mikem

Actaully someone did! See JohnO (post 16)

Babylon Sister

See post #16

Roger Pearse

I still like them. But you highlight a problem; that English style is changing, and works that everyone read with enjoyment 50 years ago are now disappearing over the style-horizon. The same thing happens to every age; the popular literature of the Victorian era was very hard going to me in 1980!

Of course the works remain as they always were; it is we who have changed. And we are the losers, if we can no longer walk on Malacandra. Books are only a means to travel to other places, and once the words get in the way...

All the best,

Roger Pearse

cajela

In Australia he's known pretty much only for Narnia, except in religious circles, where he's quite popular. My bloke's brother sent him a copy of The Screwtape Letters in a vague attempt to get him back to church. Very lame. If you want to see devils doing real evil, check out Good Omens. Bureaucracy! Bypasses!

I enjoyed Narnia very much and on a re-reading still like it. (Except I always hated the Last Battle). But I'm happy to read myths. I love fairy tales. I enjoy fantasy (when not too sugary), myth, legend. I LOVE the DC Vertigo Sandman, Dreaming, Books of Magic & Lucifer comics. Aslan's sacrifice is a lovely myth. Clearly in Narnia he isn't all-powerful: he can't defy the Deep Magic. He's a limited god, not an Xian omnipotent type. I wonder if Lewis even noticed that.

RED DAVE

From RED DAVE:
From Roger Pearse:
I don't think that it's really a matter of language. The Victorian stuff that is dated is not because of language. Dickens, MacDonald, Eliot, Collins, Browning, are still extremely readable. Where the problem comes is their insufferable moralizing. And Lewis is a terrible moralizer. That's what, ultimately, kills the Narnia series.

In Tolkein or MacDonald, the moralizer and the story-teller are usually blended extremely well. In Lewis, the story-teller is very deliberately subsumed by the moralizer whenever necessary.

RED DAVE