In a distance he discerned a shed by the side of the road, broke into a run, and, reaching it, took shelter with a bound which landed him in a shallow puddle lying just within the dark entrance. "Oh, damn and blast!" he cried with a great voice. "Why was this bloody world created?""As a sewer for the stars," a voice in front of him said. "Alternatively, to know God and to glorify Him for ever."
This is a passage from Williams's War in Heaven and it's quite typical of him: a clerk from a publishing-house runs into a shed for shelter from the rain, lands in a puddle, curses Creation itself, and it just so happens there's a mystically-minded poet in the shed with him. it's not realistic exactly...magical-realistic, perhaps. I quite like it, and it's quite a bit more exciting (though more difficult to follow) than C. S. Lewis's prosaic and even mundane style. When Williams gets mystical it feels integral to the texture of his storytelling; when Lewis tries to get mystical, it's often jarring and awkward, like when Dionysos suddenly pops up in Prince Caspian.
(🎶 O to be Prince Caspian / Afloat upon the waves 🎵)
~Chara
