C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters! Oft’ imitated. Never really rivaled.
If you haven’t read this book yet…. what on your planet at you waiting for?!?
My favorite method to absorb Lewis’ window is the audiobook reading by John Cleese. Imagine: John Cleese as Screwtape. UK audio cassettes HERE
Some of the imitations of the Letters are pretty good. I have in mind especially Peter Kreeft’s valiant attempt. US HERE UK HERE
However, I was notified about the effort at the blog Mercy For Marthas (which I admit I had not seen before… how many blogs are there, I wonder…). This time, nasty old Screwtape has written to a demon named Bitterwench who as as a patient a homeschooling mother.
I don’t follow many mommy bloggers, mind you. Yes, that’s a term. I rather enjoy One Mad Mom. Some mommy bloggers really need to be… expunged… if you get my recent reference. This one, however, is pretty good. Go spike her stats and see her essay into the genre of Screwtapism.
And, she has twist on the Letters in the form of an intercepted angelic, not demonic, letter. Check it out.
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Speaking of John Cleese, did you know has launched a new church in the USA? Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3NF349aEHM
Sorry, back to Screwtape…
And don’t forget Focus on the Family’s audio dramatization of the Screwtape Letters starring Andy Serkis (Gollum) from LOTR. While it does not include a full reading of all of the 31 letters, it does offer much of the meat of Lewis’ work with high production values.
The Focus on the Family dramatization of Screwtape was also amazing; worth checking out if you’ve never heard it.
I wish Nigel Hawthorne had recorded them – the higher civil servants in Yes, Minister remind me a lot of the ‘Lowerarchy’ in The Screwtape Letters.
They came to mind with your post drawing our attention to Monsignor Pope’s and some of the comments – the wartime setting grows more immediate day by day, sadly – though happily in underlining some lessons.
Peter Kreeft occasionally teaches a course on C.S. Lewis. When I was a student at Boston College, I took many courses with him, including his course on Lewis. “The Screwtape Letters” were among the assigned readings. Professor Kreeft is pretty flexible when it comes to assigning papers, and one of the options was to write Screwtape-style letters that synthesized themes from Lewis’ entire body of work. I chose this option, and it was an interesting exercise. At the bottom of my 10-page paper, Professor Kreeft left only one comment, “Simple, yet profound”…getting feedback of that kind from someone like Peter Kreeft who is the master of combining simplicity and profundity in writing was the greatest compliment anyone could give me.
I listened to the John Cleese readings probably 20 years ago. Very good. I was surprised when I later learned Cleese was (or had become) a rather ant-religion atheist.
Cleese as Screwtape!
Thank you, Father.
“And, she has twist on the Letters in the form of an intercepted angelic, not demonic, letter.” And with it, a quotation from Lewis, “Ideally, Screwtape’s advice to Wormwood should have been balanced by archangelical advice to the patient’s guardian angel. Without this the picture of human life is lop-sided.” I wonder if you could sometimes see where Wormwood has probably been frustrated by the “patient’s” guardian angel?