An open thread dedicated to discussing books, movies, and tv shows we love. And occasionally some politics.

Wow. I wrote this assuming we'd be crowning Hillary today. Guess American politics still has the capacity to surprise me! Well, it's not as pertinent as I thought it would be, but I hope you enjoy it!

Today, I’d like to talk about C.S. Lewis.

Lewis, a contemporary and friend of J.R.R. Tolkien, was many things: a soldier in WWI, left for dead on a battlefield; a British colonial born in Northern Ireland; a bereaved child who lost his mother young; a scholar, teacher, and author. Some of the things he was were unpleasant: consistently and profoundly sexist, a bit nasty about women’s intellectual abilities, he’s nobody I would have wanted to encounter had I been one of the first women to attend Oxford. He was a confirmed atheist who had been converted to Protestantism, which ended up meaning that his pride in his own rationality and rightness got turned into a pride in the rightness of a somewhat Calvinistic Christianity. Meaning, in other words, he's really really sure he's right.

Lewis' certainty of how right he is can be grating—and I don’t mean in his apologias for Christianity, where such preachiness could be expected, but in his fiction. Fairly frequently, if you’re a Lewis reader, you feel like you are, at the very least, being lectured to and expected to take notes and amend your ways. Supposedly Tolkien converted him, but there’s a capacious quality to Tolkien’s religiosity, a breadth and room, compassion and grace, within which even a pagan like myself can sit down, visit, and have a cup of tea without feeling it’s difficult to breathe. Lewis’ spiritual vision at best is far narrower than Tolkien’s. Ursula LeGuin, in her review of The Tower and Other Stories has wonderful insight into this difference between the two men, when she says that, in Tolkien’s world, it is the shadow (Gollum) , not the hero, who accomplishes the quest—evil doesn’t just reside in “the other,” but in the self, and the “evil” self isn’t garbage to be rejected or purged, but an integral part of the story. There’s nothing like that in Lewis that I know.

However, Lewis was also a very talented writer. In the same review, Ursula Le Guin rightly says that the Martian scenes Lewis wrote in Out of the Silent Planet have been copied by science fiction authors ever since he wrote it in 1938. I have been reading and re-reading Lewis most of my life. I remember asking my mother to read me The Last Battle when I was younger than 5, and her steering me back to the beginning of the series, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. I began reading it immediately.

Like the Milky Way of Star Trek, Willy Wonka’s factory, Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, and a few other places, Narnia is an Ur-place for me: a place you almost imagine existing—maybe if you walked into your closet on the right day…or leaned too close to the wrong painting…Ah, Narnia. Just in case anybody doesn’t know it, it’s a small Northern land of woods, moors, and rivers with a big coastline and a passion for the sea.

Oh, and the animals (most of them) and the trees talk. At one end of Narnia, in the middle of the woods, is a lamppost, burning away brightly without explanation (you have to read to the next-to-last book of the series to find out its origin). Doors to Narnia open at odd times and places (closets, train stations, paintings) and, speaking of time, Narnia’s time doesn’t run like ours; you could spend a month in our world and find a hundred years had gone by back in Narnia. Narnia is ruled and watched over by a supernatural and powerful Lion named Aslan who is an obvious Christ analogy (in case you haven’t read the first book, I won’t tell you why) and from time to time various incursions of supernatural evil (the White Witch) or more mundane colonial evil (the Telmarines) disturb Narnia, and eight children from our world must come to Narnia’s aid.

I wanted to talk today about my favorite of the series, The Silver Chair.

The Silver Chair is a bit of a dark horse, usually thought of as the worst of the series, not the best. But I loved it because it had all the elements of Dungeons and Dragons: a group of people setting out on a quest, in this case, a quest to find a lost prince; mysteries and puzzles to solve, temptations to resist, battles to win…

And in the book, Lewis creates one of the most accurate portrayals of propaganda I’ve ever read. Four characters-- two children from our world, Jill and Eustace, the lost Prince Rillian (whom they’ve been seeking), and their companion, Puddleglum the Marsh-Wiggle are being held in an underground realm by a witch. Rather than slaying them, the witch decides to convince them not to leave. She lights a fire:

It did not blaze much, but a very sweet and drowsy smell came from it. And all through the conversation which followed, that smell grew stronger and filled the room and made it harder to think. Secondly, she took out a musical instrument…She began to play it with her fingers…After she thrummed for a time (and the sweet smell was now strong) she began speaking in a sweet, quiet voice.

“Narnia? “ she said, “Narnia?...There is no land called Narnia.”
“Yes there is, though, Ma’am, “ said Puddleglum. “You see, I happen to have lived there all my life.”
“Indeed, “ said the Witch. “Tell me, I pray you, where that country is?”
“Up there,” said Puddleglum stoutly, pointing overhead. “I—I don’t know exactly where.”
“How?” said the Queen with a kind, soft, musical laugh. “Is there a country up there among the stones and mortar on the roof?”

I bet you all can see where this is going.

“No. I suppose that other world must be all a dream.”
“Yes. It is all a dream,” said the Witch, always thrumming.
“Yes, all a dream,” said Jill.
“There never was such a world,” said the Witch.
“No,” said Jill and Scrubb, “never was such a world.”
“There never was any world but mine,” said the Witch.
“There never was any world but yours,” said they.

The Witch manages to convince them that there is nothing above ground—no realm in the light, no sun, no home. She manages to convince them that nothing but her reality exists:

“The Prince and the two children were standing with their heads hung down, their cheeks flushed, their eyes half closed; the strength all gone from them; the enchantment almost complete. But Puddleglum, desperately gathering all his strength, walked over to the fire. Then he did a very brave thing. He knew it wouldn’t hurt him quite as much as it would hurt a human…But he knew it would hurt him badly enough; and so it did. With his bare foot, he stamped on the fire, grinding a large part of it into ashes…the heavy, sweet smell grew very much less. ..the fire that remained smelled very largely of burnt Marsh-wiggle, which is not at all an enchanting smell. ..the Prince and the children held up their heads again and opened their eyes.
Secondly, the Witch, in a loud, terrible voice, utterly different from the sweet tones she had been using up till now, called out, “What are you doing? Dare to touch my fire again, mud-filth, and I’ll turn the blood to fire inside your veins.”
Thirdly, the pain itself made Puddleglum’s head for a moment perfectly clear and he knew exactly what he really thought:

Sometimes the blunt force of Lewis’ morality, usually preachy and irritating, is bloody brilliant:

“One word, Ma’am,” he said…”One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overworld. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think, but that’s small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”

In an era in which America has come to look very like the Witch's "black pit of a kingdom," I intend to live as like what an American was supposed to be as I can even if there isn't any such America.

May the best of humanity prevail.