More random thoughts on Narnia

Nice article in Slate about how most kids miss the allegory and love the Narnia books because of the adventure. That was totally, absolutely and undeniably me. I think I am fundamentally non-Christian—I was never really interested in Aslan. He never did it for me. My least favorite parts of the books are when he appears. Ha, so even as a kid I was not down with Jesus.

My favorites of the books are the Silver Chair, the two young Caspian books, the Horse and His Boy and the Magician's Nephew. Jill and Eustace are the characters I like the best, across the novels. I never had much use for any of the Pevensies except Edmund, the little shit that he was.

Lewis is accused of being a racist but as far as I'm concerned he's just stuck in the same old-white-man mid-century rut that Tolkien sits in—product of their times, programmed to mistrust the exotic and stay comfortably at home for tea with the other white folks. Tolkien and Lewis both mistreat their darker-skinned characters, but I don't think it's legit to cry racism when they both also created worlds where characters of all shape, size, color and species intermingle and communicate and navigate their differences. Context, peeps. Meanwhile, the Horse and His Boy was fascinating to me as a child—the complex maze of the city, the desert outside the gate, the turbans and the litters and the "O the delight of my eyes" language. Yes, it's all an odd Middle Eastern sendup but when you're a kid and not yet quite acquainted with the world it serves as a nice gateway. I feel like Lewis and Tolkien, both so capable of expanding their minds into fictional worlds of myth (or faith), both operate on a pathetically yet not-unexpected juvenile level when dealing with cultural references to other parts of the real world—but it works, because juveniles are reading the books. Racism only applies if you are an ignorant adult thinking "boy, these Calormenes are just like them damn Arabs"... sheesh.

Meanwhile, trusty Adam Gopnik has a good article in the New Yorker about it all.