What is the author's style in Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis?

While the story is told as a chronological narrative of Lewis' life, it is at times divided into chapters laid side by side in order to describe the very separate goings on in Lewis' inner and outer lives. He divides his life into eras based on the stages of his education, and, since there were several, it is a tidy division and allows for the reader to see each as an episode containing its own phases of appreciation of types of literature and responsible for its own evolution of understanding. His search for joy is always an inner narrative, and he separates it from the outer experiences such as school, his friendships and his family. He compares them to images like a canal running next to a river. He is careful to include in each a listing of the authors who are speaking to him at the time, so as to provide a stream for the reader to follow of independently knowable flavors that colored his phases.