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The Reading Life: The Joy of Seeing New Worlds Through Others’ Eyes
C. S. Lewis
How to Read provides guidance and reflections on the love and enjoyment of books. Engaging and enlightening, this well-rounded collection includes Lewis’ reflections on science fiction, why children’s literature is for readers of all ages, and why we should read two old books for every new one. C. S. Lewis continues to speak to readers thanks to not only his intellectual insights on Christianity but also his wondrous creative works and deep reflections on the literature that impacted his life. Beloved for his teaching novels like Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and The Chronicles of Narnia as well as his narrative books that explored theology and Christian life, Lewis was a long-time writer and lover of books of every kind. Cultivated from his many essays, articles, letters, as well as his classic works, How to Read is a collection of Lewis’s writings that provides both guidance and reflections on the love and enjoyment of books. A lens into the thoughts of one of the greatest public intellectuals of our time, this collection reveals what Lewis himself loved so much about reading and what it means to learn through literature–all in one accessible volume.
Copyright (#ulink_1a740595-9d89-5706-8dc4-38194bcd92e4)
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://WilliamCollinsBooks.com)
First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2019
First published in the United States by HarperOne in 2019
Experiment in Criticism. Copyright © 1961 by Cambridge University Press. God in the Dock. Copyright © 1967 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Published by Eerdmans.
Studies in Words. Copyright © 1960 by Cambridge University Press.
Every effort has been made to obtain permissions for pieces quoted or adapted in this work. If any required acknowledgments have been omitted, or any rights overlooked, it is unintentional. Please notify the publishers of any omission, and it will be rectified in future editions.
The Reading Life. Copyright © 2019 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Designed by Janet Evans-Scanlon
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Source ISBN: 9780008307110
Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008307134
Version: 2019-10-04
About This Book (#ulink_c4a5217a-273c-5a34-9aa1-8c9c37f8a3d1)
The revered teacher and best-selling author reflects on the power, importance, and joy of a life dedicated to reading books in this delightful collection drawn from his wide body of writings.
More than fifty years after his death, revered intellectual and teacher C. S. Lewis continues to speak to readers, thanks not only to his intellectual insights on Christianity but also his wondrous creative works and deep reflections on the literature that influenced his life. Beloved for his instructive novels including The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and The Chronicles of Narnia as well as his philosophical books that explored theology and Christian life, Lewis was a life-long writer and book lover.
Cultivated from his many essays, articles, and letters, as well as his classic works, The Reading Life provides guidance and reflections on the love and enjoyment of books. Engaging and enlightening, this well-rounded collection includes Lewis’ reflections on science fiction, why children’s literature is for readers of all ages, and why we should read two old books for every new one.
A window into the thoughts of one of the greatest public intellectuals of our time, this collection reveals not only why Lewis loved the written word, but what it means to learn through literature from one of our wisest and most enduring teachers.
CONTENTS
Cover (#u256845f1-7f93-55d6-812e-c5d42b8fde3c)
Title Page (#u79239f1d-9ffd-5fde-b1be-302d7fcbde30)
Copyright (#u8c1caec9-8d67-5758-aa82-2382f7fc7b70)
About This Book (#uf34542a4-9e22-59a0-a16e-5fe3b4397747)
Preface by David C. Downing and Michael G. Maudlin
PART ONE: ON THE ART AND JOY OF READING (#uf976f957-69f1-55d3-a4a7-5c17b035ca8a)
Why We Read (#u35583169-a92f-5804-ae10-27bfba5a75b4)
How to Know If You Are a True Reader (#u2c8fdfa1-e48c-5731-bd30-da8ca9cbaf15)
Why Children’s Stories Are Not Just for Children (#u408de5c4-1630-5465-bd90-bb4dbda39d10)
Literature as Time Travel (#litres_trial_promo)
Why Fairy Tales Are Often Less Deceptive Than ‘Realistic’ Stories (#litres_trial_promo)
The Case for Reading Old Books (#litres_trial_promo)
On the Role of the Marvellous (#litres_trial_promo)
Growing Up Amidst a Sea of Books (#litres_trial_promo)
On Encountering a Favorite Author for the First Time (#litres_trial_promo)
Why Movies Sometimes Ruin Books (#litres_trial_promo)
How to Murder Words (#litres_trial_promo)
Saving Words from the Eulogistic Abyss (#litres_trial_promo)
The Achievements of J. R. R. Tolkien (#litres_trial_promo)
On the Dangers of Confusing Saga with History (#litres_trial_promo)
On Two Ways of Traveling and Two Ways of Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
PART TWO: SHORT READINGS ON READING (#litres_trial_promo)
Word Combinations (#litres_trial_promo)
Sincerity and Talent (#litres_trial_promo)
Prose Style (#litres_trial_promo)
Not in but Through (#litres_trial_promo)
Pleasure (#litres_trial_promo)
Originality (#litres_trial_promo)
The Up-to-Date Myth (#litres_trial_promo)
Keeping Up (#litres_trial_promo)
Wide Tastes (#litres_trial_promo)
Real Enjoyment (#litres_trial_promo)
Literary Snobs (#litres_trial_promo)
Re-reading Favorites Each Decade (#litres_trial_promo)
Reading and Experience (#litres_trial_promo)
Free to Skip (#litres_trial_promo)
Free to Read (#litres_trial_promo)
Huck (#litres_trial_promo)
The Glories of Childhood—Versus Adolescence (#litres_trial_promo)
Jane Austen (#litres_trial_promo)
Art and Literature (#litres_trial_promo)
Art Appreciation (#litres_trial_promo)
Look. Listen. Receive. (#litres_trial_promo)
Talking About Books (#litres_trial_promo)
The Blessing of Correspondence (#litres_trial_promo)
In Praise of Dante (#litres_trial_promo)
On Alexandre Dumas (#litres_trial_promo)
The Delight of Fairy Tales (#litres_trial_promo)
Language as Comment (#litres_trial_promo)
Communicating the Essence of Our Lives (#litres_trial_promo)
Mapping My Books (#litres_trial_promo)
On Plato and Aristotle (#litres_trial_promo)
Imagination (#litres_trial_promo)
If Only (#litres_trial_promo)
On Shakespeare (#litres_trial_promo)
On Hamlet (#litres_trial_promo)
On Leo Tolstoy (#litres_trial_promo)
Advice for Writing (#litres_trial_promo)
Good Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
Appendix: Journal Exercises for Reflecting on Your Reading Life (#litres_trial_promo)
Footnotes (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by C. S. Lewis (#litres_trial_promo)
Also Available From Harpercollins (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PREFACE (#uf73a185b-4ab3-559a-a72a-3b845fb565e9)
THE NOTED CRITIC WILLIAM EMPSON ONCE DESCRIBED C. S. Lewis as “the best-read man of his generation, one who read everything and remembered everything he read.”[1] (#litres_trial_promo) This sounds like pardonable exaggeration, but it comes close to being true in the realms of literature, philosophy, and classics. At the age of ten, Lewis started reading Milton’s Paradise Lost. By age eleven, he began his lifelong habit of seasoning his letters with quotations from the Bible and Shakespeare. In his mid-teens, Lewis was reading classic and contemporary works in Greek, Latin, French, German, and Italian.
And Lewis did indeed seem to remember most of what he read. One of his students recalled that someone could quote any line from the book-length Paradise Lost, and Lewis would continue the passage from memory. Another student said that he could take a book off Lewis’s shelf, open a page at random and begin reading, and Lewis could summarize the rest of the page, often word for word.[2] (#litres_trial_promo) With that kind of memory, Lewis had little difficulty reaching for just the right quotation or reference to illustrate his point. Since it seems he was able to carry an entire library in his head, it should come as no surprise that his major scholarly books average about one thousand citations apiece. His three volumes of letters contain another twelve thousand quotations or references. Even The Chronicles of Narnia for children contain nearly one hundred echoes or allusions to myth, history, or literature.
But as Mortimer Adler once remarked, “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” Lewis would certainly agree, and he often commented how much his worldview and sensibility were shaped by the books he read—everything from Beatrix Potter in childhood to his re-reading of Homer’s Iliad, Dickens’s Bleak House, and Tennyson’s In Memoriam in the last few weeks before his death in November 1963.
Lewis was a disciplined reader and an engaged reader. Fellow scholars recall how he could sit for hours in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, perusing and absorbing texts, oblivious to what was happening in the room around him. When reading books from his private library, he often added marginal notes and created his own index on the inside cover. If he found a book unprofitable, as he did Byron’s Don Juan, he simply wrote on the inside back cover “Never again.”
Of course, reading was also one of the supreme pleasures of Lewis’s life. In his memoir Surprised by Joy Lewis described his ideal daily routine to be reading and writing from nine until one and again from five to seven, with breaks for meals, walking, or tea-time. Apart from those six hours of study every day, he also enjoyed light reading over meals or in the evening hours (pp. 141–143). All in all, Lewis’s preferred schedule seemed to include seven or eight hours of reading per day! For Lewis, reading was both a high calling and an endless source of satisfaction. In fact, his sense of vocation and avocation were virtually indistinguishable whenever he picked up a book—and often when he wrote one.
Often Lewis described the community that is formed when one is among fellow passionate readers (see the chapter on “How to Know If You Are a True Reader”). This fellowship is not one of merely sharing a hobby but of people whose worlds have been enlarged and deepened by books. They are a distinctive group. This collection brings together fun, whimsical, and wise selections from Lewis’s lifetime of writing that would be of interest to those who share this passion. And we mean all who love reading literature, whether children’s fantasy, poetry, science fiction, or Jane Austen. We did not include his opinions on classic or historical literature, which was his academic specialty, but only his advice and opinions on the shared enterprise of reading works of general interest. Nor do we include his many comments on Christian or devotional reading. This book is for members of the reading club, broadly defined.
One of the delights of Lewis’s thoughts on reading is the breadth of his passions, never forgetting the childhood joy in discovering that books were portals to other worlds. As Lewis himself explained, “Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality … In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”
This volume is for the entertainment and the edification of those in this reading club. We hope you enjoy this new window into the wit and wisdom of C. S. Lewis.
DAVID C. DOWNING
