C.s. lewis

Unexpectedly, the Oxford literature professor Clive Staples Lewis – better known as C.S. Lewis – is having something of a moment, more than six decades after his death. Director Greta Gerwig, of Barbie fame, has embarked upon the ambitious project of filming all seven of his Chronicles of Narnia books for Netflix, starting with The Magician’s Nephew. She has assembled a starry ensemble that will include Daniel Craig, Carey Mulligan, the excellent Emma Mackey as the White Witch and, for the voice of the divine lion Aslan, none other than Meryl Streep. There are rumors that Lewis’s ever-popular satirical epistolary novel The Screwtape Letters is to be turned into an animated film.

In the summer of 1955, an unusual meeting took place. Billy Graham visited the writer and academic C.S. Lewis in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalene College, Cambridge. It was unusual because leading British academics typically avoided Southern Baptist revivalists. But rather than encountering a fussy, prim don, Graham found a kind, intelligent scholar who was very happy to spend the afternoon with him. Later, Graham admitted he was intimidated by Lewis, but the English professor quickly dispelled any anxiety, probably by offering Graham a cup of tea. Graham’s impact on American religious culture, for good or ill, is unquestioned, but it is difficult to imagine what that same culture would look like without the works of C.S. Lewis.

Sohrab Ahmari is an ogre sent by Satan to annihilate American freedom. At least, that’s the reputation he has with liberals of the more excitable sort. His new book ought to soothe their twitchy nerves. The Unbroken Thread is an easy going, ecumenical, rather cosmopolitan tour of 12 moral questions and select thinkers who responded to each of them. ‘My primary purpose,’ writes our implausible theocrat, is ‘not to offer definitive answers, drawn from any one particular tradition, but to explore the possibility that our contemporary philosophy might be wrong in crucial respects.’ Ahmari has been much vilified for his criticism of Drag Queen Story Hour, an event in which crossdressers introduce themselves to children in public libraries.

Don’t skip over the dedications in books. They can be as illuminating as the stories they precede and shine an intriguing light on the author’s private life and loves: Jane Austen and Edmund Spenser [caption id="attachment_9876775" align="alignnone" width="739"] Family portrait of Jane Austen[/caption] The dedication to Jane Austen’s Emma reads: ‘To His Royal Highness The Prince Regent, This Work Is By His Royal Highness’s Permission, Most Respectfully Dedicated, By His Royal Highness’s Dutiful And Obedient Humble Servant, The Author.’ The Prince Regent was George Augustus Frederick, uncle of Queen Victoria and the eldest of George III’s children. He was self-indulgent and excessive.