Book Briefs: January 16, 1987

Letting Lewis Do The Talking

Clive Staples Lewis: A Dramatic Life, by William Griffin (Harper & Row, 1986, 507 pp.; $24.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Lyle Dorsett, curator of the Marion E. Wade Collection at Wheaton College.

By today’s standards, C.S. Lewis did not live long. Dying before his sixty-fifth birthday, he nevertheless accomplished more in a relatively brief life than most men who are long lived and obsessively ambitious. During his productive years this slightly rotund, tall, bespectacled man published almost 40 books, nearly 70 poems, 125 essays and pamphlets, three dozen book reviews, and two short stories. All this was accomplished while he taught full-time, first at Oxford and later at Cambridge.

The range of Lewis’s interests is as remarkable as the quantity of his work. He wrote juvenile and adult fiction, literary history, and criticism, as well as popular theology and apologetics.

But he was more than prolific and far ranging—he was strikingly talented. Lewis’s fiction is enchanting and his scholarship, original. His Christian treatises are penetrating and instructive. A most notable venture into philosophy, The Abolition of Man, was selected as one of the “Great Books” by Mortimer J. Adler, and the bulk of Lewis’s writing is still in print, widely read, and translated into many languages.

How do you write a biography of a brilliant man who mastered many subjects? Every biographer is confronted with the problem of selection. With C. S. Lewis, however, this normal difficulty assumes gargantuan proportions. A midlife convert to Christianity, Lewis left us more than stacks of publications, he bequeathed thousands of letters that have survived. Besides two published autobiographical volumes, there are also family papers and diaries, scores of personal reminiscences about Lewis, and no end of master’s and doctoral theses.

Wading Into The Reservoir

William Griffin, formerly a senior editor at Macmillan and now a free-lance writer, has courageously waded into the massive reservoir of sources. Being associated with Lewis’s leading American publisher, Griffin knows there has long been a need for a major biography of Lewis. (Two biographies had appeared before Griffin’s effort: C. S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics, by Chad Walsh, and C. S. Lewis: A Biography, by Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper.)

A dozen years later, and nearly a quarter-century after Lewis’s death, we finally have a new book on this century’s most widely quoted and profoundly influential English-language Christian thinker and writer. Griffin’s 430 pages of text are clearly written and heavily documented. His book relies upon much of the recent scholarship, and all of the published primary sources that have become available since the Green and Hooper biography was published.

William Griffin has written a crisp and moving account, and he says he wrote it for Americans. Spelling has been Americanized, and many customs are explained for people innocent of British history and culture. The book is full of fascinating anecdotes, and the author retells many of the rich experiences of Lewis’s life. Although this book has no major thesis, Griffin does present evidence to bury once and for all some of the tiresome debates about Lewis’s life.

Griffin makes it clear that the Anglican layman’s marriage to the once-divorced Joy Davidman Gresham was normal and consummated. The biographer also demolishes the implications in John Beversluis’s book, C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion, and in the fictional film Shadowlands, that Lewis’s faith was seriously damaged if not lost over the death of his wife.

But for all that, there is not much new in this latest book on Lewis. Griffin is, however, to be commended for trying something original. He has not written a traditional biography, a selectively styled literary biography, a dangerously tricky spiritual biography, or the popular life and times. Avoiding preachiness, omniscience, and tedious digressions, Griffin has opted to let C. S. Lewis do the talking. In place of ordinary chapters, this medium-sized book contains nearly 40 divisions, each one bearing the title of a year

A Technique In The Dock

Because Griffin has decided to weave few of his own interpretations into the story, the text is laden with direct quotations. Since Lewis wrote little until 1927, the first chapter bears that date. Thirty-six subsequent chapters follow, concluding with 1963. Although Griffin allows us an occasional backward glance, he never carries the reader forward in time beyond the date of the chapter.

I was slightly annoyed when I first encountered those brief chapters with no theme or continuity except chronology. But once I grew used to Griffin’s “camera-eye” technique (a style employed by John Dos Passos early in this century), I found it palatable—even savory. Griffin’s approach pleases because it is new and it keeps the reader focused on Lewis rather than the musings of the author.

Nevertheless, the drawbacks of this technique are significant. There is a one-dimensional quality to the book. Unless Lewis wrote about a person or topic it is usually ignored. Few of the important people in his life are more than stick figures. And Lewis himself—because he deplored prolonged introspection and self-analysis—is never developed. Many events in his life are ignored, and we learn almost nothing about social and cultural factors that shaped his life, or the subtle developments of Lewis’s faith and personality. Finally, we learn nothing about his range of influence at home and abroad, and we have no assessment of his contribution to Christian thought and behavior.

In brief, despite the pleasure and usefulness many readers will derive from C. S. Lewis: A Dramatic Life, we still need someone to read and assimilate the prodigious range of primary sources relating to this remarkable Christian. If a major biography for our times is to be written, it must derive much of its strength from insights available through modern scholarship in the fields of history, literary criticism, and psychology. But until such a major book is available, William Griffin’s book will be read and discussed by the ever-growing throng of Lewis admirers.

Porn Again

Final Report of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, introduction by Michael J. McManus (Rutledge Hill Press, 1986, 571 pp.; $9.95, paper; distributed by Word Books, Waco, Texas). Reviewed by Tom Minnery, marketing manager, Christianity Today, Inc., and editor of Pornography: A Human Tragedy (Tyndale/CTi, 1986).

Last summer, as controversy swirled about the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, we heard more idle speculation about Attorney General Edwin Meese’s motives than we did about the evidence for or against pornography. Even the final report of the commission was no help. It was 1,900 pages long, poorly organized, too expensive (at $35.00), and soon out of print.

Nevertheless, the report is potent and exhaustive. Commissioners grappled not only with the growing body of social-science evidence, but with moral and legal implications as well. The report condemns hard-core pornography, finding links between it and the commission of sexual crimes.

It is a significant document and deserves a far wider audience than it would have received had not Rutledge Hill Press, a small, new company formed by a former executive of Thomas Nelson, agreed to publish it and Word, Inc., agreed to distribute it. The format is readable, the bulk manageable, and the book is doubly valuable because of the extended introduction by Michael J. McManus, one of a handful of journalists regularly in attendance at commission sessions.

His introduction is an essential guide to the most significant sections of the document, and is a fascinating tour through the politics of the commission. McManus puts to rest (as did, ironically, the reports appearing in Penthouse) the accusation that the commission was stacked with conservatives out to do mischief to the First Amendment.

This introduction is the only detailed account of the commission’s work that does not come from the vituperative pens of the pornography press. It therefore provides a much-needed balance to the misguided (and erroneous) rhetoric that followed the original report. Thus, it is fitting that the Rutledge Hill edition of the final report, with McManus’s introduction, has already sold 50,000 copies—more than ten times the original document published by the government.

Why Fiction Is Not A Waste Of Time

Windows to the World: Literature in Christian Perspective, by Leland Ryken (Zondervan/Probe Ministries, 1985, 192 pp.; $7.95, softcover). Reviewed by Buddy Matthews, a columnist for the Richardson (Tex.) Daily News and a doctoral student in intellectual history at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Whenever the topic of literature arises in a discussion among Christians, the question is often raised, “Why should Christians waste their time reading fiction or poetry? Wouldn’t they be better stewards of their time if they read factual material instead?”

Christians who have read Dante or Dostoevsky will probably know the answer to the question. But it is an attitude prevalent in the Christian community, and it is this attitude that Leland Ryken, professor of English at Wheaton College, seeks to address in his new book.

In his words, “Literature … conveys a valuable form of human understanding and insight. It helps us to begin to grasp the essential nature of reality, albeit a somewhat subjective grasp. Reading literature, therefore, yields a worthwhile form of knowledge, valuable even though different in quality from scientific knowledge.”

Ryken makes the case that literature can be a better teacher than standard nonfictional writing. Even the Bible, he points out, “is in large part literary in nature.” The Bible does not generally present us with theological outlines, but employs the forms found in literature, such as stories, poetry, visions, and letters. The story of the Good Samaritan, for example, is so appealing and pedagogically enduring precisely because of its literary qualities.

The Experience Itself

Windows to the World is an introduction to literary theory. As such it discusses the nature of literature and examines how literature interacts with the reader. “Literature does not primarily convey information about experience but actually presents the experience as concretely and as vividly as possible,” Ryken writes.

Ryken discusses the monomyth, plot motifs, archetypal images, imagination, and the various forms of literary criticism prevalent today. All of these topics are standard fare for those who study literature, but they are new concepts for most lay persons. Consequently, Ryken develops this material and presents it in an easy and readable format.

One of the major objections Christians raise in regard to literature is that so much of it, especially contemporary literature, reflects immoral and often anti-Christian values. Ryken is sensitive to this concern and attempts to address it.

“If the effect [of a certain piece of literature] is one that pushes a reader toward immoral attitudes, feelings, or behavior, the antidote is simple: either stop reading the troublesome material, or exercise stronger moral control over the influence the material is exerting. Works of literature are moral or immoral persuaders, but no reader is obliged to be persuaded against his or her will,” he advises.

That recommendation seems a little weak, but it may be the best one possible given the fact that much of literature tends to dwell on topics Christians often find distasteful. What Ryken does not do, and probably should have done, was to distinguish between the literary junk of our day that is written only to tease and tantalize and that which should be considered serious fiction. Nevertheless, Windows to the World is a good introduction to a much-neglected topic, the Christian approach to literature.

Laughing All The Way To Church

And the Laugh Shall Be First: A Treasury of Religious Humor, compiled by William H. Willimon (Abingdon, 1986, 156 pp.; $12.95, cloth). Reviewed by David Neff.

Duke University minister and professor Will Willimon thinks “there is something fundamentally righteous and holy about our humor.” And his brief introduction to And the Laugh Shall Be First is an attempt to establish what should be obvious to followers of the biblical Christ. Swinburne’s “pale Galilean” notwithstanding, the man who talked of swallowing camels and whose ripostes left Saducees speechless could hardly have been humorless.

Nevertheless, for those who need to hear it, and for those who enjoy hearing it as well, Willimon locates Godlike humor in God’s own justice (“when God puts all of us in our place, when the first end up last and the last move to the front of the line”) and in his grace (“the very essence of grace is to receive the gift of laughter, especially when the joke is on us, particularly when the most laughable incongruities consist of the gap between who we are and who God would have us to be”).

Most of the selections Willimon offers in this compilation rely on parody to make their points. The skeptical Mark Twain delivers a send-up of the logic of Holy Land shrines and holy relics. H. L. Mencken burlesques American weddings. And Stephen Leacock soberly records the fate of the desperate-to-please pastor who won’t risk offense by saying good-by.

Thus the book proceeds in roughly chronological fashion from the dead skeptics of yesteryear to the liberal theological humorists of our own time: Martin Marty (“Fundies in Their Undies”), Robert McAfee Brown (“Oral Roberts and the 900-Foot Jesus”), and (if a bit self-indulgently) Christian Century editor-at-large Will Willimon (“The Evangelization of a Family Named Fulp” and four additional entries).

The high point of the volume very well may be poet Anthony Towne’s 1966 response to Thomas J. J. Altizer’s Death of God theology. “GOD IS DEAD IN GEORGIA,” reads the headline on the lengthy, New York Times-style obituary. “In Gettysburg, Pa.,” wrote Towne, “former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, released, through a military aide, the following statement: ‘Mrs. Eisenhower joins me in heartfelt sympathy to the family and many friends of the late God. He was, I always felt, a force for moral good in the universe. Those of us who were privileged to know him admired the probity of his character, the breadth of his compassion, the depth of his intellect. Generous almost to a fault, his many acts of kindness to America will never be forgotten. It is a very great loss indeed. He will be missed.’ ”

After sampling Willimon’s collection over several days’ lunch breaks while walking from my office to the local convenience market, I believe the volume achieves its editor’s goal: to “provide many hours of insight and grace—two essential commodities in short supply, in church or out.”

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