A Bio For a New Generation

Many of us began to admire C. S. Lewis when we read The Chronicles of Narnia. Devin Brown is aware that young people today are being introduced to Lewis by watching the movies, so he has written a biography that is “a concise introduction to Lewis and his best-known works for a new generation of readers, a generation who may know him only through the Narnia films” (xii). We will review Brown’s work by keeping an eye on that purpose statement.

A Life Observed is a concise introduction, for Brown masterfully tells his story in fewer than two hundred and fifty pages. It is one of the shorter biographies of Lewis: good news for his audience. The author begins by working his way through Lewis’ autobiography, Surprised by Joy. More than half of this new biography has to do with Lewis’ conversion to Christianity. That makes sense, for Jack (the author often uses the nickname) spent slightly more than half his life coming to faith in Jesus Christ. Brown anticipates that his target audience will struggle with some expressions and literary references in Surprised by Joy, so he sheds light on many of them along the way.

Here are two examples. First, he explains that Lewis used the word Joy to mean “a special kind of intense longing he felt, beginning in childhood, for something he could not quite put his finger on” (3). Much later, Brown spends a couple of pages discussing a fleeting reference to Hippolytus by Euripides (Surprised by Joy 217). He points out that Lewis was “transported to the land of longing” by the words: “Bring me to the end of the seas. Let me escape to the rim of the world where the tremendous firmament meets the earth.” That image influenced Lewis so profoundly that he included it in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader to convey Reepicheep’s longing for Aslan’s country, “where sky and water meet” (127-129).

Brown skillfully weaves material from Lewis’ best-known works into his narrative to show that the autobiographical books, letters, fiction, works of Christian apologetics, and literary criticism are interconnected. Owen Barfield’s observation, that what Lewis thought about everything was secretly present in what he said about anything (Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis 131), came to mind while reading this book. As a case in point, the author picks up on the image of “sea and islands” that Lewis used to describe how he felt when his mother died. He retrieved that image for Perelandra to express the Green Lady’s experience, forbidden by Maleldil to stay overnight on the Fixed Land. Maleldil was to become her solid ground (45-46). Brown concludes: “Years after his mother’s death, Lewis would find a way to live with confidence in a world of sea and island” (46).

A Life Observed also contains a good deal of material from secondary sources, including biographies by Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper, George Sayer, David Downing, Lyle Dorsett, Douglas Gresham, and Alan Jacobs. Brown seems to be a teacher at heart, for he wants readers to be aware of the quality of the resources that are available on Lewis. Accordingly, he warns that Michael White and A. N. Wilson thought they understood Lewis better than he understood himself, so Brown believes their biographies contain some questionable conclusions (54, 69-70).

Who belongs to this new generation of readers the author has in mind? Bookstore and Internet browsers, curious about the man behind the movies, will be attracted to Brown’s friendly story-telling style. Other newcomers may include those who sign up for a course on Lewis in high school, college or university, seminary, or church. They should find A Life Observed listed in their syllabi.

Douglas Gresham commends this biography by affirming that the real Jack whom he knew “walks the pages of this book” (x). This new generation needs its own introduction to Lewis. A Life Observed will serve that purpose. Those who read it will encounter the Lewis many of us have admired for decades.