Screwtape Proposes a Toast by C.S. LewisMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Since I don't own a copy of this story, it was read to me. My ability to create imagery for and comprehend language read to me is better than my ability to comprehend what I read silently or out loud to myself, using the Lindamood-Bell visualizing and verbalizing program. Also short stories should be easier to understand and remember than books, and this one followed The Screwtape Letters, a much more complex and convoluted story. Yet I found it difficult to engage with it. Perhaps it was my fatigue. It was also a lot of stress that badly affected my cognitions.
This story may or may not take place after Screwtape wrote his letters to his nephew Wormwood, but since CS Lewis wrote it a long time after, I read it as if it did. Here, Screwtape is called upon to speak to the newest graduating class of junior tempters, about to be sent out to their new postings around the world. Their mission: capture human souls for their Father Below. The teachers, Screwtape, and the class have just finished a feast of souls and are now into the speechifying part of the event. Screwtape opines on the feast. As is the wont of old men, he waxes nostalgic on dinners past, manages to bite his colleagues in that oh-so-British way, which also serves to tell us a little something about the kinds of things that lead us humans to be easy marks for junior and senior tempters, alike.
Like in his letters to Wormwood, Screwtape lies by omission and commission about himself and them -- and God aka "The Enemy." You have to read the letters to get the frisson from behind-the-scenes knowledge that is being hidden from the new graduates.
I'm not sure if Screwtape Proposes A Toast adds to our understanding of the battle of good and evil. Yet it does shed light on 21st century ideas, showing us that though we may think we've advanced in our thinking, we haven't changed one iota in decades. What is considered of new concern today, the diminishment of education, began at least a century ago. Perhaps more. And our human propensity towards jealousy and resentment allows demons to nourish othering, especially a particular way of seeing ourselves in competition with others. You'll have to read the story to understand what I mean.
Those last two points I was unable to remember at the time of writing this review (Oct 27) even though I discussed it at length with the person who read it to me and even though I've thought about the last point many times in my life. Competition serves no one, except in sport and then only a particular tone of competition. Refreshing my memory, three weeks after I finished the story, on CS Lewis's main point took mere seconds of reading a sentence or two to flash back all the imagery into my consciousness. I still have a long way to go in restoring my reading and ability to remember -- and stress during the time I'm reading has a deleterious effect on my comprehension and long-term recall -- but the fact that it takes very little rereading to restore my memory is heartening.
The story is rich in sensory details. There are deep ideas and descriptions of what consumed humans decades ago interesting enough to chew over. But it's not as engaging as The Screwtape Letters. Perhaps, for me, part of that arises out of the fact that it still takes me awhile before I engage with a story to the point that I begin to care about it and desire to know what comes next. So far, I'm about two-thirds of the way (and weeks) into a book before that happens. You can see that would be problematic for a short story.
If you want more of Screwtape, read it. If Screwtape's letters are satisfying enough, you can skip this one.
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