I’m finally
reviewing my favorite book of 2021.
Volume One of the
Letters of C.S. Lewis covers his early life and ends with his conversion. In
Volume Two (1931-1949), we see how he
grows in his faith and begins writing his fiction and his apologetical books. I
was drawn in from the very first letter and was kept interested by the variety
of his correspondents and his overwhelming kindness and humility. I was taken aback
initially by a bawdy joke he included in a letter to his brother, but chortled at
his nickname for a project in which he was unwillingly involved (The
Oxford
History
of
English
Literature) that he referred to as “O Hell!”
There is much
to savor in this volume: details of his friendship with Tolkien, his unbelievable patience
with Jane (a cantankerous woman who was Lewis’ houseguest until the end of
her life), his gentle, wise responses to people who asked him questions about
his faith, and the endless list of books he was reading.
In spite of
his brilliance as a thinker and writer, his letters are infused with a guilelessness
that is disarming. He wrote to a Catholic nun on August 9, 1939, Though
I’m forty years old as a man, I’m only about twelve as a Christian, so it would
be a maternal act if you found time to sometimes mention me in your prayers.
In another letter
written in April of 1935, he is renewing an old acquaintance and sums up his
life simply, My father is dead and my brother has retired from the army and
now lives with us…. I am going bald. I am a Christian. Professionally I am
chiefly a medievalist.
As his fame
grew, he was answering seven letters a day year-round and his brother, Warnie,
began helping. Thank goodness hundreds and hundreds of those letters have been
preserved for posterity. This book was a thousand pages and I loved every one of them.
I was fortunate to pick this up when it was being offered for a few dollars on Kindle. When I investigated the possibility of purchasing hard covers for my permanent library, I found they are way out of my price range. Happily, the Kindle prices, though still high, are more accessible.
Volume 1 and
Volume 3 may be my big splurges for 2022.
Blessings,
2 comments:
I have all three in my Kindle app and hope to at least read the first one this year. When I have seen excerpts of his letters here and there, I have been amazed at how literary he can sound even in just everyday correspondence. I did read his Letters to Children a few years ago. I was amazed as well at how, in them and the Narnia books, he could communicate so well to children. Yet he could also write over my head in some of his essays.
For such a learned man he oozed humility. I think the fact that he can write books that captivate children as well as satisfy an intellectual comes out of that place of humility, too.
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