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C. S. Lewis: Mere Christian
by Kathryn Lindskoog
Cornerstone Press Chicago
292 pp.; $19.99
Journey into Narnia
by Kathryn Lindskoog
Hope Publishing House
P.O. Box 60008,
Pasadena CA, 91116
227 pp.; $15.95, paper
C. S. Lewis: Lightbearer in
the Shadowlands:
the Evangelistic
Vision of C. S. Lewis
edited by Angus J. L. Menuge
Crossway
399 pp.; $17.99, paper
Simply C. S. Lewis:
A Beginner's Guide to
His Life and Works
by Thomas C. Peters
Crossway
270 pp.; $11.99, paper
In 1998, Christians all over the world will be celebrating the centennial of the birth of Clive Staples Lewis. This year-long Lewisfest will be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it will yield fresh insights. (Look for David Downing's essay on Lewis and postmodernism in a forthcoming issue of B&C.) And the hubbub will attract new readers, not a few of whom may find their way into the kingdom. On the other hand, the sheer volume of talk about Lewis is bound to grate, even when it is free of the unctuous accents of hagiography.
Four new books give a taste of what we can expect in the coming year. The first is not really a new book but rather a new edition of Kathryn Lindskoog's widely used guide. Lindskoog commands an encyclopedic knowledge of Lewis's life and works, and she writes with contagious passion. She is also highly combative, particularly in her judgments against Walter Hooper, one of Lewis's literary editors and the editor of many of his posthumously published works. Don't miss the six appendices to Lindskoog's book, the last of which is a lovely essay on Lewis and Christmas.
Lindskoog's Journey into Narnia is also a combination of old and new, though here the proportion of new is much higher. This volume combines an early work, The Lion of Judah in Never-Never Land, which elicited an appreciative letter from Lewis when it was first published in 1957, with a light-hearted but very well-informed guide to the Narnia books.
In C. S. Lewis: Lightbearer in the Shadowlands, we have a sample of academic approaches to Lewis. Though most of the 16 contributors to this volume are indeed writing from a college or university setting, they write with clarity and a minimum of jargon. And while the essays range widely, from Wayne Martindale's reflections on the film Shadowlands to Gene Edward Veith's concluding piece, "A Vision, Within a Dream, Within the Truth: C. S. Lewis as Evangelist to the Postmodernists," they are unified by a focus on Lewis's "evangelistic vision." Lewis scholars, both professional and amateur, will want to add this collection to their shelves.
Finally, with Simply C. S. Lewis: A Beginner's Guide to His Life and Works, by Thomas C. Peters, we have a specimen of the superfluous book. The back cover asserts that "Lewis can be terribly intimidating to those who know his reputation as an intellectual but haven't yet sampled his writing." Nonsense. As one might expect, given that sort of packaging, Peters's book is execrably written, full of tediously prolonged summaries of Lewis's sparkling works, potted intellectual history, and odd stylistic mannerisms. (For example, Peters frequently refers to Lewis by his full name when there is no reason to do so. After a few dozen occurrences, the effect is rather like the Chinese water torture.)
So it will go in the year ahead. Those who predict that the centennial will finally kill interest in Lewis are far too pessimistic, but there will be a lot of chaff to separate from the wheat.
—JW
Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present
Edited by Jerry Z. Muller
Princeton University Press
450 pp.; $59.50, hardcover; $19.95, paper
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