Why do we choose a biography to read? What do we expect to find? Do we expect that by finding out something about a person’s life, we will learn something that will explain their work, or is reading a biography simply a voyeuristic exercise? It is, of course, human to want to know about other people’s lives. We look to a person’s life to see if it will explain how or why they became famous or successful; we want to know how they are different from us, and yet at the same time we look for similarities to see how they might be like us. This is especially true if the biography is of someone we think we admire, or whose work or accomplishments we admire. Do we feel more justified in our admiration if we can also find that the person is like us in someway?, Does the knowledge that they are not like we imagined change our judgement of their work? Do we think that by understanding an artist we can understand his or her work?
I often have mixed feelings about biographies of writers, be they writers of fiction or people who write about ideas such as philosophers. Because writing seems so personal, there is a tendency to think that we are familiar with the person who did the writing because of what we read and admire in their work. But this may not be the case. If you love a person’s writing, does that mean you must love them in some way? Or does learning that a beloved writer is all too human, that he or she has great failings or flaws inextricably alter the perception of the works themselves, as if learning of the flaws of their creator renders the beauty of the work invalid.
Still, I was eager to read The Narnian, even though I was not sure what I would find there. Except for that part of his life popularized by Shadowlands, I was not at all familiar with Lewis’s life. But I had read a great many of his books and admired his work. Perhaps I was intrigued by the man who could write such magnificent scholarly works such as The Allegory of Love and also the science fiction/fantasy world of Out of the Silent Planet and the Narnia books. I can’t say that the fiction is of the same merit, in a purely literary sense, as Lewis’s scholarly works, but the novels do show a deep love fo fantasy and imagination, and a deep love of STORY in and of itself.
I did not read the Narnia books until later, after the age of childhood, after I had read some of his works about Christianity. My father gave me Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters to read when I was 12. I did not discover Narnia until several years later. I was, in fact, despite being beyond my years in my selection of reading matter at times, not quite ready for those books although they made deep impressions on me. Screwtape frightened me terribly for a long time. It took some time before I could appreciate the satire and irony in that book, but I suspect that a true understanding of satire is not yet fully developed at age 12, except perhaps in the most precocious. But I remembered both books and read them again later, when they actually made a deeper impression on me.
I did not expect the book to change my perception of Lewis as a writer because whatever the life of the person, it is the life of the mind that is reflected in written works and anyone with an imagination knows that the mind can offer a totally different life than reality. In our minds we can be the best that we can be, we can be unfettered from the constraints of our lives. The value of a writer’s works has very little to do with the life of the writer itself, except in how the shaping of the writer occurred.
Perhaps that is what I am seeking when reading a biography of a writer, some kind of knowledge of how they became a writer. Perhaps I want to know what shaped them and gave them the gift of placing words and thoughts on a page.
The Narnian did not disappoint. I enjoyed the book, and yes, I was thrilled to find things that Lewis and I had in common, especially the fact that we both loved Spenser’s Faeroe Queen and the stories of George MacDonald as young people. It was a thrill to hear about how Lewis loved the imaginary world and the life of the imagination, and how he despaired of a generation of young people growing up without that sense of the endless possibility to be found in fantasy worlds, but even that should not have surprised me. Allegory and fantasy are not unrelated and they both seem quite outdated in modern life and our belief in science and the practicality of the “real”. It did not surprise me that he described himself as a dinosaur. I have felt at times to be out of touch with the modern world myself, but I am no CS Lewis.
And so I felt thrilled that I could share some interests with Lewis, even though much of his life seems incomprehensible to me. I should not have been surprised to find some common thread, because I have admired and read such a broad assortment of his works, and his writings have made a deep impression on me. As should be the case after reading an inspiring biography of a writer, I wish to reread many of the works and perhaps over the next few months I shall pick up a few volumes and re-acquaint myself with Lewis’s writings.