Sipsey Street Irregulars: C.S. Lewis, Hot Off the Presses

Saturday, November 23, 2013

C.S. Lewis, Hot Off the Presses

When C.S. Lewis died 50 years ago today, he thought his works were likewise not long for this world. The famous professor, who had graced the cover of Time magazine and delivered radio broadcasts heard by most Britons (the original title of Mere Christianity was Broadcast Talks), thought popular memory of him would linger for five years, give or take. Then he would belong to the specialists.

Book critic Michael Dirda joked of this comically pessimistic assessment, "Lewis was clearly no prophet." However, give Lewis this much: it would be hard even for a drunken optimist to foresee the success that he has enjoyed since his passing.

All of Lewis's books are still available, sold to and read by millions of people around the globe. His life and writings are the subject of serious study by scholars and laymen. Movies based on his Chronicles of Narnia series have grossed about $1.6 billion.

In fact, Lewis is not only still in print 50 years later, but still publishing new works.

MBV Note: Lewis' Mere Christianity was on Doctor Richter's list, as was The Screwtape Letters.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Check out IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE by Sinclair Lewis - the parallels between it and our present government are eerie. Written pre-WW II era - Wow!; November 25, 2013 at 5:57 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Saturday, November 23, 2013

C.S. Lewis, Hot Off the Presses

1 comment:

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