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Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C. S. Lewis

door Abigail Santamaria

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"The first full biography of Joy Davidman, known primarily as C.S. Lewis's late-in-life bride, but who here receives her much deserved rescue from that shadow"--
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There are some reviews that are easy to write, that almost writes itself. I can finish a book sit down and write without problems. Then there are books, like this one that I kind of know what to write, but still, the process from my head to the actually writing it down takes a bit longer time. And, I'm sorry it's a bit lengthy.

I first learned of Joy Davidman when I for quite many years ago watched Shadowlands. Before that, I had no idea that C.S. Lewis had been married. It was a wonderful film, but still it's a film, even though there are truths in the story it has been changed to suit the public. For instance, Joy had two children, two boys and in the movie, she had one. But that they started out as pen pals, that she traveled over to England to see him, that they, in the end, married each other and that she died of cancer is true just as it is in the movie. But the books makes everything sounds so perfect.

But this book gives a much deeper insight into the woman Joy, to her childhood, her growing up, her writing, her time with the communist party and her conversion to Christianity which led her to C.S. Lewis writings and writing together with her husband a letter to C.S. Lewis. She would, in the end, continue to write to C.S. Lewis, but without Bill.

It sounds like a wonderful love story, but in reality, it was a bit more calculated than that. Joy marriage was falling apart, and she practically arranged for her husband to fall in love with her beautiful cousin that came to stay with them. How so? By then she was writing to C.S. Lewis and she was eager to travel and meet him and she left her husband, children, and cousin together and traveled to England to meet C.S. Lewis. She had fallen in love with him trough his letters and she was actually going there to make him fall in love with her. It didn’t go as plan, she did meet him, she spent months in England, but it would take some years before they would truly be a couple. During the time, she and her husband divorced because he had fallen in love with her cousin and she bad mouths him quite bad in letter and to friends. Although, she was hardly a saint herself. she left her sons for months while she was in England and she wrote home to ask for money she then spends on buying clothes and stuff for herself.

But was their love story untrue? No she did love Jack (C.S. Lewis) and he loved her and they got some wonderful years together.

It was not an easy book to read, the first half of the book was a bit tough, it’s very well researched (40% of the book was footnoted), but it was sometimes a bit dry and I must admit that her poems that were in the book, well they didn’t really fascinate me. I often just glanced over them. They just didn't appeal to me. But I was interesting to read about the time period, the rise of the communist party before the McCarty era. I had no idea that Joy was fascinated for a while in life with Dianetics a practice that a man called L. Ron Hubbard had thought of. She got over it, thankfully. She lived in a very interesting time and her life story is quite remarkable.

I think the best part of the book was the last half when she started to write to Jack, and when she got to met and later marry him. Many of his friends were worried for him, like Tolkien. They thought that she was taking advantage of him. Jack had in his youth promised Paddy Moore, a friend, that he would look after his mother if something happened to him and when the friend died in WW1 did he honor the promise and looked after her and many thought that stopped him from ever finding a woman to marry because she looked after him as a mother (he lost his mother as a child) and he looked after her as a son. And around the time Joy came to meet him Mrs. Janie King Moore had died and that made his friends concerned for him since they wanted him to be free.

But I think she did him good. She made him happy.

I recommend this book if you want to know more about Joy, or Jack or if you are just looking for an interesting biography to read.

Thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy for an honest review! ( )
  MaraBlaise | Jul 23, 2022 |
The late-in-life romance of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman must be one of the most famous literary love stories of the 20th century. Lewis, a respected authority on Medieval and Renaissance literature and popular author of books about Christianity, and Davidman, a poet and novelist who was a former atheist, former Communist and former Jew who converted to Christianity, have been the subject of numerous books and even a notable film, “Shadowlands,” starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.

Yet these accounts have generally been from the point of view of Lewis. We see how she impacted his life. One of the pleasures of “Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C.S. Lewis” by Abigail Santamaria is that it reveals how he impacted her life.

Joy's parents were strict and unaffectionate. A less than perfect report card usually meant a slap in the face from her father. Throughout her youth she dreamed of Fairyland, a yearning very much like what Lewis describes in several of his books. She sought her Fairyland in her poetry, in the Communist Party and the Soviet Union (she once idolized Stalin much as she later idolized Lewis) and even in an early form of L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology. She married a fellow Communist, Bill Gresham, also a writer, and they had two sons.

Reading books by C.S. Lewis and experiencing a profound religious experience when, still an atheist, she bowed in desperation to pray, her life was transformed. Bill changed, too, and together they joined a Presbyterian Church, both even becoming officers in the church. Bill was the more commercially successful writer of the pair, selling one of his novels to Hollywood, but he drank too much, once fired a rifle in their house while the boys slept and was sometimes unfaithful.

And then Joy began pursuing Lewis, as if he were her Fairyland. She wrote to him, Lewis responded and a long correspondence began. Then she left for England for several months, supposedly to do research for a book, although her real purpose was to meet Lewis and, if possible, win the heart of this contented bachelor who lived in Oxford with his brother. Despite the fact that her husband was alcoholic and attracted to other women, she left their children in the care of Bill and Renee, Joy's pretty cousin, a woman fleeing her own husband. When Bill and Renee fell in love, Joy portrayed it to Lewis as a betrayal, although Santamaria suggests it may have been her plan all along.

In time Joy took her boys to England, she and Bill divorced and she and Lewis were married twice, once in a civil ceremony and again in a Christian one.

Joy Davidman does not come through as a particularly admirable person even in her own biography, yet the author leaves no suggestion at the end that Lewis was ever deceived or taken advantage of. He loved Joy Davidman with all his heart and grieved deeply after her premature death from cancer. Imperfect though she may have been, she made his own imperfect life seem briefly like Fairyland. ( )
  hardlyhardy | May 11, 2020 |
I have always been fascinated with who Joy was as a person. She swept Lewis off his feet, and looking at her before Lewis life it seems amazing that the two would hit it off. Some of her characteristics and her keen mind certainly predicted that some sparks would fly, but that they should fall so deeply in love seems more happenstance than logical conclusion. The one thing I thoroughly appreciated in this book was the very even-handed treatment of Joy's first marriage. I had previously uncritically accepted the views of Joy's first husband found in Shadowlands, i.e., that he was a tyrannical, physically abusive drunk. This book helped show that he was a much more complex person than that and that their marriage was equally as complicated. Just a very well done biography. ( )
  bness2 | May 23, 2017 |
The following article is located at: http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2016/marapr/finding-joy.html

Finding Joy
The first full life of Joy Davidman in a generation.
Don W. King | posted 2/19/2016

Dorsett pointed out that Davidman's early home life was shaped by her domineering and perfectionist father, Joe. ... f Joy brought home a less than perfect grade, her father would slap her.

Once Santamaria begins to concentrate on Davidman's desire for a relationship with Lewis, the tone of the biography takes on a noticeably critical perspective. Santamaria suggests Davidman pursued Lewis with pathological intensity. Determined to seduce him, Davidman was rendered "beyond self-control and reason."

Santamaria's tone softens after there is an established relationship between Davidman and Lewis. She points out that Davidman became something of a literary confidante, particularly via her work on his autobiography, Surprised by Joy (she typed out the complete typescript): "Jack now trusted Joy implicitly with his manuscripts.

Such quibbles aside, Joy is an earnest, well-researched portrayal of the woman who captivated the heart of C. S. Lewis.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Abigail Santamaria's Joy is the first comprehensive biography of Helen Joy Davidman in a generation—Lyle Dorsett's still reliable And God Came In: The Extraordinary Story of Joy Davidman appeared in 1983. As such, Joy benefits from 30 years of critical reflection. In her introduction, Santamaria sets the overall tone of her biography, arguing that "most [previous] accounts of [Davidman's] life seemed glazed with a kind of hero worship." Perhaps Santamaria has in mind the 1993 film Shadowlands, starring Anthony Hopkins and Deborah Winger. However, that film claimed only to be based upon a true story—at best it is a docudrama. Dorsett's earlier biography of Davidman is respectful but clear-eyed; he certainly does not suggest she was a saint. Moreover, C. S. Lewis's most able biographers, George Sayer and Alister McGrath, have little good to say about Davidman. Regardless, Santamaria adopts a critical lens through which to view the details of Davidman's life.

Santamaria deserves much praise for her careful research and her success in gaining access to heretofore little known or closed primary sources; in doing so, she advances in great detail matters of Davidman's life that up until now were only outlined. For instance, Dorsett pointed out that Davidman's early home life was shaped by her domineering and perfectionist father, Joe. Santamaria fleshes out the background of Joe's personality, noting that in his role as a junior high school principal "he was such a tyrannical bully that in a single year, twenty-two members of his staff requested transfers, including his own former seventh grade teacher." At home with Joy and her younger brother, Howard, a similar iron discipline was applied. If Joy brought home a less than perfect grade, her father would slap her. When Joy's second semester grades at Hunter College were a mixture of B's, C's, and D's, Joe slapped her face. This time, however, "Joy flung herself forward and scratched his face with her nails. Joe never touched her again." Given the tension of her relationship with an overbearing, demanding, and controlling father, it is little wonder that she rebelled against Joe and everything he stood for.

Other aspects of Davidman's life that Santamaria plumbs in depth include her years as a devoted member of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), her six-month tenure as screenwriter in Hollywood, her work as an editor for New Masses (the semi-official magazine of the CPUSA), her involvement in the leftist writers organization, the League of American Writers, the early life of her first husband, William Lindsay Gresham (Bill), their marriage and subsequent fascination with L. Ron Hubbard and Dianetics, and eventually her gradual disaffection for Gresham and the breakup of their marriage. Readers interested in discovering more about these elements of her life have much for which to thank Santamaria.

Once Santamaria begins to concentrate on Davidman's desire for a relationship with Lewis, the tone of the biography takes on a noticeably critical perspective. Santamaria suggests Davidman pursued Lewis with pathological intensity. Determined to seduce him, Davidman was rendered "beyond self-control and reason." In her obsession, Davidman sailed for England with "urgency," abandoned her motherly responsibilities, knew that in her absence an sexual affair would occur between Bill and her cousin, Renée, spent money recklessly (thus unfairly burdening Bill), threw herself at Lewis, fantasized about a future with him, played the innocent victim, consistently engaged in self-deception, and fabricated the details of how her marriage to Bill fell apart—it was "a myth made of half truths, exaggerations, omissions, and self-pity—facts and fictions cast into a land of shadows."

In part, Santamaria's account of this sequence of events is based on her reading of the sequence of 45 love sonnets Davidman wrote to Lewis.[1] I believe it is fair to read these sonnets at least in some ways as biographical; in fact, I think the sonnets served Davidman much as a journal would for other writers. Although each sonnet is complete in itself—telling its own little story—it is easy to discern a larger story or narrative as we read through the sequence. Accordingly within the sequence many of the sonnets are "conversational"; that is, sometimes Davidman is speaking to herself, sometimes to Lewis directly or indirectly, sometimes to God, sometimes to former lovers, sometimes to no one in particular, and sometimes to several of these at the same time. Throughout the sequence, Joy's narrative tone or mood vacillates between despair and hope, anger and resignation, desire and shame, longing and self-denial, scheming and confessing, plotting and humiliation, eros and agape, passion and reason, the flesh and the spirit, a fierce desire to possess and a frustrated acquiesce to give up, and desperation and resolution.

Santamaria's tone softens after there is an established relationship between Davidman and Lewis. She points out that Davidman became something of a literary confidante, particularly via her work on his autobiography, Surprised by Joy (she typed out the complete typescript): "Jack now trusted Joy implicitly with his manuscripts. As Surprised by Joy proceeded through production, he directed his editor to discuss the proofs with her directly." Santamaria traces the way Lewis became more and more comfortable with Joy's integration into his life, and she charts effectively how Lewis's feelings of friendship for Davidman moved him to marry her in a civil ceremony on April 26, 1956. Once Davidman's bone cancer was discovered, Santamaria chronicles to great effect the way in which Lewis came to realize how much he loved Davidman. At one point he wrote a friend: "You could hardly believe what happiness, even gaiety, there is between us." Phileo moved on to eros, and eventually to a second, bedside ecclesiastical marriage. Joy concludes poignantly by covering the three years of happiness Lewis and Davidman shared before the cancer returned and took her life.

Readers may quibble with some of Santamaria's interpretations of events in Davidman's life. For example, she argues that the breach in Davidman's relationship with Bill can be traced to her conviction that he had been sexually unfaithful with Phyl Haring, a lesbian friend of the couple. Yet when Davidman sailed to England in 1952, she stayed in Haring's London flat. It seems inconceivable that Davidman would have stayed with the woman she believed Bill had slept with. Another instance is Santamaria's contention that Davidman knew Bill and Renée would have an affair while she was in England. Yet if that was the case, why was Davidman apparently so heartbroken when she learned of the affair?

Such quibbles aside, Joy is an earnest, well-researched portrayal of the woman who captivated the heart of C. S. Lewis. Perhaps it is best to give Davidman the last word. Her poem "A Sword Named Joy," written on February 23, 1953, intimates how deeply she longed for his love:

If you love me as I love you,
No knife can cut our love in two!
On Christmas Day I gave my lord
An old and wicked Persian sword
To cut his finger on; and he
Did cut it most obligingly,
But would not let me kiss it well.
On Christmas morning it befell,
And all the bells of Oxford then
Were crying goodwill unto men!
O it was very bad indeed
To bring a gift that made him bleed,
It was unchristian and inhuman;
But still, the creature's name is woman—
A knife is a true lover's gift,
Old poets say; and so with thrift
She saved her pennies, had no rest,
Till she had found of knives the best,
Curved as sweetly as her breast.
And he has hung it on his wall,
And yet, he loves her not at all.
If you loved me as I love you,
No sword could separate us two!
Don W. King edited the letters and the poems of Joy Davidman. His most recent book is Yet One More Spring: A Critical Study of Joy Davidman (Eerdmans).

1. See A Naked Tree: Love Sonnets to C. S. Lewis and Other Poems (Eerdmans, 2015), pp. 282-307.
  keithhamblen | Mar 18, 2016 |
Joy Davidman spent her life searching for heaven on earth, and she found it just before her death from cancer at the age of 45, in her unlikely marriage to Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. Her last years and the aftermath of her death are well-known due to the popularity of the play and the movie Shadowlands. But Joy Davidman's story prior to her relationship with Lewis has never been told in full before Abigail Santamaria's biography Joy: Poet, Seeker and the Woman who Captivated C.S. Lewis.

Santamaria’s portrait of Davidman reveals a restless woman whose life was characterized by contradictions and plagued by disappointments. She was a published poet, novelist, and freelance writer, but she never earned enough money through her writing to support her expensive tastes. As a young woman, she was a committed Communist and supporter of Stalin. Even after she became disillusioned with the Soviet way, she remained a dyed-in-the-wool atheist until her apprehension of a reality beyond the natural world led to her conversion to Christianity. Surprisingly, she saw no conflict between her new faith and her interest in L. Ron Hubbard’s self-help program Dianetics. But eventually she became disenchanted with Hubbard and his followers as well.

Santamaria reveals that Davidman was quite calculating in her approach to C.S. Lewis. Her first marriage was in serious trouble, and she had two young sons who needed her, but these concerns didn't impede her from traveling to England to meet the famous author. Davidman's and Lewis's marriage was at first one of convenience, but then it blossomed into true love. Interestingly, Lewis's literary friends, the Inklings, didn't like his new wife and could not understand what he saw in the dumpy, sarcastic, divorced Jewish-American convert. Lewis loved her deeply, and when she died, he was devastated.

Santamaria's biography of Davidman is insightful and wonderfully written. This is one of the best books I've read in a long time.

Please note that I received an electronic copy of this book to review from NetGalley, but I was not financially compensated in any way. The opinions expressed are my own and are based on my observations while reading this book. ( )
  akblanchard | Aug 6, 2015 |
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