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Title	:	The Place of the Lion
Author	:	Charles Williams
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 244 pages
Published	:	February 14th 2003 by Regent College Publishing (first published January 1st 1931)
Categories	:	Fiction. Fantasy. Christian. Classics. Christian Fiction

The Place of the Lion

Charles Williams

Paperback | Pages: 244 pages

Rating: 3.87 | 1155 Users | 151 Reviews

Interpretation Toward Books The Place of the Lion

As an author, Charles Williams writes stiffly, his stories are strange enough to be nearly inaccessible, and his characters who find clarity start speaking in a way which makes The Fairie Queene look folksy. All that being true, I love this man. After finishing this one I slept not just better, but more happily (merrily, even?) then in months. Goodness became more solidly true than usual. A few days later I was taking a shower and suddenly thought of the Idea of the Lion and Plato's Butterfly and houses in otherworldly flames - well, I started laughing at myself and the book, but not out of condescension. How does a man who writes about things which appear pretty crazy from nearly any perspective make them so rational, so fair? Charles Williams has Plato's ideas crash into our world and it's a rather ordinary thing. In another book the Holy Grail is found, and when the good guys aren't getting into dizzy car chases or bumping into cherubim, they're just hanging out being light-hearted and finding everything a good joke. Or the dead walk into a kitchen and chat with the living because it's the thing to do, or a man shacks up with a succubus, or someone promises to bear the burden of a doppleganger which is terrorizing a friend.

Now, we can encounter those things in a comic-book story, or video game, or one of the many pseudo-sci-fi/fantasy films which mixes an ancient name and time travel (or some variation thereof) into a senseless mess but is fun to look at and kinda rad. But while we abandon the straight, unadorned narratives and tales of good and bad for escapism, we are not supposed to take the shadows behind the stories seriously. Myth must be a synonym for False. All the peoples of the world which did not take a flat, neatly divided and accounted for view of reality were obviously ignorant. They were leading up to us, the people who would condemn their naivety and steal their stories as fodder for the entertainment-consumption industry, while failing to understand the people or their stories on their own terms. The better ones regret the domination, but do not hesitate to ignore, mock, or capitalize on their beliefs.

This isn't an acceptable way to approach any people or their stories, and it not an acceptable way to approach Williams. This story in particular illustrates why this is such a terrible thing to do (I'm being generous picking only one negative adjective). Williams is not intending to entertain you or allow bad ideas to go unexamined. This is not the place for cheap fantasy or a cape of a different color. He wants and intends to make you take all of this magical realism as being, yes, supernatural, but also yes, very very real.

That may seem ridiculous, but while I can laugh and say "Oh, of course it is!", I also find Charles Williams' ideas and vision moving enough that I cannot reject his philosophy/religion. I have to take his worldview seriously because it produces an utterly convincing image of goodness which far surpasses most others I've encountered. We can say we should all love one another and do good, but we seem to be best at not living up to that whatsoever. If we could see the way to do so as clearly as Charles Williams the person did, if our eyes were changed, I suspect we'd find a goodness wildly colorful that achieved far more than our platitudes and good intentions. The supernatural happenings in the stories seem integral to finding that goodness. And perhaps the reason his prose is so heavy and his stories so old and odd is because he has something very good to say which English can't quite contain. The tongue and pen can't say some things without upside-downing the world and living a bit in one age and then another and then outside of time.

I think his works are weirder and more original than pretty much anything else in the past thirty years. Stranger than Murakami (whom I love), more intriguing and provocative than the mind-benders which are yesterday's news in a moment, and there is always the joy of something old and lost like the Grail or Plato being reawakened. The great medieval masters went back again and again to the old stories, not because they could not make their own, but because they wanted to rework the great ones, to make them more true, to reveal something hitherto unseen. Williams is like that. Here are old legends and visions mixed up in our world, and the result gives a better understanding of people and life and death than any rootless fantasy ever could. Unfashionable and clumsy it may be, but here is a book that is both a story and a way to goodness.

Particularize Books In Pursuance Of The Place of the Lion

Original Title:	The Place of the Lion
ISBN:	1573831085 (ISBN13: 9781573831086)
Edition Language:	English

Rating Based On Books The Place of the Lion

Ratings: 3.87 From 1155 Users | 151 Reviews

Criticize Based On Books The Place of the Lion

When first I encountered Charles Williams, I sat stunned at his feet as the heavens were rolled back as a scroll and earth opened to receive my abandoned flesh. This time, not so much. I give this book a solid 3.5 stars, but Goodreads allows for no such nuance, so I (ever the cheerful cynic) err on the side of "all shall be hell" and just give it three. But don't get me wrong: it is a book well worth the read, just not so, well, not so tight, if you will, as Descent Into Hell. Yet it is vintage

As with all Charles Williams' books, marvelously strange, exploring the mingling of the physical and spiritual realms.

I thought I had read Williams' All Hallows' Eve, but I am reading it now and it is unfamiliar, so I think it must have been this one that I read years ago.Come to think of it, I do have a vague memory of a character seeing a lion... that may be autosuggestion, though.

I came to this book in an odd way..... I knew Charles Williams was a friend of CS Lewis, so when I saw a set of his novels in a book sale, I picked them up. But my impression was that he was kind of odd, so I didn't read them right away. Then about six months ago I read an article about Williams that made it clear that he was VERY odd, so I continued my disinterest.Then I heard Greg Wilbur talk about this book at the CiRCE conference in Louisville this summer, and it really piqued my interest. I

When first I encountered Charles Williams, I sat stunned at his feet as the heavens were rolled back as a scroll and earth opened to receive my abandoned flesh. This time, not so much. I give this book a solid 3.5 stars, but Goodreads allows for no such nuance, so I (ever the cheerful cynic) err on the side of "all shall be hell" and just give it three. But don't get me wrong: it is a book well worth the read, just not so, well, not so tight, if you will, as Descent Into Hell. Yet it is vintage

See one review here.

Platonic realities, archetypes, come crashing in to every day life when a modern day wizard of sorts sets up shop in the UK: the Place of the Lion. A great book by one of the Inklings (Tolkien and Lewis being other members of such group along with some Anthroposophists). Now for the devil of me, I find it too coincidental Ouspensky, the wizard of the 1900s, set up shop in his grand mansion called Lyne Place just 1 hour east of where the Inklings were meeting in the exact same decade, the 1930s,