Narnia and Jack and Narnia again

OK, let's talk about Jack.

I've been calling C. S. Lewis "Jack"--not "Lewis," not "Prof. Lewis," but "Jack," as if I knew him or something--for years. I used to call him "Jack Lewis" until I realized there are over a dozen writers who've actually written as "Jack Lewis" while he wrote under his initials. It's not nice, I suppose; I'm obviously not an intimate. Why do I do this? Oh, a sort of semi-dismissive familiarity, probably. Or maybe it's from a goofy way of speaking about famous people I picked up from my father. Or maybe it's mainly that that's what he called himself, and it seems correct to me.

Anyway, like a lot of people, I got to know C. S. Lewis's work through The Chronicles of Narnia. ( Read more... )

Edited to add: continued Sunday