7:00-8:00 CT.
The Story of Everything (2026) will be at the Cinemark Pflugerville from April 30 to May 6. Cast members include Stephen C. Meyer, John Lennox, and Peter Thiel. (Here's a link to John Lennox's remembrance of a C. S. Lewis lecture.)
George Fox University's C. S. Lewis Initiative presents The Undiscovered C. S. Lewis Conference on Sept. 24-27, 2026. The previous conference in 2024 had an option for virtual attendance.
Central Texas C. S. Lewis is a reading group that meets in Austin, Texas.
For meeting details, please send a request through our Contact Form. Thank you.