Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
See, I loved Lewis' ending.  I teared up with joy the last time I read
it.

Laura's ending is more melancholy for me because, while she has found
a way to appreciate Narnia despite its faults and those of its author,
and done an admirable, fair job of charting that journey, its beauty
has been largely  explained away and has failed to lead her back to the
ultimate source of beauty.
  

    
Of course, the way we look at it will depend on our views concerning
the "ultimate source of beauty."  Laura's book, with its subtitle
indicating that it was written from the perspective of a "skeptic,"
suggests one way and will mean more to those of us who are skeptics,
atheists, agnositcs, or simply entranced by a certain type of
imaginative fiction, than to those who come at the book from another
perspective.

For me, Laura's book did exactly what you say it did not: it led her,
and many of us, right back to the ultimate source of beauty.
  

    
Thank you for joining us, Laura, this discussion and your book have
been great, and have uncovered a lot of long-buried memories of Narnia
for this reader. 

It's time for another conversation to take center stage, but you're
welcome to continue here for as long as you like. 
  

    
I accepted, when I said that, that I was setting up just such a
narcissistic answering.

I approached the book with some trepidation, and was relieved and
gladdened to find it so well researched and thought out, addressing the
inaccurate charges leveled against it by Pullman and others with
admirable completeness.

I'm very sorry that the Church has lost someone like Miller, and that
she has lost (or was never exposed to) the beauty which it possesses.
  

    
Thanks, Laura. 
  

    
Laura, thank you for sharing your book and your thoughts with us for
the past two weeks.  I look forward to reading more of your writing and
have added your blog to my subscription list.
  

    
Thanks for inviting me, guys. It's been a lot of fun.