I was told by an admissions officer that my essay on how reading Surprised by Joy defined my personal search for intellectual vitality was the differential in my successful university application in a record breakingly competitive admissions cycle. Now that it’s been 10 years, I’ve forgotten most of the plot but I powerfully remember the feeling it left me with. I recently read A Severe Mercy, which is an incredible complement to Lewis’s work by someone he mentored in his later years, and has inspired me to squeeze in a reread of Surprised by Joy before the year’s end. One of those books that stays with you for sure.
Thanks for the great post. Your blog played a small role in my family’s own conversion to Christianity. We would read it when we were expecting our first child, and you were among the first Christians we had read that were without a doubt more intelligent than us. It’s tough to feel intellectually superior in that situation. Your blog helped soften our egos enough to meet with a priest for the first time.
Anyways, God bless you guys. We still think there’s a SMALL chance that “the Psmiths” are the fictional alter-ego of a single strange and lonely guy, but every time you write something like this that possibility shrinks in our minds.
Oh my goodness, what a tremendous compliment! And congratulations to you and your family on all scores. Meeting smart people who were Christians was an important thing for me too (and for Lewis!), and I’m so glad we were able to be that if only virtually.
It would be pretty funny if this substack were written by one person pretending to have two different sets of interests, writing styles, etc. but it sounds like a lot of work.
Only thing I found weird was the gal being nerdier than the guy. Usually you've got the nerdy guy and the gal who puts up with him, or a pair of non-nerds, or (rarest) the nerd couple.
But, in a planet of 7 billion people, many combinations are likely to exist *somewhere*! 1% of 7 billion is still 70 million, larger than most countries.
My wife might not be nerdier than I, but I wouldn't envy a judge given the task of deciding the matter. We met because she heard I might be a good person to help her design more realistic armored vehicles for her favorite tabletop wargame army, and we've only helped each other get worse since then.
Lewis’s quote about “Northernness” sounds so similar to Chesterton’s metaphor about the joy of “returning to one's own country,” though Chesterton describes it in his own romantic, labyrinthine way.
> I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas. I always find, however, that I am either too busy or too lazy to write this fine work, so I may as well give it away for the purposes of philosophical illustration. There will probably be a general impression that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool. I am not here concerned to deny that he looked a fool. But if you imagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense of folly was his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not studied with sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of the hero of this tale. His mistake was really a most enviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane security of coming home again?
“You can lie to yourself, but Man is a creature so constructed that Truth speaks to our hearts and seeps in around the edges. That’s the nice thing about Truth! It’s always there, whether or not you believe it. You can always go back to it. It’s waiting. You can’t ever get it, not wholly, but you can catch glimpses here and there, and if you’re honest with yourself it’s hard to live a life that contradicts those glimpses.”
This is nicely phrased but a moral relativist or materialist might well use this same framework to instead claim the opposite. For example, they might say that we just need to believe and act AS IF Free will is true, even though it is not. Or we might need to believe in a Creator because of an inability to conceive an infinite chain of causes. They would probably retort that these arguments are convincing regarding human psychology but not the Truth or Reality.
It might be the case that human tribes that do believe in something mystical (but untrue) had an evolutionary advantage over others and that’s why we all feel that need today. But it still says nothing about the actual truth of the matter.
The problem with G.K. Chesterton is that he was economically illiterate.
Eg., in a visit to America, he approved of how cheap Model T cars were. Ordinary people could own them -- something that wasn't possible in Britain at that time, where cars were something of a luxury good.
Then he said that what Ford needed to do was go out of business and turn making Model T's over to small workshops of autonomous master craftsmen.
This was his neo-medieval schtick.
But if they were made that way, they wouldn't be cheap.
They'd be monstrously expensive. He should have known this -- there would have been plenty of people capable of demonstrating it to him.
But he wasn't interested in things that pricked his fantasy bubble.
FWIW we've gone way in the opposite direction, with business being able to do whatever they want, and I can't say it's been perfect. I'd prefer something between Chesterton and, say, the globalized neoliberal world we have now...but for that you need Chesterton to point the way back.
He wasn't 'not perfect', he was willfully -stupid- about economics. Not to mention glorifying the Middle Ages -- you know, periodic famine, the Black Death...
i would recommend preface to paradise lost, & the allegory of love especially. when i ran "paradise lost" & "faerie queene" reading groups i think those books really helped us read understand & enjoy work that is famously difficult. litcrit surprisingly rarely does this. im also a huge fan of "an experiment in criticism" but i can't recommend it as strongly (only bc i have not (yet) experimentally found that it allows a group of ppl to do sthg difficult together--as preface & allegory in fact did)
have you read much of his literary criticism? his apologetics are obviously much more popular but his litcrit is intensely beautiful readable & helpful
I’m reading his “Studies in Words” right now, which is fun, but I’m really not very well-read in English literature and I don’t want to be that guy in Metropolitan! Where would you suggest starting?
Very nice. My strategy for a long time was to throw Launcelot from the castle window (I always preferred Merlin anyway), and now that I have enough gold...er, VTI shares accumulated to want to write my own fantasies...well, the publishing industry is no longer receptive to people with few diversity points, and the self-publishing marked is mostly litRPG stuff...I actually think there might be worthwhile things in there, but I haven't played enough online games to make it work.
I do think you're right about there being some innate moral sense that leads people to religion. I do wonder if it would lead people born in other countries to Islam or Buddhism? It's somewhat lacking in me, I think--I was a skeptic from early days, though seeing the positive role religion plays in people's lives I don't try to talk people out of believing. If, as I believe, our lives are nothing but a nasty, brutish, and short interval in an uncaring universe, then there's no point in trying to make the world a little colder.
> and now that I have enough gold...er, VTI shares accumulated to want to write my own fantasies...well, the publishing industry is no longer receptive to people with few diversity points, and the self-publishing marked is mostly litRPG stuff...I actually think there might be worthwhile things in there, but I haven't played enough online games to make it work.
Might I suggest writing for yourself and your own ends and joy, not for a market?
Most writers haven't been able to make a living out of it for all of history, it's the norm. And as our illustrious hosts here repeatedly show us, writing well is its own reward, even without any chance of remuneration.
Interesting. My experience with Lewis' theology consisted largely of reading a hopefully gifted copy of Mere Christianity while going through a period of losing my faith. (It didn't work; I was completely unimpressed by his arguments, lost my religion, and had to disappoint the friend who loaned it to me.) While I like the Chronicles of Narnia and the Great Divorce, I find the theological bits welded on detracted from the work.
The "Northernness" referred to here seems familiar. Reminds me of Keats: "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies/ When a new planet swims into his ken." A feeling of desire for more than the mundane world. Romantic (in the hot-blooded or the warm-hearted sense), escapist, hopeful, or just escapist. Or is it an antidote to the increasingly-evident absurdity of modern/postmodern life? Some of my friends would call it buddha-nature, other would call it the call of the universe. Don't find anything romantic or transcendent about Chrisitianity, though.
I suspect that sometimes Christianity seems very humdrum/tired/worn out to many people, particularly if raised in the West with our long history of Christianity's influence on our culture. Not very transcendent if we are looking at it from the outside. I think it's a byproduct of the rationalist/humanist takeover of some aspects of church life from the Victorian era and/or the Puritans. Of course I'm looking at it from being born and raised in the USA, it could be different in other parts of the West... But everything about modern life and the post modern world we live in is so sterile and so empty; looking back at the church of the Middle ages there was an emphasis on building the beautiful and the good, and cathedrals and hymns were created for thinking upward, the transcendent, of which culture was enriched by the Church and it's influences. There is a new direction of some thinkers out there that talk of reenchantment from a Christian perspective, I believe Rod Dreher is writing such a book... But that is peripheral to the issue. The issue is the matter of the heart, and if one is receptive to the Gospel, the good news. And the good news is if one confesses with one's mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believes that God raised Him from the dead, they will be saved. (I'm paraphrasing Romans 10:9, which is part of a lengthier passage about the logic of the Christian faith). After having made that connection myself and repenting and trusting in Jesus Christ, it is a beautiful thing to look at passages of Scripture where it talks about the transcendent. I'm looking at the very unusual visions that are described in Revelation and Daniel and elsewhere. Granted, one has to not separate the mundane living and quiet obedience to God with those huge impactful moments that blow your mind, but it is hard to describe how your life is changed and transformed once you commit yourself to Jesus Christ. It's kinda like Mrs. Psmith said in her review, you have to experience it yourself, but it is kinda boring when you hear it as a bystander. But I think that it is so freeing to surrender yourself to God, it is transcendent in a way. We no longer worry about the cares of this life when no one can touch us anymore. That assurance of the resurrection to come means everything else pales in comparison. No other religion can compare, all others fall short and are found wanting. Christianity is defended by the transcendent and the logical (of which C.S. Lewis does a fine job of defending), but it appears that the overly rational approach doesn't seem enticing to you, and I get it. I'm also tired of the same old arguments that keep cropping up. It's time for reenchantment of the faith, while still holding tight to the Word of God (the Bible). Sometimes these books are just noise, where they become static and aren't helpful any more. Why not just go back to the source? Scripture is living and active, and you can really lose yourself in it because it comes directly from the mouth of God through the human writers. I can fill a whole bookshelf of theology/nonfiction Christian books that I've read maybe a few chapters then just couldn't finish them (maybe it's my ADD or something, but they just don't hold a candle to the Bible). But I always manage to finish books of the Bible as I read through them.
Great review and I think you’d love his last book, Till We Have Faces—it might also be a link btw you and the Mr. since it’s much the same story, told in fiction/poetry (and, if not ghost-written by his new wife, notably influenced).
I’m teaching it right now and I always use Surprised By Joy sections as supplement, because they overlap so clearly. Plus, the dedication in TWHF is to JOY Davidman, who was such a surprise to him in his later life, her name being such a delightful wink of Providence. Part Two of TWHF is one of the most profound reflections on the ongoing work of conversion that I’ve ever read.
You know, I read TWHF probably ten years ago and didn’t get much out of it, but so many people whose opinions I respect speak so highly of it, I think it must be worth a second look.
I was told by an admissions officer that my essay on how reading Surprised by Joy defined my personal search for intellectual vitality was the differential in my successful university application in a record breakingly competitive admissions cycle. Now that it’s been 10 years, I’ve forgotten most of the plot but I powerfully remember the feeling it left me with. I recently read A Severe Mercy, which is an incredible complement to Lewis’s work by someone he mentored in his later years, and has inspired me to squeeze in a reread of Surprised by Joy before the year’s end. One of those books that stays with you for sure.
Thanks for the great post. Your blog played a small role in my family’s own conversion to Christianity. We would read it when we were expecting our first child, and you were among the first Christians we had read that were without a doubt more intelligent than us. It’s tough to feel intellectually superior in that situation. Your blog helped soften our egos enough to meet with a priest for the first time.
Anyways, God bless you guys. We still think there’s a SMALL chance that “the Psmiths” are the fictional alter-ego of a single strange and lonely guy, but every time you write something like this that possibility shrinks in our minds.
Oh my goodness, what a tremendous compliment! And congratulations to you and your family on all scores. Meeting smart people who were Christians was an important thing for me too (and for Lewis!), and I’m so glad we were able to be that if only virtually.
It would be pretty funny if this substack were written by one person pretending to have two different sets of interests, writing styles, etc. but it sounds like a lot of work.
Only thing I found weird was the gal being nerdier than the guy. Usually you've got the nerdy guy and the gal who puts up with him, or a pair of non-nerds, or (rarest) the nerd couple.
But, in a planet of 7 billion people, many combinations are likely to exist *somewhere*! 1% of 7 billion is still 70 million, larger than most countries.
My wife might not be nerdier than I, but I wouldn't envy a judge given the task of deciding the matter. We met because she heard I might be a good person to help her design more realistic armored vehicles for her favorite tabletop wargame army, and we've only helped each other get worse since then.
Now you have two examples!
Sounds like a nerd couple to me.
Lewis’s quote about “Northernness” sounds so similar to Chesterton’s metaphor about the joy of “returning to one's own country,” though Chesterton describes it in his own romantic, labyrinthine way.
> I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas. I always find, however, that I am either too busy or too lazy to write this fine work, so I may as well give it away for the purposes of philosophical illustration. There will probably be a general impression that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool. I am not here concerned to deny that he looked a fool. But if you imagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense of folly was his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not studied with sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of the hero of this tale. His mistake was really a most enviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane security of coming home again?
I’m sure Lewis had it in mind!
“You can lie to yourself, but Man is a creature so constructed that Truth speaks to our hearts and seeps in around the edges. That’s the nice thing about Truth! It’s always there, whether or not you believe it. You can always go back to it. It’s waiting. You can’t ever get it, not wholly, but you can catch glimpses here and there, and if you’re honest with yourself it’s hard to live a life that contradicts those glimpses.”
Thank you for articulating this so perfectly!
This is nicely phrased but a moral relativist or materialist might well use this same framework to instead claim the opposite. For example, they might say that we just need to believe and act AS IF Free will is true, even though it is not. Or we might need to believe in a Creator because of an inability to conceive an infinite chain of causes. They would probably retort that these arguments are convincing regarding human psychology but not the Truth or Reality.
It might be the case that human tribes that do believe in something mystical (but untrue) had an evolutionary advantage over others and that’s why we all feel that need today. But it still says nothing about the actual truth of the matter.
you are very good at this
That was my experience with becoming Catholic. At some point I just realized I was already and needed to make it sacramental.
This review has made it to my semifinalist list for Best of 2024-- https://www.rasmusen.org/rasmapedia/index.php?title=Best_Dozen_Articles_I%27ve_Read_in_2024
This, I think, is the all-time best of your blog's posts.
I will send it with my recommendation to read Surprise by Joy (an intent already formed) to my son-in-law.
This is very lovely and quite extraordinarily well written. Thank you.
The problem with G.K. Chesterton is that he was economically illiterate.
Eg., in a visit to America, he approved of how cheap Model T cars were. Ordinary people could own them -- something that wasn't possible in Britain at that time, where cars were something of a luxury good.
Then he said that what Ford needed to do was go out of business and turn making Model T's over to small workshops of autonomous master craftsmen.
This was his neo-medieval schtick.
But if they were made that way, they wouldn't be cheap.
They'd be monstrously expensive. He should have known this -- there would have been plenty of people capable of demonstrating it to him.
But he wasn't interested in things that pricked his fantasy bubble.
Eh...nobody's perfect.
FWIW we've gone way in the opposite direction, with business being able to do whatever they want, and I can't say it's been perfect. I'd prefer something between Chesterton and, say, the globalized neoliberal world we have now...but for that you need Chesterton to point the way back.
He wasn't 'not perfect', he was willfully -stupid- about economics. Not to mention glorifying the Middle Ages -- you know, periodic famine, the Black Death...
idk the metropolitan reference 😭
i would recommend preface to paradise lost, & the allegory of love especially. when i ran "paradise lost" & "faerie queene" reading groups i think those books really helped us read understand & enjoy work that is famously difficult. litcrit surprisingly rarely does this. im also a huge fan of "an experiment in criticism" but i can't recommend it as strongly (only bc i have not (yet) experimentally found that it allows a group of ppl to do sthg difficult together--as preface & allegory in fact did)
This scene: https://youtu.be/BATPzXjmV_s?si=0jPQtcOVPIPXLAWx
And thanks!
have you read much of his literary criticism? his apologetics are obviously much more popular but his litcrit is intensely beautiful readable & helpful
I’m reading his “Studies in Words” right now, which is fun, but I’m really not very well-read in English literature and I don’t want to be that guy in Metropolitan! Where would you suggest starting?
Very nice. My strategy for a long time was to throw Launcelot from the castle window (I always preferred Merlin anyway), and now that I have enough gold...er, VTI shares accumulated to want to write my own fantasies...well, the publishing industry is no longer receptive to people with few diversity points, and the self-publishing marked is mostly litRPG stuff...I actually think there might be worthwhile things in there, but I haven't played enough online games to make it work.
I do think you're right about there being some innate moral sense that leads people to religion. I do wonder if it would lead people born in other countries to Islam or Buddhism? It's somewhat lacking in me, I think--I was a skeptic from early days, though seeing the positive role religion plays in people's lives I don't try to talk people out of believing. If, as I believe, our lives are nothing but a nasty, brutish, and short interval in an uncaring universe, then there's no point in trying to make the world a little colder.
> and now that I have enough gold...er, VTI shares accumulated to want to write my own fantasies...well, the publishing industry is no longer receptive to people with few diversity points, and the self-publishing marked is mostly litRPG stuff...I actually think there might be worthwhile things in there, but I haven't played enough online games to make it work.
Might I suggest writing for yourself and your own ends and joy, not for a market?
Most writers haven't been able to make a living out of it for all of history, it's the norm. And as our illustrious hosts here repeatedly show us, writing well is its own reward, even without any chance of remuneration.
Interesting. My experience with Lewis' theology consisted largely of reading a hopefully gifted copy of Mere Christianity while going through a period of losing my faith. (It didn't work; I was completely unimpressed by his arguments, lost my religion, and had to disappoint the friend who loaned it to me.) While I like the Chronicles of Narnia and the Great Divorce, I find the theological bits welded on detracted from the work.
The "Northernness" referred to here seems familiar. Reminds me of Keats: "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies/ When a new planet swims into his ken." A feeling of desire for more than the mundane world. Romantic (in the hot-blooded or the warm-hearted sense), escapist, hopeful, or just escapist. Or is it an antidote to the increasingly-evident absurdity of modern/postmodern life? Some of my friends would call it buddha-nature, other would call it the call of the universe. Don't find anything romantic or transcendent about Chrisitianity, though.
I suspect that sometimes Christianity seems very humdrum/tired/worn out to many people, particularly if raised in the West with our long history of Christianity's influence on our culture. Not very transcendent if we are looking at it from the outside. I think it's a byproduct of the rationalist/humanist takeover of some aspects of church life from the Victorian era and/or the Puritans. Of course I'm looking at it from being born and raised in the USA, it could be different in other parts of the West... But everything about modern life and the post modern world we live in is so sterile and so empty; looking back at the church of the Middle ages there was an emphasis on building the beautiful and the good, and cathedrals and hymns were created for thinking upward, the transcendent, of which culture was enriched by the Church and it's influences. There is a new direction of some thinkers out there that talk of reenchantment from a Christian perspective, I believe Rod Dreher is writing such a book... But that is peripheral to the issue. The issue is the matter of the heart, and if one is receptive to the Gospel, the good news. And the good news is if one confesses with one's mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believes that God raised Him from the dead, they will be saved. (I'm paraphrasing Romans 10:9, which is part of a lengthier passage about the logic of the Christian faith). After having made that connection myself and repenting and trusting in Jesus Christ, it is a beautiful thing to look at passages of Scripture where it talks about the transcendent. I'm looking at the very unusual visions that are described in Revelation and Daniel and elsewhere. Granted, one has to not separate the mundane living and quiet obedience to God with those huge impactful moments that blow your mind, but it is hard to describe how your life is changed and transformed once you commit yourself to Jesus Christ. It's kinda like Mrs. Psmith said in her review, you have to experience it yourself, but it is kinda boring when you hear it as a bystander. But I think that it is so freeing to surrender yourself to God, it is transcendent in a way. We no longer worry about the cares of this life when no one can touch us anymore. That assurance of the resurrection to come means everything else pales in comparison. No other religion can compare, all others fall short and are found wanting. Christianity is defended by the transcendent and the logical (of which C.S. Lewis does a fine job of defending), but it appears that the overly rational approach doesn't seem enticing to you, and I get it. I'm also tired of the same old arguments that keep cropping up. It's time for reenchantment of the faith, while still holding tight to the Word of God (the Bible). Sometimes these books are just noise, where they become static and aren't helpful any more. Why not just go back to the source? Scripture is living and active, and you can really lose yourself in it because it comes directly from the mouth of God through the human writers. I can fill a whole bookshelf of theology/nonfiction Christian books that I've read maybe a few chapters then just couldn't finish them (maybe it's my ADD or something, but they just don't hold a candle to the Bible). But I always manage to finish books of the Bible as I read through them.
Great review and I think you’d love his last book, Till We Have Faces—it might also be a link btw you and the Mr. since it’s much the same story, told in fiction/poetry (and, if not ghost-written by his new wife, notably influenced).
I’m teaching it right now and I always use Surprised By Joy sections as supplement, because they overlap so clearly. Plus, the dedication in TWHF is to JOY Davidman, who was such a surprise to him in his later life, her name being such a delightful wink of Providence. Part Two of TWHF is one of the most profound reflections on the ongoing work of conversion that I’ve ever read.
You know, I read TWHF probably ten years ago and didn’t get much out of it, but so many people whose opinions I respect speak so highly of it, I think it must be worth a second look.
You should! It really needs to be read allegorically to unlock its potential :)
Its impossible to *not* read it allegorically. The last act hits you over the head with it over and over.