Lupiverse(es)

David Stockhoff · 15 Mar 2012, 21:44 · from 2012-March.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 17:44:22 -0400
Subject: (urth) Lupiverse(es)
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On 3/15/2012 5:19 PM, Ant?nio Marques wrote:
> David Stockhoff wrote:
>> My disappointment was not, after all, that Lewis was a Christian. Who
>> cares? I would be equally wary of books written by psychologists. The
>> disappointment lay in his didacticism and dishonesty. What I had been
>> led to believe was one thing was revealed to be another. Whatever
>> aspects of the story I enjoyed were apparently not considered the main
>> point by its author. Worse, Narnia made me think I believed things I did
>> not believe.
>
> Regarding this and the hypothetical anti-christian Wolfe (a thought 
> exepriment which I think is by no means new) what I have to say is 
> that, like all demons who turn to be unknowingly doing the work of the 
> Increate, the joke would be on the writer, not on the readers who 
> enjoyed the book. *Provided* the readers enjoyed the book. If the 
> readers don't enjoy the book [other than fueling their own beliefs], 
> then the joke's both on them and the writer, whether the writer is 
> honest or dissimulate.
>
> Iow, if the work is good, it stands, no matter what the author thinks. 
> But I think the odds are very small indeed that a covert author would 
> produce a really good book.
>
> In this case, if you like Narnia, then you like it, and realising 
> after the fcat that it is propaganda should only turn you off, I 
> think, if what had made you like it were all the propagandistic bits 
> fitting in with each other. Otherwise, it makes no sense to disown it. 
> Of course, since you say you never liked it all that much, you're just 
> being coherent.

Actually, I think a covert author is quite capable of producing a really 
good book, IF the necessity for covertness is externally imposed.

After that, I'm not sure I'm following you, Antonio. I think my logic 
might not quite fit into the box you have made for it. What I liked 
about Narnia was probably not in fact all the "bits" fitting together, 
which I would identify most prominently as the personal, moral choices 
characters had to make. Those were uninteresting and contrived, and, I 
felt, increasingly so.

If I felt betrayed, it was not because I fell in love with the Narnia of 
the books after LWW, but because I gave Lewis the benefit of the doubt 
after having betrayed the first time, after LWW, and obtained some 
partial enjoyment as a result. The discovery of propaganda did not come 
after the fact, but in the course of reading. I stuck it out 
nevertheless. TLB revealed what was, to me, the mendacity of Lewis's 
project.

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