(urth) Religious writers and audiences

[Jeff Wilson]

On 6/6/2010 6:15 PM, David Duffy wrote:
> On Sat, 5 Jun 2010, John Watkins wrote:
>
>> Personally I find the "betrayal" narrative bizarre whenever I hear it.
>
> Re LWW, my opinion of it did fall when rereading when older, and seeing
> "through" the plot. By contrast, I was able to read _The Pilgrim's
> Progress_ ignoring any allegorical content ;)
>
>> I know countless people, many of liberal predispositions, who
>> have read and allegedly enjoyed The Fountainhead--and Rand is far
>> preachier
>> than Lewis, Wolfe, or even Card. And Neil Gaiman has written about his
>> feelings of betrayal as to Lewis's religiousity, but never expressed
>> similar
>> feelings toward, for example, Kipling's imperialism.
>>
>
> I quite like the concept that great art needs to have some kind of
> underlying complex system of ideas, but that those ideas don't have to
> be right to make the artwork successful. I am quite willing to suspend
> disbelief (in every sense of the word), if the story works qua story. So
> I put up with FTL travel, even though it clashes with my religous beliefs.
>
> I think my problem (and that of Gaiman, Pullman etc) with LWW is the
> feeling that the setup is too setup: it feels clumsy/arbitrary and so
> can't carry all the emotional weight. The ending of _The Last Battle_ is
> more successful, I think.

How do you feel about VeggieTales?

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >