Agreed that he's morally accountable for his views, but I consider it to his credit that his views improved with time and experience rather than stagnating or worsening.

Everybody gets points for growing wiser.

It's just that, for me, there's a difference between saying "Come on, that's juvenilia, he didn't write his first great novel until he was thirty" and saying "Well, he did say this incredibly stupid and narrow-minded thing, but he wised up about a year before he died."

Although I adore Yeats, who was a complete -stick-a-banana-up-your-nose-and-claim-you're-an-elephant loony, and who never copped to it until he wrote The Circus Animals' Desertion.

Not about a year before he died, but progressively, from the time he met the woman who would eventually become his wife (early 50s, if memory serves). He never dealt completely honestly with his change in perspective -- just completely stopped writing about The Woman Problem altogether in his theology/lit/life in general essays. My personal hope is that he realized he'd been an ass but lacked the courage to publicly recant, but there's no way to prove that.

He does get points from me, though, for having spent the last decade plus of his life refraining from the bloviating that has gotten him in trouble here, all the while creating female characters in his fiction who were progressively more rich, sympathetic, complicated and fully human.

Now that I think about it, just about every author I adore from that generation--Lewis, Sayers, Tolkien, etc.--has at least one issue and/or authorial tic that makes me roll my eyes when I encounter it. I guess it's an individual comfort zone thing. F'rinstance, I get more annoyed with Tolkien than Lewis over gender issues, because the women and girls in the Narnia stories are a heck of a lot more well-rounded and important to the story than the ones of Middle-Earth. Not that that's stopping me from awaiting The Two Towers film with bated breath; it just annoys me a little.

Truly, the past is a different country.

I consider it to his credit that his views improved with time and experience rather than stagnating or worsening.

Yep, that is the interesting thing about Lewis. Whenever he ticks me off I remind myself he was a conservative who grew broader rather than a liberal who shrivled as he aged.

Let's give CSL credit - but also remember that he can't completely blame his time. After all H.G. Wells lived in the same period and managed to be a feminist, a humanist, for labor against capital and an all around good guy.

And Oscar Wilde, and maybe George Bernard Shaw (although managing to speak favorably of Stalin and Hitler at the same time loses him some points).

Not just of his time, but his class and upbringing as well.

I'm amazed he did as well as he did.

People who did even better simply floor me.

The other day I was trapped in a conversation with a 70 year old family friend who was being more racially divisive than I'd ever put up with from a peer. I found myself thinking, "I can't wait 'till I'm 70 and can give ANYBODY what-for".

Reminding myself he was relatively progressive for his day only helps so much but it helps.

Yeah, but don't give him too much credit for his day. My late father who would be around 73 if he were alive to day never fell for any of that stuff, pro-labor, feminist, anti-racist, enviornmentalist - and still managed to be Macho. OK, my Dad was exeptional. but like I know a couple around my parents age - Italian American married to a Japanese American. And they lived in Washington DC in the 50s and had to conceal the fact that they were married because it was illegal in our nations capitol. And if they had to drive South for any reason, she had to ride in the back and pretend that he was the Chauffer. And when they stopped they had to stay in "Blacks only" hotels who would overlook her being white, and take seperate rooms. And know that when they sneaked into one anothers room, if they were caught by the house detective they would be arrested and then probably lynched. And yet they managed to overcome all that; an Italian American of that generation was given tons of racist conditioning which she managed to overcome.

My Grandfather (well, all my grandparents, but I'm thinking of the pulpit-swapping with synagogues and black churches in the south grandfather in particular) as well. Progressive thinkers didn't just spring from the ether in 1961.