Tuesday, December 05, 2006

C. S. Lewis Meme

I saw this at The Metaphysical Pluralist.

1. What was the first book by Lewis that you ever read?

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

2. What is your favorite book by Lewis?

(A) It alternates between LWW and Till We Have Faces.
My favorite non-fiction work by Lewis is The Discarded Image.

3. How many books by Lewis have you read?

(A) I have read so many I have no notion.

4. What books are they?

(A) Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, God in the Dock, The Abolition of Man, The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain, A Grief Observed, Miracles, The Four Loves, all the Chronicles of Narnia, Till We Have Faces, The Allegory of Love, Surprised by Joy, the 'Space Trilogy', The Pilgrim's Regress, The Discarded Image, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama, An Experiment in Criticism, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, Reflections on the Psalms, Studies in Words, several of the letter collections, several of the essay collections, Spirits in Bondage, etc.

Perhaps it would be easier to list books I certainly have not read: The Personal Heresy and Dymer and the juvenilia are the only ones that come to mind.

5. If C.S. Lewis got in a fight with Francis Schaeffer, who would win?

(A) Lewis; he was more of a figher in any case.

6. What books on Lewis have you read?

(A) I typically eschew books on authors when I can read the authors own works. I've read a few, though -- Lindskroog's works on the Dark Tower controversy, for instance, Carpenter's The Inklings, Sibley's Shadowlands. I've occasionally picked others up, but they mostly seem insipid. The best book on Lewis I've read is only on one facet of his thought, namely, Lionel Adey's C. S. Lewis' 'Great War' with Owen Barfield. The book on Lewis that I haven't read that I most want to read is Reppert's.

7. What made Lewis great?

(A) No one who knows Lewis's life, I think, can give anything other than this: he had excellent friends. He had a talent for making excellent friends, he had a talent for inspiring those friends to greater heights, and he had a talent for being inspired by those friends. These are major gifts, and the mark of them is all over his best work. Would we were all so blessed.