Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life |
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| Title: | Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life |
| Author: | C.S. Lewis |
| Publisher: | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| Type: | Book / Hardcover |
| Publication Date: | 01 November, 1995 |
| ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0151001855 / 9780151001859 |
| List Price: | $18.00 |
| You Save: | $5.76 |
| Amazon Price: | $12.24 |
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Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
In this book Lewis tells of his search for joy, a spiritual journey that led him from the Christianity of his early youth into atheism and then back to Christianity. This book, together with his early diary All My Road Before Me, form the closest thing we have to an autobiography.
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Customer Reviews:
• It Has It's Moments, But I Wish There'd Been More
24 November, 2009
I've never been much of a reader of C. S. Lewis. I've heard a few quotes attributed to him that seemed very insightful and wise to me, and I once tried to read The Screwtape Letters before becoming bored and giving it up. Nor did I find his Narnia stories to be particularly enticing (I preferred Tolkien). Nonetheless, I've heard a little history about him and thought this short autobiography might be interesting.
This is only an account of his early life and eventual rejections of atheism. He speaks of his childhood, the memories he has of his mother who died while he was young, of his father whom he found to be rather overbearing, and his brother and their attendance at boarding schools. I found it a bit difficult to follow or understand some of his stories of school or when he slipped into discussing the imaginary world he had already begun to develop, but it seemed to be an honest telling even when some details must have been embarrassing. The latter half of the book deals more with his intellectual and spiritual conversion to belief in God, and this became even harder to follow. I'm not a student of philosophy and he was evidently on a far higher level of thinking than I am.
Overall, I found myself rather bored and disappointed with the book (I listened to the audio book narrated by Geoffrey Howard). I'm a Christian but wasn't looking for an inspiring conversion story (especially one that was so cerebral). I would have preferred to learn more about his life, and those parts were the more interesting to me.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Part Autobiography, Part Conversion, Fully Neither
02 October, 2009
I have read many of C.S. Lewis' books, and I love them all, including this one, but I have to say that this volume should not be your first C.S. Lewis. The writing is awesome, I loved the book, but I doubt it would interest a reader who knows nothing of Lewis; I could be wrong, though.
I expected a book about Lewis' move from atheism to Christianity, and while there is that in there, there is definitely not as much as you'd be led to believe! Lewis makes clear that he isn't going for a full autobiography, and when it comes to his spirituality, he does not get into much detail. Used to his theology books, I expected a complete explanation of his thoughts and the likes, but of that there was little, so it remained more autobiographical than theological or philosophical.
Because of this, I felt like the book had its "ass between two chairs": not fully autobiographical, and not fully the detailed account of a conversion. I wanted to know more about Lewis' life, and I wanted to know more about his thoughts on atheism, theism, and Christianity. In the end, I wasn't satisfied on either domain.
This sounds rather negative, but I still give the book 5 stars because it was an excellent read. Some parts are truly hilarious, others nearly made me cry. From bad boarding schools to the trenches of World War I, to Oxford, this is quite a journey, and well told.
Recommended for Lewis readers, not so much for others.
- Amazon Customer Review
• A Masterpiece Of Discovery
01 March, 2009
Surprised by Joy is C.S. Lewis' partial autobiography, partial in that he recounts events from early childhood up until his conversion to Christianity as a young Oxford academic. The purpose of the book is not a straight forward autobiography, hence the relatively early conclusion of the work, but rather an account of how Lewis, at one time an atheist, came to believe in God and finally in Christianity.
The recurring theme of the book, expressed in the title, is Lewis' experience of joy, a deeply felt, intense longing or desire, that came upon him in rare and special moments, usually associated with literature and nature. The imaginative side of Lewis from boyhood on pursued this experience of joy as the highest good of life; he associated the best writing and most worthy culture with works and experiences that elicited this deeply-felt and spiritual exultation. Finally, after being convinced both intellectually and existentially of God's existence, Lewis realized that his experiences of joy were not ends in themselves, or the final object of life, but signposts towards God.
In the book Lewis covers his ancestry, childhood, close relationship with his brother Warren, troubled relationship with his father, his education in the English public school world, his blissful studies under the retired schoolmaster Kirkpatrick, his WWI military service in France, his Oxford education and his earlier years as an Oxford tutor. Lewis' writing is absorbing, penetrating, insightful and fascinating. One characteristic of the book (and Lewis' writing in general) is a brilliant brevity. Most of the subjects are dealt with in a few pages and none are described with any methodical detail. Yet in these brief treatments, one gains rich impressions of the various topics covered. With one anecdote or several skillful images Lewis draws his readers into turn-of-the-century Belfast, a brutal English boarding school, the boat ride between Ireland and England, and the trenches of World War I, to give examples.
Lewis is equally skilled at depicting the development of his own personality and beliefs. A bookish, imaginative child, he cultivated a special literary taste and style through his pursuit of joy and his natural intellectual gifts. He began with the children's classics of his era such as Beatrix Potter but later had a special love for Norse mythology and the related music of Richard Wagner. His human desire to be master of his own destiny and free from the external authority of any supernatural being was supplemented by the fashionable skepticism of the age; he became an atheist as an adolescent. But his literary taste and imaginative life ran relatively free of the influence of his philosophical outlook. Thus, on the one hand he read literature and experienced nature as if there was some objective basis for the beauty and harmony he sensed there, while on the other hand he was intellectually convinced that since the material world was all that existed, there could be no real beauty or truth behind the lovely images of art and scenery.
The climax of the book occurs when Lewis is a young academic at Oxford and he realizes that his atheism is untenable. Influenced by intelligent friends who were theists and even Christians, struck by how many of his favorite authors, including Plato, Milton, Spenser, George Herbert, George MacDonald, and G.K. Chesterton were supernaturalists or religious, and having rejected materialism for philosophical idealism, Lewis also felt himself pursued by a personal God. Through reading and meditation, he realized that his lifelong interest in aesthetic ecstasy, or joy, was an expression of the innate longing of mankind for relationship with God, only that he had mistakenly made the experience of joy an end in itself. In reality, this joy or deep desire was a by-product or characteristic of the contemplation of God. Joy cannot be pursued and therefore cannot be captured or achieved. It is like trying to hold water in the palm of one's hand or capture sunshine with a butterfly net. Rather, God is the only thing worth pursuing and when we pursue Him as the supreme end in life, we not only gain snatches of holy joy in the process, but we learn, as did Lewis, that it is really God who has been pursuing us all along.
Surprise by Joy is a masterpiece on many levels--as an account of Edwardian Ireland and England, as a depiction of English boarding school life and the generations of British leaders who emerged from this culture, as a chronicle of the education and literary development of a great English writer and thinker, as an exercise in self-reflection and analysis, and as an unparalleled example of the conversion of a priceless human soul to belief in God. It is one of the best books I have ever read and I recommend it highly.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Need Some Instructions
07 January, 2010
When I try to listen this CDs with Sony Walkman and several of my CD players, it skiped so bad tha I could not listen. I was ready to return them. However, my genius daughter told me to listen in computer cd drive because the it may have newer system. And it worked. But it is too bad that I cannot listen them in WALKMAN or my home CD players. Am I allow to down loard them into ITune them copy them on CD disc so I can listen to them in any CD players?
Anyway, the warning should be given on this item, I think. If I had known this trouble, I would not purchase it.
- Amazon Customer Review
• "surprised By Joy" - A Joy To Read
18 January, 2010
I just finished the 230-page book by C.S. Lewis, "Surprised By Joy - The Shape of My Early Life." I have read other works by Lewis on the topic of Christianity, and have profited by them all. This book is no exception. It is a worthy read for Christians and non-Christians alike. People with inquiring minds will enjoy Lewis' intellectual path from atheism to belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God--for this is what the book is about.
(Whenever I read Lewis I want to take the book to a particular friend of mine who is as inquiring as is Lewis, but who is a determined atheist, or perhaps agnostic. He is determined not to believe, and I would wish otherwise for him.)
I am not one of those "inquiring minds," but I still very much enjoyed the descriptions of his home and homeland, the early schools he was forced to attend, his tutors, his teachers, and his few friends. The narrative is very typically Lewis: not devoid of emotion, but removed from it to the extent that it doesn't cloud the story.
His journey to Christ is very different from mine, but the closer he comes to faith, the more his path and mine intersect. Page 206, in the chapter "Checkmate,"
"The most religious (Plato, Aeschylys, Virgil) were clearly those on whom I could really feed. On the other hand, those writers who did not suffer from religion and with whom in theory my sympathy ought to have been complete--Shaw and Wells and Gibbon and Voltaire--all seemed a little thin; what as boys we called "tinny." It wasn't that I didn't like them. They were all (especially Gibbon) entertaining; but hardly more. There seemed to be no depth in them. They were too simple. The roughness and density of life did not appear in their books." (emphasis mine)
I have not read any of the authors he mentions; my experience simply tracks with the last part of his statement. The truth of Christianity includes all "the roughness and density of life," and this book traces in a compelling way an intellectual's journey to that truth.
- Amazon Customer Review
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