On Friday night, trying to decide what to do, I felt a wave of certainty crash on me. I turned to Zachary and said in a decisive voice, “I would like to read tonight.” He had nothing to say in protest, so I grabbed my library copy of That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis, which I’ve been reading intermittently over the past few weeks, and plopped down on my bed. At first I intended to read a couple of chapters. An hour later, I felt the tipping point. I had to keep reading. There was no choice. So on I read, and ended up finishing at 1:00am. I can’t remember the last time I stayed up past bedtime to read a good book. It felt incredible. The fact that it was one of the best books I’ve ever read made it even more incredible.
I have some advice to every young teen and preteen who loves to read: on a regular basis, read something that’s way over your head. I picked up That Hideous Strength when I was 14, after going through the much more straightforward (though still incredibly deep) Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. In the third book of the “trilogy” (a very misleading label, I must say) I expected more adventures with space travel, creative creatures, theological vigor, and intense (sometimes alarmingly bloody) hand-to-hand combat scenes. What I got instead was a story about a man involved in academia and a woman who was frustrated with her marriage. The main character of the other two books was nowhere in sight until Chapter 7, and even then, he was very different. I felt disappointed and plowed through the book without understanding any of it. Still, through my parents’ assurances, I doubtfully conceded that there was a lot I was missing. There had to be. I just didn’t get it yet.
Reading the book nine years later, I feel like I get it. That is one of the greatest feelings in the world. You see your past self in a new way, with a clarity that is beautiful and nostalgic. When I read this book in another decade, I will understand my 23-year-old self in a way that I can’t possibly do now. It is breathtaking to see yourself through the lens of a good book.
“A good book” is a mild way of describing Lewis’s masterpiece. Through deeply sympathetic characters, thought-provoking scenes, and a steady build-up of ideas, he illustrates his thoughts and opinions— humanism, feminism, exclusivity, science, spirituality, animal nature, Medieval perspective, and, most of all, romance— in a deeper way than any work of nonfiction could convey. It’s odd to say that a book titled That Hideous Strength is one of the most romantic books I’ve ever read, but it is. At the end of the story I felt a painful sense of the beauty and joy and intimacy that exists in the heart of true love. The book is, as Lewis says in the foreword, a fairy tale, and every fairy tale is a love story at heart. The conflict makes you want to hide your head under a blanket, or throw up, or start shuddering and never stop. The resolution makes you want to dance in the grass on a dewey night and hug the starlight and eat toast with butter and tea.
It is a terrifying and lovely story, as all good fairy tales are. I look forward to reading it again in another nine years, and continue to “get it” more and more with each decade.
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It's good to know Lewis' writing reached into your life. These days it appears this is becoming a rarity among young folks. . . that life is spent in trivial pursuits. Glad it connected some dots this time around. With my poor memory I reread books now often. Now if I could only remember what these authors wrote. : )
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