A
Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of C. S. Lewis
by Devin Brown is sweet and engaging, yet also insightful and well
researched. Its greatest strength, I believe, is that it
approaches Lewis' life through the theme that Lewis himself claimed
was the theme of his earthly existence: sehnsucht
or
“joy.” This means that the majority of the biography veers
dangerously close to being just a paraphrase of Surprised
by Joy,
but manages to avoid that fate by bringing in passages from all of
Lewis' works and setting them against SbJ.
Indeed, this is as much a study of Joy in Lewis' life as it is a
straight-forward biographical account, weaving together light
literary analysis with the story of the life.
This
analytical, thematic approach means that Brown sometimes departs from
a chronological narrative, occasionally relating events out of order
to emphasize their relationship to the story of Joy. Yet he always
signposts these with clear markers (such as “but we are getting
ahead of ourselves,” 4) to avoid confusing the reader.
The
style is lovely: simple, clean, elegant, and inviting. The focus on
Lewis' spiritual life, while not original, is valuable. Brown takes
especial care in tracing the steps of Lewis' thought (on naturalism,
for instance, or in the “moves” of the divine “chess game”
that brought him to faith).
While
this biography is, as I have said, lively, intelligent, and
informative it suffers from two enormous omissions that may very well
prove fatal: Mrs. Moore and Charles Williams are almost completely
erased from this account.
Leaving
Mrs. Moore and Charles Williams out of the story of Lewis' life is
like leaving Queen Elizabeth I and Christopher Marlowe out of an
account of Shakespeare's; they were probably the fifth and sixth most
influential people he ever encountered—after Warnie, Tolkien,
Barfield, and Joy Davidman. (Arthur Greeves may belong in that list,
but he was arguably a man more influenced than influencing).
Mrs.
Moore receives less than three full pages in Brown's work (104-6). Any intelligent reader of All
My Road Before Me or
the Collected
Letters
knows that the story is very complicated and sordid.
Charles Williams did more than any
other person, after Barfield and Tolkien, to form Lewis' thoughts,
books, and behavior. Their friendship was extremely important. They taught one
another about new theological varieties of love. They each inspired
the other to be a better writer, a better friend, and a better
Christian. Lewis wrote in a letter right after Williams' death:
“I also have become much acquainted with grief now through the
death of my great friend Charles Williams, my friend of friends, the
comforter of all our little set, the most angelic man.”
All
this to say: Brown's negligence in treating Mrs. Moore and Charles
Williams seriously lessens the value of his otherwise excellent book. This is still the one biography I would recommend to you!
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