For Jim; Finally I Share What I've Wanted to Share about C.S. Lewis

I have a craving for discipline of speech and discipline of thought. Where does the craving come from? I don't exactly know. There are certain influences. My daddy, who I adore, is a brilliant man with an opinion on everything, and usually with the evidence and reasoning to back it up. We spend hours at the dining room table at my parent's house discussing things of a Sunday afternoon. I attend his guest lectures whenever possible, and I often look to him for information when I have a question about philosophy, or natural science, or the food supply, or theology, or whatever else may come up. I tend to dominate his attention when we go to the swimming pool, because I need to desperately to run ideas by him. He answers many questions with a question, usually encouraging us to think things through a bit more thoroughly.

Another influence is, certainly, my lifelong admiration of C.S. Lewis. I love Lewis so much that no matter what I'm reading, whatever the book on whatever the subject, my eye always travels to the initials C. and S. together, whenever they occur on the page. I wish that I could have had him for a teacher, though I doubt he ever had any female students, and he probably wouldn't have been all that impressed with me. The closest I can come is reading his books.

Lewis wrote books about medieval literature, about language, about story-telling. I have a couple of his works of literary criticism in addition to the usual collection of amateur theology and fiction. Though in my circles he is known primarily as a Christian apologist, he was also a professor of English Literature, and a wonderfully accessible writer, which plays a large role in my devotion to him as one of my favorite authors. I was able to use him as a source many years ago when I was writing a small piece of textual criticism on Mallory's Le Morte D'Arthur for a class.

I notice sometimes, when I choose the wrong word or phrase, what that choice of words indicates concerning my state of mind. I would never be so critical of the language used by any other person, but as you know, I am constantly examining myself, looking for intellectual fairness and love and the meeting of duty. For example, several weeks ago I made a comment to my sister that it was foolish to dismiss a particular doubt as foolishness even if the resulting explanation was incorrect. I noticed after saying it that I was doing the same thing to the speaker that I had been accusing him of. Forgive me if that statement isn't as clear as I had hoped to make it. I wonder if this passage from Surprised by Joy, in which Lewis describes his first encounter with his tutor, Kirkpatrick, called Kirk, or The Great Knock, has to do with my self-criticism. You can also read a brief and illustrative passage preceding this one here.

If ever a man came near to being a purely logical entity, that man was Kirk. Born a little later, he would have been a Logical Positivist. The idea that human beings should exercise their vocal organs for any purpose except that of communicating or discovering truth was to him preposterous. The most casual remark was taken as a summons to disputation. I soon came to know the differing values of his three openings. The loud cry of "Stop!" was flung in to arrest a torrent of verbiage which could not be endured a moment longer; not because it fretted his patience (he never thought of that) but because it was wasting time, darkening counsel. The hastier and quieter "Excuse!" (i.e., "Excuse me") ushered in a correction or distinction merely parenthetical and betokened that, thus set right, your remark might still, without absurdity, be allowed to reach completion. The most encouraging of all was, "I hear you." This meant that your remark was significant and only required refutation; it had risen to the dignity of error. Refutation (when we got so far) always followed the same lines. Had I read this? Had I studied that? Had I any statistical evidence? Had I any evidence in my own experience? And so to the almost inevitable conclusion, "Do you not see then that you had no right, etc."

Some boys would not have liked it; to me it was red beef and strong beer (135-136).

Did I originally get the idea that words and ideas matter from reading Lewis and Surprised by Joy? What's more likely, did I get them from my father? As I read Adler this month I sometime wonder if I got my ideas from him, or whether the fact that so much of his theory of reading, emphasizing understanding before criticism, expresses things I already believe is only a happy accident and confirmation, even if it is incommensurate with our culture.

One of my favorite things about Lewis is the fact that not only does he say what he means, he has a wonderful talent for explaining what it is he doesn't mean. I admire him as a master of critical thought and of communication, skills that he must have learned under the tutelage of Knock.