Urth Net
George MacDonald
8 quoted lines · depth 2
Tami Whitehead wrote:
((Honestly, I read Doors, and just sat and scratched
my head for a day or so. It reminded me a bit of
Lilith, by ol' what's his name, friend and
contemporary of C S Lewis etc...rats, what's his name,
but you know the one, Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
for adults, with a tad un-orthodox Christian
symbolism...))
I suppose, strictly speaking, George Macdonald (1824-1905) and C S Lewis (1898-1963) overlapped by about seven years, but you wouldn't normally call them "contemporaries".
Years ago, I did a dissertation on Macdonald and read all his fantasy novels and stories and a chunk of his literary criticism and mainstream Victorian fiction too. To quote one of my children's favourite phrases, "it did my head in." Some of his stories were good - I liked "The Golden Key" for example - but most of his work is verbose, poorly structured and mawkishly sentimental. Some of it is also, frankly, perverse. I never did really understand what Lewis saw in him.
So imagine my horror when I read the following in Nutria's interview with Wolfe ("That's his name Jim, but not spelt as we know it!"):
9 quoted lines · depth 2
JJ: Now you are reading George McDonald?
GW: Yes, Lilith. I had not read anything
except Curdie and the Goblin and At the
Back of the North Wind and those types,
and they are quite good but they are
basically fairy stories. I had read others
that were about that good, but I don't think
they had any great theological impact, any
great feeling from that standpoint.
I agree entirely with Wolfe's verdict on the main body of Macdonald's work, but, frustratingly, he doesn't say what he thought of "Lilith". Now that you mention it, though, I can see some points of overlap for Wolfe. Other worlds, ambiguous goddess/queens...and Lilith, if I recall, has some inhuma-like characteristics...She turns into a blood sucking white slug or worm at night. As in the famous C L Moore story "Shambleau", however, MacDonald is deliberately vague...Oh dear, how do I put this?...about what it is exactly that Lilith sucks...
I do apologise for that.
Love Wolfe, don't like most MacDonald.
Nigel