The single finest biographical survey written on C.S. Lewis

Conflicted But Redeemed: James Como’s Life of C.S Lewis

by Bradley J. Birzer

James Como’s C.S Lewis: A Very Short Introduction is delightful and is the single finest biographical survey yet written on the Oxford don. In a little more than one hundred pages, you’ll happily come to know the complexities of the most famous convert to Christianity in the twentieth century.

C.S. Lewis: A Very Short Introduction, 

by James Como (160 pages, Oxford University Press, 2019)

Let me throw the gauntlet down. This is the single finest biographical survey yet written on C.S. Lewis. Yes, I’m quite sincere. No exaggeration, no typical Birzer hyperbole. As far as I know, I’ve read all of the serious biographies over the last 30 years. Of those, Chad Walsh’s 1949 Apostle to the Skeptics is excellent but incomplete; Humphrey Carpenter’s 1978 The Inklings is too scattered, unsure of what it wants to be; Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper’s 1974C.S. Lewis: A Biography is too (often) adulatory; and A.N. Wilson’s C.S. Lewis (1995) is too cynical. Each is good, to be sure, but none of them actually capture the personality, purpose, and essence of the endlessly fascinating and complex C.S. Lewis.

(For the sake of sanity, I’m excluding the myriad of bizarrely and superficially pietistic and evangelical treatments of Lewis as quasi saint. In these latter—all too many, we must lament—Lewis comes across as a two-dimensional prig, devoid of will and choice, more fitting as a Precious Moments figurine than as a flesh-and-blood human being. These books are as painful to read as they probably were to write, the saccharine oozing in pustules from each page.)

A poet, professor, public speaker, editor, and essayist, James Como has spent much of his professional life exploring every aspect of C.S. Lewis’s life and writings. Even if Dr. Como had not written this biographical survey, he would always be listed among the greatest of Lewis scholars, especially for his extraordinary C.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table. That Dr. Como has finally pieced together over fifty years of his own findings and thoughts on Lewis in A Very Short Introduction perfectly solidifies his position at the top of an impressive and mighty list. Indeed, this book finds the perfect balance between the Lewis that became famous and the Lewis that remained—generally—hidden to the public. To be sure, Dr. Como’s Very Short Introduction is, as advertised, a very short biographical survey, but it’s delightful and reminds me much of Theodor Haecker’s forgotten little 1934 gem,Virgil: Father of the West, in tone and scope. It’s the kind of book that we need far more of. It’s much longer than an Atlantic Monthly expose, but it’s also much shorter than, say, a David McCulloch life and times. It’s the kind of book you can devour in one long sitting and feel quite satisfied after reading it. In a little over one hundred pages, you’ll happily come to know the complexities of the most famous convert to Christianity in the twentieth century and Oxbridge don, Jack Lewis.

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