> For Lewis, the greatest game was running a magazine. He played with words and ideas like a beautiful set of hand-hewn stone blocks. He loved the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga’s book Homo Ludens, about the formative role of play in human culture, its five defining characteristics: “1. Play is free, is in fact freedom. 2. Play is not ‘ordinary’ or ‘real’ life. 3. Play is distinct from ‘ordinary’ life both as to locality and duration. 4. Play creates order, is order. Play demands order absolute and supreme. 5. Play is connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained from it.” Lewis discovered and disseminated a way of life and work that was essentially play. So I guess, in the end, he tossed rules 2 and 3 into the trash.
If you enjoyed TFA, the obit from Lapham's Quarterly [0] is similar in tone and also well worth reading.
0: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/lewis-h-lapham-1...