Haven't had time to finish it, but it's here. I'm sure Lewis will be getting an enormous amount of attention in the next few months because of the forthcoming Narnia movie.
Oh! thanks for that link to Gopnik's article on Lewis - I used to look through each issue of The New Yorker, erm, religiously:-), but I've been letting them pile up unread for the last several months, and I'd probably have missed this.
C.S. Lewis had a considerable influence on my thinking and worldview as a young woman (from highschool through college and two years at Episcopalian theological seminaries--30 years ago! Eep!) and now that I find myself, with Dante (and DLS), "in the middle of the journey of our life" and trying to find my way through the dark wood, it's fascinating to look at the lives of some of those writers who had the most effect on me, (CSL, JRRT, and DLS among them) and to view them from a perspective with more life experience of my own now and ask myself if they still seem like people I'd want to hang out with or listen to...and the conversations here on LJ and elsewhere about "the Susan problem" and suchlike have given me lots of food for thought.
I must say I was quite shocked by the one egregious error (more than a Tyop) in the article, where Gopnick refers to widower-CSL's famous book as A Grief Portrayed" rather than A Grief Observed (which is what my old 70's paperback and all the Amazon listings I just checked show for it). I mean, The New Yorkerused to be renowned for its fact-checkers. (Sigh. How are the mighty fallen...)
Thank you for clarifying that, I was wondering if these were two different books: 'A Grief Portrayed' mentioned by Gopnik, and 'A Grief Observed' for sale through Amazon (I googled it and got your lj). So your correction was a big help.
The hardest thing about reading Lewis is that his work seems to strive toward a belief that he knows to be faltering, somehow... I find him unsettling in a way that Rimbaud, at one extreme, or Austen, at another, are not - they aren't trying to believe anything so huge, and hugely broken, as Lewis' Christianity...
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-15 02:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-15 05:14 pm (UTC)C.S. Lewis had a considerable influence on my thinking and worldview as a young woman (from highschool through college and two years at Episcopalian theological seminaries--30 years ago! Eep!) and now that I find myself, with Dante (and DLS), "in the middle of the journey of our life" and trying to find my way through the dark wood, it's fascinating to look at the lives of some of those writers who had the most effect on me, (CSL, JRRT, and DLS among them) and to view them from a perspective with more life experience of my own now and ask myself if they still seem like people I'd want to hang out with or listen to...and the conversations here on LJ and elsewhere about "the Susan problem" and suchlike have given me lots of food for thought.
I must say I was quite shocked by the one egregious error (more than a Tyop) in the article, where Gopnick refers to widower-CSL's famous book as A Grief Portrayed" rather than A Grief Observed (which is what my old 70's paperback and all the Amazon listings I just checked show for it). I mean, The New Yorker used to be renowned for its fact-checkers. (Sigh. How are the mighty fallen...)
HLC in NYC
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-23 11:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-15 05:55 pm (UTC)