CS Lewis

The Lewis Legacy-Issue 85, Summer 2000 From the Mailbag

Since writing “The Dark Tower: A Challenge to Lewis Scholars” (Legacy 84), I’ve noticed a few more echoes of That Hideous Strength in The Dark Tower. In That Hideous Strength, Mark Studdock is imprisoned in a room that is covered, wherever he looks, with decorations not explicitly demonic but having a subtle cumulative effect that is dehumanizing (ch. 13). According Read More ›

The Lewis Legacy-Issue 85, Summer 2000 News and Views

Conference in Milan: “Clive Staples Lewis critico della Modernita.” On Saturday, December 11, 1999 the first Italian C. S. Lewis conference took place. Most of the speakers were Italian, but there were two from Oxford: Andrew Paul Cuneo, President of Oxford University Lewis Society, spoke on “The Principle of Hierarchy in C.S. Lewis,” and Walter Hooper gave the keynote address, Read More ›

The Lewis Legacy-Issue 85, Summer 2000 Stop and Shop

BOOKS BY LEGACY READERS The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers (Del Rey, paperback reissue, 1999). This historical fantasy set in 16th century Europe draws on the legend of the Fisher King. First published in 1979 it has been translated into French, Czech, Italian, and Polish. Declare by Tim Powers will be released this year by Avon, but 26 Read More ›

The Lewis Legacy-Issue 85, Summer 2000 Notes and Quotes

Lewis’s view of Purgatory was similar to Dante’s. Kathryn Lindskoog writes: “The analogy that works best for me is arriving at a festive dinner party in dripping wet raincoat and muddy galoshes. Instead of joining the other guests in the reception room that way, we strip off our outer wraps in the vestibule and then join the party. How long Read More ›

In the Footsteps of Anon

According to a very popular e-mail, from 1558 to 1829 Catholics in England were not allowed to practice their faith in public or private. It was illegal to be Catholic, upon penalty of death. So Catholics wrote “The Twelve Days of Christmas” to secretly teach their children the basics of the Christian faith. Since the song sounded like rhyming nonsense, Read More ›

In the Footsteps of Dilbert

In 1997 a management consultant held a seminar for executives of Logitech International, the world’s largest producer of computer mice. He led the attentive group through a session of brainstorming and sharing in order to improve their mission statement, which was simply “to provide Logitech with profitable growth and related new business areas.” The improved statement that they produced with Read More ›

In the Footsteps of Bourbaki

In an article titled “The Joy of Sets” in the October 1998 issue of Lingua Franca, Jim Holt began “Why is it that French theory so often ends up having a baneful effect on American pedagogy? I am thinking not of Derrida, but of another figure, one whose influence reached these shores long before him: Nicolas Bourbaki.” “In 1939 he Read More ›

In the Footsteps of Ashbless

Information from a 1999 copyrighted interview by John Berlyne. Authors Tim Powers and James Blaylock met as students at California State University at Fullerton in the 1970s. At that time the school paper was publishing lots of student poetry — in Powers’s words, “all free-verse, unpunctuated, unrhymed hippie drivel. Very pretentious though.” So Powers and Blaylock decided to write a Read More ›

The Lewis Legacy-Issue 85, Summer 2000 Note

All the Bells on Earth by James Blaylock (Ace Books) “Blaylock is one of the most brilliant of that new generation of fabulist writers; All the Bells on Earth may be his best book…mystical and enthralling…at once reminiscent of C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength and Clive Barker’s urban fantasies.” Washington Post Book World In fact, Blaylock’s book is a Read More ›

Note about Louis MacNeice from James O’Fee

Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) was a near contemporary of C.S. Lewis, and the two men had much in common: a. raised in pious Ulster middle-class familiesb. sent away to school in England where they lost Christian faithc. won scholarships to Oxfordd. took 1st Class Degrees in Classicse. yearned to make their name as poetsf. became masters of the medium then called Read More ›