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C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide,
by Walter Hooper (Harper San Francisco, 940 pp.; $40, hardcover);

Surprised by Laughter: The Comic World of C. S. Lewis,
by Terry Lindvall (Thomas Nelson, 422 pp.; $22.99, hardcover);

The Man Who Created Narnia: The Story of C. S. Lewis, by Michael Coren (Eerdmans, 140 pp.; $20, hardcver);

Not a Tame Lion: The Spiritual Legacy of C. S. Lewis, by Terry W. Glaspey (Highland Books, 243 pp.; $12.95, hardcover);

C. S. Lewis Index: Rumours from the Sculptor's Shop, compiled and edited by Janine Goffar
(La Sierra University Press, 678 pp.; $34.95, hardcover). Reviewed by David C. Downing, who teaches English at Messiah College and Elizabethtown College. He is the author of Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of C. S. Lewis's Ransom Trilogy (University of Massachusetts Press).

It has ceased to be remarkable how many people read books by C. S. Lewis. What has become remarkable is how many people write books about C. S. Lewis. Commentators in the eighties used to quip about the burgeoning of Lewis studies into a "cottage industry." In the nineties, the industry has outgrown the cottage. By 1998, the centennial of Lewis's birth, the number of books and dissertations on Lewis will have already surpassed one hundred.

Lewis penned (literally—he never learned to type) nearly 40 books in his lifetime, and another 15 collections of his essays, letters, and poems have appeared since his death in 1963. By 1990 there were three major biographies of Lewis, five collections of reminiscences, six surveys of his fiction, with another half-dozen books devoted specifically to the Chronicles of Narnia. Added to this were at least 15 general introductions to his life and thought, plus another 15 books on specialized topics such as Lewis and the Inklings, Lewis and the Roman church, or Lewis as a social thinker.

At least 20 new books on Lewis have appeared so far in the nineties, with as many recent titles coming from general trade publishers and university presses as from Christian booksellers. We now have a fourth biography, a seventh book on the Narnia Chronicles, as well as book-length studies of the Ransom trilogy, Till We Have Faces, and The Pilgrim's Regress. Readers who feel daunted by the sheer quantity of new books appearing on Lewis can at least take heart in the generally high quality of recent additions.

Among the books newly published, the most substantial (in every sense of the term) is Walter Hooper's 940-page C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide. Hooper's guidebook is a whole reference shelf on Lewis between two covers. It includes a 120-page biographical essay; a detailed survey of Lewis's books, including backgrounds, summaries, and reviews; alphabetically arranged essays on Lewis's key ideas; directories explaining Who's Who and What's What in Lewis's life and books; and a comprehensive bibliography of Lewis's writings.

Hooper has undertaken a monumental task in producing this resource, and he has succeeded admirably. It seems an odd compliment to pay a 940-page book, but the Companion is notable for its conciseness. I would recommend Hooper's judicious and compact summary of Lewis's life over A. N. Wilson's self-indulgent and error-strewn biography; and I would recommend Hooper's 150-page discussion of the Chronicles over any of the books now out on Narnia (with the exception of Peter J. Schakel's excellent Reading with the Heart and Paul F. Ford's indispensable Companion to Narnia ).

Hooper's knowledge of Lewis's writings (both published and unpublished) is unsurpassed, and he has chased down a thousand details to fill in the gaps left by the texts. He offers here something more than a reference work. This readable volume seems to reflect a lifetime of meditating on everything written by Lewis and about him, of talking to those who knew Lewis, and of ruminating upon his own conversations with Lewis during their brief acquaintance. Hooper is best known as one of Lewis's literary executors and as an editor of his posthumous works. But in this volume Hooper provides what may be his most valuable contribution yet.

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February 3 1997, Vol. 41, No. 2