Remember being really spooked out by Magician's Nephew as a kid.
― Inevitable stupid samba mix (chap), Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:03 (thirteen years ago) link
I guess The Horse was too "orientalist" or something.
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:10 (thirteen years ago) link
i like it a lot, prob 3rd fave, but it does suffer from colonialist narrative clumsiness at times, though i'm dem sure those caliph wallahs are all dem fine fellas in their own way wot wot
― 10/11 of a dead jesus (darraghmac), Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:13 (thirteen years ago) link
may this poll perish in the fire of perfidy, into ashes of indignity.
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:14 (thirteen years ago) link
morelike voyage of the yawn treader
― ▲/Δ (Lamp), Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:14 (thirteen years ago) link
voyage of the don't read 'er
― 10/11 of a dead jesus (darraghmac), Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:17 (thirteen years ago) link
The Horse and His Goy
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:22 (thirteen years ago) link
Blanked out on this. Dawn Treader/Silver Chair/Horse probably would hold up the best in the area I kinda realize I like the best in most of the fantasy I've read, namely the description of places, landscape, climate and so forth. It's a fleshing out of a landscape he obviously only initially considered as generic medieval Europe, and while obviously it's not what he would have seen as the point of the stories, it's more central to his work than he guessed. (See also some of the SF stiff and especially Til We Have Faces.)
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:33 (thirteen years ago) link
SF stiff? But of course. SF stuff.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:36 (thirteen years ago) link
I have a hard time choosing among those books because you're right: Lewis, newly confident a narrative writer, devotes several superb paragraphs in each book to describing a Narnian sunset, the intense quiet that comes upon travelers at sea, or a mysterious bird. To me this culminates in his description of the creation of Narnia, in which several characters, some awestruck, others gobsmacked, register the sudden popping out of stars and animals, all to the accompaniment of Aslan's numinous song.
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:38 (thirteen years ago) link
It also makes the actual ending of Narnia in The Last Battle the most spectacular part of that book; for me as a kid, more than Revelation ever did in its battles and vagueness of a new paradise, you felt the stakes were being played for keeps, and the terror of its end is just that: desperate figures running towards a door, a monstrous hand squeezing the sun into oblivion, nothing but vacuum and ice remains. Even the 'new' Narnia couldn't make that go away.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:44 (thirteen years ago) link
Remember when Aslan calmly orders Peter? "Peter, High King of Narnia, shut the Door."
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:44 (thirteen years ago) link
I just had a brainwave to do a talking lion poll, then realised I probably need to do more sleeping and less boozing.
― Inevitable stupid samba mix (chap), Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:47 (thirteen years ago) link
xpost -- that vs. his command to Father Time: "Now make an end."
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:48 (thirteen years ago) link
aslan voiced by john inman
― 10/11 of a dead jesus (darraghmac), Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:49 (thirteen years ago) link
I read that as "Don Imus."
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:50 (thirteen years ago) link
http://blogs.kansascity.com/photos/uncategorized/2009/03/16/don_imus.jpg ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOARRRRRR!
― smells like PENGUINS (remy bean), Thursday, 4 August 2011 23:57 (thirteen years ago) link
i think reading the horse & his boy as a child was the first time i enjoyed being bored
― ogmor, Friday, 5 August 2011 00:17 (thirteen years ago) link
I love how Eustace does not get less unlikeable as the series proceeds.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 22 May 2015 00:35 (nine years ago) link
https://i.imgur.com/3hCAbbB.jpg
hate u miraz
― mookieproof, Saturday, 26 March 2016 03:30 (eight years ago) link
reshpecktabiggle
― mookieproof, Wednesday, August 3, 201
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 3 October 2019 17:37 (four years ago) link
im a few glasses of valpolicella in but i feel that 't' is extraneous and in my dim recollection (tho i quote that word in particular a lot) its obiggle
― all over bar the shouting (im here for the shouting) (darraghmac), Thursday, 3 October 2019 19:54 (four years ago) link
regardless we can allow for dialect i feel
THAHB is the best one and was robbed
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, 3 October 2019 19:56 (four years ago) link
I reactivated the thread because I reread it
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 3 October 2019 19:57 (four years ago) link
deep dialect from before the dawn of time
― mookieproof, Thursday, 3 October 2019 19:58 (four years ago) link
agreed that THAHB is the best
― all over bar the shouting (im here for the shouting) (darraghmac), Thursday, 3 October 2019 21:34 (four years ago) link
the last battle is good not bad, few know this
― mark s, Thursday, 3 October 2019 21:55 (four years ago) link
they're all good i think
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, 3 October 2019 21:58 (four years ago) link
http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2011/01/narnia-week-heaven-heaven-is-a-place-a-place-where-nothing-nothing-ever-happens/
― mark s, Thursday, 3 October 2019 22:00 (four years ago) link
my fave was always dawn treader: must have read it a dozen times. love a voyage.
silver chair was the creepiest, in which narnia felt the oldest (in spite of magician's nephew).
i am an original-sequence loyalist.
― difficult listening hour, Friday, 4 October 2019 02:57 (four years ago) link
Well shit I was reading the years old thread thinking “the horse and his boy is the best” and there you go
It was later that Allah Tash was problematically represented as some spider-vulture; Horse is colonialist but well told and sympathetic— the secondary-character nature of the Four Monarchs is a narrative coup
Silver Chair overrated but goodPrince Caspian boringLast Battle and incredibly constructed bit of traumatizing filthWhite Witch is lessened by Nephew— also how dare you read it first, your job as a librarian is effectively cancelled— Digory and Jane (?) remarkably good protagonistsTreader is good because Eustace is a great character Wardrobe is my favourite after Horse— so weird that Santa shows up but I like the anachronism in fantasy— imagine if Krishna was a random character in Dune that’d be sick
― i could chug a keg of you (flamboyant goon tie included), Friday, 4 October 2019 03:09 (four years ago) link
great piece mark, lol @ this:
I like to think that Professor Digory Kirke lost his nice house when he lost his job as a professor — after the school inspectors who’d been at Experiment House audited one of his lessons and realised he’d never actually read The Republic…
the deposed Head becomes an MP, iirc, so odds are good
experiment house btw is such a strange satire. from wiki
Created by the author to express his disdain with modern educational methods, it is co-educational where children are allowed to do as they please and can feel free to bully other children. It is run by a female Head who devotes her attention more to bullies, whom she sees as interesting psychological cases who she does not punish, than well-behaved children.
you'd think your average grumpy conservative constructing a progressive-school strawman would lament the loss of bullying's darwinian power to improve, or maybe i am thinking too modern-US; maybe there's a contemporary body of education-policy criticism EH fits snugly into, but lewis' political/religious idiosyncrasy in general makes me think prob not. regardless my understanding is that the nonprogressive UK school system of his day was not exactly institutionally bullyfree.
anyway the absurdity of this picture of an entirely upside-down hell-school-- presumably the top of the class is all the most consistent truants-- has made it always stick w me in a way a more trad "eustace had received an alligator in mathematics" would not. (for example my personal image of the opening of silver chair has always been reused for YOU! YOU BEHIND THE BIKE SHED!!! even tho this is not actually appropriate at all, or is it.)
― difficult listening hour, Friday, 4 October 2019 03:26 (four years ago) link
i have consulted the text and darragh is (of course) correct
Reshpeckobiggle
― mookieproof, Friday, 4 October 2019 04:15 (four years ago) link
also pretty rude that no one complimented me on my cuteness reading prince caspian above
guess i'll put a bold face on it
― mookieproof, Friday, 4 October 2019 04:20 (four years ago) link
no wonder Aslan instructs Caspian, Eustace, and Rilian to slap'em with the sides of their swords.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 4 October 2019 10:22 (four years ago) link
Prince Caspian suffers from the structural tediousness of telling yet another origin story, only the Pevensies are marginalized. Yet I get a thrill when Caspian watches in awe as Trufflehunter (great character), and Trumpkin (same) confirm the existence of Old Narnia, one character at a time: Glenstorm, Patterwig, the Three Bulgy Bears, and, of course, Reepicheek.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 4 October 2019 10:27 (four years ago) link
and no Narnia chronicle is complete without a wtf sequence: the awakening of the River God and his daughters and the appearance of Bacchus.
that wtf sequence explored*: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/07/the-chronicles-of-narnia-part-2-prince-caspian-or-whos-got-the-hornalso (since i'm apparently doing this) why the dawn treader is good not bad film: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2011/01/narnia-week-what-you-see-is-what-you-getbook: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2014/06/narnian-origins-imagined-islands-in-the-great-green-sea-of-gloom
*some of this one reads a bit FT in-jokey in retrospect so apologies for that in advance, i wasn't on ilx at this time or caring much abt the "wider reader"
― mark s, Friday, 4 October 2019 11:06 (four years ago) link
The problem of the Telmarines: book-Telmarines are Puritan colonisers, Early Americans if you will, pirates-turned-moralisers out of sync with the nature they’ve invaded. They had excellent pointy helmets and nifty mini-skirts. Film-Telmarines are Spanish Conquistadors extpriating the Aztecs, proud and treachorous all, except for tyrant-usurper Miraz, who is Hitler obv, and therefore Iranian.
man that movie -- to quote TSC's Glimfeather, "Too true, too true!"
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 4 October 2019 11:14 (four years ago) link
I liked PC-the-film's concept of a High King Peter who's not so High King after all when called upon to recall his old moves. Lewis does mention Peter's putative strategy and Magnificence in those allusions to endless wars with the Giants of the North.
Back to PC: it's as credible that flop-haired Cesar Romero Caspian would think, "Who the fuck are you, High King? I'm in charge now, you're an illustration in a book" as it would be credible for "The High King in Command."
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 4 October 2019 11:20 (four years ago) link
Shout out to the King Edmunds. Edmund I of England, and Edmund Pevensie from The Chronicles of Narnia.— wikishoutouts (@wikishoutouts) September 4, 2019
― mookieproof, Saturday, 5 October 2019 02:19 (four years ago) link
love how Eustace does not get less unlikeable as the series proceeds.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 21, 2015
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 11 November 2019 01:28 (four years ago) link
I need to reread these. Remember really liking The Silver Chair, though, and the descriptions of Charn still stick with me even now. Know it’s basic af, but the ending of TLB really knocked me sideways - it just feels so casually cruel! Millions of people have said about this, but honestly, the thought of being a parent having to explain that...nah
― gyac, Monday, 11 November 2019 08:25 (four years ago) link
TLB's underlying ethos is a facer ("dying young in a horrible railway accident is good and here's why") but it absolutely has some of the best-realised and and most startling tableaux along the way
― mark s, Monday, 11 November 2019 10:07 (four years ago) link
Started reading these on a whim with my 8-year-old, in the correct order. So far halfway through TMN and it's just as good as I remember, perhaps even better.My opinion as a kid was TH&HB > TMN >>>> TSC > TVOTDT > THTW&TW >>>> PC >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> TLB - so will be interested to see if I still agree with myself aged 10.
― Camaraderie at Arms Length, Tuesday, 31 January 2023 21:41 (one year ago) link
It’s been too long since I’ve read these.
― The Triumphant Return of Bernard & Stubbs (Raymond Cummings), Tuesday, 31 January 2023 21:49 (one year ago) link
xp -- re yr placing of TLB: yrself aged 10 was nuts and very wrong
― mark s, Tuesday, 31 January 2023 21:49 (one year ago) link
I was a 10-year-old Catholic kid and I genuinely think it may have been one of the first cracks that led to my atheism by the age of 15, just "what kind of sick fuck thinks this is a good thing to publish as a kids' book and do I really want to be in their club?:
― Camaraderie at Arms Length, Tuesday, 31 January 2023 21:52 (one year ago) link
That was kinda about my reaction too at 10. (Even if I was more of a relaxed but earnest Anglican.)
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 31 January 2023 21:55 (one year ago) link
Lewis had to have known he was setting Christianity up for failure in his child audience by having Aslan take such an active and explicit role in the Narnian protagonists' lives, I choose to believe it was intentional
― the absence of bikes (f. hazel), Friday, 27 October 2023 15:57 (ten months ago) link
lol. I feel the same about the ending of TLB. “Oh cool we’re in heaven…But we all died horribly in a train crash? What???”
― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Friday, 27 October 2023 16:00 (ten months ago) link
what's weird about it?
― hat trick of trashiness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 27 October 2023 16:34 (ten months ago) link
The stuff with the doorframe was weird (and cool).
― hat trick of trashiness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 27 October 2023 16:35 (ten months ago) link
I guess the stuff of the real-Narnia-inside-the-real-Narnia is Lewis the amateur Platonist addressing ideal forms or some shit
Mostly a Netflix higher up interview here:
https://variety.com/2023/film/news/greta-gerwig-narnia-plans-netflix-1235785562/
But there is this:
Q I want to ask you about some upcoming films. You have Greta Gerwig adapting C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books. Why did you decide to make that deal? What about her as a filmmaker made you feel like that was a good fit with that material?A Greta’s been a friend for a while. Her husband, Noah Baumbach, we’re close to, we’ve made I think three films. We’re starting another one. We have a big deal with them. If you don’t know her, she’s truly one of the greatest people, not an artist, but a human being. She’s just got this great soul. When we had 2019’s ‘Marriage Story’ and she had ‘Little Women,’ we all spent quite a bit of time on the awards trail together at dinners.Gerwig grew up in a Christian background. The C.S. Lewis books are very much based in Christianity. And so we just started talking about it. And like I said earlier, we don’t have IP, so when we had the opportunity to license those books or the Roald Dahl Co. we’ve jumped at it, to have stories that people recognize and the ability to tell those stories. So it was just a great opportunity and I’m so thrilled that she’s working on it with us and I’m just thrilled to be in business with her. And she’s just an incredible talent.Q Is she writing many of these adaptations? What is her commitment to this?A Obviously, ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ is kind of the preeminent one, but there’s such an interesting narrative form to the Narnia series if you read all of them. And so that’s what she’s working on now with producer Amy Pascal and trying to figure out how they can break the whole arc of all of it.
A Greta’s been a friend for a while. Her husband, Noah Baumbach, we’re close to, we’ve made I think three films. We’re starting another one. We have a big deal with them. If you don’t know her, she’s truly one of the greatest people, not an artist, but a human being. She’s just got this great soul. When we had 2019’s ‘Marriage Story’ and she had ‘Little Women,’ we all spent quite a bit of time on the awards trail together at dinners.
Gerwig grew up in a Christian background. The C.S. Lewis books are very much based in Christianity. And so we just started talking about it. And like I said earlier, we don’t have IP, so when we had the opportunity to license those books or the Roald Dahl Co. we’ve jumped at it, to have stories that people recognize and the ability to tell those stories. So it was just a great opportunity and I’m so thrilled that she’s working on it with us and I’m just thrilled to be in business with her. And she’s just an incredible talent.
Q Is she writing many of these adaptations? What is her commitment to this?
A Obviously, ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ is kind of the preeminent one, but there’s such an interesting narrative form to the Narnia series if you read all of them. And so that’s what she’s working on now with producer Amy Pascal and trying to figure out how they can break the whole arc of all of it.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 9 November 2023 18:31 (ten months ago) link
i would def sign up for a gerwig-directed 'the magician's nephew'
― is he disgruntled adrian? (voodoo chili), Thursday, 9 November 2023 18:58 (ten months ago) link
love gerwig and no shade but very funny to answer "What about her as a filmmaker made you feel like that was a good fit with that material?" with "she's really cool and I like to hang out with her"
― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Tuesday, 14 November 2023 02:00 (ten months ago) link
Wild takes from hazel!
I’m an “read these in order of publication” hardliner, or at the very least read TMN second last (or even entirely last), stylistically it is written like a flashback, not an exposition.
TLB is the best-written of all of them, the most intensely plotted and sinister, Shift is one of my favourite characters. As a kid I didn’t pick up on the racism but that Susan stuff was really messed up
What is way worse than TLB tho is all the responses to it— specifically the final volume of His Dark Materials, which is way more fucked up and awful than anything Pullman was attempting to “correct”
― as a lyricist he is from hell (flamboyant goon tie included), Tuesday, 14 November 2023 07:39 (ten months ago) link
I’m a “read these in order of publication” hardliner
thats right
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 14 November 2023 08:29 (ten months ago) link
It's interesting to see the Narnia books lose the context of mid-20th century British kid's literature, where it was almost required to write books where absolutely nothing happened... in comparison, Price Caspian is a nonstop rollercoaster
― the absence of bikes (f. hazel), Tuesday, 14 November 2023 16:12 (ten months ago) link
f.hazel i love you but that is complete nonsense
― mark s, Tuesday, 14 November 2023 17:14 (ten months ago) link
let's not pretend the canonical British children's book in 1950 isn't "child sent to country house during war and befriends ghost child, decides eccentric grandparent is all right after all, goes home"
― the absence of bikes (f. hazel), Tuesday, 14 November 2023 18:49 (ten months ago) link
16 “canonic” british authors active 40s-60s who don’t fit that template
joan aiken pauline clarkeroald dahl leon garfieldalan garner eric linklatermary nortonsheena porterarthur ransomeian serraillier catherine storr rosemary sutcliffe john rowe townsendgeoffrey trease henry treece t.h.white
(excluding john christopher and peter dickinson as they don’t start till the late 60s so count more as a bookend)
2 who kinda do fit that template
lucy m. boston (this is who you mainly have in mind guess)philippa pearce (not very like boston, and also just one book of several not in template)
I never read the flambards books, maybe they fit too
― mark s, Tuesday, 14 November 2023 19:55 (ten months ago) link
none of them count
― the absence of bikes (f. hazel), Tuesday, 14 November 2023 20:11 (ten months ago) link
(I'm being silly, you're right of course)
― the absence of bikes (f. hazel), Tuesday, 14 November 2023 20:12 (ten months ago) link
lol yes, i just got into it bcz i think it's an interesting issue! CSL *does* kinda stick out in this company, i think his sensibility was formed decades before most of those other guys
(tolk's too, though he's always a bit of a special case) (like denys watkins-pitchford didn't spend 20 years proving the the little grey men with not one but three languages alphabets and names of months etc)
― mark s, Tuesday, 14 November 2023 20:17 (ten months ago) link
This thread revive lead me to read the Wiki entry on Pauline Baynes. Didn't know before that Lewis (who does not come out of this well) privately expressed severe reservations about her work, particularly in a letter to Dorothy L Sayers:
Lewis gave his fullest account of his opinion of Baynes in a letter that he wrote to his friend Dorothy L. Sayers on 5 August 1955. "The main trouble about Pauline B. is [...] her total ignorance of animal anatomy. In the v. last book [the fifth in the series] she has at last learned how to draw a horse. I have always had serious reservations about her [...]. But she had merits (her botanical forms are lovely), she needed the work (old mother to support, I think), and worst of all she is such a timid creature, so 'easily put down' that criticism cd. only be hinted [...]. At any real reprimand she'd have thrown up the job, not in a huff but in sheer, downright, unresenting, pusillanimous dejection. She is quite a good artist on a certain formal-fantastic level (did Tolkien's Farmer Giles far better than my books) but has no interest in matter – how boats are rowed, or bows shot with, or feet planted, or fists clenched. Arabesque is really her vocation."
Hideous sexism aside, I ... sort of agree with Lewis - or rather, I really like her colour cover paintings, but find her interior line drawings a bit stiff and really quite unattractive.
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 14 November 2023 20:26 (ten months ago) link
it's odd given the mode of baynes's illustrations for farmer giles of ham -- which are witty and stylised and pull in the bayeux tapestry and the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts, and medieval illustration generally, and in 1948 she's drawing horses (there are plenty in and around ham) perfectly well -- that she was then bundled into an approach that worked much less well for her in the CSL books (1950-56)? like the image of the children all tumbling out of the wardrobe at the end of tLtWatW: it's inept goofiness is actually kind of engaging, but it's objectively not good realism!!
a book baynes worked on that i loooove is amabel williams-ellis's* fairytales of the british isles (1960)
meet beelzebub! https://www.paulinebaynes.com/_gallery_images/fiomiz57w95o.jpg
*married to the architect who designed portmeirion
― mark s, Wednesday, 15 November 2023 16:52 (ten months ago) link
really good revive this! and tho mark is obv absolutely right, i totally saw where f.hazel was coming from, and I was trying to work out why.
I think in my v uncategorised childhood mind (not recognising these come from different periods and strands), Tom's Midnight Garden, The Secret Garden, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Five Children and It, The Box of Delights and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (and a number of others eg Over Sea, Under Stone) were quite similar. all involve displacement through illness, war, parental absence and the discovery of magic of some form (the form is important though: myth, ghosts, ancient immanent magic.
The city/pastoral division is probably important (puck and a midsummer night's dream is really not very far away in some of these). Purely mechanically it gives the child or children somewhere to explore and time on your hands to do it.
― Fizzles, Thursday, 16 November 2023 08:28 (ten months ago) link
uhhh what has Amazon done now? All I saw was a single still of "The Pevensie Era" and I am terrified of what they may have wrought
― I painted my teeth (sleeve), Thursday, 25 July 2024 21:18 (one month ago) link
fucking nikabrik
― mookieproof, Thursday, 1 August 2024 00:45 (one month ago) link