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Title: Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
ISBN: 0151001855
Author:
C.S. Lewis
Publicate Date: 1995-11-01
Publish: 1995-11-01
List Price: $17.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $10.98
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1: Literary marmite - you will love it or hate it.
I love CS Lewis but this one was a bit problematic and he is fully aware it. I will explain shortly.
'Joy' is a semi-autobiography of Lewis' journey from faith to atheism and back. It traces his inner and outer journey from childhood to adulthood and the corresponding spiritual maturation. He uses his characteristic rationality and objectivity along with acute self-awareness to explain how God 'conspired' to reel him into the ranks of the faithful through books, mentors, self-indulgence, family and friends.
The problem is that the journey is unavoidably subjective and can alienate readers who simply can't relate to his intellectualism and elitist education - there's even a hint of the prevailing view of race of the time. Lewis doesn't attempt to universalize his experience which, while sincere, can make one question the point of the book. You might question the inclusion of certain details - but with effort they do seem to have a place in the text. But as said - Lewis is fully aware of the risk he took.
Still, theists can leave with a deeper view (as I did) of how God pursues us. One reflects upon their own conversion with new insight and gratitiude. That God is present in everything and touches each one in a unique but apt way is re-inforced. You also get quite alot of insight into the man behind his many other writings and some of the inspiration for those writings ('The Inner Ring' speech seemed inspired by his academic life).
Non-believers may not be very convinced. But some may find striking similarities in thought. You could close the book somewhat paranoid about how God is 'coming to get you'.
The one Universal theme that does cross all boundaries is of course Joy. Lewis seems to imply that it is the one thing we all seek in this life, and often, in the wrong places. He suggests that if we are honest about where joy is and isn't - we may eventually be led (inevitably?) to God himself. I suggest you try it out for yourself to see if you will be Surprised by Joy.
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2: How Myth Became Fact for Lewis
The subtitle of the book - "The Shape of My Early Life" - already indicates what this is about: the experiences that shaped Lewis' thinking in his childhood and early years as an adult, up to his conversion to Christianity. It is not meant to be a complete autobiography, but somewhat of a spiritual memoir.
I recommend reading this book shortly before or after "The Pilgrim's Regress," which is an autobiographically inspired allegory of someone abandoning the Christianity of his youth, going on a journey of various worldviews, and finally finding Christianity again in a whole new, surprising way.
In both of these books, what Lewis terms "Joy" plays an important part. By that, he means a longing for and a delight in the "beyond": the esthetic experience you might have by staring at mountains far away; the emotion one might feel by reading myths; the fascination of the numinous.
This Joy, he experienced in pagan myths, in stories, and in nature, but not in Christianity. He describes the reason for this very well in the following passage of "The Pilgrim's Regress."
When the main character, John, abandoned his belief in the Landlord (that is, God), he was "bounding forward on his road so lightly that before he knew it he had come to the top of a little hill. It was not because the hill had tired him that he stopped there, but because he was too happy to move. `There is no Landlord,' he cried. Such a weight had been lifted from his mind that he felt he could fly. All round him the frost was gleaming like silver; the sky was like blue glass; a robin sat in the hedge beside him; a cock was crowing in the distance. `There is no Landlord.' He laughed when he thought of the old card of rules hung over his bed in the bedroom, so low and dark, in his father's house. `There is no Landlord. There is no black hole.' He turned and looked back on the road he had come by: and when he did so he gasped with joy. For there in the East, under the morning light, he saw the mountains heaped up to the sky like clouds, green and violet and dark red; shadows were passing over the big rounded slopes, and water shone in the mountain pools, and up at the highest of all the sun was smiling steadily on the ultimate crags. These crags were indeed so shaped that you could easily take them for a castle [where John had previously believed the castle of the Landlord to be]: and now it came into John's head that he had never looked at the mountains before, because, as long as he thought that the Landlord lived there, he had been afraid of them. But now that there was no Landlord he perceived that they were beautiful."
So, by abandoning the Christianity of his youth, he was free to discover beauty and delight. But none of that was lasting. No step on his journey brought the ultimate fulfillment. "Joy" always slipped away.
Until he connected his delight in myths with Christian doctrine. "If ever a myth had become fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this," writes he in "Surprised by Joy" about his gradual acceptance of the Gospels. "And nothing else in literature was just like this. Myths were like it in one way. Histories were like it in another. But nothing was simply like it. And no person was like the Person it depicted; as real, as recognizable, through all that depth of time, as Plato's Socrates or Boswell's Johnson (ten times more so than Eckermann's Goethe or Lockhart's Scott), yet also numinous, lit by a light from beyond the world, a god. But if a god - we are no longer polytheists - then not a god, but God. Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man. This is not `a religion,' nor `a philosophy.' It is the summing up and actuality of them all."
For Lewis, myth had finally become fact. Joy was found in a Person who is both God and Man.
There are many more details in "Surprised by Joy," and he does not speak on Christianity or spiritual issues on every page, but, like I said, it's not an autobiography as such, and readers expecting this might be disappointed by what Lewis leaves out.
Without such expectations, though, it is a fascinating read and something that people who have enjoyed some of Lewis' other works shouldn't miss.
- Jacob Schriftman, Author of The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible: What the Greatest Christian Writer Thought About the Greatest Book
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3: Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
If you like CS Lewis's work, it is worth knowing his history and this is a beginning to that.
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4: For C.S. Lewis Devotees Only!
I love most of what C.S. Lewis writes. I can read the Narnia series over and over, and I adore Till We Have Faces. I find him an incredible philosopher and a brilliant mind and a fantastic writer all 'round.
This book is possibly the dullest thing I have ever forced myself to read.
I wanted to like it; heaven knows it had interesting parts, fascinating things I had never thought of before. I found it valuable for understanding what themes that Lewis meant to convey in all of my favorite books.
Oh, but I could have gone without that long and utterly boring chapter about going to boys' school, being hazed, and interactions with the Bloods; I could barely keep myself in the thing even in the most interesting parts about his childhood. Even his conversion came with little emotional interest. For a second I wanted to say that I was missing something, that I had the problem, but I'm not sure that this is so. It's just... boring. I'm not even sure it's applicable for the person on the brink of accepting Christianity, for intellectually, Lewis is on another plane entirely. What if the reader has never felt this stab of "joy," or at least, experienced it the way Lewis experienced it? I tried to remember such a feeling and, although I remember it, I do not recall it being such a life-changing event.
Furthermore, his conversion didn't seem like such a logical step as much as returning to an old friend, if that makes any sense. I think another reviewer hit the nail on the head when they said they doubted that Lewis ever truly left Christianity to begin with. This isn't to say he didn't become a true atheist -- but it was as though he retained some sort of regard for it, even when was most disdainful of it.
To sum things up, this book is painfully boring, but invaluable for the insight it delivers into Lewis's works of fiction than for the path he took to conversion.
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5: Excellent!
I have been looking for this book for a long time and i am glad it was so painless to get hold if it through amazon. I am most impressed with the whole experience. Perfect and Painless..
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