Ep. 631, The Man Who Lived Backwards, by Charles F. Hall

Where, (and when) does Dr. Nikolai Rostof disappear to while teaching a classroom full of children? Charles F. Hall, today on The Classic Tales Podcast.

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And now for something completely different.

I am heading out of town with my family this week, and so we’re bringing you a rare story from the vaults.

C.S. Lewis wrote, in his preface to The Great Divorce: “I must acknowledge my debt to a writer whose name I have forgotten and whom I read several years ago in a highly coloured American magazine. The unbendable and unbreakable quality of my heavenly matter was suggested to me by him, although he used the fancy for a different and more ingenious purpose. His hero traveled into the past and there very properly found raindrops that would pierce him like bullets and sandwiches that no strength would bite because, of course, nothing in the past can be altered. If the writer of that story ever reads these lines I ask him to accept my grateful acknowledgment.”

Lewis was wrong about the story appearing in an American magazine. In fact, it appeared in a short-lived British Magazine, Tales of Wonder. And it’s small wonder that the author’s name slipped Lewis’ mind. He published two stories for this obscure magazine in 1938, and then disappeared. Today’s story is the first, and the one that Lewis referred to as influencing his writing in such a unique way.

This recording was originally released in 2011, in Season Five of The Classic Tales Podcast.

Rest assured, we will return to The Importance of Being Earnest next week. 

And now, The Man Who Lived Backward, by Charles F. Hall.

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