Through a New Wardrobe: The NarniaFans Interview Series: Devin Brown

Hey, everybody, welcome to “Through a New Wardrobe” where we get the chance to sit down and chat with writers whose work was influenced by CS Lewis and the Land of Narnia. To day we get to talk to our old friend, Dr. Devin Brown, author of the Inside Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and discuss this latest installment to his Inside Narnia Series.

NarniaFans: Do you prefer to be addressed as Devin, Dr. Brown, Professor Brown or Mr. Brown?

Well, my students call me Dr. Brown. My friends call me Devin. So either one is fine.

NarniaFans: While we have spoken with you before, some of our readers may not be familiar with you or your work. Would you care to tell us a bit about yourself?

I was born and raised in a very blue collar neighborhood on the Southside of Chicago. I jokingly tell people that you could go for miles and not run into someone who had ever read a poem. When I was sixteen, my older brother came home from college and threw a book on my bed and said I should read it. The book was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and this was the first time I heard of C. S. Lewis. Though I was a Christian, this became my first encounter with the true power of the gospel story outside of the Bible. This was also my introduction to the power of the Christian imagination and to the world of ideas. It was like giving someone in the desert a glass of water.

I went on to get a B.A. in philosophy (like Lewis), then switched to English (also like Lewis). When I was in graduate school, there were no classes on Lewis and it was virtually impossible to do a Master’s thesis or a doctoral dissertation on his writings. As soon as I was done with my PhD. and could do what I wanted, I wrote my first article on Lewis for a lovely journal called The Lamp-Post. To my great delight, they accepted it, and Lewis has been my research focus ever since.

For the past 14 years I have been teaching at Asbury University—a wonderful Christian liberal arts college just outside of Lexington, Kentucky where students can get a degree in English. filmmaking, biology, or any of the normal majors but in a Christian context. We offer a literature class on Lewis’s fiction which I teach. We also offer a philosophy class that covers Lewis’s apologetic writings. Lewis’s literary criticism is used in our Renaissance lit class. We are currently working on a travel class to Lewis’s Oxford. Asbury is known as a very friendly place. You could also say Asbury is a very Lewis-friendly place.

When the first movie came out in 2005, I published my first book Inside Narnia, which is a chapter by chapter look at The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We also had a huge Narnia Night at Asbury the week before the film’s release. This has become a pattern. My third book on Narnia—Inside the Voyage of the Dawn Treader—came out in October and on December 3^rd Asbury will host its third Narnia Night with Chip Flaherty as our guest of honor. I would like to personally invite any and all NarniaFans to attend. There is no charge. The program starts at 7 pm.

In 2008, I was invited to teach one of the seminars that the C. S. Lewis Foundation holds at the Kilns each summer. We spent an entire week there. We ate in Lewis’s dining room, held classes in his library, and hung out in his living room and lovely garden. Each night I got to sleep in his bedroom. As you might guess, it was truly a dream come true.

NarniaFans: What other projects have you been up to since we last spoke to you?

Being a Lewis scholar has opened the door to being involved with many wonderful people on many incredible projects. In February, I was part of an amazing panel at Fox Studio’s Zanuck Theater which included Micheal Flaherty, Doug Gresham, Micheal Apted, and Mark Johnson. Earlier this summer, I was honored to be invited by Samaritan’s Purse to help with Operation Narnia which provides Christmas presents for disadvantaged children. At Asbury’s Narnia Night we are going have the world premier of a documentary I have been helping with, and think is rather good, titled C. S. Lewis: Why He Matters Today. As part of the documentary we traveled all over the country to interview awesome people like Doug Gresham, Tim Keller, Micheal Flaherty, Chuck Colson, and Eric Metaxas—who are all big Narnia fans by the way.

NarniaFans: Can you give us a quick teaser for Inside the Voyage of the Dawn Treader that will give us an idea of what we’re in for?

People often tell me they wish they had the chance to sit in the class I teach on Lewis at Asbury. You could say that Inside the Voyage of the Dawn Treader is my class in book-form, a way for anyone to be part of the discussion about this story. I tie in aspects of the book with the other Chronicles, with Lewis’s other writings, and with other authors, like Tolkien, who influenced him.

Can I think of a couple specific aspects that I cover might be of interest to Narnia fans? I talk quite a bit about the temptations that Lucy, Caspian, and Edmund face and about what Lewis has to say on temptation in other works like Mere Christianity. I also discuss Reepicheep’s character arc—how over the course of the story he finds a higher honor and a greater glory to seek.

NarniaFans: What has been the overall response to the Inside Narnia series?

All three books have done well, and I am very grateful for the interest they have generated. Over the past five years, I have heard from Narnia fans all over the world who write to say they have enjoyed having serious books with lots of information about their favorite author and favorite literary series.

NarniaFans: How long does it take you to write one of these books?

With the revisions from my brilliant content editor Marv Hinten and my extraordinary style editor Jessica Miles, permissions to get for all the Lewis quotes, and final proofreading, it takes me about as long to write a new book as it does for Walden to make a new film. So as soon as the next movie gets the green light, I will start on Inside The Silver Chair.

NarniaFans: What was the hardest part of writing Inside Voyage of the Dawn Treader?

Imagine trying to write a book about a book that includes all the interesting ideas, leaves out any uninteresting ones, and talks about each point for just the right amount of time—neither going on too long nor being too short. This would be impossible except for the fact that Lewis has left such great material to discuss. While I might not always be scintillating, Lewis always is.

NarniaFans: What did you learn from writing Inside Voyage of the Dawn Treader?

Anyone who has spent time with Lewis’s writings knows that you always learn lots of things.

One of my most interesting discoveries is that in chapter eight of Mere Christianity—a chapter titled “The Great Sin”—Lewis mapped out what would become the framework for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. There Lewis notes that pride does not get pleasure merely from having something, but from having more of this something than someone else. He explains: “We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others.” This is the exact pattern that temptation takes for Edmund and Caspian (who want to be richer than everyone else), Eustace (who thinks he is cleverer), and Lucy (who wants to be better-looking).

Another discovery is the way that Lewis patterned Eustace after his own youthful self. Eustace Clarence Scrubb and Clive Staples Lewis share many other qualities besides their similar sounding names.

NarniaFans: Who designed the cover art?

The wonderful cover for Inside the Voyage of the Dawn Treader was done by Kirk DouPonce who runs DogEared Design. Some of the authors he’s designed covers for include Coach Bill McCartney, Max Lucado, John Piper, John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, and James Dobson.

NarniaFans: You mentioned that you are a college professor. Does writing the Inside Narnia series take any time away from your teaching duties?

Most college professors see writing and research as part of their job. Publishing a new book on Narnia every two years is a bit more than most professors produce, but I still teach a full set of classes and see teaching as the biggest part of what I do at Asbury. Each semester my students teach me a lot, and I feel that my teaching helps make me a better writer.

NarniaFans: What do you hope readers gain from the latest installment of the series?

My hope with each of my books is that my readers will gain a greater understanding and a greater enjoyment for Lewis’s originals.

NarniaFans: Are the books endorsed or authorized by the Lewis estate or Walden Media and any other film partners?

I am an independent scholar—not endorsed or authorized by anyone, and I think this is the way it should be. By never receiving funding or an endorsement from an outside agency, I am free to write from an objective viewpoint without any goals other than my own personal ones.

NarniaFans: Most readers look only at the allegorical aspects of Narnia and leave out any other parts of the story; why do you think it is important for them to remember the mythological and literary aspects of the books?

The Narnia stories are first and foremost just that: stories, great stories. And like all great stories they are able to express the inexpressible truths about the human condition. Every so often I run into someone who wants to argue that Peter Pevensie is the apostle Peter, that Edmund is Judas, and the White Witch is Pontius Pilate, and I think, “Wow! Here is someone who has missed out on one of the world’s greatest tales.”

NarniaFans: What are your first (Spoiler free) impressions of the footage of Voyage of the Dawn Treader that you’ve seen?

I have seen the finished version of the movie and loved it. The team from Fox and Walden were able to hold on to all the parts that were essential and at the same time to open up the story to make it a film. I am sure the filmmakers themselves would be the first to tell you that it is not perfect—but what film is? I am not even sure I would say Lewis’s original is perfect. While not perfect, I think most movie goers will say the film is very, very good. Well worth seeing and (at least in my case) well worth seeing a second, a third, and maybe even a fourth time.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a film made by people who really understand and really love Lewis’s original, a group of extremely talented folks who did the very best they could to make a screen adaptation worthy of this incredible book. They recognize what these Narnia stories have meant to people all over the world and see their work as being given a sacred trust. I am sure that this third movie going to be a great hit and that people—young and old—are going to really enjoy it.

I would like to add that there is no doubt the film will lead many people to read the Narnia books who would never have done so otherwise—and this may, in the end, be its most important legacy. This movie, like the previous two, will inspire young audiences—young people who may never have been to church, who may never have set a foot inside their local library—to open up Lewis’s books and read. And that is a fantastic and a wonderful achievement.

NarniaFans: Does the continuation of the Inside Narnia Series hinge upon the films continuing or will you still do Inside Silver Chair and the rest of the Narnia books with out the films to tie into?

Mark Johnson, the producer for the three films so far, has said that he is committed to making all seven movies and will be disappointed if he is not able to complete them all. I would say the same for my Inside series. This will be my contribution to Lewis studies, and, like the books that Lewis left behind, something I hope will be around long after I am gone. They are also my small way of saying thank you to an author who has been my greatest and best teacher since that day back when I was sixteen and one of his books landed on my bed.