As part of A Week with Jack, I’m going to respond to a few questions inspired by C.S. Lewis’ relationship with literature. These questions were presented to the reader at the end of The Reading Life, an anthology of Lewisian essays on literature, reading, and the meaning/value thereof. You are invited and welcome to participate, to whatever degree you feel comfortable.
List the ten books that have most shaped who you are today and write down a few sentences per book of how they have shaped you.
Neil Postman’s Technopoly has had a huge yet understated effect on my life and thought: it was the book that made me think about how our use of technology changes us, and it’s why despite being a tech geek, I’m also a quasi-luddite who only bought a smartphone in 2018, and then largely to serve as a camera. Erich Fromm’s essay “Ennui and Affluence”, included in For the Love of Life and then expanded into its own book, To Have or to Be? woke me up to the unhappiness caused by not just consumerism, but to material attachment, and along with Walden was the reason I began exploring voluntary simplicity and lived like a monk in college. The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton are must mentions, introducing me to a life inclined towards wisdom, and in Aurelius’ case, my engagement with his thinking made me realize and appreciate what religion felt like — the attempt to discern order in the Cosmos and then live by it. A Life of her Own by Emile Carles, which I read for a French history class, had a huge effect on my political thinking, introducing me to the libertarian left. The Death and Life of Great American Cities is one of the most important books I’ve ever read, introducing me to the concept of emergent order, and serving as the unwittingly catalyst for my transformation from a conflicted progressive into a conflicted libertarian. Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, like Kunstler’s Geography of Nowhere, brought into focus something I’d been aware of, but in a hazy, “can’t quite put my finger on it” sort of way, and it led to me engaging with conservative though, which I was starting to realize was more varied and substantive in quarters than I’d realized.
Lewis often describes the gift of reading as the opportunity to “see through others’ eyes.” Which books have you read that have revealed to you a very different view of the world from your own? How did these experiences change you? Which books should you read that would open up other worlds you are not familiar with—allowing that the differences could be cultural, racial, religious, historical, or something else?
This is a harder question to answer. given how many books I’ve read over the years — close to two thousand during this blog’s tenure. I’ve read books that would give me another perspective before — Destiny, Disrupted is a world history through Muslim eyes, for instance, and one of my favorite books in the for Dummies series is a British book whose history of the American Revolution allowed me to see the English perspective. I sometimes read war memoirs from different sides: Black Edelweiss remains one of the most chilling I’ve read, demonstrating how perfectly normal, middle-class Germans could willfully choose Hitler, not because they believed in him but because he was viewed as a necessary evil, a safeguard against worst fates like takeover by Communist gangs.
Lewis highly values re-reading old books, even books from childhood. Which books have you re-read, and why did you choose to re-read them?
I’ve re-read quite a few books from my youth, largely because I wanted to re-experience the stories again. Tom Sawyer and The Call of the Wild are books for me that will never grow old. Recently I re-read books from the 1990s, but not for any serious reason; it was more to dip into neon nostalgia for a little bit.
Which books have you read more than twice? How have these books affected you? Write down your earliest childhood memories of books that transported you and created in you a love of books? Have you re-read these titles lately? Were they still magical? How did these early experiences influence you?
I’ve read many books more than once. Before I became a working adult, I’d chronically re-read the books I had, so much so that those titles are a….wee bit battered. Now, as an adult, I rarely re-read books, but there are exceptions. I regularly re-read C.S. Lewis’ Surprised by Joy and The Screwtape Letters, the former because I enjoy Jack’s company and the latter as a devotional exercise of sorts. Asimov, Bill Kauffman, and Anthony Esolen are also revisited on a regular basis. Ditto Wendell Berry: I love putting on a chapter of my Jayber Crow audiobook and revisiting Port William. As far as books that transport me some place else — oh, Robinson Crusoe! I don’t remember how old I was when I read it — eight, maybe. It was a child’s version, but I was absolutely fascinated by it, and still remember walking down the street reading it, unable to wait to get to my ‘spot’ –a little area between some huge mounds of sand and the woodline, where there were a multitude of blackberry bushes and honeysuckles. It was cool in the summer heat, no one could see me behind the sand, and I could lose myself in reading. I also had a private spot in the woods behind a swamp that I’d forged a path to using..um, “borrowed” cinder blocks. Alas, I lost it when the woods were logged.
List the “old books” you will commit to read as a break from reading all contemporary ones.
While I’m not going to take a break from new reads, there are a few books from 2013 I’d like to re-visit: Crunchy Cons, which I read as a progressive moving into libertarianism, but which was about the conservative counterculture; The Death and Life of Great American Cities, not only because it was brilliant and mind-blowing but because I never reviewed it; The Age of Absurdity, which I read in the same year and again failed to review; and several of those world-view changing titles like small is beautiful.
What do you think of the genre of books called fairy stories or books of fantasy and magic—of which Lewis had much to say? Which titles have influenced you most and what do you think they have taught you about the “real” world?
I have enjoyed them, but they’re not a staple. I think I resonate more with Narnia and Middleearth because of who the authors were, and from the fact that they were drawing deeply from Western and Christian culture/lore to create this stories. Likewise for Mercedes’ Lackey “500 Kingdoms” series, which takes as its premise that The Tradition (of stories) is always trying to recreate itself by pushing people who fit certain types (like a stepmother or an orphan) into tropish storylines. Aesthetically, I like the world of Tolkienseque fantasy very much – -the psuedo-medieval setting is always easy to understand.
Lewis writes movingly about the discovery of his favorite author, George MacDonald. Who would you say is your favorite author, and what role has he or she played in your life?
A few years ago I would have described Isaac Asimov as my favorite author, simply because I’d read so much of him. These days, though, I’m torn between Wendell Berry and Jack himself. I could write essays on either — on my appreciation of Berry’s unique critiques about the industrial state, the destruction of human communities and the human person in the modern age, his beautiful recreation of the same in his Port Williams books, etc. Lewis had similar critiques about modernity, though he wasn’t so much thinking of a shift from agriculture to industrialism, or the takeover by agriculture by the machine: not only did that presumably happen at a different scale in England, but it was only starting in earnest in the US when he died. I think I’ll say Lewis, not because I like Berry less but because I feel I know more of Lewis: I’ve read his biography, his letters, his diaries, countless essays. Lewis isn’t just an author to me, he feels like a friend, one whose company I frequently seek out.
Reading Freely 