(urth) Lupiverse(es)

Sat Mar 17 03:06:24 PDT 2012

Photogen and Nycteris is definitely one of the very best.  Lilith and
Phantastes are certainly meandering and oblique novels - but I think
they're very powerful, undiluted fantasies - he taps into some deep
mythopoiea and faerie in these in my opinion - lots of great individual
scenes and elements too - plenty of creatures and not a little horror also
- he's always struck me as a phantasmagorical Poe.  I'd like to see whether
their's a connection to Wolfe at all, either overtly or unintentionally.

-DOJP

On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 4:08 AM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>wrote:

>  Just for the record, I can't find the "dull" MacDonald story I thought I
> was looking for, and I can only guess it's buried among the many ebook
> collections of his fiction on my old hard drive.
>
> But *Lilith *certainly fits the bill, and *Phantastes *is not far behind.
> No worse than William Morris, though.
>
> *Photgen and Nycteris *is one of my favorites, along with several others
> I can't locate at the moment.
>
> On 3/16/2012 4:32 PM, DAVID STOCKHOFF wrote:
>
>  I plan to read it to my daughter when she's old enough---in a year or
> two. That's why I collected all the MacDonald I have, though there was a
> selfish motivation as well.
>
>  I have to apologize for shocking everyone, however. It wasn't The Golden
> Key I was thinking of at all. Had I read that as a child I might recall it
> more clearly than I did in fact---probably as much as Curdie---but I
> enjoyed it nevertheless.
>
>  I am not sure which story it was that struck me as stilted and dull,
> only that the protagonist was a girl. But I shouldn't venture to opine
> until I get back home and find the physical books.
>
>  Auden is amazing---no, not dull at all. But then he never wrote stories
> for children, or did he?
>
>    ------------------------------
> *From:* Daniel Petersen <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com><danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com>
> *To:* The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> <urth at lists.urth.net>
> *Sent:* Friday, March 16, 2012 3:30 PM
> *Subject:* Re: (urth) Lupiverse(es)
>
> I really enjoy the edition where it's printed as its own small book, with
> illustrations by Maurice Sendak and an afterword by W. H. Auden.  (And I'll
> side with Auden over Stockhoff as to the story and its author's worth - but
> maybe the Stock finds Auden dull as well?  [If so only further proving my
> theory that he is inhuman.])
>
>  You know, I actually first read that edition aloud to my daughter when
> she was 5 or 6 and that was the go that really bowled me over.  David, do
> you know of any bairns you can read it aloud to?
>
>  (Does anyone have experiences reading Wolfe aloud?  I've never done
> that, I don't think.  Lafferty gains whole new dimensions when you do it
> with him - I wonder what it would be like with Wolfe.  I picture it being
> more of a reading to fellow adults scenario, rather than to children.)
>
>  -DOJP
>
> On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 7:11 PM, Antonin Scriabin <
> kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The Golden Key was a favorite of mine growing up.  I wish I could find my
> copy!
>
> On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 3:09 PM, Daniel Petersen <
> danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It's the BEST!  You have no
> soul!  You are not human, you are machine!
>
>  (To be honest, it was on a second read that it blew me away.)
>
>  -DOJP
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 5:11 PM, DAVID STOCKHOFF <dstockhoff at verizon.net>wrote:
>
>  Golden Key: THAT's the one. Dull, dull, dull, dull, dull.
>
>  ;)
>
>    ------------------------------
> *From:* James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
> *To:* The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
> *Sent:* Friday, March 16, 2012 10:19 AM
> *Subject:* Re: (urth) Lupiverse(es)
>
>  Try some of his short stories and novellas:
>
> Photogen and Nycteris (aka Day Boy & Night Girl, aka Son of the Day,
> Daughter of Night)
> Light Princess (aka Little Daylight)
> Golden Key
> Translations for Novalis
>
> Lewis and MacDonald never met. But Lewis credited MacDonald's fiction as
> an important element in his conversion. He (and the reception of his
> children) were important in the publication of Alice in Wonderland.
> Although he was a pastor for a time, his sermons and theology got him in
> trouble and he was eventually pushed out.
>
> J.
>
> On 3/16/2012 8:09 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:
>
> I'm not sure which of MacDonald's books I consider stilted and boring,
> although I encountered those as an adult. But I loved the Curdie books my
> mom read to me when I was four or five.
>
> On 3/15/2012 10:51 PM, Craig Brewer wrote:
>
>  Phantastes was a beautiful book! Never besmirch the name of MacDonald!
> heh heh...
>
>  As someone who was raised in a relatively a-religious family, I usually
> just ignored the obviously religious bits of Lewis/Tolkien/whoever else.
> But as I got older, I found that the non-"preachy" manner of fictional
> Christian works actually worked to explain why faith was interesting and
> attractive. After all, here was some fantasy that might be real on a
> certain level, or at least a number of people thought so.
>
>  That's a perspective I've had trouble explaining to friends who had that
> "betrayal" reaction to Narnia.
>
>    ------------------------------
> *From:* David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
> *To:* The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> <urth at lists.urth.net>
> *Sent:* Thursday, March 15, 2012 9:42 PM
> *Subject:* Re: (urth) Lupiverse(es)
>
> On 3/15/2012 10:32 PM, António Pedro Marques wrote:
> > Wasn't MacDonald a good half century older? And he was one of those
> mollified Presbyterians.
> > But is it fair to criticise didacticism which didn't pretend to be
> anything else? I mean, neither MacDonald nor Lewis, that I know of, tried
> to present their books as doctrinally free. At least MacDonald was overt as
> to their didactic nature. It isn't Lewis's fault if the Narnia books got
> popular that they were pushed everywhere as mere children's books without a
> caveat that they were had a religious undercurrent. Maybe the real issue is
> that they are popular because that undercurrent pleases people, just as
> Praise of Empire pleased others, and those who take exception to that way
> of writing resent the popularity.
>
> Well, if it's boring, it's boring. And it depends on what you mean by
> "didn't pretend"---as with Lewis, most of his readers were children. If you
> have no idea what you might be reading, you can't know whether it's
> pretense or not.
>
> Certainly Lewis wasn't responsible for whatever marketing got his books in
> my local library and into my hands. But I doubt they were and are popular
> because they are religious: rather, they probably are popular because they
> are accessible, imaginative (sometimes magical, as you said),
> action-packed, well-written, comforting (Aslan always appeared to set
> things right), and morally nonthreatening. Girls read them as much as boys
> did, and no parents objected to them.
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