Pullman rips on LOTR, others

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Lal:

You write as if I haven't read HDM. I have. And I realize that Pullman is (or can be) a pleasant tweedy sort who calls himself a 'cultural Anglican' and enjoys singing Christmas carols- but who also doesn't find anything unseemly in publicly slagging off other writers, whether he really means it or no.

None of that alters the fact that in Vol III his storytelling collapses under the weight of his preaching: and however much he wanted his finale to evoke Blake and Milton, to me at least it's more like Act III of Faust as retold by William Burroughs. So it's disingenous of him to disclaim sermonising when he so plainly is. At least Lewis, love him or hate him, never denied writing Christian apologias.

The important word he used was 'conceited' - so the excuse trotted out that it was about her materialism doesn't work. Conceit hasn't got anything to do with materialism, it is about self-regard, which Susan as an attractive young woman, clearly has lots of; Lewis sets it up plainly that she was immoral to grow self-confident and assured of her own sexual attractiveness.

There you're really, really reaching. One can be conceited about one's looks- but also about one's intelligence, wealth, athletic prowess, social status..... If Lewis were fixated on the physical he could have used, say, 'vain.' Nor would I equate 'self-confidence' with 'conceit.' The one is an excess of the other, which is perjorated and rightly so. By trying to force a feminist narrative of sexuality and female submission onto this (like your snark about 'keeping her head properly covered') you really make yourself sound like those old Freudian critics to whom a cigar was never just a cigar.

All Lewis was saying was that Susan had become self-absorbed, prideful, and obsessed with the 'things of this world' (by which is not meant the material, but rather the evanescent)- and thereby forgot and so lost Narnia. This is hardly radical or reactionary: even atheists will acknowledge that humility and selflessness are virtues.


(NB: Eustace's school was not a Comprehensive, which IIRC didn't exist in the early 50's, but a non-state 'experimental' school.)