Famous Fans of CS Lewis?

[Bill]

[Warrior 4 Jesus]

[Guest]

[Solomons Song]

Neil Gaiman's Sandman series is most awesome. Seasons of Mists knits all the mythologies together into one storyline. Most interesting.

[hand_carved]

[larry gilman]

The biologist David Ehrenfeld, author of the (to me) utterly indispensable The Arrogance of Humanism, quotes Lewis extensively.

It it is equally interesting to note famous people who have loathed Lewis's work. George Orwell had some kind things to say about That Hideous Strength as a piece of writing (see his review at http://www.solcon.nl/arendsmilde/cslewi ... ellths.htm), but despised the radio talks that became Mere Christianity.

The very skilled author of the popular young-adult fantasy novel The Golden Compass and its sequels, Phillip Pullman, has a severe bee in his bonnet against Lewis, obviously a theological grudge---see his whackazoidal attack article "The Dark Side of Narnia" at http://www.crlamppost.org/darkside.htm.

Larry

[Áthas]

[Guest]

[larry gilman]

[Warrior 4 Jesus]

[larry gilman]

I'm definitely being sarcastic, or rather humorous---"sarcasm" implies a snarling edge that I didn't intend---about the sunglasses and the Led Zeppelin. But the joke was reality-based: I have met a few conservative Christians who reacted with shock to the concept of listening to Led Zeppelin. Eek, a blues lyric! And one or two who believed that rock music does contain satanic code for the corruption of youth. The Led, by the way, were huge fans of Lewis's friend Tolkien, so there's another (roundabout) Lewis connection.

But just to be clear, since you don't ask specifically what I was or wasn't being sarcastic about, I was not being sarcastic about the list of un-Pat-Robertsonesque Lewis characteristics. All items on that list are literally accurate and unexaggerated, and can be proved by direct quotation from CSL. Not that I deny that Lewis was on the whole what we would call a "conservative," but it is also a fact that that term accepted different valences in England during Lewis's lifetime than it usually does in the USA today. And some of those valences, in Lewis's case, definitely bust the penguin-suit buttons. I mentioned some of them. I should perhaps have added to the list that his favorite Christian thinker, George MacDonald, the man Lewis called "my master," was a Universalist (though Lewis himself wasn't).

Best regards,

Larry

[Paul F. Ford]

Pope John Paul II read Lewis and quoted The Four Loves. Cardinal Hans Urs von Balthasar loved Lewis and quoted The Great Divorce. Mrs. Margaret Thatcher loves the Chronicles of Narnia, as do Prince William and Prince Harry.

[A#minor]

[pjb0015]

[Bill]