little black journal

Yes, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted about a book.  Fact is, I took a bit of a ‘literary detour’ and spent the first part of this summer wrapped up in the Twilight series.  And I won’t apologize for it – I was in the mood for something quick, easy, and just a little bit trashy, and that vampire saga fit the bill perfectly.  But once I got my fill of teenage romance, I was ready to flex my reading muscles and so picked up Till We Have Faces, my book club’s August pick.  This is C.S. Lewis’ interpretation of the classical myth of Cupid and Psyche, set in the far-off pagan land of Glome.  I’m not going to lie – this wasn’t a ‘fun’ read, but it stretched me, and encouraged me further explore deeper themes of selfish love, self-awareness, and frustration over a seemingly distant God.  And I like when a book stumps me, keeps the wheels in my head turning after I’ve put it down, forces me flip back through it in hopes of catching something new.  After doing some Googling and reading a couple of book reviews sent to me by my fellow stumped book-clubbies, I’m just scratching the surface of what Lewis may (or may not) have been getting at.  I’ll leave you with this passage, that seems to grow more powerful each time I reread it:

” ‘Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.’  A glib saying.  When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy of words.  I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer.  Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean?  How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”