What We’re Reading

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters. C.S. Lewis was one of the great literati of the 20^th century, a member of the Inklings, he is now famous for his Chronicles of Narnia novels and apologetic works like Mere Christianity. One of his popular Christian works included The Screwtape Letters, an imaginary epistolary writing between a demon, Screwtape, writing to his younger demonic nephew, Wormwood. The work is filled with polyphonic speaking and irony with Screwtape often acting as Lewis’ indirect voice to comment on the current state of Christianity (in the 1940s), theology, philosophy, politics, sex and gender, and more. A work that I briefly teach as part of one of my Literature courses, the work – though brief – is filled with many prescient moments. For instance, Lewis identifies the crisis of relativism: your truth vs. my truth; he also exposes a problem emerging in the treatment of ancient literature, what he dubs the “historical perspective,” which reduces questions of truth relating to literature to merely its cultural and historical influence (thereby eliminating metaphysical concerns from literature) and is a worthwhile epistemological consideration for those who teach the great books (why do we teach the great books: merely because of their cultural impact or for deeper reasons?). While a sometimes witty, funny, and easy read, the work really has moments of deep intellectual consideration and the reader may recognize that many of the problems we are facing in the 21^st century were already bubbling up in the mid-20^th century.

~ Paul Krause

Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff. The iconic account of America’s first forays into Space, told from an eye-witness, boots-on-the-ground perspective, Wolfe captures something like fiction in the midst of a very real historical event. Wolfe was a journalist — he believed in talking to people and being in the places where things happened; but Wolfe also believed in telling a story. In The Right Stuff, Wolfe straddles the line between truth and story to give you an account of the Mercury Project that reads like a novel, while reminding the reader through its relentless attention to detail that it’s a journalistic account of a major moment in American history. Wolfe turned the manuscript over to his publisher without any footnotes (something unthinkable today). He dares the reader to trust him, and I found no reason not to.

More than the great writing, Wolfe identifies a certain strain of the astronauts DNA that sets them apart, but throughout the book, you start to realize that the right stuff he’s parsing is actually an American thing and not just an astronaut thing. Consider this quote:

After all, the right stuff was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life (by riding on top of a Redstone or Atlas rocket). Any fool could do that (and many fools would no doubt volunteer, given the opportunity), just as any fool could throw his life away in the process. No, the idea (as all pilots understood) was that a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back at the last yawning moment—but how in the name of God could you either hang it out or haul it back if you were a lab animal sealed in a pod? Every.

It’s the admiration, the American admiration of this stuff, that made astronauts phenoms in America, and I think that we have an admiration for it because it harkens back to the Frontier and the Mayflower. We love risk takers who succeed. And the first seven astronauts in the Mercury Project succeeded.

~ Samuel Schaefer

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed. I do not think I have ever read something more gut wrenching than A Grief Observed. We see an unnamed man that has gone through extremely painful experiences. He’s lost his wife. He’s lost his child. And he lost his God. If God is so good and so powerful and so loving, why would He take the most important aspects of my life away, he asks himself. Contemplating God’s handiwork over reality makes him grapple with the phrases that follow these unfortunate events after one passes like “they are in His hands,” “they are in a better place,” or “they are with Him now.” Are these supposed to make people feel better…because it appears they do not, rather they make things worse, according to the man. Hearing these words come from surviving loved ones makes him feel a sense of pressure to relive his deceased wife and child’s memory, thinking and talking to them daily. He concludes that God is not literally physically present, and Christians talk to God all day, so why not talk to the predeceased family? This potential memory loss becomes an irrational fear, and it later forms deepening grief. To him, if he doesn’t create previous memories in his head, their souls will eventually vanish. On the one hand, he discloses the fact that Christians talk to an invisible figure who has been raised from the dead for a few thousand years, yet His memory lives on. Why is His memory eternal, he asks. The answer is that Christians are constantly searching for Him, not something that reminds us of Him. Perhaps that is the whole point—Christians must not find peace in the sole image of God, rather than God Himself, which leads to an endless road towards knowing, loving, and becoming like Him. Unfortunately, the man never traveled this road while he was married. It was only after the death of his wife where he picked up his pain and agony and curiously stepped on this road. This powerful parable-like story is jaw dropping, knowing God will do anything for us to find Him. And, in this case, He called one child home to gain another.

~ Sarah Tillard

One of our assistant editors, Samuel Schaefer, has started a Substack, The Local Enquirer, an online publication aiming to chronicle American stories and culture across the country. Queries can be sent to: [email protected].

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