(urth) Lupiverse(es)

[DAVID STOCKHOFF]

________________________________
 From: Daniel Petersen <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> 
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 11:58 AM
Subject: Re: (urth) Lupiverse(es)
 

Ha, thanks everyone for engaging so profusely with my initial rant.  I think all the angles have been well-covered.  I'll just add that any of you who think Lewis and/or MacDonald have little literary merit and are reducible to dishonesty and/or didacticism, well...

---I think there's something about this forum that exaggerates what is said, and I'm just not careful enough to avoid a ballooning misunderstanding. I think Lewis and MacDonald are great, sometimes. And didacticism is not = dishonesty. There's nothing wrong with didacticism . . . unless it's dishonest, or pandering, or condescending, or poorly executed, or without life. In other words: murder is already illegal, we don't have to pass a special law against certain types of murders.

And I am far from being the reader I was at 9.




you can go suck an egg.  And I wish you speedy recovery from your literary myopia.  :)  

As to Lee's direct question:


Just as a thought experiment, what would the reverse bring for you? What if
there was, say, a deathbed confession by Wolfe that all his work was meant to
subvert belief in Christ and promote worship of Satan or Dionysus. Would you be
out? 


This did happen to me in the past few years with one of my favourite singers and lyricists, Nick Cave.  First I just loved his musical and lyrical artistry - some of my all-time favourite stuff.  Then I noticed his lyrics were consistently more and more 'God-conscious' and even specifically 'Christ-conscious'.  Then he started professing to believe in God and in Christ (if in an idiosyncratic sense) - then his lyrics became even more blatantly 'Christian'.  Then he suddenly said in several interviews on the back of his second novel coming out (The Death of Bunny Munro) that he did not believe in the literal existence of a personal God - contradicting quite clear statements in interviews in very recent years.  Was I confused and even disappointed?  Yeah.  Have I abandoned enjoying, following and analysing his work?  No way.  Do I think the discussion is closed?  Uh-uh.
---I have wondered about that, having noticed the change in lyrics and read statements that Cave is Catholic. But what's the contradiction arising from disbelieving in a "personal" God?

(That term, especially in the form "personal Jesus," always makes me think of something portable and convenient, like a purse dog. Does the Church assign everyone a non-optional personal God, like Philip Pullman's daemons?)
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