> one of the commandments of being in an Inner Ring is that one must not allow in riff-raff But Lewis was a professor of English literature who invited in the

> one of the commandments of being in an Inner Ring is that one must not allow in riff-raff But Lewis was a professor of English literature who invited in the riff-raff. People like him weren't supposed to like pulp science fiction and fantasy stories. That was seen as trash, and it's not exactly hard to understand why either. But Lewis insisted that there was something great and valuable there, something fairy tales (and old epics like Beowulf) had but modern literature had lost sight of. Going from agnosticism and fashionable scientism of his day to Anglicanism was also a "debasement" of sorts. Like adoring pulp SF wouldn't win you the most friends in literature, adoring Jesus wouldn't win you the most friends with the rising stars in science and politics of his day. And then he in turn shocked a lot of his newfound Christian brethren by marrying a divorced woman. It's hard for me to see any place in Lewis' life where he tried to fit in to something exclusive.