A.N. Wilson's biography of C.S. Lewis has been the target of many hostile comments by Lewis's most ardent fans, and has led some non-fans to speak of him with a kind of amused contempt. CM does not altogether understand either reaction. Wilson's book is rather sloppily written and some paragraphs appear not to have been carefully proofread, suggesting careless cutting and pasting. It has also been challenged by some of the people Wilson interviewed, who say that he misquoted them or got his facts wrong, or both. This is a graver charge than the first, of course, and if it is true, then Wilson should certainly be called to account for it.
All the same, it does not seem to CM that the book is really so unflattering a portrait of Lewis as a man or a writer. Lewis's sexual history, upon which Wilson lingers with an interest some find prurient, does not seem to CM to be as amusing or as contemptible as either Wilson or some readers have found it. Beyond the issue of whether biographers have a right or reason to explore this side of a writer's life, or how far they should feel free to speculate where solid information is lacking, CM believes that Wilson has in many respects done well by Lewis, especially Lewis as a scholar - clearly the side of the man that Wilson found most sympathetic. Lewis had a remarkable ability to make old texts come alive for his readers, and Wilson shows this in some detail.
Even where he is most critical of Lewis, in his discussion of Lewis's works of popular apologetics, Wilson acknowledges Lewis's development over time, as life tested his faith. Below, he quotes a passage from one such work and comments upon how Lewis had begun to have a better grasp of Christianity:
[The Four Loves] stays in the mind, particularly for the times when, as in the final chapter on the love of God, Lewis writes with a new quietness, a new wistfulness:If we cannot 'practise the presence of God', it is something to be able to practise the absence of God, to become increasingly aware of our unawareness till we feel like a man who should stand beside a great cataract and hear no noise, or like a man in story who looks in a mirror and finds no face there, or a man in a dream who stretches out his hand to visible objects and gets no sensation of touch.This is a very different Lewis from the man who breezily wrapped up the whole mystery of the Incarnation by asking his wireless audiences to imagine how they would feel if they were reborn as slugs. He had already begun to glimpse both the incomprehensibility and the challenge of his faith. The Christian story is one of a mysterious love so strong that it led to self-abnegation on the part of the Godhead Himself; a story of one who was rich, for our sake becoming poor; a story of certainties and status abandoned, of sinlessness involved, totally, in the world of sin, to the point where it received the ultimate degradation and punishment for sin; of cosmic suffering; of darkness and abandonment by God; of Gethsemane and Golgotha. Lewis was to have the easy, theoretical - and almost frivolous, in the case of the slug parallel - certainties of his early days of faith tried to their limits. [Wilson, C.S. Lewis: A Biography, p. 276]
6 comments:
I personally like Lewis' late Christians books, like The Four Loves and Letters to Malcolm best. I read Wilson's bio when it came out nearly 20 years ago, so I can't remember how strongly it makes the case that Lewis turned away from his older 'apologetic' mode. I do know that at one time some people were saying that after 'losing' a debate about miracles with the RC philosopher GEM Anscombe, Lewis went off apologetics, and that, later, this idea of his 'regress' was much criticised, because, it was said, the kinds of things presented as evidence for Lewis' post-debate turn toward a less 'rationalistic' approach can all be found in his earlier writing. I think a better historical-biographical analysis might simply be that, at one point, perhaps during WWII, Lewis was asked to give radio talks, and trying as hard as he could to reach and convert a wide audience, he gave some rather weak and wooden arguments, like the 'mad, bad or God one'. The less poetic apologetics is probably in radio talks or quick written stuff. Whereas, it could be said, the later and deeper stuff isn't aimed at that audience, or 'for someone else, who wasn't Lewis', but comes right out of his guts. To me, 'an inner and outer Lewis' sort of explanation of the difference makes more sense than a turn against rational apologetics.
At the time Wilson wrote his biography of Lewis he was just losing his faith, and all the Christian commentators noted this and denigrated the bio. In my memory, Wilson does bring out some good points which the Christian writers on Lewis avoid, like the weirdness of his relationship with Mrs Moore, and the fact that, having practically polemicised against the 'love me, love my wife' idea, he practised the same once married to Mrs Davidson. IE, he is brilliantly witty in 'The Four Loves' about how bringing a spouse into all social situations wrecks male friendship, but then he expected his male friends to enjoy Mrs Davidson's company.
Wilson's great problem as an historian is that he can't resist a witticism - whether it is true or not.
Francesca
The Four Loves is pretty amazing isn't it? It along with The Magician's Nephew and some of the critical essays are the best of Lewis and will last for a long time.
I don't much like the earlier apologetics, such as Mere Christianity. As Francesca notes they have some rather gaping holes in their logic.
Thursday
Completely off-topic, but now might be a good time to get back into history mode -- the daughter of the US Republican VP nominee is 17 and pregnant, and will marry before she has the kid, so at 17 or 18. People are freaking out.
Most of the commentary I've read around the Blogworld, as you insist on calling it, is totally ignorant of age at first marriage patterns in Northern Europe and its offshoots since 1500. They think females used to get married early -- rather than 22 or 23 on the low end, and 30 on the high end.
I just browsed through Barbara Harris' *English Aristocratic Women 1450 - 1550*. She analyzed the genealogies of lots of aristocratic females (in the low thousands) during the period, and found that 94% of them married by 21, often between 13 to 17. Well-to-do people used to marry *younger* than hard-up people.
Since you're probably already familiar with this stuff, it might be well to develop a summary + thoughts posting, as everyone seems ignorant of it. Or maybe you already know of a good website that summarizes it, and you could link to it and comment.
That subject is highly political; more so than I'm usually willing to get here. All the same, I admit I am already thinking of writing something about Ms (Mrs?) Palin. I hadn't thought of tackling it from that angle, but perhaps I will.
Interesting how the reputation of The Four Loves seems to have held up. A sample size of two (even two such as Thursday and Francesca) is too small to make much of judgment about such things, but I have heard over and over again from people everywhere on the political, religious and cultural spectra that The Four Loves influenced how they think about love till this day.
Me too. I recently had a to-do (friendly but heated) about "commitment" and the alleged male fear thereof, and The Four Loves made its appearance...on both sides!
The quote was a moving instance of a kind of apophatic theology I don't hear much of in Western Christianity, and not something I associate with Lewis. Thank you Clio.
Please do post something about SP. I'd like to see some of the people you've been arguing with elsewhere come in here and duke it out. This is a hot issue, CM, very hot indeed.
Reproduction...always gets people going. Birds and the bees and the babies...boys and the girls and the getting and losing thereof...it's the stuff of blog posts!
I'd love to see a post on SP. After coming on as a Neanderthal female here a few days ago, I've been seething to read comments from self-described stay-at-home moms to the effect that SP is no conservative and certainly no Christian, since she's no s-a-h-m. Agnostic mentions the lack of historical sense about the age for marriage; what about combining ancient attitudes to family size with 20th century conceptions of a child's needs? The degree of hands on child-rearing regarded as requisite by today's American s-a-h-m's is unparallled in history. GEM Anscombe, who had somewhere between five & seven children, used to write in an attic, and pulled up the ladder behind her!
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