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Old 07-20-2006, 01:45 PM   #1
davem
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'Spun Candy' anyone?

(Ok, I found a reference to this statement of Philip Pullman on another board)

In an essay in the New Yorker Pullman states

Quote:
At one point, Pullman and I stopped by the Eagle and Child, an Oxford pub where Lewis and Tolkien used to meet regularly with a group of literary friends. (They called themselves the Inklings.) A framed photograph of Lewis’s jowly face smiled down on us as we talked. In person, Pullman isn’t quite as choleric as he sometimes comes across in his newspaper essays. When challenged, he listens carefully and considerately, and occasionally tempers his ire. “The ‘Narnia’ books are a real wrestle with real things,” he conceded. As much as he dislikes the answers Lewis arrives at, he said that he respects “the struggle that he’s undergoing as he searches for the answers. There’s hope for Lewis. Lewis could be redeemed.” Not Tolkien, however: the “Rings” series, he declared, is “just fancy spun candy. There’s no substance to it.”
Now, what's interesting is that Pullman thinks the Narnia Chronicles are 'redeemable' while LotR is not. I wonder what he means by 'redeemed' here? Is he saying that the Narnia books could be changed to fit in with his own philosophical position while LotR could not? Apparently Lewis is asking the right questions, but getting the 'wrong' answers, while Tolkien is not asking any questions at all.

Is this in any way correct? Is Lewis asking difficult questions & Tolkien merely producing an 'entertainment'?

What's interesting is that Tolkien effectively said in the Foreword to LotR that he was writing an entertainment, a long tale that would move his readers, but that it was not an allegory, or an attempt to explain the nature of life, the universe & everything. Lewis called his Narnia books a 'supposal' - 'suppose the Son of God had appeared in a world like Narnia - what would happen?'

So, is it correct that Tolkien was not asking 'questions', & therefore not offering 'answers'? I suppose one could argue that he was presenting us with the harsh facts of life & death, without offering answers (how could he if he was not asking any questions?).

But if Lewis is 'redeemable' does that mean that there is a fundamental difference between the works of the two friends? And if Pullman is correct what does this say about the difference between the Middle-earth & Narnia?

Personally, I was never 'convinced' by Narnia or the worlds of HDM - both seemed fake, made up - perhaps because in each case the author is using their story to ask questions (& offer answers), while Tolkien was not.

So, is LotR 'spun candy' in the sense that it is not a didactic work? Perhaps - reading both HDM & the Narnia books I always felt I was in a classroom, being 'taught' something, while reading LotR was like the Summer Holidays, runnng through the fields, exploring the woods, having adventures.
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