Originally published: 1937-1968
Page count: 261
Dates read: 5/3/22-5/15/22; 5/24/22-5/29/22
2022 book goal progress: 14 out of 21
Back to the Classics category: Nonfiction Classic
Mindful Readers' Family Bookclub
genre/theme: x
Read my other 2022 book reviews HERE.
Description on back of book:
While CS Lewis was a professor of literature at Oxford University, he was renowned for his insightful and often witty presentations on the nature of stories. This collection assembles 20 essays that encapsulate his opinions of specific authors, as well as his ideas about reading, writing, and/or critiquing fiction. Usually, the genre involved is specifically children's stories, fantasy/fairytales, and/or science fiction.
Contents (and short notes):
Read my other 2022 book reviews HERE.
Description on back of book:
While CS Lewis was a professor of literature at Oxford University, he was renowned for his insightful and often witty presentations on the nature of stories. This collection assembles 20 essays that encapsulate his opinions of specific authors, as well as his ideas about reading, writing, and/or critiquing fiction. Usually, the genre involved is specifically children's stories, fantasy/fairytales, and/or science fiction.
Contents (and short notes):
1. On Stories (1947)
-This was hard to wrap my head around. I didn't understand 'Story' vs. 'story.'
2. The Novels of Charles Williams (1949)
3. A Tribute to ER Eddision (1968)
4. On Three Ways of Writing for Children (1952)
-This was one of my favorites!
5. Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to be Said (1956)
-Much of the same as the previous essays.
6. On Juvenile Tastes (1958)
7. It All Began with a Picture (1960)
8. On Science Fiction (1955)
9. A Reply to Professor Haldane (1946)
10. The Hobbit (1937)
11. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1955)
12. A Panegyric for Dorothy L Sayers (1958)
-This was not as positive as I would expect something to be for a memorial service.
13. The Mythopoeic Gift of Rider Haggard (1960)
14. George Orwell (1955)
-This compares 1984 with Animal Farm, of which, Lewis views the latter as far superior.
15. The Death of Words (1944)
-I really liked this one! It's about how the meaning of words change over time.
16. The Parthenon and the Optative (1944)
17. Period Criticism (1946)
-This is about GK Chesterton.
18. Different Tastes in Literature (1946)
19. On Criticism (1966)
20. Unreal Estates (1962)
-Transcript of a recorded conversation between CS Lewis, Kingsley Amis, and Brian Aldiss.
Review:
-Transcript of a recorded conversation between CS Lewis, Kingsley Amis, and Brian Aldiss.
Review:
Overall, it's a good collection. As would be expected, some were much better than others. They were collected together because they all follow a similar theme, which sometimes felt repetitive. He often uses the term 'romance,' which I believe he uses as a sort of synonym to 'fiction,' rather than meaning the 'romance genre' that we think of today.
Some fun facts: Many people know that Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, but many don't know he actually wrote a Space Trilogy, which is quite fantastic. Did you know that CS Lewis died the same day President JFK was assassinated? Did you know that CS Lewis died the day before the very first episode of Doctor Who was aired? I wish we could have gotten his critique of the show!
Book suggestions:
Well, with critiquing a bunch of books, if nothing else, I have greatly expanded my list of books I want to read:
Voyage to Arcturus, Worm of Ouroboros, Wind in the Willows, Bastable Trilogy, Flatland, The Borrowers, Brave New World, Iter Extaticum Celeste, Sayers' detective stories, The Mind of the Maker, The Zeal of Thy House, Sayers' translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, Essays Presented to Charles Williams, She, King of Solomon's Mines, The Ancient Mariner, The Well at the Word's End, Deirdre, Sheckley's Sci-Fi shorts, Lucky Jim
Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let CS Lewis have the last words with a multitude of quotes:
"Good stories often introduce the marvelous or supernatural, and nothing about Story has been so often misunderstood as this. Thus, for example, Dr. Johnson, if I remember rightly, thought that children liked the marvelous because they were too ignorant to know that they were impossible. But children do not always like them, nor are those who like them always children; and to enjoy reading about fairies - much more about giants and dragons - it is not necessary to believe in them. Belief at best is irrelevant; it may be a positive disadvantage."
-On Stories
"It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one's adult enjoyment of what are called 'children's books.' I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more ) worth reading at the age of fifty - except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all."
-On Stories
"A children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story."
-On Three Ways of Writing for Children
"What shows we are reading myth, not allegory, is that there are no pointers to a specifically theological, or political, or psychological application. A myth points, for each reader, to the realm he lives in most. It is a master key; use it on the door you like."
-Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
" 'But why,' (some ask), 'why if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own?' Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality... And Man as a whole, Man pitted against the universe, have we seen him at all till we see that he is like a hero in a fairy tale?... The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores them to the rich significance which has been hidden by 'the veil of familiarity.' "
-Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
LEWIS: I've never started [a story] from a message or a moral, have you?
AMIS: No, never. You get interested in the situation.
LEWIS: The story itself should force its moral upon you. You find out what the moral is by writing the story.
AMIS: Exactly. I think that sort of thing is true of all kinds of fiction.
-Unreal Estates
