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Quite some time ago I read a biography of C.S. Lewis which was so interesting that I wanted to write a post about it. A really chewy post.
You all know what happens next, I'm sure. Or, given the fact that I haven't posted for over a month, you can guess.
So, briefly and incompletely - the bio I read is by A.N. Wilson, and anyone who was paying more attention than I was to Lewis studies in the mid-1990s - which would be anyone paying any attention at all, or at least, both my parents and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
penwiper26 - might remember hearing of as having a negative spin.
I didn't find it meanspirited or even particularly negative, in the sense of having a JACK LEWIS WAS A JERK take-home message. It is a critical biography, but "critical" in the sense of "analytical" not in the sense of "passing judgment on the subject and finding him wanting." Specifically, though Wilson illustrates a number of ways in which Lewis-as-experienced-by-his-students-and-colleagues differs from Lewis-as-experienced-by-readers, and indeed ways in which Lewis'-life-as-known-from-the-historical-record differs from Lewis'-life-as-recounted-in-Surprised by Joy, he never seems to use the variations to accuse Lewis of dishonesty or hypocrisy, and indeed seems to find Lewis intelligent, skilled, and interesting, if rather an odd duck.
Things that Wilson does snark at, in descending order of magnitude-of-snark:
- Lewis's early poetry. (If his first publication, Dymer, is an artistic and emotional touchstone for you, you probably should not read this biography.) (You should also not read this biography if it would distress you to consider the possibility that Lewis might have been sexually intimate with as many as two women in his entire life, one pre-conversion and one his wife.)
- Walter Hooper, literary advisor to the estate of C.S. Lewis and (in Wilson's view) quite a silly self-important man who has made much hay out of quite a brief personal association with Lewis.
- American C.S. Lewis fans who seem keen to reimagine Lewis in their own image - whether that image is (in the case of Hooper) traditionalist Roman Catholic or (in the case of Wheaton College) teetotal casserole-eating non-dancing G-movie-watching mainstream evangelical. (To paraphrase Anne Lamott, we can be sure we've recreated C.S. Lewis in our own image when we are sure he drank only the same things we do.)
OTHER RECENT READING
- the Small Change trilogy, by Jo Walton (Farthing, Ha'penny, and Half a Crown, in that order.) Mysteries set in an alternate UK that made peace with Hitler in 1941. Depressing (because the only thing more depressing than historical fascism is EXPANDED historical fascism, avec bonus explicit homophobia) and fascinating (1940s genderswap production of Hamlet?? YES PLEASE.) Does not end with unrelieved gloom.
- The Butterfly Mosque by G. Willow Wilson. What Eat Pray Love would have been if the author had more perspective. It's a memoir by an American woman who went to Cairo to teach English, converted to Islam and fell in love. It's particularly remarkable how she manages to describe the experience of being a young American woman learning to navigate shopping and housekeeping in a totally different culture and climate without either downplaying her own fear and discomfort or totally exoticizing the world she's entering.
- Volume 5 of the Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery. Makes me glad all over again to live in an age of medicine that has a fair chance of actually working.
- rereading Long May She Reign by Ellen Emerson White, the fourth book in the President's Daughter series. I couldn't put it down, but at the same time I found it rather more distressing on rereading than I had the first time through. I wanted to take Meg by the shoulders and tell her to get. some. fucking. therapy. And failing that I wished her resistance to the idea had been fleshed out just a little bit.
RECENT VIEWING
- White Collar via iTunes. Continues to be love.
- A Bit of Fry and Laurie on my beloved Netflix streaming. B&R and I are trying to pace ourselves because there's not NEARLY as much of it as we wish there were.
- Any bits of Dara O'Briain, Irish standup comedian, that I can find.
RECENT SINGING
We now have a new director of music, a new organist, and paid section leaders, which in some ways is marvelous (we sound awesome every time!) and in some ways makes me feel both inadequate and superfluous (we sound awesome whether I open my mouth or not!) We're singing some very lovely stuff, which is an unmitigated yay. Two weekends ago we had a choral evensong which came off excellently, featuring a Slavonic _Phos Hilaron,_ acres of Herbert Howells (Magnificant, Nunc Dimitis, psalm setting, and two hymns), and a spiritual.
FINALLY
I find it most unfair that it can be thirty-odd or even twenty-odd degrees every morning, and not more than forty-five at the heat of the day, but I am STILL getting springtime allergies. MOST unfair. *rubs eyes*
You all know what happens next, I'm sure. Or, given the fact that I haven't posted for over a month, you can guess.
So, briefly and incompletely - the bio I read is by A.N. Wilson, and anyone who was paying more attention than I was to Lewis studies in the mid-1990s - which would be anyone paying any attention at all, or at least, both my parents and
penwiper26 - might remember hearing of as having a negative spin.I didn't find it meanspirited or even particularly negative, in the sense of having a JACK LEWIS WAS A JERK take-home message. It is a critical biography, but "critical" in the sense of "analytical" not in the sense of "passing judgment on the subject and finding him wanting." Specifically, though Wilson illustrates a number of ways in which Lewis-as-experienced-by-his-students-and-colleagues differs from Lewis-as-experienced-by-readers, and indeed ways in which Lewis'-life-as-known-from-the-historical-record differs from Lewis'-life-as-recounted-in-Surprised by Joy, he never seems to use the variations to accuse Lewis of dishonesty or hypocrisy, and indeed seems to find Lewis intelligent, skilled, and interesting, if rather an odd duck.
Things that Wilson does snark at, in descending order of magnitude-of-snark:
- Lewis's early poetry. (If his first publication, Dymer, is an artistic and emotional touchstone for you, you probably should not read this biography.) (You should also not read this biography if it would distress you to consider the possibility that Lewis might have been sexually intimate with as many as two women in his entire life, one pre-conversion and one his wife.)
- Walter Hooper, literary advisor to the estate of C.S. Lewis and (in Wilson's view) quite a silly self-important man who has made much hay out of quite a brief personal association with Lewis.
- American C.S. Lewis fans who seem keen to reimagine Lewis in their own image - whether that image is (in the case of Hooper) traditionalist Roman Catholic or (in the case of Wheaton College) teetotal casserole-eating non-dancing G-movie-watching mainstream evangelical. (To paraphrase Anne Lamott, we can be sure we've recreated C.S. Lewis in our own image when we are sure he drank only the same things we do.)
OTHER RECENT READING
- the Small Change trilogy, by Jo Walton (Farthing, Ha'penny, and Half a Crown, in that order.) Mysteries set in an alternate UK that made peace with Hitler in 1941. Depressing (because the only thing more depressing than historical fascism is EXPANDED historical fascism, avec bonus explicit homophobia) and fascinating (1940s genderswap production of Hamlet?? YES PLEASE.) Does not end with unrelieved gloom.
- The Butterfly Mosque by G. Willow Wilson. What Eat Pray Love would have been if the author had more perspective. It's a memoir by an American woman who went to Cairo to teach English, converted to Islam and fell in love. It's particularly remarkable how she manages to describe the experience of being a young American woman learning to navigate shopping and housekeeping in a totally different culture and climate without either downplaying her own fear and discomfort or totally exoticizing the world she's entering.
- Volume 5 of the Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery. Makes me glad all over again to live in an age of medicine that has a fair chance of actually working.
- rereading Long May She Reign by Ellen Emerson White, the fourth book in the President's Daughter series. I couldn't put it down, but at the same time I found it rather more distressing on rereading than I had the first time through. I wanted to take Meg by the shoulders and tell her to get. some. fucking. therapy. And failing that I wished her resistance to the idea had been fleshed out just a little bit.
RECENT VIEWING
- White Collar via iTunes. Continues to be love.
- A Bit of Fry and Laurie on my beloved Netflix streaming. B&R and I are trying to pace ourselves because there's not NEARLY as much of it as we wish there were.
- Any bits of Dara O'Briain, Irish standup comedian, that I can find.
RECENT SINGING
We now have a new director of music, a new organist, and paid section leaders, which in some ways is marvelous (we sound awesome every time!) and in some ways makes me feel both inadequate and superfluous (we sound awesome whether I open my mouth or not!) We're singing some very lovely stuff, which is an unmitigated yay. Two weekends ago we had a choral evensong which came off excellently, featuring a Slavonic _Phos Hilaron,_ acres of Herbert Howells (Magnificant, Nunc Dimitis, psalm setting, and two hymns), and a spiritual.
FINALLY
I find it most unfair that it can be thirty-odd or even twenty-odd degrees every morning, and not more than forty-five at the heat of the day, but I am STILL getting springtime allergies. MOST unfair. *rubs eyes*
