Ma's Literary Corner

I've commenced Surprised by Joy, by C.S. Lewis. It's in a volume including four books, entitled, Beloved Works of C.S. Lewis. Only 23 pages into it and already I'm hooked.

Here are separate parts from the same paragraph, concerning Lewis's father and his choice of a school for his sons:

"....surviving correspondence shows that he had considered many other schools before fixing on Oldies's; and I know him well enough to be sure that in such a matter he would never have been guided by his first thoughts (which would probably have been right) nor even by his twenty-first (which would at least have been explicable). Beyond doubt he would have prolonged deliberation till his hundred-and-first; and they would be infallibly and invincibly wrong. That is what always happens to the deliberations of a simple man who thinks he is a subtle one....

...at any rate, my brother and I certainly did not succeed in impressing the truth on our father's mind. For one thing (and this will become clearer in the sequel) he was a man not easily informed. His mind was too active to be an accurate receiver. What he thought he had heard was never exactly what you had said. We did not even try very hard."

C.S. Lewis, The Beloved Works of C.S. Lewis--Surprised by Joy, (New York: Inspirational Press, originally printed 1986), p. 18
 

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