Ros, thanks for that quotation. I like the way Lewis thinks, most of the time, especially about literature.
This quotation reminds me of a thought I had a few years back. I was re-reading Janice Norton's "Treatment of a Dying Patient" (one of the most beautiful things I've ever read, and entirely in clinical language!), and I e-mailed James Boyd White, who'd written the book in which I'd originally found Norton, and thanked him for introducing me to a friend. That's the way I feel about really good books and authors -- as if I'd met a good friend for life. This is an illusion, of course, and one that sometimes badly intrudes on the lives of authors, but I feel that I've learned so much from LeGuin, Irving, Atwood, Dickens, Tolkien, etc. (and Lewis too, while I'm at it) that it's as if I know them; and yes, I feel that I've looked through their eyes.
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This quotation reminds me of a thought I had a few years back. I was re-reading Janice Norton's "Treatment of a Dying Patient" (one of the most beautiful things I've ever read, and entirely in clinical language!), and I e-mailed James Boyd White, who'd written the book in which I'd originally found Norton, and thanked him for introducing me to a friend. That's the way I feel about really good books and authors -- as if I'd met a good friend for life. This is an illusion, of course, and one that sometimes badly intrudes on the lives of authors, but I feel that I've learned so much from LeGuin, Irving, Atwood, Dickens, Tolkien, etc. (and Lewis too, while I'm at it) that it's as if I know them; and yes, I feel that I've looked through their eyes.