In 1942, a 43 year-old English academic shot to fame with the publication of a short book called The Screwtape Letters. Five years later his picture was on the cover of Time magazine. Since his death on the day on which John Kennedy was murdered, sales of his books have skyrocketed, with 100 million copies of his children's books alone having been sold worldwide. Hollywood has made filmed versions both of his life and of his children's books.
Taking the form of a correspondence between a senior devil and a trainee, much of the power of The Screwtape Letters is derived from the many ways in which a skilful and witty writer like Lewis can exploit a scenario in which everything is inverted since it is presented from the infernal point of view. Thus, the senior demon Screwtape, who holds an administrative post in the Lowerarchy of Hell and is ultimately responsible to Our Father Below, must ensure that his nephew Wormwood keeps the human he’s been assigned to look after away from the clutches of the Enemy (i..e. God).
Here's an extract from Letter XI, in which Screwtape has some lessons for his nephew on laughter:
"Humour is for the English the all-consoling and the all-excusing, grace of life ... A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a joke ... Flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practise it.”
Taking the form of a correspondence between a senior devil and a trainee, much of the power of The Screwtape Letters is derived from the many ways in which a skilful and witty writer like Lewis can exploit a scenario in which everything is inverted since it is presented from the infernal point of view. Thus, the senior demon Screwtape, who holds an administrative post in the Lowerarchy of Hell and is ultimately responsible to Our Father Below, must ensure that his nephew Wormwood keeps the human he’s been assigned to look after away from the clutches of the Enemy (i..e. God).
Here's an extract from Letter XI, in which Screwtape has some lessons for his nephew on laughter:
"Humour is for the English the all-consoling and the all-excusing, grace of life ... A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a joke ... Flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practise it.”
3 comments:
Have you ever read "Black Easter" by James Blish? I think it would appeal to you. Blish, like Lewis, wrote several novels on theological themes, the most famous being "A Case of Conscience".
Was Blish a Christian? I have to say I've never heard of him. His wiki entry lists one of his books as Spock Must Die!, which had me worried.
Who's Joy?
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