Random CSL quotes about reading past writers

 Randomly browsing through C. S. Lewis's letter, and, in a letter to Warnie dated 22 Nov. 1931, he writes:

To read  histories of literature, one would suppose that the great authors of the past were a sort of chorus of melodious idiots who said, in beautifully cadenced language that black was white and that two and two made five. When one turns to the books themselves--well I, at any rate, find nothing obsolete. The silly things that great men say, were as silly then as they are now: the wise ones are as wise now as they were then ....

Although the emphasis on "great men" might now count as among the "silly things," this sentiment, by and large, is still how I tend to read novels, and which I see little enough in contemporary literary criticism ...

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