C.S. Lewis
Dec. 17th, 2013 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jsburbidgeI've been seeing a handful of articles on C.S. Lewis, in this fiftieth year since his death. A good example is this one at The Atlantic.
Now, I'm a strong Inklings reader. I've read not only Lewis' fiction (of which I would most strongly recommend ill We Have Faces, which never shows up in these general articles) but also much of his apologetics, and most of his scholarly work (the two most lasting pieces (even though they need updating) being The Allegory of Love and English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama).
I'm also more than willing to acknowledge the impact Lewis had on later writers. The children-fall-into-another-world model which he basically invented has so many direct descendents (notably Joy Chant, and Pamela Dean's The Hidden Country and following books) that it stands at the head of a whole sub-genre.
But I can't see as reasonable any claim to Lewis' lasting importance. He's very much of an age -- and an age which was already passing away before he left the stage. (He was aware of this, referring to himself in a public speech as a "dinosaur".)
It's not just conservatism: his apologetic writings are ageing much faster than (for example) the work of his equally conservative contemporaries (in terms of main writings) Eric Mascall and Austin Ferrar. Too much of what he wrote assumed the mores of his time as a given; Mascall and Ferrar don't ground what they are writing on generally accepted modes of thought which will change underneath them.
The two surveys I mentioned above will remain valuable -- nobody is likely to do that spadework again, and Lewis was sometimes referred to as the best-read man of his generation -- but will need a superstructure of later qualification for anyone interested in their respective topics.
As far as the stories go: the Narnia books will remain popular for some time, but increasingly read like letters from another world. The narrator is too intrusive: the "common background" he shares with his audience is no longer common, and tourism to to that background isn't the point of the books (as it is with, say Little House on the Prairie or Swallows and Amazons). (By contrast, Tolkien's narratives, which are much more self contained, do not have this sort of issue. The Hobbit does have an intrusive narrator, but not nearly as tied to his own time; Tolkien's narrator establishes familiarity by dragging in the unfamiliar as though it were familiar, rather than by domesticating the unfamiliar by dragging in the familiar.) My guess is that eventually they'll settle in to about the level of E. Nesbit's books (such as The Treasure Seekers (referenced by Lewis in The Magician's Nephew)) which have a perennial market but are hardly dominant.
The interplanetary trilogy really needs an awareness of the Wellsian background against which OOTSP reacts to work; the same holds for the post-war environment in England and the NICE in THS. They remain novels with very strong bits, but their accessibility diminishes with the passage of time. THS is particularly marked by Lewis' old-fashioned (even in his own days) views on female roles and marriage, for all that the book passes the Bechdel test handily. Till We Have Faces will, I think, remain as accessible as it began -- but it has never been among the most popular of his works.
Lewis is not critical enough of his own age and assumptions to distance himself from them (possibly partly because he already saw himself as distanced from them on a whole lot of grounds where he thought it too advanced).
So why this growth in popularity? To explain this, you have to look at what happened to American Evangelicalism in the last fifty years or so. (The same can be said generally of English Evangelicals, but Lewis is more popular in the US than the UK: Amazon.com has Mere Christianity at #474 in Books, and Lewis' apologetic works make up 7 of the top 20 in their category; on Amazon.co.uk it is #1,702 in Books, and his apologetics make up 6 of the top 20 in their category there. Interestingly, the English list includes Screwtape, his most original and still fresh contribution to the category, in the top 20, and the American one does not (it's down at #25).) The Evangelicals basically turned their back on the changing world sometime in the 1960s and created an entire internal culture out of piece-by-piece replacements for elements in the general culture, with their own publishing houses, amusement parks, rock bands, TV stations, and museums. That world blocks out anything disruptive, and it also fetishizes the values of the 1950s, which are seen as a golden era.
Lewis' works -- all of them, pretty well, except for his scholarly work and TWHF -- are marinated in that period. Reading Lewis is like having a small voice over your shoulder whispering, all the time, "these values are normal and sensible". Is it any wonder that he's popular with people who would like nothing more than to pack up and move to an idealized version of that same time?
In the end, it probably makes more sense to think of Lewis as a 20th Century parallel to one of his favourite 19th century authors, George MacDonald -- good enough to have a continuing popularity (and to stay in print) in the long term, but not an important thinker or a major writer, regardless of the short-term ups and downs of his popularity.
Now, I'm a strong Inklings reader. I've read not only Lewis' fiction (of which I would most strongly recommend ill We Have Faces, which never shows up in these general articles) but also much of his apologetics, and most of his scholarly work (the two most lasting pieces (even though they need updating) being The Allegory of Love and English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama).
I'm also more than willing to acknowledge the impact Lewis had on later writers. The children-fall-into-another-world model which he basically invented has so many direct descendents (notably Joy Chant, and Pamela Dean's The Hidden Country and following books) that it stands at the head of a whole sub-genre.
But I can't see as reasonable any claim to Lewis' lasting importance. He's very much of an age -- and an age which was already passing away before he left the stage. (He was aware of this, referring to himself in a public speech as a "dinosaur".)
It's not just conservatism: his apologetic writings are ageing much faster than (for example) the work of his equally conservative contemporaries (in terms of main writings) Eric Mascall and Austin Ferrar. Too much of what he wrote assumed the mores of his time as a given; Mascall and Ferrar don't ground what they are writing on generally accepted modes of thought which will change underneath them.
The two surveys I mentioned above will remain valuable -- nobody is likely to do that spadework again, and Lewis was sometimes referred to as the best-read man of his generation -- but will need a superstructure of later qualification for anyone interested in their respective topics.
As far as the stories go: the Narnia books will remain popular for some time, but increasingly read like letters from another world. The narrator is too intrusive: the "common background" he shares with his audience is no longer common, and tourism to to that background isn't the point of the books (as it is with, say Little House on the Prairie or Swallows and Amazons). (By contrast, Tolkien's narratives, which are much more self contained, do not have this sort of issue. The Hobbit does have an intrusive narrator, but not nearly as tied to his own time; Tolkien's narrator establishes familiarity by dragging in the unfamiliar as though it were familiar, rather than by domesticating the unfamiliar by dragging in the familiar.) My guess is that eventually they'll settle in to about the level of E. Nesbit's books (such as The Treasure Seekers (referenced by Lewis in The Magician's Nephew)) which have a perennial market but are hardly dominant.
The interplanetary trilogy really needs an awareness of the Wellsian background against which OOTSP reacts to work; the same holds for the post-war environment in England and the NICE in THS. They remain novels with very strong bits, but their accessibility diminishes with the passage of time. THS is particularly marked by Lewis' old-fashioned (even in his own days) views on female roles and marriage, for all that the book passes the Bechdel test handily. Till We Have Faces will, I think, remain as accessible as it began -- but it has never been among the most popular of his works.
Lewis is not critical enough of his own age and assumptions to distance himself from them (possibly partly because he already saw himself as distanced from them on a whole lot of grounds where he thought it too advanced).
So why this growth in popularity? To explain this, you have to look at what happened to American Evangelicalism in the last fifty years or so. (The same can be said generally of English Evangelicals, but Lewis is more popular in the US than the UK: Amazon.com has Mere Christianity at #474 in Books, and Lewis' apologetic works make up 7 of the top 20 in their category; on Amazon.co.uk it is #1,702 in Books, and his apologetics make up 6 of the top 20 in their category there. Interestingly, the English list includes Screwtape, his most original and still fresh contribution to the category, in the top 20, and the American one does not (it's down at #25).) The Evangelicals basically turned their back on the changing world sometime in the 1960s and created an entire internal culture out of piece-by-piece replacements for elements in the general culture, with their own publishing houses, amusement parks, rock bands, TV stations, and museums. That world blocks out anything disruptive, and it also fetishizes the values of the 1950s, which are seen as a golden era.
Lewis' works -- all of them, pretty well, except for his scholarly work and TWHF -- are marinated in that period. Reading Lewis is like having a small voice over your shoulder whispering, all the time, "these values are normal and sensible". Is it any wonder that he's popular with people who would like nothing more than to pack up and move to an idealized version of that same time?
In the end, it probably makes more sense to think of Lewis as a 20th Century parallel to one of his favourite 19th century authors, George MacDonald -- good enough to have a continuing popularity (and to stay in print) in the long term, but not an important thinker or a major writer, regardless of the short-term ups and downs of his popularity.
