Vigils 'n' Sigils: Preface

"But the Dwarfs jeered back at Eustace. 'That was a surprise for you, little boy, eh? Thought we were on your side, did you? No fear. We don't want any Talking Horses. We don't want you to win any more than the other gang. You can't take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.'" 

C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

It's only two weeks into 45's Administration, and if you haven't "picked a side" you are an extremist in your own right. So this passage comes to mind, from The Last Battle — surely Lewis's most vexatious work in a very large oeuvre that manages to vex every reader, sooner or later. Neo-Platonist, Anti-Feminist, Orientalist, Christo-centric Universalist — there are plenty of other "trigger warnings" that apply to this work, I'm just too lazy to dredge them up. But it's his apocalyptic book, and Lewis sorts out multiple antagonists and shibboleths as he is wont to do. Echoing the spirit of these times I say if Lewis, with a single book, can piss off that many readers — pretty much all of them, by my reckoning — he must be doing something right.

Whether or not we are enduring The Apocalypse — and whether or not that term has any eschatological significance in your personal lexicon — we are certainly enduring an apocalypse, or "uncovering." So Lewis comes to mind, because for all his readiness to push every hot-button within reach, his take on what an "uncovering" finally entails is surprisingly gentle.

I might get back to Lewis, I might not — I honestly have no idea where any of this is going. But mebbe I'm just a Dwarf — for the Dwarfs, and all others can go hang.

Dwarf party — less fun than it looks.

Next: Join The Gang!