We all get this image of the ultra-sophisticated atheist with indomitable wit, and then you read this and you can almost hear his brain creaking to a halt.
I love Lewis and Tolkien. I've not read Pullman, though I hear he is a talented writer. However, I've read several reviews of his trilogy that roundly and justly criticise him for sacrificing story-telling and pretty basic rules of writing in order to bash his readers over the head with his fundamentalist atheism. In other words, it seems Pullman's trilogy isn't worth using as toilet paper. His atheist fiction doesn't hold a candle to the masters of Christian fairy story, judging from the merciless reviews I've read of Pullman.
FYI, even Jack Chick tracts have better plots and are more entertaining this guy's books.
Are you kidding? Jack Chick should be making Millions for Hollywood on the amazing fiction he writes.
That guy missed his true calling.
Oh no, wait for this-I find myself a tiny little bit in sympathy with Pullman.If Pullman's analysis is right , the quotes are right, then there IS something wanting about not about not wanting to grow up;.'when I spake like a child...' that maturity is evil or something....the loss of innocence is the loss of heaven
On instinct I don't care for Lewis much; to do with his donnishness I think. It goes very deep in England that academically detached observer attitude. The equivalent to a CS Lewis in America is a New England Puritan sophisticate like Henry James.Give me Chesterton any day.
I mean if Susan is excluded from the stable for the reasons Pullman gives then Lewis is wanting in Christian undestaning isn't he? He is at fault.
He didn't convert.
I hate the idea of of 'The Screwtape Letters' (I've never read them). Letters to the devil are they? It's that theologically detached thing I dislike, like it's a game. Am I wrong?
Just a point for discussion.
James
Am I wrong?
Yes, James you are wrong.
First, Lewis is not against "growing up" he is against "being grown up" that is the false pretenses we put on ourselves pretending we actually know what it's all about. Note that the children who stay in Narnia are all grown up in their acts. They act maturely and support one another. Susan, "the grown up" is off wearing stockings and lipstick and pretending that being pretty is meaningful. The children are all about saving what matters the "adult" is all about "me" and my playtime.
Pullman must be a shallow reader at that if he fails to appreciate the distinction. He needn't agree only, to be a good author, he must understand what Lewis is saying.
There is nothing detached about "The Screwtape Letters" though, as Chesterton points out, the issue is far too serious to maintain a serious tone throughout the story. It requires a bit of playfulness to truly get the point across. But Lewis is deadly serious and personal as he points out the many ways we can fool ourselves into thinking we are adults and spared the fires of hell because of what we are.
Pullman reminds me of the Anglican bishop in the Chronicals who sits in hell endlessly debating the fine points of theology.
Finally, if you want a hint of Lewis's attitude towards sex and grown ups skip all the way to "Perelandra". At the end of the story the "angel" "Venus" shows up on earth allowing the married couple of the story to rejoice in their marriage and the British don of the story to retire to his study and take a nap dreaming creative thoughts.
Finally, James, there is nothing in Christianity that requires that you like Lewis's writing,(you might consider Flannery O'Connor instead) but Pullman neither likes nor understands Lewis (or Tolkien for that matter) and not understanding Lewis means not having a clue about what Christianity is or who God is.
These two things also should also be observed:
1) Contrary to what Pullman said, Susan is not sent to hell. At the end of the story, she is the only one of the Pevensie children who wasn't killed in the train derailment. So, she remains alive on earth -- she hasn't gone to heaven, she hasn't gone to hell, she hasn't gone to purgatory. But she was presented as spiritually adrift, too "grown up" for "childish" things like Narna. But Lewis held out too much hope for him to definitively send a Queen of Narnia to hell. "Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia." So, Susan is presented as a cautionary example, but she is not said to have lost her salvation.
2) The Screwtape Letters are not letters to the devil, but are presented as letters or bureacratic memos written by Wormwood, a higher-ranking demon in Satan's bureacracy, to a lower-ranking demon, Screwtape, giving the lesser demon advice and instructions on how to tempt Christians and bring about their spiritual ruin. In the letters, the demons talk of good things as if they are bad, and refer to God and Jesus as "the Enemy." In the end, the lesser demon fails, the man he has been attempting to ruin dies and goes to heaven, and the higher-ranking demon concludes with the promise that he will punish the lesser demon's failure by devouring him. The genius of The Screwtape Letters was in the novel approach of viewing our spiritual war against Principalities and Powers from the perspective of Hell, in order to give Christians advice about how to recognise and resist and defeat the temptations and artifices the Devil throws at us.
Thanks for the response
All it is with me is an aesthetic prejududice against him. There is too much duty in Narnia.
later
above from James
There is too much Duty Narnia? DIscuss
too bad pullman didn't even do the homework this self-styled "amateur" did on the deep spiritual (Catholic) truths found in the LOTR:
http://www.mythictruth.com/
MainP...foreword_nn.htm
i cannot understand, however, why he thought Narnia to be 'deeper' than Middle Earth--the latter is so much richer, darker, deeper, more evil, more good, more colorful, in my opinion. so much more to consider--especially as a Catholic! did the cloaks Galadriel gave the Fellowship mean to symbolize Our Lady's scapular? is Lembas bread the Eucharist? amazing connections can be made... and so many death-and-resurrection themes too! and Christ is not limited to *one* figure, but at least three.
considering all of that, it's easy to get pullman's gripe about tolkien--he's too Catholic to do anything with! no, pullman wants a fight, and LOTR (starting with The Simarillion) simply isn't assailable from the perspective pullman would like to take--one that starts in *this* world and continues into another. pullman simply hasn't the imagination to substitute this world for Middle Earth and go from there, or even to see Middle Earth as this world unmasked. poor impoverished atheist!
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