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Imagining Narnia

From the January 2006 Print Edition

CS. Lewis is hard to like and easy to love. As a solitary, clever, and bookish child he was a study in precocity, a model prig. “I have a prejudice against the French,” he announced, a four year old, to his father. Why? “If I knew why it wouldn’t be a prejudice.” At the age of nine he was . . . . Continue Reading »

Pym Wins

From the December 2003 Print Edition

The Book Against God by James Wood Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. 257 pp. $24. James Wood is a formidable writer with a growing reputation. Solidly the product of the English middle classes”a classical education, a childhood of music lessons and cathedral evensong, a degree from . . . . Continue Reading »

What's So Funny

From the August/September 2003 Print Edition

The Morality of Laughter by f. h. buckleyuniversity of michigan press. 239 pp. $29.95 Football, a famously dour Scotsman once remarked, is not a question of life and death: “It’s more important than that.” The same might be said, with greater justice, of humor. A vast literature, growing by . . . . Continue Reading »