AS USUAL, LACK OF CHARITY LEADS TO BAD READING<\/strong>: A reader rightly takes issue with one aspect of the big Payne-book-post below:<\/p>\n Lewis would have destroyed those letters because at that time (the 1950s) homosexuality was still illegal and its practise could land you in jail, destroy your reputation, embarrass your family, and have any number of nasty consequences. Lewis was a public figure and knew his correspondence would be read by people other than himself and might some day be published. <\/p>\n He destroyed his correspondent\u2019s letters out of charity, not disgust or hostility. Your reaction is\u2013for you\u2013surprisingly \u201cpresent-minded\u201d and lacking in insight. <\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t sound as though the Payne book was really worth the anger and distress it seems to have caused you! Forgive me\u2013I don\u2019t mean to play the analyst, but your response to this book seems so uncharacteristic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n No, that\u2019s totally fair. I definitely was wrong to conflate Lewis, operating in his own time and his own position, with Payne, holding him up as a model in 1981. By the time I reached that section of the book I was unwilling to cut her any slack, and the fact that she seemed to present the Lewis quotes without <\/em>any context or sense that some aspects of his situation and mental framework were problematic or no longer applicable made me a) do the same thing, taking Lewis badly out of context, because I b) assumed that Payne was nostalgic for the attitudes of an earlier era. Both of those are really bad reading-moves, and I shouldn\u2019t\u2019ve made them.<\/p>\n