Edgar Rice Burroughs was the first author who hooked me on something.
Dickens converted me from that “something” to literature.
C.S. Lewis was my first Master.
Like most readers, I was introduced to Lewis through The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe when I was in elementary school. I didn’t really care for it. No one I knew had read it, so there was no one to talk to about the symbolism or magic, and it didn’t have the type of plot that excited my classmates as much as Tarzan eating the arm of a gorilla.
When I was introduced to it again a few years later, I had already discovered Tolkien, and Narnia doesn’t hold the mystery and depth of Middle Earth.
But my freshman roommate in college loved him, and I gave him another chance, and found myself breaking away from chemistry and calculus every chance I got to read fairy tales.
Far greater analyses than I can hope to produce have been written about the Chronicles of Narnia. All I can hope to add is the encouragement that you should read them in the order written, and read them for what they are: fairy tales, not allegories; original literature; not formulaic best-sellers.
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is the greatest piece of children’s literature I’ve ever found, but I have yet to find a child who’s really enjoyed it it’s read in solitude.
Prince Caspian turned the excitement meter down a little, brought in some of Lewis’ beloved anti-imperialist themes, and didn’t really grab me. But its sequel, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader completely broke from the plot outline of the previous two books, introduced the valiant Reepicheep, and had the best salvation/healing story that’s ever appeared in a novel.
The Silver Chair had another great character and some memorable lines and images, but the story moved a little more slowly than The Dawn Treader, and the mystery was one of those un-solvable revealed-at-the-last-moment things along the lines of Scooby Doo or Harry Potter.
I doubt a modern publisher would allow a series’ author to break from form as much as Lewis did with The Magician’s Nephew and The Horse and His Boy. The first of these takes place before the fantasy world is created, and doesn’t even involve swordplay or a battle. The second doesn’t involve any magic crossing between worlds. They’re both more amazing as publishing masterpieces than as literature in their own right.
I’ve never met a child who’s enjoyed The Last Battle. But every adult I’ve met who’s read it as an adult has loved it.
Reading the whole series took less than a week. Then I was on to his space trilogy and The Abolition of Man.
The space trilogy is probably of little interest to those unfamiliar with science fiction, and, as all science fiction, it seems amazingly dated a generation later.
Out of the Silent Planet is, I’ve heard, the first piece of science fiction to ever posit that earthlings may be more evil than extraterrestrials. It’s clever for its human touches—like the earth team’s inability to categorize Martian “trees”—but the main themes, particularly the opposition to scientific arrogance and imperialism, may be necessary but no longer seem compelling.
Perelandra is the highest of the trilogy from an imaginative or literary perspective. The floating lands of Venus are as beautifully re-created as the battle of wits in the re-imagined Temptation in the Garden. Lewis’ humility as a writer shines through in the final sector of the book as he, thankfully, leaves the glimpses of heaven with brief allusions and returns the hero to earth.
Even though I will agree with anyone who says Perelandra is a better book, I liked That Hideous Strength more. It’s the darkest, the most satirical, and the funniest of Lewis’ books. I’ve read it several times since starting work in professional academia, and have appreciated it more after every nonsensical board meeting.
The Abolition of Man was the first of Lewis’ non-fiction works that I read. With that book, he became my teacher. I felt, for the first time, that I was reading a book someone had written about me. It prompted a spiritual conversion in me. On paper, it looked only like the request for a change of major, but my life has never been the same.
The Screwtape Letters came next, simply because it was famous. It should be more so. It is probably the most condensed exposure you can find to Lewis’ wit, wisdom, and satirical ability, especially if you get an edition that includes “Screwtape’s Toast”. I’ve read it four or five times, and always see new truths. Dozens of authors have ripped off his “letters from a demon” device in vain attempts to update it; all of them fall short.
His autobiography, Surprised by Joy, is the only book of its genre that I’ve truly enjoyed. That doesn’t mean it’s as good as his other books, but that it’s not bad for the type of thing he’s writing. It got me started on George MacDonald, though, so I’m grateful.
In Reflections on the Psalms, Lewis traded his imagination and fun for serious homilies and reflections. It’s a trade down. Again, his boring books are still better than most authors’ best attempts. But it didn’t change my life.
The Four Loves and Miracles have some quotable lines, but the anti-Freudian and anti-Mechanistic analyses make several sections seem unfortunately apologetic. Truth never seems dated, but apologetics do.
That reading list took me less than seven months of my sophomore year of college.
Then it became a little harder to find his books.
I came across The Case for Christianity in an old bookstore, and appreciated his argument for the existence of universal law even though I’d already found it presented in The Abolition of Man. If you can’t find The Case, you can find virtually everything in it repeated nearly verbatim in Mere Christianity.
None of Lewis’ books are praised more highly in Christian circles than Mere Christianity. It’s probably because they think they can use it to convince a non-believing friend. The problem is that it’s like a light bulb: it gives light to those who are already in the room, but castes darker shadows on those who haven’t yet entered.
The Weight of Glory and other addresses, and The Seeing Eye and other essays, The Grand Miracle and other essays, and God in the Dock and other essays area all uneven collections. Of the three, The Weight of Glory is by far the best. In fact, that single essay is probably the best thing he ever wrote. God in the Dock was also memorable, but a lot of the other essays began to run together for me, repeating themes and arguments that I’d already come across in other books.
In college, I read several hundred pages of literary criticism and analyses of medieval and romantic literature. None of it helped me as much as The Discarded Image. If I could, I wouldn’t let anyone read medieval literature without it. The Allegory of Love was also good, along the same theme, but it didn’t reach me as deeply.
An Experiment in Criticism, like The Discarded.. and The Allegory… won’t show up on many bookshelves, but it’s a great book on what it means to read and appreciate literature.
A Preface to ‘Paradise Lost’ combines themes form An Experiment…, The Discarded…, and The Allegory… I appreciated Paradise Lost, but I appreciated it more when I read his Preface, even though I read it afterward.
The Business of Heaven and The Visionary Christian are devotionals compiled from his other writings. If you have an attention span long enough to read this review, skip them and go for the real thing.
In A Grief Observed, Lewis shares reflections and journals from the months after his wife’s death from cancer. I’ve heard from friends who have lost loved ones that it’s helped. I read it not long after falling in love, so I was too happy to appreciate it.
Around this time (year two in my relationship with Lewis’ works), I came across The Dark Tower and other stories. Supposedly, it’s an anthology of manuscripts and unfinished works from Lewis, published posthumously. I’m not a literary scholar, but I can’t believe Lewis wrote them. They’re terrible.
The Problem of Pain was, correctly, played up as his weak spot in the pseudo-bio-pic “Shadowlands”. It’s his weakest popular work. Philip Yancey does the compassion better, and John Piper does the God-glorifying better. I think Lewis was trying too hard to find a middle ground.
Spirits in Bondage, a collection of his poetry, isn’t bad, but I didn’t memorize any of it. He has better lines in his other books.
I’m not big on collections of personal letters or unpublished journals from famous writers; I respect the right to destroy an early draft; but I liked Letters to Children, Letters to an American Lady, and Letters to Malcolm. I doubt I would have enjoyed them as much had I not already gained such a familiarity with the author that I really enjoyed hearing his opinions on everything from which of his books shouldn’t be read to children, to whether men and women can have non-sexual friendships, to creativity and masturbation. Like I said, he had become my Master, and I liked him.
Despite some of the references to the “allegorical” quality of the Chronicles and space trilogy, The Great Divorce and The Pilgrim’s Regress were his only true allegories. The Great Divorce remains the most compelling description of heaven I’ve found outside the Bible. The Pilgrim’s… requires a significant knowledge of 20th-century philosophical trends, but it’s worth the work.
And all that’s left is the magnificently underrated ‘Til We Have Faces. Re-imagining the Book of Job in a mythic pre-Christian Greece, with a female protagonist would have been enough, but to introduce lesbian subtext and gender role discussions and the Psyche/Cupid stuff… If only publishers still believed Christian readers could handle stuff like that! Brilliant!
And then I came to the end.
Two and a half years of reading, and it was over. I discovered Lewis, and finished him in less time than it took to complete a medieval history/philosophy major. Every now and then I hear a quote from him that I don’t recognize, and I’m pretty sure there are essays and academic publications I haven’t read, but I think that might be it.
I graduated from college with the most complete Lewis library of anyone I knew, and no regrets for the time spent with him.
