by Dr. U » November 23rd, 2006, 4:19 am
There's a volume called C.S.Lewis on Stories and Other Essays on Literature (ISBN 015-668788-7) that will give you a whole list of books that he liked enough to (mostly) write positive essays about, or write a more critical essay in one venue or another. For example, he thought George Orwell made his point about totalitarianism far more effectively in Animal Farm than in 1984 (one of the essays in the book).
This book also has his take on book reviews that have written about his inner motivations for various novels, often quite far off according to the author, which he then builds on to question much "modern" biblical criticism - very interesting and thought-provoking essay.
Partly from reading Lewis' essay on Rider Haggard in this book, I bought a copy of She a few years ago for beach reading, the only Rider Haggard novel I've ever read so far. Lewis' take on it was that Haggard had a mythopoeic gift, at its best in She, but was not that great a writer per se, and I thought that was a good assessment after I read the book. I really enjoyed it as a "B" novel, but only read it once. I enjoyed knowing the Lewis had also liked it as escapist literature when I read it though!
One literary device that I wondered if he may have partly taken from Haggard was the use of pseudo-documentation, (like the letter at the end of Out of the Silent Planet in which Ransom gives his review of the MS). I have had occasional college students seriously ask me whether the novel really happened, whether Lewis was reporting real events, because of that letter! Haggard does a lot of stuff like that in She, including correspondence at the end. Very clever. (Of course, the degree to which someone like Dan Brown has apparently taken this trick in Da Vinci Code strikes me as more sinister - haven't bothered to read it, friends who have tell me it's not only a polemic, it's a dreadfully written polemic.)
She is "She Who Must Be Obeyed", an immortal, beautiful and utterly merciless African queen, who most men cannot help but fall in love with if they get too close, even if costs them their lives. Thinking about some of the recent discussion on another thread, "Why are so many of Lewis' villians women?", and remembering just now that Lewis really liked She makes me wonder if She played a part somewhere in the formation of Jadis the White Witch and some other lead villians? Jadis does resemble her the more I think about it.