A Mind Awake -- An Anthology of C. S. Lewis, edited by Clyde S. Kilby. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. $3.95.
October 14, 1980
Kilby gives us "pungent and provocative" remarks on the subject for which C. S. Lewis is most renowned -- religious experience. Lewis, born in Belfast in 1898, converted to Christianity when he was 31 after professing atheism as a youth. A popular lecturer and tutor at Oxford and Cambridge Universities until his passing in 1963, he also gained a reputation as a master of concise and cogent prose. Drawing on 20 years of reading Lewis, Kilby chooses self-contained passages and arranges them topically. In opting for a conceptual approach, he does not reveal Lewis's power as a storyteller. Nevertheless, this collection provides an excellent introduction to a broad range of Lewis's writings, both fictional and nonfictional.