Book Review: Writers To Read By Douglas Wilson

  • Wednesday, November 18, 2015
  • J. Vaden Cavett

Writers to Read: 9 Names that Belong on Your Bookshelf is a book-length footnote to Douglas Wilson's writing career (thus far), a benedictory catalogue of his influences.

I like Wilson. This is the fifteenth book I've read by him - there is still plenty I haven't read - but I would say that, given my acquaintance with his work, I am uniquely qualified to write this review. 
Be warned at the outset, in true Wilsonian fashion, what follows is far from objective. This review, like each of the chapters in Wilson's book, is an adoring meditation. If you want an unbiased perspective, you'll have to wait until robots can write reviews. Until then, I hope this will do.  

Wilson offers us chapters on G.K. Chesterton, H.L. Mencken, P.G. Wodehouse, T.S. Eliot, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, R.F. Capon, M.S. Robinson, and N.D. Wilson. Each chapter consists of a biographical sketch, an analysis of the author's work, and recommended reading. Though each chapter is structured the same, it isn't monotonous at all. The repetition sets a quick pace and fosters warmth and familiarity.  

Wilson has said in various places that C.S. Lewis has influenced him more than all the other authors he has read combined. I believe it. Lewis appears in nearly every chapter in this book. It seems that Lewis is so baked into Wilson's cake that he is incapable of understanding the world apart from him. This isn't a weakness; it's authorial integrity. In his book, Wilson isn't recommending authors he's merely read. He's lauding authors he can't live without.

A similar dependence on Chesterton and Tolkien is evident in some of his other books (e.g., Heaven Misplaced and Angels in the Architecture). Tolkien's conception of reality as a story, climaxing in the eucatastrophy of the resurrection of Jesus, is essential to Wilson's worldview, just as Chestertonian joviality is to his general disposition and literary sensibilities. 

You can't read too far into the Wilson canon without realizing that he's a witty wordsmith, fond of seasoning his prose with a dash whimsy. Wilson's wit is thoroughly Wodehousian, an adjective I'm sure he'd appreciate having applied to him. Here's what he has to say about Wodehouse:
"...I have for years been devoting myself to an ongoing and consistent reading of Wodehouse — meaning that I am always reading something by him, all the time. Simply put, Wodehouse is a black belt metaphor ninja. Evelyn Waugh, himself a great writer, once said that Wodehouse was capable of two or three striking metaphors per page. He looked like a sheep with a secret sorrow. One young man was a great dancer, one who never let his left hip know what his right hip was doing. She had just enough brains to make a jaybird fly crooked. Her face was shining like the seat of a bus driver’s trousers. He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom. 

"The metaphors are consistently laugh-out-loud funny, but they are more than that. They are arresting. They are memorable. They connect things that are not usually connected. They show wordsmiths how wordsmithing should be done. Aristotle once said that the ability to use metaphor was a mark of genius, and if this is correct, as I believe it is, then Wodehouse has a lot to teach anyone who works with words. We learn by imitation, and when it comes to striking similes and metaphors, Wodehouse is worthy of imitation. But to imitate, we must read." 

Wilson has praised Wodehouse in several other places prior to the publication of Writers to Read, so I was already a fan, having read four Wodehouse books to date. However, thanks to Wilson's chapter on Wodehouse, my appreciation for Wodehouse and for Wilson's appreciation for Wodehouse has only deepened. 

This review could go on for quite some time, so to save electronic ink, I'll keep my comments about the rest of Wilson's favorite authors brief. 

R.F. Capon has helped Wilson develop a thoroughly incarnational understanding of food and feasting in the Christian life. For more on this, check out Joy at the End of the Tether. 

M.S. Robinson, an Idaho native, has skillfully woven the Idaho countryside into her novels and has won Wilson's affection by doing so (Wilson lives in Moscow, Idaho). 

Wilson has written somewhere that, if he could write like anyone, he would want to write like H.L. Mencken. It seems to me he does write like Mencken, especially in his social critique, much of which can be found over at his website, Blog and Mablog (dougwils.com).  

Finally, Wilson includes his son, N.D. Wilson, as the last author in Writers to Read. In many ways, this makes sense. N.D. is a product of his father, who is a product of all the other authors mentioned in the book. What better way to end the book than by lauding the incarnation of the cumulative influence of all of your favorite authors? 

Go buy this book, and pick up a second job while you're at it. You'll need it when you finish reading it and have an Amazon cart full of book recommendations to buy.

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