Ok, I’ve now sifted through 17 books on Lewis, and my head cold is down to about 8.5 on the Richter scale. I could keep on plowing through other books on Lewis, but I can see the trend.
The issue under consideration was the desire to know more details about the steps of Lewis’ conversion as he briefly outlines them in chapters XIII-XV in SURPRISED BY JOY. The verdict: You are unlikely to find out much more detail as requested here, from Lewis himself. As Lyle Dorsett said, in SEEKING THE PRIVATE PLACE: THE SPIRITUAL FORMATION OF C.S LEWIS, “…Lewis never really tried to explain the mystery of his conversion”. In any degree which satisfies our curiosity, any way, beyond SBJ. Which means that I, who have been a Chesterton collector for as long and as avidly as I have collected Lewis (and other stuff) won’t get any details on the impact of THE EVERLASTING MAN, beyond that it made sense of the Christian take on history, and GKC was full of common sense. True. And, sorry I’m unlikely to learn more of that.
One could wish for some insight into the reported fragment of an autobiographical account of his conversion that Lewis seems to have started about 1932 (reported basically by Walter Hooper, who said in his and Roger Green’s 1974 bio of Lewis that a 72 page fragment of such a work was in his hands, discovered after Lewis’ death), in which Lewis proposed to trace the path by which he had moved from materialist to belief in God. Sounds promising; this was approximately the time that PILGRIM’S REGRESS was written, perhaps there is something in there. But if anything more was heard of that fragment, it hasn’t been heard by me, yet. Joe Christopher, in his 1987 C.S. LEWIS, says it was unpublished, as of that date. I might have missed it.
But there is certainly more that profitably might be read on the subject, with some suggestive observations. Hooper and Green’s C.S. LEWIS -A BIOGRAPHY, esp. Chapter IV. Alister McGrath’s excellent 2013 bio, ECCENTRIC GENIUS. RELUCTANT PROPHET./C.S. LEWIS/A LIFE. And especially his follow-up THE INTELLECTUAL WORLD OF C.S. LEWIS, chaps. 1-3 and 5 in particular; chap. 1 is a good critque of SBJ. But on the questions rasied in the thread, I could find no useful answers. Maybe I didn’t look far or deep enough. But as of now, life and death have put me far behind where I should be at this time of the year and I must try and catch up.
Merry Christmas.
And i only know that because I have just read this
Another thing that comes up is that the longing, the sensucht, the pursuit of joy— that he realizes that the joy isn’t important in and of itself, but in that it directs you elsewhere to what’s important-- like a signpost.