Monday, August 29, 2011

C.S. Lewis and the missing Duet

Others figured this out before me, but some time ago I realized that C.S. Lewis produced "duets" of books: for the sake of one type of reader, he would write a nonfiction book; for the sake of another type, he would demonstrate the topics with a fiction novel.

Example 1. The Abolition of Man was accompanied by That Hideous Strength.
Example 2. The Four Loves was accompanied by Till We Have Faces.

Those are the two I know of.  There are others (see here for examples).

Now for a puzzler that I've wondered about for years. When he died he was working on After Ten Years, which was more or less a reworking of the Iliad + Odyssey.  I haven't read it for maybe 15 years, so it's not fresh in my mind, and yet I can't help but wonder: what was its nonfiction dual? Does it exist?

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