C. S. Lewis by James Como

Author:James Como
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192563330
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2018-11-20T16:00:00+00:00

That Hideous Strength

Lewis seems always to have had some piece of writing in the works. This was true of The Chronicles, his autobiography, a narrative poem, and of Abolition (to which this book is the fictional correlative). The continuity of his labours, especially in light of the scraps of paper he wrote on, is hard to fathom. This book, too, had a false start. It is by far the longest of the three and the most complexly plotted, as thrillers will be. It is set on Earth, and in addition to its thrills (maximized by cross-cuts, close calls, and other devices, all well managed) is marked by sheer horror. Thus its subtitle: ‘A Fairy-Tale for Adults’.

Jane Studdock is a doctoral student who cannot get on with her thesis. Her husband Mark is a Fellow of Sociology at Bracton College in Edgestow, a Midlands village. He badly wants to be among the ‘progressive element’ (an ‘inner ring’ about which Lewis will write). Jane, on the other hand, is troubled by a dream: a man’s head has been twisted off and kept alive and people are digging up an ancient figure, ‘a druidical kind of man’.

Mark meets Lord Feverstone (Devine, from Out of the Silent Planet), who enlists him to write press stories on behalf of the College; these will be largely false. As it happens, Feverstone and other sinister (and quite haunting) figures are part of N.I.C.E., the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments—all very scientific. Meanwhile, Jane, troubled by her dreams, seeks out Mother Dimble, whose husband was Jane’s tutor and is an authority on the Arthurian legend. She recommends to her that she visit St Anne’s on the Hill to meet none other than Ransom, who has not aged but had been wounded by the bite of the Un-man. He is the Pendragon, the heir to King Arthur’s authority.

From this point forward the action shifts between the College, where ‘man has got to take charge of man … some men have to take charge of the rest’, and Ransom’s community of organic friendship (including Mr Bultitude, a bear), with him as the Head. But N.I.C.E. is keeping another head alive, that of a criminal who was decapitated, the very head of which Jane dreamt. That head will be the portal for malignant powers that descend, the fallen eldila (the plural of ‘eldil’) who will help establish this scientific order. The villains expect the help of Merlin, who lies in a nearby wood. (In a hilarious sequence, the N.I.C.E. mistakes a hobo for the great mage.)

Mark is sorely tested, especially in a room of grotesque abnormalities, Jane is estranged from him, and Merlin (who, though primitive, is righteous) will bring mayhem to the N.I.C.E., casting a spell that transforms language into babble. Meanwhile, owing to the breach of the quarantine around Earth at the orbit of the Moon, good eldila—in fact gloriously terrifying angels—descend on St Anne’s on the Hill. Belbury, the centre of N.I.C.E. wrongdoing, is destroyed by an earthquake,

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