Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
It's our pleasure to welcome Laura Miller to the Inkwell.

Laura is a journalist and critic living in New York. She is a
co-founder of Salon.com, where she is currently a staff writer, and a
regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review. Her work has
appeared in the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, Time magazine and
other publications. She is the author of "The Magician's Book: A
Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" (Little, Brown, 2008) and editor of
the "The Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors" (Penguin,
2000).

Leading the discussion is David Albert, or (aslan) as he is known on
The WELL. 

David runs a computer lab half-time at a K-8 public school, and
consults on technology and data issues for educational organizations. 
He is an avid reader of children's books.  David has one daughter, age
9, who is not quite ready for the Narnia books but will be soon!
  

    
I’d like to re-welcome Laura to the WELL for our discussion of “The
Magician’s Book.”  As a theme that may come up frequently during this
discussion, I might well start by pointing out that I would very much
love to discuss the original “Magician’s Book” (the one in the
Magician’s House mentioned in “Dawn Treader”) from which Laura’s title
is drawn, and that as this discussion proceeds, I imagine that we will
be discussing Narnia itself as well as Laura’s take on Narnia, the
books, and C. S. Lewis.

As some people may wonder why my WELL name is Aslan, I will mention
briefly how I came by it.  In 1991, I was introduced to virtual
communities by way of MicroMUSE, an online text-based virtual world
(mentioned prominently alongside the WELL in Howard Rheingold’s book on
Virtual Community) in which it was possible to have a sense of place
and of permanence as well as mere discussion.  When pressed to come up
with a name for myself, for an environment in which one could
participate actively in the creation of the world, I thought
immediately of the one creator I had always known and loved.  I then
set to work rebuilding Narnia in MicroMuse, a project that still
exists.

As I began to read Laura’s book, I found many points of similarity in
our reactions to our early readings and rereadings; enough so that I
was surprised by the points of difference.  So let me start with a big,
perhaps fundamental difference, that manifests itself on page one of
the Introduction.  A few years after her first reading, Laura writes,
“when I discovred some of the more obvious ‘secret’ meanings in C. S.
Lewis’s children’s books, I felt tricked, and for a long time I avoided
even thinking about Narnia.”

I felt completely differently.  I was thrilled beyond measure.  I felt
as if I had uncovered the meaning of a pirate’s secret treasure map. 
I wondered, in my teenage naivete, if anyone *else* had ever noticed
the similarities between Aslan and Jesus, between the stories of the
Stone Table and the crucifixion, or if somehow I had stumbled upon
something that nobody else had ever found.  I began searching eagerly
for other similarities and messages.  I suddenly understood some of the
phrases that had confused me on my first, and second, and third, and
fourth rereadings (“[In your country] I have another name … by knowing
me here for a little, you may know me better there” – WHAT other name,
I wondered futilely for several years.)

However, my thrill was not religious (except perhaps in the sense of
the religion of the avid reader and puzzle solver).  As an atheist from
a non-religious Jewish family, my interest was purely academic.  There
was no trickery involved.  Here was a fascinating puzzle, and I had
solved the biggest piece, and now all that was left was fitting in the
rest of the pieces.  It never occurred to me, then, or even until
reading Laura’s book, that people with other early religious
experiences might have felt differently about the discovery.

Laura, there is so much in your book to discuss, that I scarcely know
where to begin.  As I began to read, I kept thinking, “okay, she’s
talked about such-and-such, but she hasn’t mentioned this other really
important issue.”  Every time I had that thought, you would bring the
issue up in the very next section or chapter.  So in some ways, there
is almost nothing left for me to ask.  On the other hand, I would love
to continue the discussion of almost every topic you raised.  I’m sure
others will have more detailed questions.  To get started, though, here
is a question I do have:  Have you spoken with people about Narnia who
first read the books as children but did NOT feel betrayed in some way
or another when they discovered the symbolism in the books?
  

    
Hi David (and everyone else) and thanks for inviting me to do this.

In answer to your question, yes, I've encountered people who weren't
dismayed to discover the religious symbolism in the Chronicles, either
because they had a more positive attitude towards Christianity at the
time, or because it just didn't make that much difference to them. I've
got interviews with some people like that in the book. For one woman,
Aslan's resurrection just seemed part and parcel of what godlike beings
did. 

Of course, I tend to hear more from people whose history was like mine
because until now there's been relatively little written about *that*
experience. What makes it interesting to me (besides the fact that it's
my own experience!) is that it very early on set me up to have a
dissenting and ambiguous relationship with authors, even and especially
authors whose work I love. Narnia is pretty integral to who I am as a
person and a reader, yet the most salient thing about it (in most
adults' eyes) is its Christian apologetics, and I am not a Christian,
despite having been raised in the church.

That situation automatically sets a person up for a deeper, more
active type of reading. It makes you want to lift up the hood and see
how this thing works because the obvious answers don't add up. I hoped,
with The Magician's Book, to describe the arc of my history with
Narnia, but also to model a way of reading that's less passive, less of
a love-it-or-chuck-it approach. I'm completely fascinated by reading,
what people get out of it, how they do it, the interaction between a
fictional world or voice and the person who's recreating it in the
theater of her mind, the ways a reader's identity is changed by it, and
the ways that readers make use of the things they find in books.

Which is all by way of saying that having a problematic relationship
to Narnia and its author was what made The Magician's Book worth
writing to me.
  

    
I had many problems with Narnia -- all of which became more
interesting to me as I grew older, and some of which kept me reading
and rereading -- even though none of those problems was of religious
origin.

You bring up most of the problems in the book, but to name but a
couple:  I was deeply troubled by Lewis's abandonment of Susan, or
Susan's abandonment of Narnia, on first reading.  When I first
understood that Susan's absence meant that she was alive, while the
other characters were dead, I became even more troubled: wasn't it GOOD
to be alive, after all?

Lewis's treatment of the Calormenes was even more troubling, and not
just for the inherent racism.  Although I saw the religious issues as
purely philosophical rather than faith-based, I still spend a lot of
time pondering the idea, espoused by Aslan, that all good things done
in Tash's name are accepted by Aslan, and that all evil things done in
the name of Aslan are really done for Tash.  I was willing at the time
to accept the notion of an ultimate good and an ultimate evil, but if
they were set up as equals in stature then I was less sure as to why
only one of them got to be the judge of which was which.  And finally,
why did the Calormenes have to get stuck "accidentally" worshipping the
evil guy, given that surely much of what many of them did was good.

Where I really and truly felt betrayed by Lewis was not in Narnia at
all.  As soon as I was old enough to realize that Lewis might have
written other books, I found the Perelandra trilogy.  There, I had no
trouble finding Christian symbolism.  What I had trouble finding was a
reason to read the books.  It had never occurred to me, prior to that
time, that an author with such great books could also have written such
dull ones.  I abandoned those very quickly.
  

    
The blithe way that Lewis handles the deaths of almost all of the
favorite characters in the series at the end of The Last Battle is one
of the things that most bothers Philip Pullman about the books. He
called Lewis "gnostic," or at least he did when I spoke to him. I don't
think that's exactly right, though it's always hard to say exactly
what it means to be gnostic.

Lewis was a platonist, or more specifically a neoplatonist, and I'd
blame that for some of the less satisfying aspects of his fiction,
especially the space trilogy, which he wrote (accord to Tolkien) under
the influence of Charles Williams, an even harder-core platonist.

That aspect of Lewis' personality was always at war with what I think
of as a fairly hedonistic side. He liked to eat and drink and smoke and
go out for long walks in the countryside, and he wrote very vividly
about the sensual aspects of such things. Reading his criticism, I was
struck by how often he will follow up a passage of relatively abstract
argument with a clarifying metaphor that's absolutely immediate and
material, often involving food or eating. For example, he compares
reading good children's fiction as an adult to eating bread and honey,
a treat for a child that adults still like at times.
  

    
(Note: Offsite readers with questions or comments may have them added
to this conversation by emailing them to inkwell@well.com -- please
include "The Magician's Book" in the subject line.)
  

    <scribbled by dfowlkes Tue 3 Jul 12 10:14>
  

    
I have to confess, I haven't read That Hideous Strength because
Perelandra put me off so thoroughly. You're unusual, Dan, in liking
THS, since most of the people I know who have read it have told me that
they found it the weakest of the three.
  

    
Great to see this book is out and in the hands of WELL readers! 
Laura, could you say a word or two about what you mean by Platonist
and/or Neoplatonist?  Wikipedia managed to further confuse me on that
front.
  

    
It's not surprising that you found it confusing, Gail, since I feel
like I've read lots and lots about neoplatonism without ever quite
getting a grasp of it. Same with gnosticism, which is one reason why I
cut a big section on it out of the final draft. But, forging onward,
I'll take a stab at explaining.

Platonism in this usage means the belief that the material world
consists of merely the flawed iterations of ideal things called "the
forms," which, while not exactly material are inherent to the universe,
and real. One of the easiest ways to understand this is to think of
the number 3. It is certainly real without being an object in the
material world, and in fact numbers are often of particular interest to
people of a platonic bent.

Neoplatonism encompasses a variety of beliefs and philosophies, but
it's helpful to think of it a mystical form of platonism; the great
ideal/original or form of the universe is God, an entity who is not
necessary to the platonic model. Most, but not all, neoplatonism
attempts to reconcile classical philosophy, specifically platonism,
with Christianity. It runs into trouble when it seems to embrace the
idea that the material world is not-God, or in some way flawed or a
trap -- a gnostic belief that is unorthodox to the point of heresy in
Christianity.

The scene at the end of The Last Battle, where the characters turn
away from the destruction of the material Narnia and go "further up and
further in" to a Narnia that is perfected by the absence of death and
other flaws, a Narnia that is described as "more real" than the one
they knew before, and that in turn contains yet another Narnia that is
in turn larger and realer and better than the Narnia that contains it
and so on ad infinitum -- *that* is a classic neoplatonic construct.

I remember Perelandra ending in an equally trippy, headache-inducing
ecstasy and so to a lesser degree does Lewis' little-know last novel
Til We Have Faces (otherwise very good). He had a weakness for this
sort of thing, as if he couldn't bear to say, "This is the end," but
had to keep promising more and more and better and better, thereby
ruining the story, because a story is made by its ending and its
willingness to end. To be honest, I think of his faith as being a
version of the same tendency, a refusal to come to terms with mortality
and limitations or to recognize their beauty.
  

    
And yet the discussion is usually about the Christianity and not the other
classical themes!  Thanks.
  

    

> that all good things done
> in Tash's name are accepted by Aslan, and that all evil things done in
> the name of Aslan are really done for Tash. 

I loved that idea. How many times do we see people assuming that their
religion is true and othes are false and those who cling to a false
religion are going to hell no matter what. The theological perspective
that any worshipper of truth, justice, love, compassion and honesty is on
an upward road is not common in today's world.
  

    
As imaginative works, I don't see religious writings to be any more or
less interesting or irritating than the great bulk of myths, legends,
fairy tales, fantasy fiction, etc..  

For that matter, are "facts" or "truths" any more or less important
than the products of human imagination?  

It is possible that human life today is more dependent on human
imagination than it is on supposed "truth".  Come to think of it,
imagination may have been more important all the way along.  

The error may be in demanding certainty.
  

    

Agreed.  I very much appreciated a god so wise, compassionate, and
reasonable.
  

    

(robertflick slipt)
  

    
I think one of the thing that drew me to Narnia as a child was that
epic, mythical religious sweep.  I too was sort of offended when told
by college friends that it was merely disguised Christian propaganda,
but a lot of literature I love borrows from great mythic or religious
tradition.  As a third-generation agnostic, I love the movie Life of
Brian -- but if I had never learned anything about religion, it might
have been wasted on me. 

Many of my favorite science fiction/fantasy works touch on religion,
when I think about it. 

But Narnia was different. I realize I had that betrayal response to
Narnia too. Why this book?  

 
  

    
> when told
> by college friends that it was merely disguised Christian propaganda

But it isn't *merely* disguised Christian propaganda, even if it is
that.

For one thing, propaganda doesn't always work.  I was well able to
accept the wonders that were Narnia, even after understanding the
symbolism, without suddenly saying "oh, so I guess I'm really a
Christian after all".  Maybe it is harder for anyone who has any doubt
about their faith?  I must say it didn't occur to me at the time of
finding out the symbolism that the author had any INTENT behind
including it.  As I said earlier, it was just a neat puzzle and I'd
solved it, just as I might solve a mystery story -- except that it was
a hidden puzzle and you can read the book WITHOUT solving it and still
enjoy the book.

What about kids who have no doubts at all and whose faith mirrors that
of Lewis's.  What reaction do they have to the discovery?
 
  

    
>For one thing, propaganda doesn't always work.<

Thank heaven (pardon the religious allusion). 


One approach is to assume that there is always a hidden message. 
Since much of human life is semi or unconscious, we may have messages
in our communications that are even "hidden" from ourselves.  

Conscious manipulation through hidden intent may only be the tip of
the iceberg. 

BTW, those that need the feeling of certainty will find it somewhere. 
I recall Marxists that conveyed a strong sense of certainty without
any (traditional?)religion. 
  

    

But they are wonderful stories!  The Christian/mythic elements are common to
many of our very best tales.

I was raised in a fundamentalist household, so the memes were familiar, but
that's not why I love the books.  The Christianity was pretty much 
irrelevant to me.  (I could enjoy Lewis' _Screwtape Letters_, highly 
Christian, but fun, and Twain's, _Letters from Earth_, highly anti, and 
great fun, without getting bogged down in the religious symbolism.  It 
was helpful, of course, that I understood the metaphors and derivations.)  
The Narnia characters are pretty well developed, especially the magician and 
marshwiggle, nobody is too goody-two-shoes, even Aslan, and the adventures 
are plausible. 
  

    <scribbled by dfowlkes Tue 3 Jul 12 10:14>
  

    
Partly agree about Pullman.  My biggest problem with the Dark
Materials series is that if I *don't* read it as pure symbolism, then
it is all plot-plot-plot with new twists thrown in whenever he seems to
want one, and no real character development.  The sort of science
fiction I loved as a child (raised on Asimov, after all) but now find
rather one-dimensional.  

Glad someone mentioned the Screwtape Letters -- I should reread.  I do
remember enjoying that book, either despite of, or because, all the
Christianity is right out in the open.

Back to Narnia and Laura's book: I was glad Laura included in the
introduction a note on the ORDERING of the books.  To me, the
re-ordering in modern republication borders on the sacreligious. 
(There, I've said it: Narnia was almost a religion to me, even if I
didn't actually *believe* in it.)  As to the ordering: it makes PERFECT
sense to put the Magician's Nephew late in the series.  Why would
anyone WANT to know about the origins of Narnia before they'd read
about Narnia in LWW?  And what sense does it make from a storytelling
point of view to reveal the origins of the White Witch BEFORE
introducing her as a character?

Plus, if you put H-and-his-B as the second or third book, who's going
to read past it?  I know at least one person whose first two books were
LWW and HB and that was it -- they were off Narnia forever.  Not that
Prince Caspian is the strongest either, but it does have to come before
the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, always my second favorite.  

So: whose favorites are in a different order, and why?
  

    

_Magician's Nephew_ couldn't possibly be such a pleasure without the earlier
books.
  

    
Sorry to be absent for a while there. I couldn't get to my computer
for various boring reasons.

Although Prince Caspian is often described as weak, it has several
favorite scenes in it -- and I think for every Friend of Narnia (FON),
it's more about the favorite scenes or vignettes than the books as
novels per se. Caspian has the Pevensies exploring the ruins of Cair
Paravel and coming to the realization that it's *their* old castle,
that they've been archeologists of themselves. It has Caspian as the
ultimate avatar of the FON, believing in the old Narnia in spite of the
adult world's skepticism and disapproval and then joyfully finding a
way into it. It has the werewolf (which may be one of Neil Gaiman's
favorite and most formative characters). And it has that procession at
the end with Bacchus and his girls, tearing down the schools and
bridges. These are all great. I think it's just that long slog through
the woods right in the middle that puts people off. 
  

    
As for sneakily inserting religious propaganda, I know at times Lewis
did think he was doing that. He wrote of stealing "past watchful
dragons" to communicate the Christian message in a way that wasn't
spoiled by Sunday-school associations. Often, though, I believe he was
in the grip of other or different mythic traditions, and he was always
attempting to integrate them into his preferred faith.

He and Tolkien adopted this inverted notion of "myth" by which all the
similar stories in Western culture (dating back, probably, to a Vedic
ur-mythology) were actually echoes of the one time the myth was true --
the life of Christ. They'd all read The Golden Bough, so they knew
they couldn't claim that the New Testament was somehow unprecedented.
But Lewis thought -- wrongly -- that historians and archeologists had
found significant confirmation of the events described in the New
Testament, so he did believe/hope that there was a historic basis to a
lot of it.
  

    
It strikes me that seeking confirmation suggests some doubt even in
the throws of belief. Also the building of additional talking points
when dealing with infidels.  
  

    
I did love the ruins of old Cair Paravel and the archaeological
discoveries.  But I'm not much for werewolves for some reason, or
lengthy battle scenes (and I was probably in graduate school or at
least college before I'd learned enough about WWII to recognize some of
the references like the Battle of the Bulge.  Even now military
history is not my strong point.

I actually came to Narnia through the Silver Chair, at about age 10,
which was the first book I was given.  Boy was I confused.  Of course
it all made sense the second time around.  Not my favorite book either,
but the adventures are fun and I really liked the giant word they fell
into and figured out, and other descriptions of living among the
giants.

As you mention in your book, some of my best take-away messages from
these books were those of HOW to manage an adventure, and what to
expect (e.g. the messiness of killing and cleaning your own food).  In
that respect, the Narnia series fell closest to a set of books I didn't
discover until much later: Arthur Ransome's "Swallows and Amazons"
series -- with children left essentially to their own devices and
having wonderfully detailed (though in the latter case, realistic)
adventures, of the sort one could truly imagine participating in partly
because the books taught you how.