From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V4 #116 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Monday, August 12 2002 Volume 04 : Number 116 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: t/narnia etc. ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: t/narnia etc. [meredith ] b/hugo award nomination [meredith ] Re: t/narnia etc. ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/hugo award nomination ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: t/narnia etc. [meredith ] Re: t/narnia etc. [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: t/narnia etc. [Joseph Zitt ] Re: t/narnia etc. [Joseph Zitt ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 05:08:54 -0700 From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: t/narnia etc. Donald - The order of the Narnian books has been a matter of great interest in the Lewis circles that I know of. And most people are on the same side: LWW first. Peter Schakel tried to organize a panel to discuss the issue at Lewiscon, I think, and couldn't even find anyone to take the other side. There is one piece of external textual evidence in favor of the MN-first order, a letter that Lewis wrote in 1957 to a boy named Laurence Krieg [later my most distinguished predecessor as editor of Mythprint], saying that "I think I agree with your order for reading the books [the MN-first order] more than with your mother's [the LWW-first order] ... but perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone reads them." (The letter is in _Letters to Children_, p. 68) That's what Lewis said in one hurried letter on one occasion, but it's very weakly worded; and most of us believe that on further reflection he would have realized there's more yet to be said for the other order. (Walter Hooper claims that Lewis specifically told him to put the books in the MN-first order, but nobody except the publishers pays any attention to that.) You should read the article that Peter Schakel himself wrote on this, in Mythlore issue 88 last year. Peter notes the point that flashbacks are a legitimate literary device, which Lewis used in _Perelandra_, _Till We Have Faces_, and even within Narnia, in _Prince Caspian_. He also claims that, insofar as the Chronicles are an imaginative course in theology, they work more logically in the LWW-first order. But his main argument discusses the concept of "gaps" from reader-response theory, the things that you don't know when you first read and get filled in later. This I guess is pretty much what you mean by "the reader's experience of the series." Peter points out that LWW is written to provide pleasurable and enticing gaps for readers who don't already know what Narnia is, but that reading MN first will merely produce confusing gaps. The second sentence of MN is "It is a very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the land of Narnia first began." After which the word "Narnia" does not reappear for nine chapters. This makes NO SENSE if you read MN first, but makes perfect sense if you've already read its predecessors ("_all_ the comings and goings"). At 06:52 AM 8/10/2002 , DGK wrote: >To begin with a side-issue: the Narnia books are a fantasy that we tend, I >think, to read very young (you can take this as a survey-question, in >fact), I'd barely heard of it in my childhood, and never attempted to read it until I joined the Mythopoeic Society. But my childhood fantasy reading, though intense, was very spotty. >and so in a sense we can (narratology alert!) observe it as an >engine for learning to read fantasy; and in this sense =The Lion, the >Witch, and the Wardrobe= is the easiest, the most "naive," of the books, >and portrays a "younger" sort of fantasizing (the wardrobe in the >abandoned room is the gateway to fantasyland), and thus is the perfect >introduction to the whole series. By contrast, =The Magician's Nephew= is >the most complex and sophisticated (and I would argue the best) of the >books, and for that reason needs to come later. This, I think, is a different argument from the one Peter Schakel is making, so it needs to be elaborated. >Here's the core of the argument, which focuses on one symbol from =The >Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe=: the lamp-post sitting in the middle of >the forest. What's it doing there? (David: is it true, as I seem to >remember, that Lewis himself didn't know why it was there at first? Can >you give me a ref?) I have always guessed that to be the case, but on a quick search I can't find any references that specifically say so. >It seems to me this is another case of the Freudian/Jungian split. (More >research needed to get this point precise.) Jung somewhere says that >there's a difference between a symbol and a sign: he points out that for >Freud, what he calls a "symbol" is really a sign, since it invariably >represents the same content (or signified, in semotic terms). For Jung, a >symbol is a sign that represents an =unknown= content, something that is >meaningful but we don't know why; and I think that's =exactly= what the >lamp-post is if we encounter it first in =The Lion, the Witch, and the >Wardrobe=. But here a problem arises: if we conclude on reading LWW that the lamp-post is meaningful but we don't know why, then when we finally get the explanation in MN, does it satisfy? For many it does; but it seems to me that the plot of MN is a regretably twisted thing, contorted for the purpose of getting the lamp-post there. I frequently find that the explanations, in fantasy novels, of mysterious things has a strangely deflating effect: this is certainly true of just about every explanation in Zelazny's Amber, to pick one example among many. Even Tolkien's explanations work best as hard-won nuggets of knowledge, and I wince every time somebody explains them to beginning readers. There's a great wonder and mystery, for instance, in Pippin wondering how old Gandalf is, how he came into the world, and when he will leave it; a wonder that's richly satisfied by the clear explanation of his origins in _Unfinished Tales_, but that's pricked whenever someone summarizes it baldly in a misguided attempt to explain Tolkien's subcreation to a new reader. The only fantasy book I've ever read in which the explanations are as rich as the mysteries, and which resist any attempt to explain them without reading the book itself, is Gene Wolfe's _Free Live Free_. My guess is that Wolfe worked out the explanations first, and constructed the story around them, which mirrors what would happen if the story were true; while other authors imagine the story first and cobble the explanations together afterwards. Tolkien's explanations for surprising plot events came afterwards, and often caused him much trouble (for instance, he had no idea, when Aragorn first appeared, who he was); the myths and legends he refers to, however, already literally existed, which is surely why even the vague references to them in LOTR are so vivid and real (e.g. once he had decided Aragorn was a descendant of the Numenorean kings, he already knew who _they_ were). >This may be a side-issue, too, but...I have sort of seen the =Lord of the >Rings= movie now (capsule review: 80% wonderful, 20% annoying), and spent >an afternoon skimming through the book (which I haven't really looked at >in years). I'm going to partly concede to David an argument we were having >some time ago, where he complained that the Tolkien entry in =The >Encyclopedia of Fantasy= (written by editor John Clute) had things wrong >way round by beginning with the First Age creation-myth of Tolkien's >mythos rather than with the Third Age events of =The Lord of the >Rings= (which is how most readers first encounter Middle-Earth). >(David: Did you publish your opinion? Can you point me to it if so?) This >would seem to dovetail with what I'm saying about Narnia. No, that's not quite what I think I said. I published my opinion in my review of the book in _Mythprint_, which I don't have handy; but my complaint was that Clute's discussion is needlessly complex (too complex for anyone who actually needs it), occasionally inaccurate, too much concerned with the backstory rather than the plot (even of the Silmarillion), and most importantly that it fails to connect itself with any of the books it's contained in. Compared to this, the question of - had Clute actually written a plain summary of the plots of the books - - whether he should have begun with _The Hobbit_ or _The Silmarillion_ is relatively trivial. I've published another essay in which I discuss which Tolkien book one should begin with. There's no easy answer, actually. I'd quote it here, but it's rather long. But despite the fact that Tolkien began with the Silmarillion, he >But the case is a little different, isn't it? Narnia grew from an initial >image (was it the lamp-post? or the faun? I forget [ref solicited]) from >which it opened out; but in Tolkien's case the tales of the First and >Second Ages long =predate= =The Lord of the Rings=. > >On the other hand, Tolkien implies in his 1960s foreword ("This tale >grew in the telling...) that there were many things in =The Lord of the >Rings= that he only figured out as he wrote. Is it the case that the Third >Age stories worked like Narnia while the First and Second Ages did not? Lewis wrote, "The _Lion_ all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, 'Let's try to make a story about it.'" (_On Stories_, p. 53) In Tolkien's case, the First and Second Ages (though not called that) did exist before he began to write LOTR, but they in their turn had contained many things that he only figured out as he wrote. Furthermore, the things he discovered while writing LOTR often required additions to earlier material, or changes in the ordering and significance of events: for instance, slotting in Galadriel, and the significance of her exile - she did not exist in the earlier Silmarillion material, and the rebellion of the Noldor had a different import. The difficulty of re-writing the Silmarillion to fit the things he had discovered in the course of writing LOTR was one of the reasons he never finished and published the Silmarillion. Berni may be right that the lamp-post is a Christian symbol, though it probably wasn't consciously intended as such by Lewis. But having pinned down the Christian symbolism doesn't exhaust what you can legitimately say about the lamp-post. It doesn't make it wrong for you to analyze its effect on the reader from a Jungian perspective (or even a Freudian perspective) any more than it makes it wrong for Peter Schakel to do so from a reader-response criticism perspective. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 16:53:32 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Re: t/narnia etc. Hi, I first started reading the Narnia books when I was about 7. My sister had been studying at Cambridge and sent me a Penguin boxed set (which I still have, with the Heffers bookstore price sticker still on) for Christmas. This set was in the proper order, though I believe I put _The Last Battle_ at the end instead of _The Magician's Nephew_, because well, it's the end. But _The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe_ is still first!! I've long since lost track of how many times I have read _The Lion ..._, _The Magician's Nephew_ and _The Last Battle_. (Funnily enough, I think I've only gotten through _The Silver Chair_ once -- and I recall it took several tries before I could even get into it. Not sure why.) Finally, when I was in junior high I made myself go through the entire thing in order, which was definitely the best way to go. As a counterpoint to Berni's post, I offer this: it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that _The Lion..._ is a Christian allegory, especially considering that I was a Catholic school student at the time (have I mentioned just what a dense reader/viewer I am?! I *never* pick up on things, which explains why I wasn't an English major). That revelation really diminished the book for me, atheist rebel that I am. But once I got a little older and was able to set the Christian stuff aside and just read it as a fantasy again, I was able to enjoy it just as much as I did when I was blissful in my ignorance. Don noted: >To begin with a side-issue: the Narnia books are a fantasy that we tend, I >think, to read very young (you can take this as a survey-question, in >fact), and so in a sense we can (narratology alert!) observe it as an >engine for learning to read fantasy; In my case that pretty much true. I had already read _A Wrinkle In Time_ more than once, but I read Narnia before I got to Tolkein (though _The Hobbit_ wasn't far behind), and Alan Garner (the Garner boxed set came the *next* Christmas ). It was also right around the same time as I discovered E. Nesbit and Edward Eager. >Also, the writing of the books, I think, was a discovery process for the >author, and =The Magician's Nephew= represents the =end= of that process, >not the beginning. (This point can be expanded, and I'll get back to it.) I'd buy that. It is certainly a discovery process for the reader. I clearly remember the first time I read _The Magician's Nephew_ -- it was so cool to find out how it all began! I can't imagine it being nearly as interesting without the other books as background material. ============================================== Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth ============================================== Live At The House O'Muzak House Concert Series http://www.smoe.org/meth/muzak.html ============================================== ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 18:12:51 -0400 From: meredith Subject: b/hugo award nomination Hi, On the outside chance this isn't already common knowledge amongst everyone here ... "Once More, With Feeling" has received a Hugo nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation. Since it's up against LOTR I don't give it much of a chance, but "it's nice just to be nominated", right? ============================================== Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth ============================================== Live At The House O'Muzak House Concert Series http://www.smoe.org/meth/muzak.html ============================================== ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 15:42:02 -0700 From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: t/narnia etc. At 01:53 PM 8/11/2002 , Meredith wrote: >I first started reading the Narnia books when I was about 7. My sister had >been studying at Cambridge and sent me a Penguin boxed set (which I still >have, with the Heffers bookstore price sticker still on) for >Christmas. This set was in the proper order, though I believe I put _The >Last Battle_ at the end instead of _The Magician's Nephew_, because well, >it's the end. _The Last Battle_ is the final book in both orderings. >(Funnily enough, I think I've only gotten through _The Silver Chair_ once >-- and I recall it took several tries before I could even get into >it. Not sure why.) Hm. That's my favorite of all the books. >As a counterpoint to Berni's post, I offer this: it took me an >embarrassingly long time to figure out that _The Lion..._ is a Christian >allegory, especially considering that I was a Catholic school student at >the time (have I mentioned just what a dense reader/viewer I am?! You're hardly alone. A lot of people miss that, even with Aslan's heavy-handed comments about "my name in your world" and so on. Lewis did all this quite deliberately, and was probably inspired to do so by the critical reaction to _Out of the Silent Planet_. Quasi-quote: "Only a few reviewers picked up that this business about planetary angels and so on was anything other than a notion of my own. I now begin to think that any amount of theology can be smuggled into popular fiction without anyone noticing." >In my case that pretty much true. I had already read _A Wrinkle In Time_ >more than once, but I read Narnia before I got to Tolkein Tolkien. I'm taking a survey every time I see that other spelling (a very common error): what made you think it's spelled that way? >(though _The Hobbit_ wasn't far behind), and Alan Garner (the Garner boxed >set came the *next* Christmas ). What was in the Garner boxed set? _The Weirdstone of Brisingamen_ and _The Moon of Gomrath_, surely; what else? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 15:42:56 -0700 From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/hugo award nomination At 03:12 PM 8/11/2002 , meredith wrote: >Hi, > >On the outside chance this isn't already common knowledge amongst everyone >here ... > >"Once More, With Feeling" has received a Hugo nomination for Best Dramatic >Presentation. Since it's up against LOTR And Harry Potter, Monsters Inc., and Shrek. I voted for Shrek. >I don't give it much of a chance, but "it's nice just to be nominated", right? Right. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 18:52:16 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Re: t/narnia etc. Hi, David responded: >_The Last Battle_ is the final book in both orderings. Ah, ok ... something in what Don said led me to believe that the original ordering was supposed to have _The Magician's Nephew_ at the end. >You're hardly alone. A lot of people miss that, even with Aslan's >heavy-handed comments about "my name in your world" and so on. It makes me feel better to know that. :) >Tolkien. I'm taking a survey every time I see that other spelling (a very >common error): what made you think it's spelled that way? Pure typo, nothing more. I know it's properly spelled with the i before the e. >What was in the Garner boxed set? _The Weirdstone of Brisingamen_ and >_The Moon of Gomrath_, surely; what else? _Elidor_. Which is in my Top Three Favorite Books Ever, along with _A Wrinkle In Time_ and _The House With A Clock In Its Walls_. >I voted for Shrek. Hmmm. I saw _Shrek_, and didn't much care for it. It had its entertaining moments (in particular the slags on Disney World), but didn't really wow me. ============================================== Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth ============================================== Live At The House O'Muzak House Concert Series http://www.smoe.org/meth/muzak.html ============================================== ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 21:47:29 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: t/narnia etc. In a message dated 8/11/02 3:43:38 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dbratman@stanford.edu writes: << >As a counterpoint to Berni's post, I offer this: it took me an >embarrassingly long time to figure out that _The Lion..._ is a Christian >allegory, especially considering that I was a Catholic school student at >the time (have I mentioned just what a dense reader/viewer I am?! You're hardly alone. A lot of people miss that, even with Aslan's heavy-handed comments about "my name in your world" and so on. >> I have not read the books, only seen an animated version of LWW on TV once, which I am sure was totally watered down, but =I= picked up on the Christian allegory halfway through the cartoon. I told my friend who was watching with me, "Wait a minute! I get it. The lion is Christ. I know what's going to happen." She didn't believe me, but the story unfolded exactly as I'd predicted. Okay, if I hadn't been familiar with C.S. Lewis's name and known he was a Christian writer, I might not have picked up on it so quickly, but then later on when I mentioned something about the Christian allegory to a friend who had read the Narnia books, she wouldn't believe me even though she knew that Lewis was a Christian writer. She insisted that even though he wrote theology books, his religion had nothing to do with his fiction. I had thought that the Christian allegory was transparently obvious, but it must not be to everyone. Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 20:03:02 -0700 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: t/narnia etc. On Sun, 11 Aug 2002 15:42:02 -0700 "David S. Bratman" wrote: > Tolkien. I'm taking a survey every time I see that other spelling (a > very common error): what made you think it's spelled that way? My hunch is that people, continually unsure about the ordering of "e" and "i" in words, unconsciously connect it with the many common German-derived names (Klein, Bernstein, Fishbein, etc) that end in "ein", though few might consciously make the connection. - -- | josephzitt@josephzitt.com http://www.josephzitt.com/ | | http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt/ http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt/ | | == New book: Surprise Me with Beauty: the Music of Human Systems == | | Comma / Gray Code Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 22:16:47 -0700 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: t/narnia etc. On Sat, 10 Aug 2002 09:52:25 -0400 (EDT) "Donald G. Keller" wrote: > Samuel R. Delany says somewhere (I =think= it's in =The American > Shore=, my copy of which has vanished) that the way fiction works > (narratology again) is "image first, then explanation". FWIW, he also uses the phrase in the interview at http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue217/interview.html - -- | josephzitt@josephzitt.com http://www.josephzitt.com/ | | http://www.metatronpress.com/jzitt/ http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt/ | | == New book: Surprise Me with Beauty: the Music of Human Systems == | | Comma / Gray Code Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V4 #116 *****************************