XPost: alt.usage.english, rec.arts.books.childrens, alt.books.cs-lewis   
   From: jf@NOSPAMmarage.demon.co.uk   
      
   X-No-Archive: yes   
   In message <86mze4p23l.fsf@enzym.rnd.uni-c.dk>, Peter B. Juul   
    writes   
   >JF  writes:   
   >   
   >> That is stupid advice! Read Jack Lewis's opening paragraphs in 'The   
   >> Magician's Nephew' as to why it's important to read it first!   
   >   
   >Actually Lewis was a horrible judge of this.   
      
   Fiction authors usually manage to end up with some egg -- especially   
   when they're caught out by unexpected success of a character. The Great   
   Dame thought that having a retired detective as her hero was a spiffing   
   wheeze so, for her first Hercules Poirot novel of around 1920, he was   
   aged about 60 to 65. As she said in her autobiography, it was a big   
   mistake because he was still hard at it when he was aged 150.   
      
   C S Forester had to write retros for his hero captain when said hero was   
   a junior officer. Capt W E Johns did something similar with his   
   Bigglesworth hero.   
      
   Art Doyle even brought his detective chappie back from the dead!   
      
   In the case of the Jack Lewis retro, The Magician's Nephew, at least he   
   made a bold attempt to remedy the cock-up brought about by the success   
   of LWW. As Douglas Grisham explained when he introduced TMN as the   
   opening story in the Narnia Chronicles, Jack Lewis considered it the   
   most important of all the novels. Although authors have absolutely no   
   say in the manner of their publishers' design and presentation of their   
   work, Harpic Collins did, at least, honour Jack Lewis's intentions in   
   the volume sequencing, and Douglas Grisham stuck to his stepfather's   
   insistence that it should be the first story when he produced the   
   definitive and only correct dramatisation for the Focus on the Family   
   production.   
      
   I'm astonished that so many have found the concept of the first book   
   being volume 1, the second book being volume 2, and so on, being hard to   
   grasp.   
      
   The hysterical screams of: C S Lewis was horrible wrong!; C S Lewis's   
   publishers were horribly wrong!; C S Lewis's stepson was horribly wrong!   
   have been little short of astonishing. I got bored with the emperor's   
   new wardrobe. With so much documentary evidence, I didn't even need Bill   
   Ockham's trusty razor to slash it to shreds.   
      
   --   
   James Follett. Novelist. (G1LXP) http://www.jamesfollett.dswilliams.co.uk   
   The Silent Vulcan trilogy, starting with 'The Temple of the Winds', on BBC7   
   Sundays 1840.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)