More Than One Way toHave Some Company
'We read to know we are not alone.'
--C.S. Lewis. You can review an earlier quote by the estimable author here. You can learn more about Clive Staples Lewis here, or visit an institute bearing his name here. Everyone, it seems, wants to lay claim to his name and legacy. There's even a C.S. Lewis Society of California. One strange fact we never knew until today: he died on the very same day that JFK was killed in Dallas.
2 Comments:
A black night for me, a perfect backdrop for a memory of sparkling Lewisian vistas; Colors, sensations, pleasures and terrors I have met nowhere else seem an odd outgrowth from a man who appears so staid and ordinary. Drawn in, one enters startling worlds where the character in the story is not the only one who changes. He breathes the truth of his adventures in Perelandra, "A man who has been in another world does not come back unchanged." It is a book from the space trilogy whose main character is a philologist, an item worth mentioning to those who work with words.
vitam impendere vero
The paradox you mention--about writers who live so ordinarily but create such unordinary work--is often remarked upon. The French novelist Flaubert had the right answer about that: "Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you
may be violent and original in your work." I think he was on to something. He's talking about the perspiration, dedication and discipline it takes to create good writing.
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