I am super pleased to announce that my new book is in dock!
Well, I hope so, anyway. You can’t launch unless you are in harbour, after all, and I have had some trouble getting it distributed. As regular readers of A Pilgrim in Narnia know, the process of getting this book into harbour, so to speak, has been a bit rough. For example, I landed at a brilliant conference last week at George Fox University, and the friendly local bookseller couldn’t get it in. In the US, it is available at BAM and Amazon for $35 USD (list price), and it is overpriced at B&N. The hardback is available for £22.99 at Amazon UK, but it seems extremely expensive in Japan. In Australia, the Kindle is only $17.38, but the hardback is north of $65, meaning they are shipping from the US.
And despite the thinness of the theory that is six degrees of separation from a conspiracy, we still aren’t fully rigged for sailing here in Canada, my home. It still isn’t listed in hardback in Canada’s largest bookstore, Indigo (but they have the eBook on sale for $17.39). Amazon Canada has the Kindle at $21.99, but they have listed it at $38.50 for the hardback (still shipping from the US?). My work is sea-ready, so what’s the problem?
This is the part where the brilliance of our local bookstores arrives just in time! The above picture is a shelfie that the grand folks at Charlottetown Bookmark posted on social media. This is proof that The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis is in dock!
On Tuesday, Oct 6th at 7:00pm, we will finally launch The Spiritual Imagination of C.S. Lewis here in Charlottetown, PEI.
I have been looking forward to this book event for a while now. UPEI is my home, where I enjoy the support of dozens of colleagues. Some of them are literary folk, and it is fun to share that Spiritual Imagination has topped the new books list in categories like Literary Criticism and History, and in the UK it reached #2 in Literature. And a few of my fellow profs are experts in Religion–which is the shelf upon which my book sits at the Bookmark–so I’m pleased to say that Spiritual Imagination peaked at #2 on the Christian Literature and Art list, #5 on Christian Literature and Fiction, and in the top 10 in Theology.
I suspect, though, that other than some friendly faces from our hallowed halls, the bulk of people fit into two categories: C.S. Lewis readers and Narnia fans on the one hand; Christians, religious folk, and the spiritually curious on the other. As always, there will be a handful of folks who are writers by vocation–or at least have a manuscript or two in a desk drawer somewhere.
I’m a little nervous, admittedly, in my own harbour–even though the book has been keel-ready for years and in commission for months. They are my people, you know? Some of them saw me as a kid, blindly stumbling from plank to plank. Now, I am mature enough to stumble with eyes wide open, but I can’t “fake it ’til you make it’ with your own crew.
That said, I have a good friend, Dr. Kate Scarth, moderating the conversation. She is a UPEI professor and Chair of the L.M. Montgomery Studies, and the author of a new University of Toronto Press book, Romantic Suburbs: Imagining Home in Greater London. Would you agree with me that her book is in the running for best academic book cover of the year?
Kate is a smart reader and a bright literary light in our community, so she’ll see me safe from harbour. Because it is made of paper–and because I don’t really understand champagne–we won’t be breaking a bottle of bubbly on the book. However, we will chat about ideas, share some of the background story, and enjoy a reading or two.
And, of course, the book will be for sale!
So if you are nearby and want to take a little peek into the wardrobe, I hope you can stop by the Faculty Lounge on Tuesday (Main 201, not far from the University Ave. gates).
Congratulations! I hope you enjoy every minute of your book launch.
Huzzah! Just sending notes to students and then I’m in prep mode for tonight!
Thanks Brenton. I pre-ordered this from Amazon UK. I’m from Portsmouth, England. Delivery date was 21/09/206. It’s now showing as expected between 15/10/26 to 26/11/26. Hopefully soon. Really looking forward to it.
Jeepers, a sloooooow release it seams.
I’m sure all will go well. Congratulations on the hometown launch!
I’ll email you about shipping to me.
Dana
Many congratulations, Brenton. I look forward to buying and reading the book as soon as I am able to do so.
Prof. Dickieson,
First off, congratulations for being able to get the word out about your book in your own home turf, part of the way, at least. Is the whole Canadian release issue still an ongoing thing? If so, then you’ve got my condolences. Have you been able to get any further info on why that is? If not, then I’d start asking around, and try to find out what’s up. The good news is I’ve now got my own copy to read, and having gone through it, there is an interesting question on my mind.
By situating death as one possible driver of Lewis’s Imagination, it seems as if you’re willing to demolish a few time-honored shibboleths that have gathered around the creator of Narnia for some time. To be specific, I kind of get the impression that you are willing to argue against Lewis’s strictures in “The Personal Heresy”. In other words, your book seems to make the implicit case that the personal isn’t always heretical. Am I correct, or at least close to the target, in that assumption?
Even if I’m wrong, I am at least willing to go with the idea that the “Heresy” stance is one that Lewis might have been willing to re-think later on. Evidence of this could be considered as at least “hinted at” in the blurb Lewis gave to John Custance’s “Wisdom, Madness, and Folly”. Though even before then, in books like “The English Poetic Mind”, it seems as if Charles Williams was already making the case that the personality of the artist always ends up playing some part in the finished literary product. So, in that sense, I can see how it’s possible to posit the idea that an overlooked aspect of Lewis’s career is how he slowly made his way toward Williams’s point of view, at least up to a logical enough point.
As for the idea of the Good Death as the missing puzzle piece to Lewis’s thinking and writing, well, I’ll admit I’m hesitant and pretty much up in the air about it, though I can see how it circles back to the value of noting the personal element in the author’s creativity. I’m just not sure it’s the end point of his writings as a whole. Going further, whether or not Sehnsucht is the over-arching theme of CSL’s life and thought, what I would argue is that there are still other aspects of this topic worth exploring. Some of these avenues “might” help serve to open out our understanding of the concept of Joy in a way that offers further avenues of exploration that exist in relation to the work of Lewis and otherwise unrelated artists. For instance, I “think” it is just possible to establish Sehnsucht as a “potential” link between the writings of Lewis and Stephen King, and it can be done with the help of S.T. Coleridge.
With all that said, I have to say your book on Lewis’s Imagination is proving to be the best kind, the one that’s able to provoke a lot of thought on the part of the reader, or at least this is how it’s been for me. All of which is to say congratulations for being able to write the best kind of literary study, the sort that makes you think about some of your favorite works of literature.