Alan Jacobs' The Narnian: A Must Read for All Who Enjoy C.S. Lewis
Written: Jan 25 '06
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Pros: Beautiful prose; careful research; well chosen vignettes; respectful tone; wonderful insights into Lewis
Cons: ~~~
The Bottom Line: For those who desire to know more about C.S. Lewis, I can't think of a better biography. I'd give it six stars if I could!
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| befus's Full Review: Alan Jacobs - The Narnian: The Life And Imaginatio... |
Some reviews almost seem to write themselves. You love a book, you understand immediately why you love it, and you find the words flowing effortlessly as you attempt to share that with others.
Other reviews are harder. Either your feelings about a book are mixed, or (and this is much more rare) a treasure of a book comes along that affects your heart and mind on such profound levels that it becomes a very difficult thing to put your response to it in words. This last, rare situation is where I find myself as I face the daunting though happy task of reviewing Alan Jacobs' brilliant 2005 biography of C.S. Lewis, The Narnian.
Most of me just wants to say this. Read it. If you love C.S. (Jack) Lewis, if you've enjoyed the Chronicles of Narnia or his space trilogy or any of his many non-fiction works, Jacobs' biography is a book you will not want to miss. It's a beautiful book, a carefully and respectfully researched book, a book that gave me honest and surprising insights into the life of a man whose work I've loved and admired for many years. Because I've read a good amount both by and about Lewis, I thought I had a pretty good handle on the shape of his life and what made him "tick" as a writer, a man of faith, and an apologist. But reading Jacobs' book ushered me into a new depth of understanding for Lewis as a person, one with faults and foibles, eccentricities and passions, griefs and dreams.
It is a rare pleasure indeed to find a biography that gives you such a real sense of the person about whom it's written. The doorway through which Jacobs enters his story is the doorway of "imagination." He uses Lewis' lifelong love of imagination, stories and fairie as a lens through which to shape the whole narrative. So in many ways this is not a "standard" biography, but something more -- a kind of mosaic portrait, if you will, created from bright bits of Lewis' letters, books, friendships, and loves. It never strays too far from the fundamental questions Jacob sets out in his introduction:
...what sort of person wrote the Chronicles of Narnia? Who was this man who made -- and, in a sense, himself dwelled in -- Narnia? What knowledge, what experience, what history made a boy from Ulster who grew up to profess English literature at Oxford turn, when he was nearly fifty, to the writing of stories for children -- and stories for children that would become among the most popular and beloved ever written?
As Jacobs begins to answer those questions, he adds that the answers are in some ways relevatory of the main currents of intellectual life in twentieth century Europe, in other ways unique to one man's strange experience. That rings true, and it is perhaps the latter, the uniqueness of Lewis' own imaginative, spiritual and literary experience, his mature but always childlike heart, that forms the heart of this book.
It is helpful but not necessary to have read some of Lewis' autobiographical work before turning to Jacobs. If you've already read Surprised by Joy (where Lewis reflects on his early life and on his conversion to the Christian faith) and A Grief Observed (where Lewis reflects on the death of his wife, just a few years before his own death) you will find a further depth of understanding of those periods in Lewis' life by reading Jacobs' book. If you haven't read them, Jacobs provides a more than adequate picture of those years and will make you want to read them.
Indeed, one of the great services this biography performs is to shed further light on some of the passages in Surprised by Joy, which at times can get a bit heady and philosophical for those of us not blessed with the formation of a classical education. The first half or so of The Narnian almost reads like a commentary, or a creative riff, on Surprised by Joy. Lewis' own reserve sometimes shaped what he included and left out in that narrative, and of course, the story was also shaped by themes he chose to dwell on, most especially his long journey from atheistic materialism to theism to Christianity. Jacobs hits all the major points that Lewis hits, but he does two other things concurrently. First, he probes into some of the personal events of Lewis' life and experience that Lewis himself chose not to reveal in any great depth, most especially his service in World War I and his relationship with Janie Moore, the mother of a fallen comrade. And two, Jacobs provides a very helpful primer of the times and environment that formed Lewis, particularly the British school system he struggled through as a young man, and post WWI Oxford.
When I mention that Jacobs looks into some of the events that Lewis himself chose not to reveal, I don't mean that he does so in a scandal-mongering way. In fact, the tone of this book is always respectful -- Jacobs, a professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois, clearly has a deep love of Lewis' work both personally and professionally. But it makes sense that when you're attempting to explore, in retrospect, a great person's life, you do so on various levels, not just looking at the "academic" or "public" face that the person might have worn most.
As a larger than life figure in his own time, and as someone whose reputation has only grown in the years since his death in 1963, Lewis tends to attract all sorts of attention, and it can go to either extreme. Some people tend to make him over into a plaster saint while others (especially those who frankly are ticked off at the later Lewis' explicit and exuberant embrace of Christianity) tend to paint his portrait in lurid colors or accuse him of outright hypocrisy.
Nowhere is this more seen than in biographical attempts to deal with his relationship with Mrs. Moore, the woman he called "Minto" -- and the woman he basically lived with for about thirty-two years. (I say 'basically' because Lewis, like other tutors at Oxford, kept rooms at the college where he often stayed during the week, and then went 'home' to the home he shared with his brother and Mrs. Moore on weekend and holidays. This arrangement continued after he obtained a full professorship at Cambridge.) The relationship was a complex one, and Jacobs doesn't gloss over it, though he does a terrific job of pointing out that it covered many seasons in Lewis' life, pre and post conversion, and as such, went through many changes. Jacobs doesn't spend undue amounts of time trying to exhume the truth about this relationship, but since it shaped so much of Lewis' daily life for so many years, he doesn't ignore it either. Instead, he chooses to draw from it, where he can, lessons about Lewis' character and struggles in different seasons of his journey.
That's just one prominent example of Jacobs' approach. I could go on, but instead will turn to lauding Jacobs' clear and beautiful prose style. I had a hard time putting this book down, which meant more than a few days of walking around with my nose buried in the pages, since it comes in at 314 pages (minus notes). I also loved the way Jacob provided his own interpretations and reflections on some of Lewis' work, from his early hardly known long narrative poems to his later well-known novels and non-fiction.
Jacobs is especially good at exploring certain passages in light of insights drawn from Lewis' biography. Let me give a couple of examples, both dealing with passages in the Naranian stories. Jacobs weaves a discussion of the scene where Eustace Scrubb (in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader) is transformed by Aslan from a dragon into a boy, with a discussion of Lewis' own transformation/ conversion. Brilliant and beautifully done. In another chapter, Jacobs tackles the character of Digory Kirke in The Magician's Nephew and explores Lewis' struggles and grief surrounding his mother's death, especially as that grief is revealed through the poignant scene where Digory must choose between obedience to Aslan and what seems like a magical cure for his ailing mother. Beautifully done again. It's not as though no one else has ever explored these connections, but Jacobs does it with charity and clarity, in a way that enriches one's understanding of Lewis' writing and Lewis' life all at the same time.
Jacobs is also very skillful at choosing just the right vignette to convey something noteworthy about Lewis the man. One of my favorites comes at the end of the final chapter when he recounts a visit made to Lewis in the hospital by Maureen, Mrs. Moore's now grown daughter. Maureen had been a music teacher most of her life, but in recent months had discovered, amazingly, that she was the heiress of a wealty estate owned by a distant relative in Scotland. The relative's passing had given her the title of "Lady" and had secured her fortune.
Maureen had known Jack since she was a young girl, and in the few places she appeared in Jacobs' narrative, seemed deeply appreciative of Jack's enduring loyalty and kindness to her mother, even in her last sad and difficult years. Now Jack was struggling with illness and seemed to be dying (he would in fact rally and live a few more months, only to die at home). When Maureen reached his bedside, Jack had been sliding in and out of consciousness and she was told by the doctors that he had not been recognizing visitors. Still, as Jacob recounts it:
She entered quietly, clasped his hand, and said, 'Jack, it's Maureen.' 'No,' he replied -- unsurpisingly, given his condition. But he added, 'It's Lady Dunbar of Hempriggs.' Maureen was stunned: 'Oh Jack, how could you remember that?' 'On the contrary,' he murmured. 'How could I forget a fairy-tale?'
What Alan Jacobs has given us, in the end, is a complex but heart-rendingly beautiful portrait of a man who could never forget a fairy-tale. I cried through much of the end of this book, not only because it was beautifully written, but because I felt as though I'd really come to know Jack Lewis a little bit, and now would miss him. In reading The Narnian, I felt as though a light had been turned to shine on Lewis' life, a light so skillfully positioned and softly illuminating that it was a bit like reading by the light of the lamppost in Narnia. I've always admired Lewis for his greatness: as a writer, storyteller, and person of faith. Now I will remember him also for his humanity and for his real but humble goodness: his kindness, charity, patience, prayerfulness; his stubbornness and his doubts, his willingness to admit his own faults; and most of all, his love of stories that reflected the Great Story he wholeheartedly embraced.
~© 2006, befus~
The Narnian was published in 2005 by HarperCollins.
Recommended:
Yes
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You-can't-get a cup-of-tea big enough or a book long-enough to suit me...C.S Lewis
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