Irreproachable Honourableness

Fallen as low as autobiography

As Lewis was composing Screwtape, he was also writing a book about John Milton's Paradise Lost, which retells the fall of humankind in the Garden of Eden. In many ways, this passage from Lewis' A Preface to Paradise Lost, profiles Screwtape:

To admire Satan, then, is to give one's vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography. Yet the choice is possible. Hardly a day passes without some slight movement towards it in each one of us. (Oxford UP, 1942, 102)

There is nothing appealing about hell in Screwtape—it is not the promised realm of infinite freedom and profound achievement, but rather an ugly bureaucracy, overcome by utter grayness, since there is nothing more uninteresting than a smug sea of fallen humanity sinking deeper into themselves forever and ever, lacking the transformative glory and uniqueness that redemption and the company of heaven provide.

"Incessant autobiography"...?  Is this an anticipation of blogging?