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| Subtitle | A Compelling Collection of Timely, Journalistic Essays |
| First Written | 1986 |
| Genre | Essays |
| Origin | UK |
| Publisher | Mariner |
| ISBN-10 | 0156027852 |
| My Copy | cheap paperback |
| First Read | June 02, 2013 |
Present Concerns
This is a collection of short essays that Lewis wrote for magazines, book introductions, etc. They were previously unpublished as a book, and his estate gathered them together.
I re-read this in 2013 as part of my 'Read Lewis as an Adult' project this year. They're not great, but there's enough of that good-old Lewis in there to make them interesting. Many of them are on topics old and out-of-date enough that I don't really care about the issue he's discussing.
Noted on June 9, 2013
The true aim of literary studies is to lift the student out of his provincialism by making him ‘the spectator’, if not of all, yet of much, ‘time and existence’. The student, or even the schoolboy, who has been brought by good (and therefore mutually disagreeing) teachers to meet the past where alone the past still lives, is taken out of the narrowness of his own age and class into a more public world. He is learning the true Phaenomenologie des Geistes; discovering what varieties there are in Man.
- from Is English Doomed?
Quoted on June 9, 2013