The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 2 : Books, Broadcasts and the War, 1931-1949 (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis)

Rating:
Summary: A rich mine of assorted treasures.
Review: The second volume of letters from C.S. Lewis is more varied and consistently interesting than the first, I think. For one thing, Lewis is writing to a wider group of people. While in the first volume most letters are addressed to father, brother, or friend Arthur Reeves, now he is ensconced in Oxford, mildly famous and cursed with more correspondents than he wishes (though he is always polite, and usually thoughtful). His father has passed away, his brother does some ghost-lettering, and Arthur still gets a few epistles. But this volume also contains leaves to Dorothy Sayers (an excellent match), Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, John Betjeman, poet and painter Ruth Ritter, the Catholic student of Hinduism, Dom Bede Griffiths (whom he warns, "I now believe that refined, philosophical eastern Pantheism is far further from the true Faith than the semi barbarous pagan religions"), and a few short letters to T. S. Elliot, interesting for their terseness and studied politeness. (Besides not liking his poetry, Lewis was mad at Elliot for not contributing to a book for the widow of Charles Williams.) Possibly the most common topic of discussion is literature, much of it by one or the other correspondant. But lots more gets touched on.

Some letters are also written to help people with spiritual questions, "plot good" of some sort, or pray with people like his Italian priest friend, with whom he corresponded in Latin. (Given here in English and Latin.) You can also find many interesting observations on a variety of topics sprinkled about. ("Poetry I take to be the continual effort to bring language back to the actual.")

But the adjective that may best describe Lewis in many of these letters is "fun-loving." To Barfield: "Did I ever mention that Weston, Divine, Frost, Wither, Curry and Miss Hardcastle" (the villains in That Hideous Strength) were all portraits of you?" To Sayers: "Mr. Bultitude (the lazy bear in the same book)is described by Tolkien as a portrait of the author, but I feel that is too high a compliment." I especially enjoyed the faux quarrel between Lewis, pretending to be the middleman for a medieval prince who seduced his king's wife (one letter goes out in Old English), and Barfield, representing himself as agent of the king, demanding reparation. Lewis understood that a person makes a bad bargain in growing up if he forgets along the way how to play.

Lewis' letters to Laurence Harwood, his godson, mark a change of style: now he writes with Narnian simplicity, not "talking down" to children but talking about things both still find interesting. (And I did, too.) "Yesterday the man who lives next door to us came into our garden when we weren't looking and cut down one of our trees . . . He is an old man with a white beard who eats nothing but raw vegetables. He keeps goats who also have white beards and eat nothing but raw vegetables. If I knew magic I should like to turn him into a goat himself; it wouldn't be so very wicked because he is so like a goat already!"

Much less interesting are the many "thank you" notes Lewis sends to Americans for "CARE" packages. Some of these are repetitious; Lewis seems uncomfortable, experimenting with new ways of saying "thank you." Later some of these correspondences develop into something more interesting. But since Hooper or Harper cut some, this would have been a good place to chop more more deeply. The best stuff needs to be quarried a bit. But like gemstones in a bedrock of fine granite, most of the other material is moderately interesting, though some is merely utilitarian.

Walter Hooper has done a phenomenal job with this series and this book in particular. His notes are useful and often enlightening -- especially when he explains what Lewis' correspondent said, as he often does. At the end of the book he gives graceful biographical sketches of about three dozen people who corresponded with Lewis. (Very interesting people.) He has done a first-rate job with these first two volumes, and I'm looking forward to seeing the third.

author, Jesus and the Religions of Man