“ Like all great readers, he could create for himself a wall of stillness. ”
Lewis had developed a trademark style, slow enough for note taking, loud enough to rouse the dullest listener, straightforward, abundantly furnished with quotations, and lavish in wit.
~ Philip Zaleski
A letter Lewis wrote reveals an 18-year-old with the energy of a schoolboy and the tastes of an octogenarian.
Oxford in the Inklings' day was not so different in look and smell from the Oxford of today. Then, as now, one was tempted to fantasize one's surroundings as a Camelot of intellectual knight-errantry or an Eden of serene contemplation. Then, as now, there was bound to be disappointment.
In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry. – Owen Barfield
