Screwtape

Justin Taylor has found that John Cleese's reading of The Screwtape Letters, once available on cassette, but not yet on CD, can be downloaded from Audible.com for $10.49. That is a bargain - Cleese is the perfect reader for Screwtape's letters to his nephew, Junior Tempter Wormwood.

In the very first letter, Screwtape advises that Wormwood should emphasize jargon, not logic, as he attempts to prevent the conversion of his "patient" to Christianity:

...Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous - that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.

The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy's own ground. He can argue too; whereas in really practical propaganda of the kind I am suggesting He has been shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior of Our Father Below. By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it "real life" and don't let him ask what he means by "real".

If you've never read it, then listen to it in this great recording or read The Screwtape Lettersthe old fashioned way for about the same cost.

Between Two Worlds: John Cleese Reading Screwtape Letters

Is Mere Christianity too hard?

Reflecting on his experience with college students, Andrew Cuneo has found that many of them find C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity too difficult and its approach unpersuasive:

...[T]he amazing thing (to my mind) is that a book once considered - and vilified - as a work of popular apologetics has come to be seen as exceedingly intellectual. The young minds of today’s universities find the book too argumentative, too predicated upon logic, and so one must ask about the book as well as the Christian belief proposed: is it too hard?

For full disclosure, I will note that it is not only students at my former university, Hillsdale College, who prompted the question. Whether I tutored students from Calvin College, Wheaton College, Williams College, Boston College - choose what you like - the unexpected feedback was that as admirable as Mere Christianity is, it might be pitched too high for today’s audience. ....

A syllogistic proof, a tight argument, an extended discourse, for whatever reason, simply doesn’t seem to move most students. Alas, too often they fail to perceive the argument in the first place. Once they do, they often find argument as a species too immaterial or hopelessly abstract. On the other hand and to their credit, a contemporary student is much more likely to be moved by personal narrative or an emotional appeal: by passion (reasoned or not), enthusiasm, and sincerity of purpose. What this means for their assessment of Lewis’s apologetics is then clear: too hard, too logical. Books like Mere Christianity, for them, take some wading and books like The Abolition of Man and Miracles are about beyond the pale for all but senior-year students. Such is the feedback from my approximately ten years of teaching and tutoring. ....

There is something about the temperament of the soul of the young that makes our age distinct from Lewis’s. I am here reminded of Chesterton’s observation that a cultural loss of faith makes that culture fall back upon reason, and a loss of reason makes it fall back upon emotion; and emotion, as Lewis points out so well in Abolition, is extremely easy to manipulate when it is a prime determinant in decision-making. One has to be thankful, then, that so many of Lewis’s non-apologetic works employ emotional and imaginative power to sway a generation and culture that does still eagerly enjoy narrative, story, art, and advertisement. .... [more]

Is he right? I am curious about whether recent college students agree. I used certain Lewis essays with high school students in my political science classes and they seemed to find them accessible.

C. S. Lewis Blog: Is Mere Christianity Hard or Easy?

Pauline Baynes, RIP

Brian Sibley appreciates the life and work of Pauline Baynes, who died on August 1:

After producing illustrations for various books of fairy tales, Pauline Baynes' career was established when, in 1949, J R R Tolkien's publishers showed the author of The Hobbit a portfolio of her artwork. Tolkien had written Farmer Giles of Ham, a fanciful novella with a faux-medieval setting, and being dissatisfied with the pictures that had been produced for the book was looking for a new illustrator.

Pauline produced a series of witty line illustrations that perfectly caught the essence of Tolkien's story to an extent that he declared them to be "more than illustrations, they are a collateral theme." He also delighted in reporting that friends had said that the pictures had reduced his text to "a commentary on the drawings"! ....

It was the beginning of a long friendship between author and illustrator with Pauline decorating Tolkien's subsequent books, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Smith of Wootton Major. ....

It was the collaboration with Tolkien that resulted in Pauline's subsequent association with the septet of children's novels by C S Lewis beginning with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and known, collectively, as The Chronicles of Narnia. ....

The illustrations for the Lewis books contributed significantly to their success and now are inseparable from the text, but she illustrated over a hundred other books....

Thanks to Will Vaus for the reference.

Brian Sibley: PAULINE BAYNES: QUEEN OF NARNIA AND MIDDLE-EARTH

"The echo of a tune we have not heard"

In Christianity Today, an excerpt from Mere Christians: Inspiring Stories of Encounters with C. S. Lewis: Philip Yancey's description of how Lewis's books influenced him and his writing. A portion from "Found in Space":

I first encountered C. S. Lewis through his space trilogy. Though perhaps not his best work, it had an undermining effect on me. He made the supernatural so believable that I could not help wondering, What if it's really true? What if there is a God and an afterlife and what if supernatural forces really are operating behind the scenes on this planet and in my life? ....

Alone of modern authors, Lewis taught me to anticipate heaven: "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea."

Lewis saw the world as a place worth saving. Unlike the monastics of the Middle Ages and the legalists of modern times, he saw no need to withdraw and deny all pleasures. He loved a stiff drink, a puff on the pipe, a gathering of friends, a Wagnerian opera, a hike in the fields of Oxford. The pleasures in life are indeed good, just not good enough; they are "only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."

I found in Lewis that rare and precarious balance of embracing the world while not idolizing it. For all its defects, this planet bears marks of the original design, traces of Beauty and Joy that both recall and anticipate the Creator's intent. .... [more]

Found in Space | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Lessons of Chivalry

The Inklings gives us "Michael Ward on Prince Caspian" from the May 14, 2008 Los Angeles Times. Michael Ward is the author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis. Excerpts:

As a believer in Natural Moral Law, C.S. Lewis thought that certain things were naturally good and other things were naturally bad. It wasn't just a question of human beings deciding what was good and what was bad. The very nature of the universe tells us something about how we ought to live.

One such thing it tells us to avoid - and where necessary to engage and defeat - is tyranny. In "Prince Caspian," Narnia suffers under a cruel, murderous tyrant, Miraz. His regime is not just an awkward political fact; it is a natural outrage. ....

This does not mean that one kind of tyranny is replaced by another. It means that strength can be justifiably put in the service of liberty and justice to restore the natural rule of law. As a seriously wounded veteran of World War I, Lewis knew all too well the horrors and stupidities of armed conflict. And, he was most certainly no warmonger. But he also felt that war could sometimes be warranted. ....

The world of "Prince Caspian" is not a chaos, but a cosmos, a carefully structured world, both morally and materially, in which all individuals and events have spiritual significance. The story reflects Lewis's belief that the real world, too, is ordered and coherent, all the way up to the planets and stars. "The heavens are telling the glory of God," according to the words of his favorite Biblical psalm. It is the glory of God's natural law, he believed, to pull down the overly mighty from their thrones and exalt the humble and meek. The knight saves us from a world "divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable" - so Lewis wrote in "The Necessity of Chivalry." And the lessons of chivalry, mercy, liberty and justice from "Prince Caspian" are more than ever necessary in our troubled world today. [more]

Scary and intense - but not gory

Some of us have been rather concerned that Guillermo del Toro, given his answer - "I was never into heroic fantasy. At all. I don't like little guys and dragons, hairy feet, hobbits - I've never been into that at all. I don't like sword and sorcery, I hate all that stuff," was probably a pretty bad choice to direct the Hobbit films. An interview with del Toro and Peter Jackson is reassuring. They touch on many aspects of their plans for The Hobbit. Mr. del Toro reveals that he has been a fan of the Tolkien book since he was eleven. I've excerpted below some of the answers particularly focusing on his plans for Smaug:

WetaHost - ...My question is to Guillermo, what can we expect from your vision and approach with this picture and I'm guessing there will be alot of dark elements to this film, but how far will you go in terms of horror and violence?

Guillermo del Toro - I hope that Mirkwood can be pretty scary but not graphic, I hope "Riddles in the Dark" has an element of fear and suspense and to be deeply atmospheric but still allow the ingenious, engaging contest to take place. And Smaug should be all shock and awe when he unleashes his anger so, it will be pretty intense but not gory. [....]

WetaHost - In the Hobbit book, we have talking trolls and the Eagles and Smaug talks as well, however in the LOTR Trilogy, trolls did no more than grunt, Fellbeasts screamed, and the Eagles, who were meant to talk, just stayed silent. How much will the portrayal of such animals change in The Hobbit?

Guillermo del Toro - I think it should be done exactly as in the book- the “talking beast” motif has to exist already to allow for that great character that is Smaug. It is far more jarring to have a linear movie and then – out of the blue – a talking Dragon. [....]

WetaHost - I always thought creating Gollum would pose a great artisic challenge to the artists whose job it would be to adapt the Lord of the Rings. With The Hobbit I believe Smaug will pose one of the great challenges. Now we have all seen dragons in movies. But for The Hobbit I personally am expecting nothing less than unbelievable. ....

Guillermo del Toro - .... Smaug should not be "the Dragon in the Hobbit movie" as if it was just "another" creature in a Bestiary. Smaug should be "The DRAGON" for all movies past and present. The shadow he cast and the greed he comes to embody- the "need to own" casts its long shadow and creates a thematic/dramatic continuity of sorts that articulates the story throughout.

In that respect, Smaug the CHARACTER is as important, if not more important, than the design. The character will emerge from the writing - and in that the magnificent arrogance, intelligence, sophistication and greed of Smaug shine through-

In fact, Thorin's greed is a thematic extension of this and Bilbo's "Letting go" and his noble switching of sides when the dwarves prove to be in the wrong is its conceptual counterpart (that is a hard one to get through, Bilbo's heroism is a quiet, moral one) and the thematic thread reaches its climax in the Bilbo/Thorin death bed scene.

Anyway, back to Smaug: One of the main mistakes with talking dragons is to shape the mouth like a snub Simian one in order to achieve a dubious lip-synch. .. A point which eluded me particularly in Eragon, since their link is a psychic one.

To me, Smaug is the perfect example of a great creature defined by its look and design, yes, but also, very importantly, by his movement and - one little hint - its environment - Think about it... the way he is scaled, moves and is lit, limited or enhanced by his location, weather conditions, light conditions, time of the year, etc. That's all I can say without spoilers but, if you keep this curious little summary you'll realize several years form now that those things I had in my mind ever since doodling the character as a kid had solidified waaay before starting the shoot of the film. [the interview]

Weta Holics: Updates and News about what's happening @ Weta - An Unexpected Party Chat transcript now available!

C.S. Lewis for adults

Via Evangelical Outpost, Agent Intellect has noticed the attention the Narnia books have received because of the films, but

I thought it would be a good idea to draw attention to his fictional works written for adults, which I appreciate much more.

And so he does.

Agent Intellect: C. S. Lewis's Fiction for Adults

"Is it easy to love God?"

From Timothy Keller's The Reason for God [pp. 47-50]:

One of the principles of love—either love for a friend or romantic love—is that you have to lose independence to attain greater intimacy. If you want the "freedoms" of love—the fulfillment, security, sense of worth that it brings—you must limit your freedom in many ways. You cannot enter a deep relationship and still make unilateral decisions or allow your friend or lover no say in how you live your life. To experience the joy and freedom of love, you must give up your personal autonomy. The French novelist Francoise Sagan expressed this well in an interview in Le Monde. She expressed that she was satisfied with the way she had lived her life and had no regrets:

Interviewer: Then you have had the freedom you wanted?
Sagan: Yes ... I was obviously less free when I was in love with someone. . . . But one's not in love all the time. Apart from that . . . I'm free.

Sagan is right. A love relationship limits your personal options. Again we are confronted with the complexity of the concept of "freedom." Human beings are most free and alive in relationships of love. We only become ourselves in love, and yet healthy love relationships involve mutual, unselfish service, a mutual loss of independence. C. S. Lewis put it eloquently:

Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.

Freedom, then, is not the absence of limitations and constraints but it is finding the right ones, those that fit our nature and liberate us.

For a love relationship to be healthy there must be a mutual loss of independence. It can't be just one way. Both sides must say to the other, "I will adjust to you. I will change for you. I'll serve you even though it means a sacrifice for me." If only one party does all the sacrificing and giving, and the other does all the ordering and taking, the relationship will be exploitative and will oppress and distort the lives of both people.

At first sight, then, a relationship with God seems inherently dehumanizing. Surely it will have to be "one way," God's way. God, the divine being, has all the power. I must adjust to God—there is no way that God could adjust to and serve me.

While this may be true in other forms of religion and belief in God, it is not true in Christianity. In the most radical way, God has adjusted to us—in his incarnation and atonement. In Jesus Christ he became a limited human being, vulnerable to suffering and death. On the cross, he submitted to our condition—as sinners—and died in our place to forgive us. In the most profound way, God has said to us, in Christ, "I will adjust to you. I will change for you. I'll serve you though it means a sacrifice for me." If he has done this for us, we can and should say the same to God and others. St. Paul writes, "the love of Christ constrains us" (2 Corinthians 5:14).

A friend of C. S. Lewis's was once asked, "Is it easy to love God?" and he replied, "It is easy to those who do it." That is not as paradoxical as it sounds. When you fall deeply in love, you want to please the beloved. You don't wait for the person to ask you to do something for her. You eagerly research and learn every little thing that brings her pleasure. Then you get it for her, even if it costs you money or great inconvenience. "Your wish is my command," you feel—and it doesn't feel oppressive at all. From the outside, bemused friends may think, "She's leading him around by the nose," but from the inside it feels like heaven.

For a Christian, it's the same with Jesus. The love of Christ constrains. Once you realize how Jesus changed for you and gave himself for you, you aren't afraid of giving up your freedom and therefore finding your freedom in him.

Better on film

Frederica Mathewes-Green likes the movie of Prince Caspian better than C.S. Lewis's book:

Every once in awhile, a movie improves on the book on which it is based. In my bold opinion, Prince Caspian, the second Disney film drawn from C. S. Lewis’s beloved Chronicles of Narnia, is such a movie. Criticism of C. S. Lewis is rightly taboo, but facts are facts: Prince Caspian, the book, is a dud.

It was the second to be written in the series, and it’s rushed and thin. You’ll remember from the first book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, that the four Pevensie siblings find their way into the land of Narnia through a mysterious wardrobe. In Prince Caspian they are called back to Narnia again, where they must help young Prince Caspian claim his rightful throne. Unfortunately, they land nowhere near Caspian, so most of the book is occupied with the Pevensies’ struggle to cross mountains and rivers to get to him. (The action also pauses for four chapters so that a dwarf can fill us in on Prince Caspian’s life so far.) When they finally meet Caspian there is a brief battle and a happy ending, and before you know it you’re running into the opening pages of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (a much better book).

Prince Caspian, the movie, fixes all this. It knits a whole lot more story around that spare frame, and the plot gains traction while the characters gain complexity. The movie is just plain better than the book.

She has surveyed friends to find other instances where the "movie trumps book." I enjoyed some of the books more than she, or her friends, did - perhaps because I read them before seeing the movies. A few of their nominations [I've provided links to Amazon for a few of them]:

The Godfather. The movie is something magnificent — those sets, those actors, that whole heady atmosphere, marching steadily and inexorably to beautiful tragedy. I wonder if it is the sheer richness that viewers appreciated, in contrast to the book. Mario Puzo conceived of good scenes, but the big screen provided more punch.

Perhaps for similar reasons, a number of classic noir movies were nominated as being better than their books. The foggy-lonely-street-lamp look of films like The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon established a kind of atmosphere that didn’t come across on the page. Take a look at Hitchcock’s brilliant The 39 Steps, darting from a clamorous London music hall to the moonlit wilds of Scotland, and then open John Buchan’s thin novel. Then close it. ....

Blade Runner. The movie was based on a short story by sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick, and some respondents cited another of his works, Minority Report. There were a number of authors whose books kept cropping up like this — Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, Stephen King, John Grisham, and Robert Ludlum, among others. Some authors have terrific ideas, but don’t express them at the acme of perfection. A creative filmmaker can draw on original raw material and produce something more satisfying. ....

The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Them’s fightin’ words, I know. Among respondents there was a feeling that the series, as J. R. R. Tolkien wrote it, is just plain ponderous. .... Director Peter Jackson had a better idea. He saw the essential beauty of the story, and brought it to the screen unimpeded.

The situation is nearly opposite with The Chronicles of Narnia. While Tolkien’s works are vast and grave, Lewis’s Narnia stories feel unaffected, sympathetic, homey. If in The Lord of the Rings someone is always swinging an axe at the head of a monster, in The Chronicles of Narnia he is getting out of the rain, warming up by the fire, and having some tea and biscuits. I think that Lewis had a better knack for storytelling than Tolkien did....

But as charming as the Narnia stories are, the movies give them more body, more strength. ....

It’s entertaining to think of movies that excel their sources, if only because they aren’t that common. Most of the time, the book is better than the movie, if only because greater length allows for greater depth. That depth doesn’t always happen; sometimes there’s more potential than the author explored, as with Prince Caspian. But the names of movies that came nowhere near the achievement of the book are too numerous to list. I’ll close with just one example: The Greatest Story Ever Told. [the article]

Frederica Mathewes-Green on Film Adaptations on National Review Online

Movies that redeem the time

Philip Anschutz is the billionaire, and Christian, whose companies are responsible for Amazing Grace, The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Prince Caspian [in theatres this Friday], the upcoming [2009] film of C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, and much else - none rated "R". Christianity Today profiled him today:

Anschutz, 69, now owns two production companies—the family-friendly Walden Media and the more broadly focused Bristol Bay Productions. The companies' creative teams have brought us such films as Amazing Grace, Charlotte's Web, Bridge to Terabithia, Ray, and, most prominently, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the first of seven planned movies based on C. S. Lewis's beloved Chronicles of Narnia. The second Narnia film, Prince Caspian, is due this month. Bristol Bay is also adapting The Screwtape Letters for the big screen, likely due in 2009.

Such cinematic bounty is a result not just of Anschutz's deep pockets: he's also a lifelong film buff committed to bringing more wholesome options to the local multiplex. ....

Anschutz and his wife, both Presbyterians, attend a local church and support various local charities, including Step 13, a Denver home for alcoholic men.

One longtime friend says Anschutz's faith informs everything he does.

"His set of values and beliefs permeates his life," said Jim Monaghan, a spokesman who has worked with Anschutz for 24 years. "He is a composite of religious values, ethics, and morals, but he doesn't wear it on his sleeve. He walks the talk." ....

Douglas Gresham, C. S. Lewis's stepson, who manages much of the Lewis estate, says he decided to sell the film rights to the Narnia franchise to Walden because he liked their vision—and Anschutz.

"The main reason I went with Walden," he told CT Movies in 2005, "is because of their mandate to produce good, entertaining movies that also educate, not merely in factual matters, but in matters of ethics and values and morality.

"But the clincher for me was meeting Phil Anschutz, and growing to respect him enormously and spending time in prayer with him. Walden Media has exactly the right idea what we should be using cinema for." Which is exactly what Anschutz wanted. [the article]

Hollywood Hellfighter | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Staying true

An interview with Andrew Adamson, director of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and the soon-to-be-released [May 16] Prince Caspian. One of the answers:

Christian readers are among the most devoted Narnia fans, and Lewis is revered in evangelical circles. Do you feel any sort of responsibility to the Christian audience?

I feel my responsibility to C. S. Lewis's fans is just being true to the books, and letting people take from it what they will. What you take from it depends on your belief, and how much interpretation you place upon it. I think by staying true to the book, I'm staying true to what any fan gets from the book. [the interview]

Interviews: The Weight of Story | Christianity Today Movies

Twelve spiritual lessons from "Prince Caspian"

The film of C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian is about to appear in the theaters [May 16], and Beliefnet offers "Twelve Spiritual Lessons from Prince Caspian.

Throughout the series, and in "Prince Caspian" in particular, the main characters face a series of life-changing situations and learn many things about themselves and others. Click through this gallery of photos from the new movie, and find out more about the world of "Prince Caspian" and the spiritual wisdom we can gain as we revisit the land of Narnia. [link]

Thanks to Joe Carter for the reference.

Top 12 Spiritual Lessons From 'Prince Caspian', 12 Spiritual Lessons from 'Prince Caspian' - Beliefnet.com

Orthodoxy

G.K. Chesterton is an author whose books can be profitably read by any Christian. He was Catholic but is admired as a Christian apologist by believers who are not. C.S. Lewis, for instance, listed Chesterton's Everlasting Man as one of the books that had influenced him the most.

Todd Kappelman at Probe Ministries recommends him to anyone who admires C.S. Lewis. He describes Chesterton's achievements:

Until his death at the age of seventy-two, Chesterton was a dominant figure in England and a staunch defender of the faith, and Christian orthodoxy, as well as an enthusiastic member of the Roman Catholic church. In addition to nearly one hundred books, he wrote for over seventy-five British periodicals and fifty American publications. He wrote literary criticism, religious and philosophical argumentation, biographies, plays, poetry, nonsense verse, detective stories, novels, short stories, and economic, political, and social commentaries.

An excellent introduction to Chesterton can be found in a book titled Orthodoxy, published in the United States in 1908, and affectionately dedicated to his mother. [more]

Orthodoxy was published one hundred years ago. James V. Schall recommends it as a book that repays many re-readings:

Orthodoxy is an intellectual autobiography, an intellectual treat. It is not, as Chesterton says, about whether the faith is true or not, but about how he came to believe that it is. In coming to believe in Christianity, Chesterton, as he tells us, did not read a single Christian book in the process. Rather, he read book after book of those who maintained that Christianity could not possibly be true. After he had read many of these tractates, he suddenly realized that the intellectual opponents of Christianity were constantly contradicting themselves about what they were opposing. Chesterton, the most logical of men, figured that anything so odd as to be opposed for the exact opposite reasons must either be quite strange or, in fact, rather normal and true. ....

The book is essentially about what it is to be sane, normal, to see the world as ordinary people see it. The scientific mind has its own foibles, which Chesterton has great fun pointing out. Chesterton is not "anti-scientific," but he is devastating with science when it is not itself reasonable. .... [more]

A good source for all things Chesterton is The American Chesterton Society, which is advertising a conference celebrating the centennial of Orthodoxy and has a multitude of links, including a collection of quotations, from among which I offer the following:

"If there were no God, there would be no atheists." - Where All Roads Lead, 1922

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." - Chapter 5, What's Wrong With The World, 1910

"The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden." - ILN 1-3-20

"Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it." - Autobiography, 1937

I have previously recommended Chesterton's Father Brown detective stories. His apologetics are just as enjoyable and probably more profitable.

Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog: Schall on the 100th anniversary of "Orthodoxy"

Can this possibly work out well?

Guillermo del Toro has been selected to direct the planned Hobbit movies [produced by Peter Jackson]. This makes del Toro seem like kind of a doubtful choice...

...[H]asn't anybody noticed that del Toro has repeatedly said he doesn't like Tolkien, and that he never finished reading "The Lord of the Rings"? Here's what he told me in Cannes in 2006, when I asked him about the influence of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis on his own work: "I was never into heroic fantasy. At all. I don't like little guys and dragons, hairy feet, hobbits - I've never been into that at all. I don't like sword and sorcery, I hate all that stuff."

Let's see, he doesn't like "little guys and dragons" or hairy-footed hobbits, and "The Hobbit" would be a movie about what, exactly? ....

Thanks to Peter Suderman at The American Scene for the reference.

Guillermo del Toro to make "Hobbit" films: Bleah! - Beyond the Multiplex - Salon.com

Tolkien on anti-Semitism

Tolkien was wonderfully unambiguous when, before World War II, a German publisher asked him whether he was "Aryan." From IYOV [quoting from the introduction to Beowulf and the Critics]:

In 1938, Tolkien had written a razor-tongued reply to the German firm Rütten und Loening Verlag, who, upon negotiating the publication of a German translation of The Hobbit, dared to ask Tolkien if he was "arisch" [Aryan]. Tolkien replied with insulting philological precision that since he was not aware that any of his "ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects," he could not claim to be Aryan. He adds, "but if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people." He then continues with an explanation of his German name (Tolkien's ancestors immigrated to England in the eighteenth century), and closes with the following:

I have been accustomed . . . to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war . . . . I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

In a letter to his own publishers about the same issue Tolkien calls the German race laws "lunatic" and notes "I do not regard the (probable absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable . . . and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine." ....

Thanks to Mark Olson for the reference.

Iyov: Tolkien on anti-Semitism and racism

"I am the kind of Christian I am...."

C.S. Lewis's influence on John Mark Reynolds was very much like Lewis's influence on me and a great many others. Reynolds:

...I am a Christian in great part because of the role his works had in shaping my imagination. I am the kind of Christian I am, because Lewis wrote and lived as he did. [....]

C.S. Lewis was the first writer who inspired me to read all of his works . . . or at least all his works I could find.

Reynolds blogs about C.S. Lewis: Five Books That Changed My Life and gives the reasons for his choices. Here are his five:

1. That Hideous Strength
2. The Abolition of Man
3. Voyage of the Dawn Treader
4. Perelandra
5. The Last Battle

He challenges each of us to choose five.

As I tried to do that I found it impossible. I admire the five he chose and for much the same reasons he gives. The first book by Lewis that I read was Mere Christianity - it provided a reasonable explanation of Christian orthodoxy at a time when that was very much what I needed. Then, like Reynolds, I read everything I could get my hands on. Choosing only five is too hard.

C.S. Lewis: Five Books that Changed My Life | The Scriptorium Daily: Middlebrow

In May

An introduction to C.S. Lewis

I've read C.S. Lewis since high school and have on my bookshelves almost everything he wrote, and - until it became almost impossible to keep up - most that was written about him. His ideas have influenced how I think about just about everything. My friends know this and so I wasn't surprised to get an email from a good friend asking my opinion about C.S. Lewis & Narnia For Dummies by Richard Wagner. She had seen it in a display at Border's and wondered if it might be a good introduction for her sons. My only experience with the "Dummies" books dated back to when I was belatedly trying to learn something about computers and the internet and I had then found the books quite useful. I had not realized how extensive their subject matter has now become.

It is not a book for the very young, but for anyone else who knows little or nothing about Lewis, C.S. Lewis & Narnia For Dummies is a pretty good introduction [even with a few discrepancies and minor errors]. It includes biographical information and material about the Narnia books - as its title describes - but also leads the curious much further, into Lewis's other fiction and his apologetics.

In one of the appendices, Wagner provides what he calls "road maps" for the interested new Lewis reader. They struck me as a pretty good way to begin to enjoy CSL. First, what Wagner calls "The Tour de Lewis":

Perhaps you started reading a Lewis book in the past and gave up. If so, I recommend that you take the Tour de Lewis approach: Start out with the easier reads and save the more challenging books for later, when you're more familiar with Lewis's subject matter and writing style. The lists below include of some of the author's most well-known books. I've divided them into three groups, divvied up according to level of difficulty and overall must-read status. (Within each group, I order the books from the least to the most difficult.)

Start off by reading the "essential" Lewis books:

• The Chronicles of Narnia
• The Screwtape Letters
• The Great Divorce
• Mere Christianity

Move on to other works of Lewis that are more complex but still highly understandable:

• Perelandra (or the entire space trilogy, if you're into fantasy)
• The Problem of Pain
• The Four Loves
• Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
• Surprised by Joy
• A Grief Observed

If you've made it this far, keep going! With a solid Lewis foundation, you can tackle his most challenging works:

• The Abolition of Man
• The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses
• The World's Last Night and Other Essays
• Till We Have Faces
• Miracles

By following the Tour de Lewis approach, you familiarize yourself with Lewis's writing style and vocabulary slowly, so that by the time you get to Miracles, you may even be philosophizing with your friends and family!

And another "road map" about Lewis's Christianity:

Perhaps you're new to Lewis and are curious about his personal path from atheism to Christianity and the reasons that lead to his conversion. If so, I offer a suggested road map through several of Lewis's meatiest works to explore his arguments for the truth of Christianity. The list starts with the following:

• Mere Christianity
• The Abolition of Man
• The Problem of Pain
• Miracles
• Surprised by Joy

After you've tackled the five core books above, I recommend rounding out your exploration of Lewis by reading, along with other classics, his fictional books that help underscore the truth of Christianity:

• Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength
• The Chronicles of Narnia
• The Screwtape Letters
• The Great Divorce
• The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses
• The World's Last Night and Other Essays
• The Pilgrim's Regress
• Till We Have Faces

Re-imagined - not re-tooled

Fred Sanders on the Inklings:

It's hard to account for just how much influence continues to stream from that little group of writers called the Inklings. Never mind that the works of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien have survived into the twenty-first century in the unlikely form of Hollywood blockbusters trailing cash and merchandise as far as the eye can see. The most influential of the Inklings were Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams, and their power of influence can be stated this way: they communicated versions of Christianity that proved interesting to the modern mind. [....]

J. R. R. Tolkien's thought was, What if you treated Christianity as if it were a sprawling saga? And the next thing you know, Tolkien's imagination had not only created a whole fully-articulated sub-creation, filled with characters of mythic proportion put in place by inconceivably long and complex lines of development, but had also ennobled the real world we live in together. Immerse yourself in Tolkien's middle earth and you find the moral colorings of your own world more vivid, the stakes of the game higher, history more pregnant with meaning, and the flat sky overhead giving way to heavens over heavens over heavens, infinite miles below a distant Illuvatar who framed the worlds in song. Christianity's not a sprawling epic, exactly, but the association brings out things that need to be noted.

C. S. Lewis' bright idea was, "What if Christianity were a fairy tale?" And he worked out the basic idea in the Chronicles of Narnia, where adventures can happen under the watchful eye of a divine Lion. In his non-fiction work, he was very careful with the notion of fairy tale, insisting that Christianity tells the fairy story that is true, the myth that became fact without losing any of its world-defining power as myth. But the Narnian ethos informs everything about his way of being Christian. For Lewis, even the presence of Christians in the world - certainly the presence of conspicuously saintly ones - is almost like the presence of the fairy folk among us: "Every now and then one meets them. Their very voices and faces are different from ours; stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant. They begin where most of us leave off. They are, I say, recognisable; but you must know what to look for." Being holy, Lewis says, "is rather like joining a secret society." "It must be great fun," he concludes, putting the finishing touch on a kind of Christianity that begins "once upon a time," ends "happily ever after," and in the in between time, under the mercy, is as tough-minded as it is tender-hearted. [....]

.... Tolkien imagined Christianity as a saga, Lewis imagined it as a fairy tale, and Williams imagined it as a ghost story. They didn't make the classic liberal mistake of re-tooling Christianity to fit whatever was currently popular. But they made it not boring, and that drew attention, and that has produced great and lasting results. [more]

Christianity Made Interesting: The Inklings | The Scriptorium Daily: Middlebrow

C.S. Lewis

Christianity Today provides annotated links to several C.S. Lewis related websites chosen by Lewis scholar Louis Markos:

The C.S. Lewis Foundation
The foundation exists to promote the works of C. S. Lewis to the larger public and in the halls of academia. In addition to offering information on the many conferences sponsored by the foundation, this website provides a full list of books by and about Lewis, along with links to all the major Lewis websites.

Into the Wardrobe
Perhaps the best one-stop educational site for information on C. S. Lewis. It not only includes an annotated bibliography but also pictures, audio files, forums, and the full text of several dozen scholarly papers.

C.S. Lewis Society of California
There are many C. S. Lewis societies out there, most of which have good websites. This one offers the fullest and most varied resources, including links to interviews and audio/video resources.

Marion E. Wade Center
The best research museum of C. S. Lewis is housed not in England but at Wheaton College, Illinois. The center also features the books and papers of six writers who profoundly influenced Lewis: Owen Barfield, G. K. Chesterton, George MacDonald, Dorothy L. Sayers, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams.

Narnia Web
With the film versions of Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader due out in May 2008 and May 2010, respectively, this is the single best news source on present and future Narnia movies.

The List: LewisWatch | Liveblog | Christianity Today