Like or dislike them, but their work needs to addressed in context.
Of course it does, just as Hemingway does and Jane Austen does. We are embedded in our time as a fly in amber.
But there's a difference between literary criticism and saying "this rubs me the wrong way". Lewis was very important to my youth and adolescence, and so was Tolkien. They shaped me. But their treatment of women also gives me hives. I don't see myself in their worlds; their worlds don't have room for me. (This isn't true of late Lewis, but it's certainly true of middle Lewis -- see That Hideous Strength.)
Pipes have got to be less bad for you than cigarettes, don't they?
Aren't you smoking the same stuff? Pipes can have filters, but aren't they similar to cigarette filters? Or are they better?
I think water pipes are less bad....
Aren't you smoking the same stuff? Pipes can have filters, but aren't they similar to cigarette filetes? Or are they better?
Well, yeah, OK. But so fun!! And the smell!
When I was a kid, I liked the pipes that you could blow bubbles out of.
Also when I was a kid, I had an uncle who smoked a pipe. I haven't really been around anyone who's smoked tobacco in a pipe since, but I do remember I liked the smell.
I like the smell of gasoline, clearly I should start some sort of huffing habit. cool.
Gasoline, mmmm. Also hairspray.
Don't let msbelle try to talk you out of smoking. Smoking is cool, that ain't no lie.
My real problem right now is that I think I hate truth.com more than I hate Big Tobacco.
But there's a difference between literary criticism and saying "this rubs me the wrong way". Lewis was very important to my youth and adolescence, and so was Tolkien. They shaped me. But their treatment of women also gives me hives. I don't see myself in their worlds; their worlds don't have room for me. (This isn't true of late Lewis, but it's certainly true of middle Lewis -- see That Hideous Strength.)
That's fair comment, but I think the point suggesting that they should have had more modern lifestyles or views isn't fair. I agree entirely that they are who they are based on when and how they lived, and their work reflects those lives. As writers they wrote to their experiences, events which shaped them, and which took place nearly a hundred years ago.
