Between Heaven and Hell

Thinking of Lewis's last days made me think of Peter Kreeft's book about JFK, Aldous Huxley, and CS Lewis, Between Heaven and Hell.  It's a fascinating premise:

The three died within a few hours of each other on the same day in 1963, and Kreeft imagines a conversation between them in some unidentified place. Folks will oftens say it is Purgatory, but this is mostly because they can't think of any other place that is neither Heaven nor Hell after death.  It always struck me as simply a waiting room of some sort, an artistic device of Professor Kreeft's. 

The work is short, and rather superficial, but perhaps the more valuable for that. It quickly summarises the animating ideas of Kennedy, a Christian in name and Christian-influenced, but more concerned with this world and the things that men can do - God as onlooker more than involved; the brilliant Huxley, much more philosophically trained but very much caught in the intellectual fashion of the day of Eastern mysticism supplanting Christianity; and Lewis, an orthodox Christian with a long history of defending the historical precepts of the faith. Kennedy comes off the worst, but this is not the fault of Kreeft so much as the incoherence of this modern Christianity which is no Christianity at all. Admittedly, this is not a skillful literary work and is intended to convey ideas, not character. Yet that is valid - if you want to capture JFK's charisma in a more complete way, write your own dialogue - this was never Peter Kreeft's intent.

We note this because we do not get much of a sense of Huxley's and Lewis's personalities either.  We get their thoughts.  Huxley thus comes off a good deal better even though Kreeft clearly sides with Lewis and wants him to emerge triumphant in the end. Huxley and Lewis engage each other's ideas in the book.