Okay. You don't have to read this. But if the confluence of Neil Gaiman and anglo-saxon epic Beowulf makes you all happy inside, take a gander at Wormtalk and Slugspeak's thoughts on the subject:

"I would submit that one of the great gulfs between those who get aesthetic pleasure from Beowulf and LotR in their original forms and those who prefer the film adaptations is likely to be the degree to which the aesthetic of narrative tightness has been internalized. And it's really important, as I keep telling my students, to keep remembering that modernist aesthetics are not universal (i.e., there's no outside standard that proves that "tight" writing is good and "slack" is bad) but matters of habit, preference and tradition."

* [I promise. No kidding: I'm at the "W"s of my blogroll. I don't have any "X"s, "Y"s, or "Z"s.]

In the comments section of this post by johncwright concerning the probability that writers are not the wisest judges of what is and is not their best work: after all "C.S. Lewis thought Til We Have Faces was his," baduin remarked:

And it was - at least his best fiction. His other books are either for children, or are interesting, but flawed, like the planetary trilogy. "Till we have faces" is simply head and shoulders above the rest.

Certainly, it is the least popular of his books, except for Pilgrim's Regress - but readers usually don't look for literary perfection in a book, and so the popularity is not a good measure of it. Obviously, a good book which is popular is better than a good book which doesn't appeal; but C.S. Lewis was not good enough to manage both in one work.


The which reminded me of a thing with which I suspect many artists struggle, and few enough master. ( Read more... )

Ah... Who does not remember the halcyon days of youth, when upon reaching some difficult word or concept, and appealing to ones elders one was sent, post-haste to the dictionary or encyclopedia.

Alright then, some of you probably didn't read dictionaries for fun (I still have My Very First One. Very tattered, now, of course), but it turns out that particular parental impulse is a noble one:

I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about "isms" and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said.

The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.

From C.S. Lewis writing an introduction to Athanasius' De Incarnatione , On Reading Old Books

Lewis (who knew?) the Librarian's friend... And in this parlous age, the impulse to go back to first sources (rather than rely on secondary report) is vital.

hattip to johncwright and sparrowrose for making me dig this out and read it (I'm book-ifying it for the collection, too)

(A belated napkin-post, brought back to mind in part by a discussion elsewhere, but mostly by an astonishingly thorough burst of housekeeping brought on by impending arrival of my parents)

( if the thought has not already grown stale, read on ) But the main reason for not pitching the napkin into the circular file, is to thank kalquessa for the title concept, and proffer sincere apology to rj_anderson for not making a similar attribution on an earlier post of mine.

I can only say that I'd honestly forgotten I'd read hers. It's an well-worn topic among old Narnia hands: We thrashed it (and Pullman's commentary on it) half to death over in MereLewis. When I jotted those ideas down on paper-towels and what-not during BunnyBright's lunchtime, I didn't realize I'd re-covered 75% of synaesthete's own thoughts on the subject.

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

Michael Drout, at his blog Wormtongue and Slugspeak tries to figure out Tolkien's Little Problem: " Where are all the female Orcs?." It's like the Problem of Susan for Lewis, only, as we shall see, much ickier. Don't miss the speculation in the comments section.

The problem is that Morgoth and Sauron weren't merely power-mad baddies, they're Really Really Evil. I'm not sure Drout and co. have quite grasped that. Well, that, or they're just not low-minded enough.

Which I am. Thus:

It's true that if we take the notion of orcs as a kind of smarter humaniform animal and we can have intelligence without, as we know it free will.

So start with the original creation of orcs by Morgoth: He warps and transforms orcs and trolls (elves and ents). The trolls are a trial run: They can interbreed (female trolls) and the very existence of a primitive family structure (Trolls are, after all, natural loners) make them poor slaves-of-evil. You'll note there are never more than one or two per orc horde, and they need to be leashed.

In the next version, Morgoth avoids the problem by further tampering with the creatures' natural reproductive methods.

Perhaps, in fact, there are no female orcs: Only great apes and other beasts raped by the males whose offspring are ripped from these uncomprehending and agonized mothers. Pitiful beasts forced, in the hell-pits of Mordor and Khazad-dum, to breed and breed without mercy or surcease.

Ugh.

But really, there's stuff in the Real World (TM) --mostly insects and parasites-- that's almost as nasty.

Thoughts?

Here it is then, my review of the new Narnia movie. I know, I know, “be still your beating heart--!” You just can’t wait. So calm down, take a deep breath, pour yourself a cuppa and take a gander at my hypothesis: In short; the film-makers didn't change the story enough. ( click the link-y thing for the long(er) version )

Addendum: The movie-review—of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe I most want read, with honestly bated-breath (and a nice cuppa) as opposed to the snark, above, is Diana Wynne Jones'. She's got it all: A modern fantasist with an appreciation for old-fashioned fairy-tale magic (Nesbit, Lewis, Tolkien) and no nonsensical historical parochialism about her. And of course, she writes a dream.

From the pounding Mr. P files, #2,007:

That misogynist Mr. Lewis... Why, did you know that the fellow has the girls of Narnia; Susan, Lucy, Jill and Aravis, always gallivanting about rescuing handsome princes; Caspian, Rillian, Tirian, and never fair princesses--?

The nerve of the man--!

Also: With a nod to xinef for pointing out the site, here's my "Quiz your Friends" meme:

Amaze your friends--!
Match wits against a sneaky librarian--!
Be the cynosure of every lovely eye--!

Follow the link below to take carbonelle's "Narnian Knowledge" quiz!

Take my Quiz on QuizYourFriends.com!

( Eh, me blathering on a bit about allegory, Narnia, my adorable toddler, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera )

Now for some eggnog and sherry. And if I blog again before Boxing Day, I am teh lame, so in anticipation of yule-tide sprightliness (as it were):

*Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

With the new Narnia movie out in Theatres, midnight next Thursday (why yes, I am just about insane enough – I still haven't managed to find a sitter for Friday, after all), I know there'll be people cough-idiotjournalists-cough running amok, announcing the story as "Christian Allegory". Allow me to head them all off at the pass with this quote, from the horse Mr. Lewis' mouth:

"I don't say. 'Let us represent Christ as Aslan.' I say, 'Supposing there was a world like Narnia, and supposing, like ours, it needed redemption, let us imagine what sort of Incarnation and Passion and Resurrection Christ would have there."

It's speculative fiction folks: If Christianity is true, and if there were a magical world like Narnia, why then you'd very likely have a story like The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

In any event, whilst playing librarian over at Moggy's place I went googling to find the quote above, since, as I told Moggy, I am too lazy to run downstairs to the library twice to grab a Lewis reference (Letters to Children). In the process, I discovered this handy-dandy answer file: "Narnia For Dummies".

So none of this allegory stuff, right-? Though if you insist on "parable," I won't object.

Neil Gaiman wrote a short story about Susan Pevensie. And I'm not going to read it.

It's not often I say that about something, but I'm not going to read "The Problem of Susan" in Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy

Like a number of people who go all silly when it comes to Christianity, Gaiman appears to have swallowed the Phil. Pullman line, hook, line and sinker. To wit: That Lewis was so appalled by growing up and sex (or so obsessed with childhood) that he made Susan go to hell for the crime of committing both.

Which is foolish on any number of levels:

1. At the end of the story, Susan is alive and well on earth, and, if "no longer a friend of Narnia" is in no worse case than the hero of The Screwtape Letters. Possibly, better, since she's not only still alive and well and capable of repenting but unlike his poor Patient, we have the surety that "once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia". Her odds are surely some of the best in the world.

2. Shasta (Prince Cor) and Aravis from The Horse and His Boy grow up and get married at the very end, if only to keep their game of quarreling and making up again convenient. Unless one wishes to posit that Mr. Lewis had a very, very strange notion of marriage, he doesn't have any problems with Heroines Growing Up and Having Sex. Now, being a Christian, they do have to get married first, but that's a rather different quibble, isn't it?

It's not becoming a sexual being that's the problem, but doing so wrongly, illicitly. "Come in by the gold gates or not at all..." is the rule. A rule, mind you, to which many will object, but which is, in any case, not at all objectionable when applied to a children's story. It's a pity that sticking to Lewis' real issues doesn't seem to interest the Pullmans of this world: They're much more interesting to argue about, if rather more difficult. Perhaps that's the point.

3. And then there's Digory, Polly and Digory's awful Uncle Andrew. Is there anyone out there who imagines that C.S. Lewis had any kind of high opinion of the Uncle Andrews of this world? Not only is he wicked, but he's weak, foolish and pathetic. The horrid Empress Jadis (who became the White Witch) was at least "fierce, proud and beautiful". And yet we have this conversation, after Polly has helpfully (and accurately) pointed out to Digory, that he's being a silly ass :

"That's all you know," said Digory. "It's because you're a girl. Girls never want to know anything but gossip and rot about people being engaged."
"You looked exactly like your Uncle when you said that," said Polly.


And so, to the truth, despite the slander that's run twice 'round the world and back again. If Lewis was being hard on anyone, it was teenagers. Susan had, as an elderly Polly remarked disapprovingly, hurried to reach the very silliest part of one's life, and then insisted on being stuck there, rather than, as one ought, growing up and becoming an adult. And therein lies the rub.

I don't, myself, take such a hard line with the egoism, conformity and yes, silliness, of adolescence; there's also enthusiasm, idiosyncratic passions and bursting energy. But for those who won't pass through it to the other side? Utterly deserving of condemnation; having taken something in parts painful, ridiculous and necessary and transformed it into something squalid. We've all had the misfortune of running into (or worse, living with) the Permanent Adolescent at some point in our lives. A "friend of Narnia"--? Hardly.

So yes, Neil Gaiman wrote a short story about Susan Pevensie.

And I'm not going to read it.

If it were anyone else, I might, out of the same morbid curiosity that drives people to goggle at car-accidents. But I have too much admiration for Mr. Gaiman's writing to go goggling at his

Update: Back on-line after some time away (just a bit too low to face socializing, even the very abstracted form found herein) and shall try to catch up on the old F.L. But I'll be skimming, so if I appear to miss something important; it was unintentional. Also: Got the rough draft done of this year's Christmas Card. Go, me!

Who was it that said, that the Great Saints were not those who came along to reveal new truths, but those who made the old familiar truths new and salient? Probably Lewis (though, I would expect, the Great Author having a sense of humor as He does, that Lewis was quoting someone else--!)

Well, the smaller saints (to which role we are all called to aspire) can take up that task as well, as aitchmark has done in his comments On Christian Community

It applies, I very strongly suspect, to all those who seek God, and are called to His purpose.

I get spam mail from a variety of sources (including NOW, which is a laff-riot) but I rarely ever see anything beyond the headline before I slap delete.

This, from a conservative (I assume) source, caught my eye: What Is God's Role in Modern Science?

Answer: Nothing. God's role in modern scientists? Everything.

One of the dangers of Christians going into politics (or writing, or art) as Christians is just this likelihood of losing the essential within the mass of worldly trivia. There's never a definitive moment of rejection or calculation: One carries on, until gradually, there is neither very good science (writing, art), nor much Christianity.

Thus, like Queen Susan, the very inheritors of the Kingdom may (like her) end up on the outside: "No longer friends of Narnia."

Thankfully, the door back home is always ready for us to un-barricade and un-bar, though, if 'Til We Have Faces is at all accurate, it's an exquisitely difficult one; the longer and more firmly we turn our faces from it.

Who on (Middle) earth is Tom Bombadil? The question has vexed generations of fans and probably produced more speculation than any other aspect of the mythology of Middle Earth. The Good Professor himself is little help in answering the question. "...and even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally)." -- The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien p 174.

Also from the Albertus Minimus comes an answer melding Catholic and pagan Celtic mythology. Read the rest of his essay for yourself.

Again, thanks to JCW at Winterdark for the link.