XPost: alt.usage.english, rec.arts.books.childrens, alt.books.cs-lewis   
   From: hayesmstw@hotmail.com   
      
   On Fri, 28 Apr 2006 22:38:45 GMT, "Dick Chambers"   
    wrote:   
      
   > asked   
   >   
   >> I thought the underlying story was illimitably good--when I was seven,   
   >> and for some years thereafter.  Dick, do you usually like children's   
   >> books?  If not, there's better Lewis you could start with.   
   >   
   >Depends on which children's book. Winnie the Pooh and House at Pooh Corner   
   >are excellent for adults. I read them to my own two children many times, and   
   >never tired of the stories. A simple tale to please the child, and deep   
   >philosophy for the adult reading the book to the child. Don't ask me what   
   >the philosophy is, because I have never fully understood this aspect of A A   
   >Milne. My experience with my own children was that A A Milne's humour made   
   >me laugh, but my children having the story read to them took it all very   
   >seriously, and did not laugh at all. Not even when Pooh and Piglet were   
   >tracking Woozle footprints in the snow. Most parents would report the same.   
   >I am looking forward to reading the Pooh stories to my grandson, now aged 2,   
   >and to my second grandchild (believed to be another boy, but as yet unborn).   
      
   I read the "Winnie the Pooh" books as a child, and took them very seriously.   
   When I was in my twenties a groups of us read them aloud, and found them   
   screamingly funny, and were in fits of laughter.   
      
   I did not read the Narnia stories as a child, however, and only discovered   
   them at about the same time as the reading of Winnie the Pooh described above.   
   I've reread them several times since then, and discover new things each time.   
   There might be better newsgroups to discuss the literary nuances, though.   
      
   >Alice in Wonderland and Wind in the Willows are also books that I have   
   >enjoyed as an adult. I did read the first Harry Potter book, but the idea   
   >simply did not appeal to my imagination, and I shall not read another.   
      
   The Alice books I've read several times, both as a child an an adult. My   
   mother gave me Kenneth Grahame books as a child, but I didn't like them. I   
   read them as an adult, and enjoyed them, but not enough to want to reread them   
   -- there was too much of an adult outsider looking in. I've re-read the Harry   
   Potter books several times. I think I enjoyed them better than reading Billy   
   Bunter as a child.   
      
   >C S Lewis was no lightweight children's author - he was in fact an Oxford   
   >academic who wrote the Narnia stories for fun, surprising even himself by   
   >how much money he earned from them. I have not read any Lewis at all, and   
   >would be interested to receive your advice concerning which of his adult[1]   
   >works would be best to start with.   
      
   Fiction or non-fiction?   
      
   I suggest, if you read the Narnia stories, that you start with "The lion, the   
   witch and the wardrobe", and go on reading them in publication order, and not   
   the "chronological" order. His adult fiction includes the "space trilogy" -   
   "Out of the silent planet", "Perelandra" and "That hideous strength", and also   
   "Till we have faces", an ancient Greek myth retold. There are also the   
   Screwtape books, "The great divorce" and "The pilgrims regress", which all   
   have a more overt theological content (the others have a theological context),   
   and the last is allegory in the style of Bunyan.   
      
   He wrote a variety of non-fiction, from literary criticism to pop theology,   
   much of it in the form of essays rather than monographs. I suggest   
   alt.books.inklings or alt.books.cs-lewis if you are looking for   
   recommendations from people who know his works well.   
      
   If you liked the Alice books, you may like the Narnia ones. Though separated   
   by nearly a century, the authors are both Oxford dons. Lewis Carroll (Charles   
   Dodgson) was a Church of England clergyman and a methematician. Lewis was a   
   Church of England layman and a literary critic, so you won't find Narnia   
   filled with the kind of mathematical puzzles and allusions you find in the   
   Alice books, but there are literary allusions, and allusions to classical and   
   Norse mythology etc. And, of course, the Christian theological context.   
      
   The "space trilogy" has, as protagonist, a university philologist (which his   
   friend J.R.R. Tolkien was in real life).   
      
   While the three books have the same protagonist and villains, they are very   
   different in many ways, not least because each one is set on a different   
   planet. The middle one, Perelandra, is quite heavily theological and fairly   
   universal. The other two reflect their time -- the mid-twentieth century. _Out   
   of the silent planet_ can be seen as a polemic against racism, imperialism and   
   the military-industrial comples. The last, "That hideous strength" deals with   
   the dehumanising effects of bureaucracy, technocracy and academic ambition.   
   Lewis must have been intimately acquainted with the last -- the back-stabbing,   
   infighting and jockeying for position of academic politics.   
      
   You could say that all three deal with the dehumanising effects of modernity   
   and the omnicompetent state. But you don't have to read them like that, you   
   can also just read them as stories.   
      
      
   --   
   Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa   
   http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm   
   E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)