Light Up Lewis

I got to some of Light Up Lancaster this evening. The most impressive display consisted of images projected onto a building accompanied by an actor playing CS Lewis completing a letter of advice to a younger writer before accepting his own death and walking away with a suitcase. He said, among other things (paraphrase): "Do not tell your readers that an experience was frightening but describe the experience in such a way that they will think, 'That would be frightening.'"

Many of us appreciate and analyze what fiction writers do without being able to do it ourselves. This observation is relevant to what we are doing here on Poul Anderson Appreciation. James Blish wished that Lewis had written more fiction because of his psychological and moral insights. I have recently reread Lewis' Ransom Trilogy but Anderson left a vaster output to reread. We have learned to appreciate Anderson's multi-sensory descriptions of nature and the seasons and his use of the Pathetic Fallacy. Lewis would have approved.

See:

Writing Advice From C.S. Lewis

(The young American writer was called Joan Lancaster.)