David C. Downing is a Professor of English at Elizabethtown College and one of the handful of C. S. Lewis scholars whose books reward reading and re-reading. Downing’s Planets in Peril is the accepted gold standard for understanding Lewis’ Space Trilogy, for example, and his guide to Narnia, Into the Wardrobe, though pre Planet Narnia, is the best of its generation.
Now Prof. Downing has taken up his pen, not to write about one Inkling or to analyze his work, but to write a story involving them all. His novel, Looking for the King (Ignatius, 2010), is subtitled An Inklings Novel and features extended cameo appearances by Charles Williams, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis. I read King in one sitting — it’s that good and, to an Inklings junkie at least, something like Turkish Delight — and wrote Prof. Downing some questions. It turned into an interview that he agreed to let me share with you, though it is more of a debate than the usual back and forth between author and reporter. His frankness, good humor, and insights, not to mention his willingness to punch back, made the experience a highlight of my writing for this weBlog.
After the jump, then, the publisher’s fly-leaf summary of the story and the HogPro interview with David C. Downing, author of Looking for the King:
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