C. S. Lewis Companion and Guide

Debates persist between laypeople and scholars regarding who has the best claim to Mr. Lewis. Some say the "true Lewis," whatever that means, is the sole provenance of his self-proclaimed experts, while others insist that he belongs to his readers. Lewis actually had a say on the matter. He got incensed over the idea that anyone could know a person based on his books, as many have attempted to claim. Thankfully, we have kind Uncle Wally's Companion and Guide to the man and his works, and he does an admirable job of bringing both to life. Mr. Hooper has never felt the pressure of bowing to the guild--nor did Lewis--and as a result his writing is, for lack of a better term, down-to-earth. Having said that, it's hard to say how well someone who only knew Lewis for a few months before his death can know the man himself, but let's admit it: he is one of the few people who actually ever lived with Lewis, and Lewis was particularly forthcoming in sharing his life with Hooper, to the point of giving him access to all of his papers. If that isn't an endorsement, I don't know what is. He trusted Mr. Hooper's instincts, and, as a result, so do I. You want to get a deeper insight into Jack and his works? Read this book.

It is absolutely indispensable for lovers of Lewis. This book leads you into his head and his heart, and there is perhaps none so close to the personality of this British genius than Mr. Hooper himself. It is the only guide I have come across truly deserving the title of "guide." Buy this book: it is the door to Lewis' universe.

Veal's excellent organizational overview of the work is spot on, and thus not to be duplicated. What this review will attempt to supplement that excellent review is Hooper's intent of providing this companion/guide: to unite the poet, critic and Christian into one. This was one of the major themes Lewis had expressed to Hooper, to find that there is a guiding thread uniting all of his life's writings. Reading and rereading Lewis is a pleasant and wonderful task, seeking and finding new emphases and insights. Hooper's reflections on the same are thus a friendly aid to this, if one chooses. I find his insights sometimes illuminate, sometimes expose my overlooks, and sometimes stamp what I've already found. Thus, for Lewis devotee, this is excellent resource. Omitted here is Lewis' work on education, which is so filled in a scholarly fashion by a new work by Joel Heck.

Companion and Guide is the sort of reference book that almost always answers the specific question you came in search of and yet whets your appetite for the original texts. I suspect that it would have this effect even on someone who had not yet read the originals. Immensely helpful for teachers even if they know Lewis very well. For example, Peter Kreeft's excellent talk on "Til We Have Faces" (available on his website) seems to have been built around Hooper's entry in this book. It was a great help to me in teaching the Ransom trilogy. Warning: if you are prone -- as I am-- to the vice of curiosity, this book is not always a time-saver. You will find yourself browsing when you meant to be only verifying a fact or running down a citation. Because of the excellent little book that she wrote on Narnia, I would hesitate to speak ill of Kathryn Lindskoog even if she were still alive and had not died what I consider to be a heroic Christian death. That said, it would be foolhardy in the extreme to let her later attacks on Hooper (some perhaps just, some quite bizarre, personal, and unsubstantiated) so poison your judgment about him that you miss out on this monumental acheivement.

Having read a great deal of work by and about C.S. Lewis over the last decade, I was surprised by how much I learned from Walter Hooper's superb volume. Hooper looked for information about Lewis from several obscure periodicals to add to his already rich knowledge of Lewisiana, and the rewards are apparent in the brief biography he writes about Lewis, the contemporary book reviews about Lewis's works, and the "Who's Who" and "What's What" sections. I found Hooper's explanatory chapters on Lewis's academic works especially helpful for understanding what Lewis was saying in such literary works as THE DISCARDED IMAGE, ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE 16th CENTURY, and PREFACE TO PARADISE LOST, and his chapters on the fiction and theology of C.S. Lewis are no less erudite and helpful. Whether you have never read anything by Lewis or have read every Lewis title you can get your hands on, C.S. Lewis: COMPANION AND GUIDE will be an entertaining and helpful aid.