It has been a delight to read of Lewis' childhood and young adult years, to see the way his mind worked from such a young age, always imagining and figuring things out. He rambles at times, but once you get into the flow of it, it really is almost like a deciphering code. Almost. I still view him as a brilliant mind, but will always appreciate his endeavor to explain the issues to us simpler minds. If you've enjoyed or benefited from any of C.S. Lewis' other books, i'd highly recommend this one as well.
Now, for some excerpts of my favorite lines. In one of the first chapters on his earliest school experiences, which was overall quite dreadful, "Hence while friendship has been by far the chief source of my happiness, acquaintance or general society has always meant little to me, and I cannot quite understand why a man should wish to know more people than he can make real friends of." From the chapter on his relatives and visits to their homes, "But I remember nothing that was said by our elders in that house; it was simply 'grown up' conversation--about people, business, politics, and health, I suppose. But 'Uncle Gussie'--my mother's brother--talked to me as if we were of an age. That is, he talked about Things. He told me all the science I could then take in, clearly, eagerly, without silly jokes and condescensions, obviously liking it as much as I did...His Canadian wife I have already mentioned. In her also I found what I liked best--an unfailing, kindly welcome without a hint of sentimentality, unruffled good sense, the unobtrusive talent for making all things at all times as cheerful and comfortable as circumstances allowed. What one could not have one did without and made the best of it. The tendency of the Lewises to re-open wounds and to rouse sleeping dogs was unknown to her as to her husband." I especially love that description of his aunt, and is something i would strive after in my own life. In another description of school life, this time at a different school, i find it horrid, yet you have to laugh at how he phrases it, "I think that this feigning, this ceaseless pretence of interest in matters to me supremely boring, was what wore me out more than anything else. If the reader will picture himself, unarmed, shut up for thirteen weeks on end, night and day, in a society of fanatical golfers--of, if he is a golfer himself, let him substitute fishermen, theosophists, bimetallists, Baconians, or German undergraduates with a taste for autobiography--who all carry revolvers and will probably shoot him if he ever seems to lose interest in their conversation, he will have an idea of my school life." On education in general, "In those days a boy on the classical side officially did almost nothing but the classics. I think this was wise; the greatest service we can do to education today is to teach fewer subjects. No one has time to do more than a very few things well before he is twenty, and when we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects we destroy his standards, perhaps for life." Because C.S.Lewis was from Northern Ireland, but went to schools mainly in England, he was often taking the ferry back and home again. From one of his journeys across to England, he shares his impression of the homes he saw, quite different from those he grew up with, "By a severer taste than mine these houses would all be mocked perhaps; yet I cannot help thinking that those who designed them and their gardens achieved their object, which was to suggest Happiness. They filled me with a desire for that domesticity which, in its full development, I had never known; they set one thinking of tea trays." So, now it is your turn to discover the formation of dear old Mr. Lewis' early life.
~~Originally published in Great Britain in 1955
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