What I Learned from Lewis’s Letters

There are so many collections of Lewis’s letters that it’s hard to know where to begin reading. On my bookshelf I have his Letters to Children; Letters to an American Lady; Letters to Malcom, Chiefly on Prayer; Collected Letters, and—probably the longest one I own—The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves. But believe me when I say that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what’s out there.

In fact, the two-volume collection of Lewis’s letters (which I don’t own…yet) is over 2,200 pages long and includes more than 3,000 letters. The number of letters he wrote to Greeves was nearly 300, coming in just under 600 pages. See what I mean? Tip of the iceberg.

Choosing the Book

So while I occasionally get WTRNP*, I found myself picking up Lewis’s letters to Greeves one afternoon while my kids were playing contentedly together for more than 10 minutes. Trust me, I remember this day because that had never happened before. So I grabbed a book off my shelf that I knew I hadn’t read yet, and it was this collection of letters from Lewis to Greeves.

I thought it would be easy to pick up and set down when someone yelled “Mommy,” in the next three minutes. I thought it wouldn’t be as gripping as a novel, and I could therefore leave it in my library to peruse during any future unclaimed moments. I thought I could treat it more like a magazine.

I was wrong.

WTRNP Defined

*WTRNP (noun): Acronym for “What To Read Next” Paralysis, a chronic disease in avid readers in which they are so (joyously) overwhelmed by the sheer number of books on their To Be Read list that they simply can’t choose where to begin.

Paralysis can last anywhere from minutes standing in front of a bookshelf to days wandering around a library or even weeks doomscrolling used book sites. WTRNP can only be cured by buying all the books and reading them as voraciously as possible in random order.

Climbing the Iceberg

As I was saying, I grabbed Lewis’s letters to his best adolescent friend, Arthur Greeves, and began reading. And wow. It was such an addictive book for me. I was already a huge Lewis geek and had read half a dozen biographies about him, as well as most of his other works. But even the best biography can’t let you see into someone’s mind and heart like a collection of private letters which were intended for a best friend, not for publication.  

As I read letter after letter from year after year, I finally felt like I was seeing the real Lewis. The whole Lewis. The Lewis I had known was the mature, godly, humble smarty pants of Narnia and Surprised by Joy and Preface to Paradise Lost and the space trilogy. The Lewis I met in the letters was just a kid, and a punk at that. Don’t get me wrong—he was absolutely a smarty pants. But he knew it.

And that’s just one of the fresh facets I enjoyed about him. In fact, I enjoyed the letters so much that I thought I’d share with you a few tidbits I’ve been savoring. My list isn’t ranked in any order, and it’s certainly not exhaustive. It’s just a few highlights in case this is the sort of thing that floats your boat. Bon voyage!

A Few Epistolary Tidbits from Lewis’s Letters

Things I learned from Jack’s letters to Arthur:

• He accomplished more in his ultra-busy life than I could ever hope to do, even if I were a hermit.
• Since the letters span just shy of 50 years, reading them is like seeing Lewis’s growth in fast forward. Well, relatively-fast forward, since the book is 566 big pages of writing.
• The deep faith of his later works was preceded by many years of antipathy to Christianity and an attraction to the occult and other unorthodox preferences.
• Humility is a defining characteristic of his later life only. His youth was full of self-confident arrogance. He later sees and regrets it.
• He read and remembered books like nobody’s business, quoting obscure passages without difficulty, even in other languages.
• He dearly loved long walks through nature in any kind of weather and had favorite routes and soaking machines—places he liked to sit and ponder.
• He had worrisome moral tendencies throughout his youth that he submitted to God in later years.  
• He read widely, preferring classics to modern and original languages to translations.
• He was faithful in everything he undertook, including years of tireless care for his war friend’s mother—and the chickens they kept in their back yard.

While he was far from perfect, it was an absolute delight to see Lewis from this unfiltered perspective. It’s a rare glimpse into his quirky youth, his busy young adulthood, his gradual conversion, and his faithfulness throughout his physical decline. If you love Lewis as much as I do (and I don’t think you’d make it through the letters otherwise), then grab a copy and dig in!