From the journals of Kenneth Tynan

Entries from unpublished journals of Kenneth Tynan, published in the August 7, 2000 issue of The New Yorker:

Oct 1
. . . C. S. Lewis . . . reminiscences of this great man, whose mind was Johnsonian without the bullying and Chestertonian without the facetiousness. If I were every to stray into the Christina camp, it would be because Lewis's arguments as expressed in books like "Miracles." . . . He was a deeply kind and charitable man, too. Once in the summer of 1948, I came to him in despair . . . I had spent most of the term in and out of bed with bronchial diseases that I was sure would soon culminate in TB. I brought my troubles to Lewis, asking him whether I could postpone my final examinations until Christmas. To this he at once agreed: after which he got on with the Christian business of consolation. He reminded me how I had once told him about the parachuted landmine which, dropping from a German bomber during an air-raid in 1040, so narrowly missed our house in Birmingham that next morning we recovered some of the parachute silk from our chimney. (The mind destroyed six house across the road and blew out all our windows). But for that hairsbreadth—a matter of inches only—I would already (Lewis gently pointed out) have been dead for eight years. Every moment of life since then had been a bonis, a tremendous free gift, a presnt that only the blackest ingratitude could refuse. As I listned to him, my problems began to dwindle to their proper proportions; I had entered his room suicidal, and I left it exhilarated.

Book to read

Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life.