Some Wednesday Readings - Aug. 19, 2026

The Joy of Baseball – Daniel Darling at One Little Word. 

Know your rights as an author and don’t get scammed – Nathan Bransford.

 

Submerged memory: C.S. Lewis and the art of forgetting – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Remembering Blaise Pascal’s Night of Fire – Emily Kleinhenz at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

On the third day: On the religious illiteracy of college students – The New Criterion. 

 

Child – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Britain: How taboos have stifled truth – Guy Dampier at The Critic Magazine.

 

Short Story, Deep Treasures: Biblical Allusion in “The Gift of the Magi” – John Savoie at Literary Matters.

 

Flashback: The Uses of a Novella – my post at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

 

Painting: Blaise Pascal about 1691.

Some Monday Readings - March 9, 2026

AI Doesn’t Reduce Work – It Intensifies It – Aruna Ranganathan and Xingqi Maggie Ye at Harvard Business Review. 

Grief Goes Hand in Hand with Gratitude: A Book Review of Marce Catlett by Wendell Berry  – Matt Wheeler at The Rabbit Room.

 

The Passage in The Lord of the Rings Tolkien Couldn’t Read Without Weeping – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition.

 

Speaking Through the Ages: John Aubrey at four hundred – Peter Davidson at Literary Review.

 

Don’t Know Jack About the Other C.S. Lewis? – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

The Nature of Nostos – K.S. Bernstein at Apple Blossoms in a Mournful Wood.

 

Murders for March – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

“A Spiral Spiritual Climb into God” and Other Poems – Katie Andraskie at Katie’s Ground.

 

Willing If Asked – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

Illustration: John Aubrey (1626-1697). 

“A Rumour of Adventure” by Kees Paling

It’s May 1938. Four friends embark upon a spring walk, something various members of their group usually do. This time, since the tradition is England, they choose Somerset. This walk is different from its predecessors; the threat of Germany is hanging over Czechoslovakia, and at least two members of the group still have strong memories of the horrors of the Great War.  

The four are members of the Inklings, a group of Oxford dons and various friends who usually meet twice a week at The Eagle and Child pub in in one of the member’s rooms in Magdalen College. The four are C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams. A Rumour of Adventure by Kees Paling is the fictional account of such a walk, which never occurred in that year with those participants (Williams wouldn’t become associated with the Inklings until more than a year later). But this is fiction, a novella or short novel, in fact, so it’s okay to invent.

 

It's a charming and engaging story, true to the teachings, beliefs, and personalities of the four. Paling has done a considerable amount of reading and study to get this as right as he does. And that includes works they wrote and biographies and accounts about them.

 

Kees Paling

Of course, the four don’t just walk; they stop at pubs and drink a lot of beer (and hey drink a lot of beer, except for Williams, who drinks a lot of tea). And they talk. Oh, how they talk. 

Their conversations about literature, writing, the growing threat in Europe, imagination, the faerie folk, and more is the heart of the story, and this is what makes the account so true to the real people. And while Tolkien in particular likes his adventures in oral and written stories only, the four will experience an adventure or two along the way. While it’s tempting to compare, the adventures bear almost no similarity to that of the four hobbits in The Lord of the Rings. Note that I said “almost.”

 

Paling has published several books in Dutch on subject ranging from the fall of Prussia and culture on the eve of the new millennium to learning problems in children. He’s contributed to several books on communication and published a rather vast number of newspaper articles. He received a degree in sociology from Utrecht University, served as a lieutenant and counsellor at the Dutch Royal Military Academy, and worked at the Dutch Ministry of Culture and Netherlands Institute for Social Research. He serves as a communication consultant for the Dutch government.

 

A Rumour of Adventure is a delightful story of four men who were good friends and companions in writing (it was Lewis who so strongly encouraged Tolkien to writ The Hobbit and the work that Tolkien called “The New Hobbit”). As the story makes clear, they were also teachers, great conversationalists, and beer drinkers (lots of beer). 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Does America Still Do Federalism? – Tony Woodlief at Law & Liberty.

 

Cui Bono? – Alan Jacob at The Homebound Symphony.

 

Notes on the Great Vibe Shift – Ian Leslie at The Ruffian.

 

Is Atlas Shrugged the New Vibe? – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Shrouded Veterans: The Untold Struggles of an Iowa Colonel’s Widow – Frank Jastrzembski at Emerging Civil War.

"Once Upon a Wardrobe" by Patti Callahan

Once upon a wardrobe, not very long ago and not very far away… 

That phrase, which sounds like the beginning of a fairy tale, is the centering theme of Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan. It’s a wonderful story, about legend and myth, about fairy tales, about C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia. And it’s about story, and the role story plays in our lives. 

 

It’s 1950. Margaret “Megs” Devonshire is studying mathematics at Somerville College at Oxford. She’s into everything logical, precise, and measurable, because that’s how she makes sense of the world.

 

She has a brother, George, 10 years her junior, a brother she loves dearly and who is not likely to see his next birthday. He’s seriously ill with what sounds like a worsening heart condition. When she visits home, she learns that George has been reading a just published book called The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by Oxford’s own C.S. Lewis. And George wants to know if she’s met Lewis or talked with him, because he has an important question: where did Narnia come from?

 

Because she loves her brother, Megs is determined to find out. She starts by making an unannounced visit to The Kilns, the house where Lewis and his brother Warnie live. Warnie finds her in the garden and invites her to have tea.

 

Patti Callahan

That invitation will send Megs on a journey into fairy tales, legends, myths, and stories. After each meeting with the Lewis brothers, and she has several, they will explain where Narnia came from – by not explaining any such thing. “Here is the thing, Miss Devonshire,” Lewis says, “you must not believe all that authors tell you about how they write their stories. When the story is finished, he has forgotten a good deal of what writing it was like.”

 

(Speaking from my own experience, that is absolutely true.)

 

Megs’ journey into the imagination will lead her to romance – and to an unexpected journey for her and George.

 

Patti Callahan Henry is the bestselling author of 17 novels, including Becoming Mrs. Lewis, the story of Lewis’s wife Joy Davidman. She’s also published in numerous anthologies and short story collections. She is the co-host and co-creator of the weekly podcast Friends and Fiction. She received degrees from Auburn University and Georgia State University. Trained as a pediatric clinical nurse, she now writes full-time. Callahan lives in Alabama. 

 

Once Upon a Wardrobe will have you nodding at its wisdom, smiling, laughing, and often in tears. Not every story has a happy ending, but the true stories have the right ending. And Once Upon a Wardrobe is a true story.

 

(And a big hat tip to my wife Janet, who recommended I read it.)

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Why the Progress Debate Goes Nowhere – Samuel Matlock at The New Atlantis. 

 

Tyson Foods cut contracts with Missouri farmers and is working to silence their legal fight – Egan Ward at Missouri Independent.

 

Winter Apple – poem by David Whyte.

 

Royal slush – Gary Saul Morson at The New Criterion on The Last Tsar: The Abdication of Nicholas II and the Fall of the Romanovs by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa,

"The Mythmakers” by John Hendrix

It was a Facebook post that did it. A fellow book lover recommended The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien by John Hendrix. I highly value her judgment and opinion, and I flipped over to Amazon, pulled up the book, glanced at the price, and ordered it. I went for the hardcover, because my friend’s description sounded like it would be a keeper. 

I didn’t read the details.

 

When the book arrived, I opened it up to discover it was a graphic work. It’s officially a graphic novel, but there’s enough actual statements by both Lewis and Tolkien (and fictional comments informed by what they said) to make The Mythmakers a blend of fiction, non-fiction, and graphic design.

 

I was not a fan of graphic novels. There’s nothing wrong with them, but I have never been seriously interested in them.

 

Until now.

 

The Mythmakers is a “knocked-it-out-of-the-ballpark” kind of work.

 

Almost reluctantly, I began to read, my lack of interest almost noticeable. Until it disappeared. And then I devoured it. 

 

Hendrix tells the story of how Lewis and Tolkien had World War I experience in common, how they met at Oxford, how they became friends, and how their friendship, or “fellowship,” as Hendrix describes it, transformed fantasy literature forever. With Lewis’s encouragement, Tolkien would likely have never published The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Because of pointed criticism by Tolkien, Lewis almost didn’t publish The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Their friendship grew and remained solid, until the years of World War II. And then, to the sorrow of both men, it grew strained. But they continued to support one another’s work.

 

The Mythmakers uses a journey of two fictional characters, a lion (shades of Aslan) and a wizard (shades of Gandalf), through the story of the friendship. And it works. It works beautifully. I laughed, I grinned, I nodded my head, and at one point I even choked up and wiped away tears. The book is that good. Yes, I knew the story of their friendship, but I hadn’t seen it visually portrayed in illustration like it is here.

 

And while The Mythmakers doesn’t make a major case out of it, it does agree with my own assessment after reading so much about both men: Lewis was the truer friend.

 

John Hendrix, the illustrated man

Hendrix has written and illustrated numerous books, including The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler, Drawing Magic: Discovering Yourself in a Sketchbook, Miracle Man: The Story of Jesus, and others. He’s also created a comics collection entitled The Holy Ghost: A Spirited Comic and produced illustrations for numerous comic books and publications. He was named Distinguished Educator in the Arts for 2024 by the Society of Illustrators and currently serves as the Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art and the founding Chair of the MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture program at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. He lives with his family in suburban St. Louis (in a suburb so close to mine that we could be neighbors). 

 

The Mythmakers may be aimed at middle grade readers, but it offers a great deal to readers of all ages. And it helped me, or shoved me, away from my apathy about graphic novels.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Best – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

An Astronomer Was Able to Pinpoint the Mystery Location Depicted in a Van Gogh Masterpiece – Jackie Appel at Popular Mechanics.

 

All the Saints, and All the Ones They Leave Behind – Logan Hoffman at Plough Quarterly on Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin.

 

10 Composers to Listen to While Studying – Andrew Benson Brown at The Epoch Times.

 

The Pubs of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

Some Wednesday Readings

Thou shalt not pray? – Lois McLatchie at The Critic Magazine. 

What Salman Rushdie Doesn’t Want to Talk About – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

 

Writing in Spare Moments of Life – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

Confederate Guerillas: Effective Commands or Detrimental Service? Part 1 and Part 2– Daniel Welch at Emerging Civil War. 

 

Morphing: Lessons from Year of the Monarch – Dheepa Maturi at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Bookish Diversions: Lewis and Tollkien, Pen Pals – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

3 Goals for Writing Great Historical Fiction – Ryan Coleman at Writer’s Digest.

 

“I, Being a Woman and Born Distressed,” poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Generations by Jean Twenge – book review by Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.

Photograph: Mosby's Rangers during the Civil War, with John Mosby in the center wearing a feathered hat.

“C.S. Lewis’s Oxford” by Simon Horobin

The university city of Oxford will likely forever be linked with two authors – C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. It was where they studied as undergraduates, made their academic careers, lived most of their lives, and wrote their most famous works. Lewis would spend his final academic years teaching at Cambridge University, but he commuted back to Oxford on weekends. Oxford holds a special connection to both authors, and a special connection for their fans, admirers, and readers. 

Simon Horobin, a professor of English Language and Literature and a Fellow and Tutor in English at Magdalen College, Oxford, has drawn a fine portrait of Oxford and what it meant in the life of Lewis in, appropriately enough entitled, C.S. Lewis’s Oxford, published, also appropriately enough, by Bodleian Library Publishing. If you’re a fan of Lewis and hi writings, or even a fan of Tolkien, this book is a treasure of information, insight, and illlustrations.

 

Horobin describes the buildings and institutions associated with Lewis in Oxford and what they were like at the time Lewis knew them. He studied and received his degree at University College. He taught for decades at Magdalen College. He lived and attended church in suburban Headington, where fans still make pilgrimages to see his home The Kilns and Holy Trinity Church, where he worshipped and is buried in the cemetery. The Eagle and Child pub is forever associated with Lewis, Tolkien, and the other members of the Inklings as the place where works in progress like The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia were first read aloud. 

 

Simon Horobin

The Eastgate Hotel on High Street near Merton College was where Lewis and Tolkien often ate and drank together, and where Lewis first met Joy Davidman in person. For many years, Lewis was president of Somerville College for women, organizing lectures and programs. St. Mary’s Passage, which runs alongside the University Church of St. Mary’s and Brasenose College, has a credible claim for inspiring the streetlamp scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Horobin includes chapters on Cambridge, which is almost an “Oxford without Lewis,” discussion, and on “Global Lews,” about the collections of Lewis manuscripts, papers, and atrifacts in such places as the Marion Wade Center at Wheaton College in suburban Chicago and the C.S. Lewis Foundation in Redlands, California. 

 

And accompanying the text are 31 color plates and numerous photographs and maps.

 

Horobin, a grsduate of the Universty of Sheffield, has written numerous books and articles on such subjects as Chaucer and his language, early English, spelling, the importance of philology for Tolkien and Lewis, medieval literature, scribes and guilds, Piers Plowman, and many other related topics. He’s also served as the honorary secretary for the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature.

 

If you’re a fan or Lewis, or even only of Oxford, this book is a delight.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

“Your Friend, Wendell”: A 90^th Birthday Tribute to Wendell Berry – Library of America. 

 

Late Victorian London in Photos – A London Inheritance. 

 

‘Blasphemers on Pogo Sticks’ and the Art of Making People Laugh – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

 

8 Books You Didn’t Know Were Originally Self-Published – Ellen Gutoskey at Mental Floss.

Some Monday Readings

In December 1939, C.S. Lewis preached a sermon at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford. Entitled “Learning in Wartime,” he addressed the question of whether continuing to study at university was rather meaningless in a time of war. It’s become one of his most famous sermons, one of nine included in the volume The Weight of Glory. It’s been reproduced in this pdf document, but you’ll need to cursor down to page 95 to find the sermon. I include the link to the pdf document because Douglas Murray’s excellent essay on the sermon, “C.S. Lewis on Keeping Calm in Chaos,” may be behind a firewall at The Free Press.  

More Monday Readings

 

Four Lessons for a Fragile America – Seth Kaplan at Tablet Magazine.

 

Are Rural White People the Problem? – Nathan Robinson at Current Affairs.

 

The Moroccan Sultan Who Protected His Country’s Jews During WW II – Theo Zenou at Smithsonian Magazine. 

 

DEI killed the CHIPS Act – Matt Cole and Chris Nicholson at The Hill.

 

What Monks Know about Focus – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

A Visit to Great Tom at St. Paul’s – Spitalfields Life.

 

A Tale of Two Ewes – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian.

 

Tavistock Square – A London Inheritance.

 

Photograph: St. Mary the Virgin Church, Oxford, UK, by J via Unsplash.

"The Hidden Work: Poems" by Rob Jones

C.S. Lewis was many things – writer, speaker, broadcaster, popular theologian, prolific letter writer, and Oxford (and Cambridge) professor. He wrote some of the most influential Christian writings of the 20^th century, including such works as Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters. He was also a poet; in fact, poetry was his first love and his original ambition. And he would likely be pleased to know that his writings and books have not only inspired millions of Christians, but they’ve also inspired a collection of poetry.

 

The Hidden Work: Poems Inspired by the Writings of C.S. Lewis is the new poetry collection by writer and poet Rob Jones. The poems stand on their own, but they’re also paired with a quotation from Lewis’s writings. And they serve as a window into Lewis’s works.

 

The specific quotations are drawn from the books of The Chronicles of Narnia; Lewis’s science fiction trilogy; The Pilgrim’s Regress; The Screwtape Letters; The Great Divorce; Til We Have Faces; Allegory of Love; The Problem of Pain; The Weight of Glory; The Abolition of Man; Miracles; Mere Christianity; Surprised by Joy; Reflections on the Psalms; The Four Loves; A Grief Observed; An Experiment in Criticism; and Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. A second (and shorter) section is a collection of prayers and creeds. 

 

Lewis published The Screwtape Letters in 1942. It’s not hyperbole to call it a work of genius; its insight into the human condition (and human frailty) has few peers. Jones cites this line from The Screwtape Letters: “The safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” And then he follows with this poem:

 

Unnoticeable Degrees

 

Comfortably numb is the state I’m in,

Idle hands, busy, toying with sin –

A benumbing habit it has become.

A simple pleasure, but not harm is done.

 

I survived this moment, time and time again.

This only confirms that I can always refrain,

For I have recourse to change my course,

So my heart won’t bleed with remorse.

 

But lately, I am aware, that I am unaware

That I’m spiraling down the road of despair.

Imperceptibly, I was nudged into the sea of sorrow.

Hubris convinced me I’d do better tomorrow.

 

Moment by moment, day after day,

Softly my decisions have led me astray.

If only I’d seen my journey’s destination,

I would’ve tailored my course to a stricter location.

 

Just this one time, was one time too many.

What I thought I controlled, now enslaved me.

The siren’s subtle song has me under a spell—

Motionless, is my descent into hell.

 

Rob Jones

In this poem, Jones precisely catches the point Lewis is making. It’s not the big issues or events in life that lead us on the downslope; it is the small, gradual things, the idle justification here, the thoughtless action there. Tiny things. The slope is so gradual that we don’t even realize what’s happening until it’s too late. We find ourselves in the quagmire, and we don’t know how we got there.

 

Jones is also the author of Re-Enchanted: Poems (2022), the novel Bad Boys f the Kingdom (2020), and the children’s story Here Comes the Night (2020). He holds a Masters of Divinity in Pastoral Leadership degree, and he sings and writes music. He lives with his family in Tennessee.

 

The Hidden Work is a pure delight. Jones takes the sense of each quotation, the essential truth lying within it, and fashions it into a poetic expression. In doing so, he provides an illustration of what Lewis meant and an amplification of it. Yes, I think Lewis would be pleased.

Some Monday Readings

 

Educating for Wisdom – Gary Houchens at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Les Miserables, the American Civil War, and Reading in Camp or Home – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War.

 

Step Inside Van Gogh’s London Bedroom – Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper.

 

The Longest Strike in U.S. History – Olivia Waxman at Time Magazine.

“English Literature in the 16th Century” by C.S. Lewis

We know C.S. Lewis as a popular theologian, a writer of children’s stories like The Chronicles of Narnia and science fiction stories, the man who gave us Mere Christianity, A Grief Observed, and The Screwtape Letters. We know him as one of the Inklings, a small group of Oxford dons (and a few others) who met regularly at The Eagle and Child (or Bird and Baby) Pub and C.S. Lewis’s rooms in Oxford to discuss their works in progress, life, religion, and everything else. 

What we often forget is that, before he was a Christian and even after, before his wartime broadcast for the BBC, and before Narnia, Lewis was a scholar. He was a Fellow and Tutor of English Literature at Oxford, and he was chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University.

 

In 1944, he gave a series of lectures at Cambridge under the general title of “English Literature in the 16^th Century.” He eventually edited the lectures and published them in 1954 as English Literature in the 16^th Century (Excluding Drama). Almost 70 years later, HarperCollins has republished the volume under its 1954 title. It’s a broad choice of subject, made somewhat easier by the “exclusion of drama,” which means the lectures did not include any discussion of Elizabethan drama, including Shakespeare’s early plays.

 

Still, the subject is large. And Lewis’s grasp of the subject is large, if not astounding. He covers poetry, theology (and it’s a period of a lot of theology), political writing, philosophy, and fiction. And while academic readers may chafe somewhat, the text is highly readable and accessible by general readers – likely a reflection of how the book started life as a lecture series. At times, it seems almost conversational.

 

C.S. Lewis

The broad strokes of understanding are simply described. Literature in the 16^th century was marked by a battle between the Scholastics and the Humanists, which the Humanists eventually won (I don’t think Lewis viewed that as a positive development). The was marked by the theological battles between, first, the Catholic establishment and the English translators like John Wycliffe, and then the religious wars between the Protestants and the Catholics. Sir Thomas Moe and John Wycliffe were martyred a year apart and for different reasons. Lewis also devotes considerable attention to one of the most important works of the 16^th century – The Book of Common Prayer.

 

Lewis notes that, for Scotland, the century began as an almost golden age in literature, while for England it was what he calls the “Drab Period.” No one, he notes, would have expected the Drab Period to eventually give way to the amazing English literature of the last half of the century. But it did, and he says he can’t offer a reason for why it happened.

 

In detail, he covers the greatest writers of the century – Edmund Spenser, Tyndale John Knox, More, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, Shakespeare (his sonnets).and many others. His descriptions and understanding make it clear that he’s not only read these authors, he’s read about these authors. The breadth and depth of Lewis’s scholarship is astonishing.

 

English Literature in the Sixteenth Century is not only an in-depth introduction to the great and not-so-great works of the period; it’s also a display of Lewis’s scholarly knowledge and understanding. And it was this incisive mind that also gave us his well-known works on Christianity, which Lewis himself might see as of a piece.

"Dorothy and Jack" by Gina Dalfonzo

It may sound like a kind of heresy, but I read Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) before I read C.S. Lewis (1898-1963). In the 1970s, there was a revival of mysteries from the Golden Age (1920s-1940s, possibly including the 1950s). I was reading Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Margery Allingham, G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, and many others. I connected to Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey stories through Chesterton. In the late 1970s, I was reading Francis Schaeffer, and it was through Schaeffer that I began reading Lewis. 

While I came to know a lot about Lewis and the Inklings, and his friendship with Tolkien, what I didn’t know was the connection between Lewis and Sayers. One connecting point was Charles Williams, a sort of “add-on Inkling” who moved to Oxford with the University Press in 1940. He became great friends with Lewis, but not so much with Tolkien. It was Williams who inspired Sayers to undertake her translation of The Divine Comedy by Dante, although his death in 1945 happened before she began to publish.

 

The original connecting point was a fan letter written by Sayers to Lewis in 1942. For the next 15 years, until Sayers’ death in 1957, they developed and maintained a friendship nurtured in writing, faith, education, family background, interests, and philosophy. Gina Dalfonzo tells their story in Dorothy and Jack: The Transforming Friendship of Dorothy L. Sayers and C.S. Lewis, and she notes that it would be difficult to find a man and a woman more alike in virtually all aspects of their lives. 

 

Gina Dalfonzo

The story of their friendship is the story of two towering intellects who connected initially through that fan letter. Dalfonzo notes that the letter itself has been lost; we don’t know which of Lewis’s works inspired her to write. Lewis said that this letter was the first fan letter he received from someone famous.

 

Their correspondence continued and grew. It was a friendship of equals – equals in intellect, faith, and fame. Their correspondence and occasional face-to-face meetings continued. Dalfonzo ably guides us through their friendship, the letters, and the context of their meetings and discussions. As the meetings of the Inklings became more sporadic, Sayers may have provided the intellectual sounding board that Lewis thrived on. And vice versa. 

 

It's a wonderful book, filled with insights about both authors.

 

Dalfonzo is the author of One by One: Welcoming the Singles in Your Church and the editor of The Gospel in Dickens: Selections from His Works. She serves as a columnist at Christ & Pop Culture and is the founder and editor of Dickensblog, a “blog for all things Dickens.” She’s written for The Atlantic, Christianity Today, First Things, Weekly Standard, and Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal, among many others. She received a B.S. degree in English from Messiah College and an M.A. degree in English from George Mason University. She lives in Virginia.

 

Dorothy and Jack is an important contribution to our understanding of not only both authors individually but to that overall climate in England in the 1940s and 1950s that did much to fan the flames of Christian faith on both sides of the Atlantic.

“After Humanity” by Michael Ward: C.S. Lewis’s “The Abolition of Man”

During World War II, C.S. Lewis gave three related lectures at Durham University. The three were entitled “Men Without Chests,” “The Way,” and “The Abolition of Man.” In 1943, they were published in a single volume under the title of The Abolition of Man. The lectures are not Lewis’s most accessible work, even though the volume sold quite well.  

The lectures concerned universal values, like courage and honor, and how contemporary philosophies were about demolishing any idea of such values existing, even though they can be found in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and indeed all major world religions. To read The Abolition of Man today is to be struck with how contemporary it sounds; a lot of the same philosophical battles are being fought, but using different names, like post-modernism.

 

But if you’re looking for something by C.S. Lewis that’s as easy to read as, say The Screwtape Letters, The Abolition of Man isn’t it. The lectures were intended for an academic audience; lay readers (like me) can understand them, but they must be read slowly and carefully. 

 

Michael Ward, whom N.T. Wright has called the foremost living Lewis scholar, seeks to make The Abolition of Man more accessible. And with After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, he’s done just that. 

 

Ward, senior research fellow at Blackfriars Hall at the University of Oxford and professor of Apologetics at Houston Baptist University, brings a wealth of knowledge about Lewis to the work. His books include Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis, The Narnia Code: C.S. Lewis and the Secret of the Seven Heavens, The Cambridge Guide to C.S. Lewis (co-editor), C.S. Lewis at Poet’s Corner (co-editor), and Heresies and How to Avoid Them(co-editor). From 1996 to 1999, Ward was resident warden at The Kilns, Lewis’s home in Oxford.

 

Michael Ward

He discusses how the lectures in both spoken and printed form were first received; the context for the lectures; an overview of the subject; the disappointment some find in discovering that The Abolition of Man is not a Christian apologetic but instead a philosophical discussion; and the legacy of the lectures and the published book. He then provides a commentary, often page by page and paragraph by paragraph, of the published lectures. His conclusion is a fascinating discussion of what the work means today, in terms of prophecy, poetry, and power.

 

After Humanity is two things – an important work of scholarship on a major work by Lewis, and an in-depth explanation and guide to what many consider one of the major intellectual works of the 20th century.

C.S. Lewis: World War I Poet

In 1919, the English publisher William Heinemann released a volume of poetry entitled Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics. The collection was part of a flood of poetry works that flowed copiously during and after World War I, joining collections by Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Charles Sorley, Francis Ledwidge, Robert Graves, Edmund Blunden, and other “World War I poets,” many of them published posthumously.  

The author of Spirits in Bondage published under a pseudonym, Clive Hamilton. His real name was Clive Staples Lewis. The collection wasn’t republished until 1984, and in 1994 it was included in his Collected Poems. Most of the poems were written between 1915 and 1918, when Lewis was in military training at Oxford and then in France on the Western Front. 

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

"On the Shoulders of Hobbits" by Louis Markos

I first read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the late 1960s, using what I didn’t know were pirated editions published by Ballantine. I reread authorized editions in the mid-1970s, and again in the early 2000s when the Peter Jackson movies were released. My youngest and I saw the movies three times each at the movie theater. We also watched the DVD of each movie. And the extended DVD set. 

I read The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis in the mid-to-late 1980s, when our oldest was six or seven years old and loved being read to. The hands-down favorite character for all of us was Reepicheep the Mouse, a humble character called to great things much like Tolkien’s Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. 

Over the years, I’ve bought a lot of books by and about Lewis and Tolkien. On one of our trips to England, I spent two hours in Blackwell’s Bookshop on Broad Street in Oxford; I stared in wonder at the whole section devoted to the two authors and the Inklings. If there is heaven on earth, it is called Blackwell’s in Oxford.

Facebook has taught me that I am not alone in my admiration for Lewis and Tolkien. We are legion.

When a scholar like Louis Markos publishes a book about both authors, it’s an event for Lewis and Tolkien fans like myself. And rather than rehash what we already know, On the Shoulders of Hobbits takes a fascinatingly different approach – it considers The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia as guideposts to the classical virtues, like courage, friendship, temperance, discernment, justice, faith, hope, and love.

Louis Markos

Markos begins with the road, or the journey, featured in both of the works. He considers the call of the road, the response to it, its dangers, and what happens at the end. The road isn’t necessarily a physical one; it can be any kind of extended task that’s fraught with difficulties and where the outcome is by no means certain. He moves then to discuss the classical and the theological virtues, and the roles they play in both stories. And then he examines the idea and problem of evil, and how it is portrayed, confronted, and battled. 

Markos is a professor in English and Scholar in Residence at Houston Baptist University. He speaks widely on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Christian worldview. His books include Atheism on Trial, Apologetics for the 21^stCentury, From Achilles to Christ, Worldview Guides to The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid, C.S. Lewis: An Apologist for Education, Lewis Agonistes, Literature: A Student’s Guide, and Heaven and Hell: Vision of the Afterlife in the Western Poetic Tradition. He lives with his family in Houston. 

On the Shoulders of Hobbits also serves a good reminder that great stories about virtues, the call of the road, and fighting evil aren’t only for the young. That’s what the book is ultimately about – what good stories like these can teach us, no matter what our age or experience or station in life. 

After all, Frodo Baggins was 50 when he leaves the Shire with the ring to travel to Rivendell.

Related: The Road is Long, and the Call is Loud - at Literary Life.