Surprised By Joy - C.S. Lewis
I’m surprising myself with this one. Don’t get me wrong, I love so much about Lewis’s work. But my mind did not immediately jump to Suprised By Joy as being one of the most influential books in my life.
But when I sat down to think about the books I’ve most highlighted and underlined, scribbled notes in and dogeared, this one rose to the top of the list.
Parts of the book read as if Lewis is trying to just get through certain episodes to get to the good stuff. But when he gets to the good stuff, it’s brilliant.
I’m currently working on a short book with Cambridge University Press on Lewis’s northern aesthetics. SBJ plays a vital role because of Lewis’s early infatuation with Norse mythology and what he calls “northernness.”
Turns out, “northernness” is not something unique to Lewis. The Victorian writers of the decades before Lewis was born threw themselves into “northernness,” as they translated Norse sagas and created new poems and myths based on the Icelandic literature of the previous centuries.
I understand the subject is niche, so it may not appeal to you. But that’s one of the reasons I love it. It’s a rabbit hole that rewards when you follow the white rabbit down into it. I also love how “northernness” played into Lewis’s conversion to the Christian faith. Lewis emphasizes how “northernness” for him was something that created a desire within him—something that gave him deep Joy.1
I wrote an article for the popular C.S. Lewis blog A Pilgrim in Narnia that looks at Lewis’s love of Joy and how it signals hope in an eschatological fashion. You link to it here.
Calvin and Hobbes
Like many of you, I read Calvin & Hobbes religiously when it appeared in the paper—what’s a “paper”? Right? I then began collecting the books. What I loved most about the comic strip was how smart it was—even philosophical.
Bill Waterson used the imagination of a six-year-old boy and his pet (stuffed) tiger to comment on society and the human condition. I remember The Far Side being popular at the same time, perhaps even more so than Calvin and Hobbes. But I would not accept that. I didn’t think they were in the same league!
Waterson showed me that you can take on any thought or paradigm in culture with humour and wit. Be smart. Don’t take yourself too seriously. And you can not only touch people’s hearts. You can change their minds.
The Sickness Unto Death - Søren Kierkegaard
Not many people have read this book. And I understand why. It was the hardest book I’ve ever read. And I’m not one given to hyperbole. I read it slowly for two straight weeks. I didn’t stop, put it up on the shelf, and return to it later. I read and reread pages and chapters so I could “get it.” And, I’m not sure I did.
But I do remember specific moments while reading when I’d walk out to the kitchen or living room to find my wife and tell her how incredible the book was, even though I didn’t understand it. And when I say I didn’t understand it, I’m not saying it was gibberish and nonsensical. I’m saying, the Dane’s mind twists in ways uncommon.
I soon discovered how many Christians thought Kierkegaard a wreckless existentialist and untrustworthy as a conversation partner in philosophy, to say nothing of his influence as a theologian. But those are the same people who’ve never read The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air or any of his upbuilding Christian discourses.
Here is Penguin’s description of The Sickness Unto Death in case you want to dive in—which I recommend you do.
A companion piece to The Concept of Anxiety, this work continues Søren Kierkegaard’s radical and comprehensive analysis of human nature in a spectrum of possibilities of existence. Present here is a remarkable combination of the insight of the poet and the contemplation of the philosopher.
In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard moves beyond anxiety on the mental-emotional level to the spiritual level, where — in contact with the eternal — anxiety becomes despair. Both anxiety and despair reflect the misrelation that arises in the self when the elements of the synthesis — the infinite and the finite — do not come into proper relation to each other. Despair is a deeper expression for anxiety and is a mark of the eternal, which is intended to penetrate temporal existence.
Beauty: A Very Short Introduction - Sir Roger Scruton
When people discover I studied beauty in the works of C.S. Lewis for my doctoral thesis, they like to ask me about my favourite books on the subject of beauty. You can’t go wrong with Scruton. He passed in 2020, and I grieved. His was a lively and countercultural mind, especially on the topic of beauty and aesthetics. I do not hide the fact that his thinking probably influenced me the most during my studies.
At first, however, I did not care for his take on beauty. He did not approach beauty like I did, from an ontological perspective. He liked keeping things here on earth, away from God—the source of being. Not because he was antagonistic toward God—he wasn’t an atheist, nor was he a Christian (at least I don’t believe he was)—but because, I believe, he wanted to keep things simple and in front of us, so to speak.
He liked keeping beauty in the thing observed, like a painting, and its effect on the observer. Interestingly, he doesn’t define beauty as you or I would hope that he would. He follows Plato’s example, who, in the Symposium, does everything but define beauty.
Scruton does, however, talk about how the absence of beauty has affected our culture. We live as if beauty does not matter, he said. And I believe him. Our culture has exchanged the profane for the beautiful. Beauty makes us feel uneasy because it comes from something we can’t control or even know fully. And so we discard it and, instead, opt to produce art that originates from naked self-expression. Everyone can pick up Scruton’s book on beauty and get something out of it.
Scruton’s take on our culture’s casting away of beauty factors heavily into my forthcoming book. Below is an excellent lecture by Scruton. At around the 38-minute mark (I think), he shows why Thomas Kincaid’s work pales in comparison to Van Gogh’s, and the commentary is insightful and helps show why we need to be more vigilant in our critique of art and our appraisal’s of the beautiful in contemporary art, literature, and music.
The Call of the Wild - Jack London
This book killed me. I’m still here. I mean that in a hyperbolic sense—but remember, I’m not given to hyperbole. I only read it—for the first time!—two years ago. And I wept at the end. I actually cried in various places throughout this book. It baffles me that schools relegate this to children’s literature. That’s ridiculous.
It’s a beautiful novel full of grit and landscape, savageness and wonder, humans behaving badly and a dog acting heroically. I loved it from start to finish.
How does it influence me?
I suppose it sets me free. I read, and I feel as if my voice matters. Meaning, you can almost sense London is letting it rip with his imaginative powers. As if the freight train of imagination is barreling down upon him and he’s a conduit for its power. There’s something raw, wild, and free about the prose that is too difficult to describe. You have to just read it. And you should read it aloud, with friends around a fire. Go ahead.
As a parting thought: don’t watch the Hollywood take of the story with Harrison Ford. It’s embarrassingly awful. I almost never turn films off, just because I feel obligated to finish the dadgum thing, even if it’s not very good. Not with this film. I shut it off and hated on it for a while afterwards.
*Leave a comment below with further questions about any of the books mentioned or even with a shortlist of the books that have influenced you the most!
Post Script - Stay tuned for more books that influence me. I’ll also be focusing on books specifically dealing with beauty and the imagination and what I think about them.
Post-Post Script - I’m microblogging on Instagram. Follow along if you’re into Instagram.
Christmas in July!
If you haven’t become a paid subscriber, now’s the time to pull the trigger. I’ve got a new yearly subscription plan and a Christmas in July Special Offer going right now until Sept 1st. I’m gearing up for a full slate of content for the second part of the year and would love you to come along on the journey.
I’m capitalizing “Joy” because Lewis uses the term in a specialized way.