I haven't heard too many people try to pigeon-hole this novel as a horror story. In fact, Peter Kreeft considers The Screwtape Letters to be the first of a very particular, satirical, and epistolary genre, where a more knowledgeable sort gives advice to a less knowledgeable sort. In this case, Uncle Screwtape gives advice to nephew Wormwood about how to deal with his patient, which supposedly should lead the human down the wrong path into the jaws of Satan. And that advice is the opposite of everything that I--excuse me, the patient--should do for eternal life with God, or in Screwtape's words--the Enemy. Which quite effectively, gives me the creeps.
In the last post, I mentioned a couple of authors who have mimicked Lewis's style and repeated much of his information in more recent novels. Kreeft followed Lewis's style incredibly closely with a new Uncle-nephew demon pairing. While Eberstadt twisted the role reversal further with a female protagonist that is not advising demons but atheists. The two more recent authors probably saw a need and a voice that Lewis's did not necessarily miss, but they believed could be expanded upon. Kreeft and Eberstadt situate their novels in current US versus Lewis's WWII England. Time and location change somethings, but certainly not all, and if one returns to the original masterpiece, he may be surprised at just how much it creeps him out by how much it still applies.
Consider for a moment these lines from Screwtape:
I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to read in the British Museum. One day, as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought in his mind beginning to go the wrong way. The Enemy, of course, was at his elbow in a moment. Before I knew where I was I saw my twenty years' work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defence by argument I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch...In fact [this idea was] much too important to tackle at the end of a morning...the patient brightened up considerably; and by the time I had added 'Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind,' he was already half way to the door. (2-3)This is such a simple anecdote of how easily one can be distracted from the state of their own soul that it makes my skin crawl for anyone to lose it over a sandwich. It also demonstrates how the demons don't even need to argue. They just whisper seeds of doubt and forgetfulness, and then the human does the rest. Screwtape goes on to articulate how to direct the patient away from God through distraction, distortion, and straight-up lying. He hits on a variety of diabolical exploits ranging from the disruption of happy union between man and woman by the man creating a fantasy of the perfect woman via pornagrophy, etc. (79). Everything was made by God as Screwtape readily admits, and he admits even more that many of those things cause great pleasure to the patient. It's all in how it's "twisted" that matters (87). Basically, if the human does the exact opposite of whatever Screwtape says, they would be in pretty good shape.
I should also point out that while Lewis dedicated his book to J.R.R. Tolkien and the updated versions have been written by Catholics, Lewis engaged both sides of the Tiber when he included quotations from two well-respected men, one of Catholic origin and the other Protestant. It was probably his evidenced-based way of saying that both groups were suffering, had suggested similar advice, and could probably benefit from a bit of devilish satire.
