Remembering Thomas Howard's "Christ theTiger"

Have you ever had that moment in a thrift store when you find an unexpected treasure?  It happened to me shortly after Christmas outside of Birmingham, Alabama.  As I surveyed row after row of books, my eyes located the small letters spelling out Christ the Tiger.  I'd heard of the book and had often hoped to come across it and there it was.

What a book!  Imagine Blue Like Jazz written by a young man of a much earlier era and with greater profundity.

I read the book instantly, but this evening was looking back through at passages I'd highlighted.  This one jumped out at me with Saturday night television in the background:

When death is upon us, we slobber and cry out to heaven.  But what is the real difference between being in a great transoceanic jet hurtling in flames toward the sea beneath, and being a few tenuous years from the same issue?  In the one situation you know that you have perhaps two minutes of consciousness and identity left to you before you are blown across into nothingness.  In the other you suppose, quite fondly, that you have a longer interval before the plunge.  Our faculty for finding solace in this interval is a curious one.  Apparently the cabins of airliners heading for the earth are scenes of wild shrieking and hysteria.  What about?  Death?  But a minute before, as the travelers read their French phrase booklets and menus, or broke open their cardboard containers of salt, did they suppose they weren't going to die?  What mythology enabled them to stay calm?  Is there some definitive difference between death now and later?

A couple of pages later:

We are all sitting on Death Row.  One fine day the man comes, and we excuse ourselves awkwardly and disappear.

This is a fine book.  I hope the younger generations rediscover it.  These passages are dark, but you may suspect, of course, that the talk of Christ is coming.  It is he who teaches us about "a kind of life that participates in the indestructible."

Comments

[Beth from TN]

Is this the same Thomas Howard who wrote the book on Charles Williams' novels?

[Michael]

You had the great fortune of finding it used. This generation of younger people (I suppose that would include me) have the fortune of being able to purchase a 2005 reprint new from Amazon. It is not quite so antiquated to not merit new printings. That is a reassuring thought.

[Hunter Baker]

Don't know, Beth, but I wouldn't be surprised. He eventually became a Catholic convert, which is something you can see coming in Christ the Tiger.

[Bill R]

I read "Christ the Tiger" years ago when it came out, then once again decades later to great profit. It's still on my bookshelve and I intend to read it yet again some day. (Yes, the same Tom Howard wrote the book on Charles Williams' novels, and has written for Touchstone.) Try to pick up his other fine books, such as "Chance or the Dance" and "Hallowed Be This House."

[Beth from TN]

Thanks for the information. I'll have to put some of those titles on the new amazon list! I really like his work on Williams; I had my students read portions of it when we read _Descent into Hell_ this semester. Excellent thinker and writer.

[Doug Cline]

My favorite is "Evangelical is Not Enough." It is a book about liturgy, written when Mr. Howard was an Anglican. It had a powerful influence on me.