I am leery of message boards, considering they often turn into screaming matches which would probably happen less if the people talking could see each other face to face, but Urth seems like a decent place, except of course for the dying sun and the forces of Abaia, Erebus, etc.

Someone mentioned earlier that it has become a fashion lately to attack Lewis's work.  Despite my own problems with Lewis's particular worldview, I have read essay by Neil Gaiman, China Mieville, and Phillip Pullman which were written basically to "debunk" Lewiss and for Mieville Tolkien as well.  Charges of racism, nostalgia, cruelty, etc , I don't think you can psychoanalyze an author from her work, and I was particularly disappointed in Gaiman's reaction.  I mean, yes Narnia is less of an allegory than the Faerie Queene though much more of an allegory than Lord of the Rings, which Tolkien denied having any allegorical structure whatsoever.  

Allegory is a very nebulous concept, though, we can call Mieville work Marxist romanticism or captitalist dystopia if we want, and Pullman age of enlightenment identity myth, and Gaiman neo-pagan mall mythology. Lewis cannabilizes things in Theosophy or Voyage to Arcturus or Lord Dunsany, Gaiman cannabilizes Roger Zelazny etc.  Really we can replace cannibalize with "is paying attention to or concernwed with" or "is influenced by" and instead of saying "allegory" we can say it is similar to narratives with similar content and dynamics.   This is not what Gaiman et al. are doing.  They are merely drawing a line between what they consider to be "leftist" or "liberal" fantasy, and "conservative" fantasy like Tolkien and Lewis, more so with Lewis.  I find this appalling.  I am not a Christian, and my pride is not hurt that they would try to detract from what they feel is Tolkien and Lewis's hegemony of "fantasy" literature.  I do happen to think Tolkien and Lewis are more intelligent writers than their detractors, but this is besides the point.  What I find appaling is the open and deliberate politization of literature, is literature for its own sake or for furthuring ideology.  It is a serious problem whether you consider Narnia to be Christian propaganda or not; but I find it more difficult with the Science Fiction Trilogy or Till We Have Faces. What exactly is propaganda is another difficult problem.  I certainly did not feel like Lewis was trying to evangelize me.  The novel that is most often cited is The Last Battle, but as an eight year old I knew the Emperor from across the sea was probably some sort of God, but I just took the whole thing as story and that's how I still read it, and it never "softened" me up to Mere Christianity, so I dont understand what everyone's complaint is. Lewis's observations concerning human psychology seem very persuasive to me if not always the conclusions he draws from them.    

I want to contrast Narnia with Pullman's His Dark Materials. I absolutely loved the series, and waited the five years until the last book with bated breath.  The Amber Spyglass which turned out to be nothing more than a refuatation of Christianity.  I felt like he was preaching to me, and there are rumors he trashed the first manuscript, so I can only wonder what the book's first form was.  Why use magic or talking polar bears to promote rationalism?  Is it because he thought children will read them along with Lewis and create a politically balanced genre.  

To a certain degree I am biased, I will admit, because I think Wolfe, Lewis, Chesterton, Tolkien ask serious questions that Gaiman, Pullman, and Mievelle do not, other "fantacists", I am excluding "science fiction", do not.  Questions of metaphysics, epistemology, semantics, what it means to be human, what it means to be a nonhuman person, the problem of technology and how to use it, etc.  Mieville, Gaiman, and Pullman seem to address these issues, but it does not seem to me as if their attempts are anything other than cursory.  Despite how "liberal" I may be or how "Christian" Lewis is, the fact remains I think he is a better thinker than the rest of them.  I feel that this writers who just so happen to be Christian make serious commitments to this questions which means trying to answer them honestly and to a certain degree means revealing in part some of their Christian beliefs.  With Mieville and Pullman it seems as if they are only trying to further political agendas primarily, the stories come second, and because they pretend to be good humanists, it's okay to indulge in the same "escapist" fantasy they attribute to Tolkien and Lewiss, very hypocritical.  Gaiman seems not to want to commite to anything, and to this day, I have no idea what Gaiman thinks about anything, except that he probably voted for Kerry.  I do not understand why they started attacking Lewiss simultaneously, was it jealousy, the impending Lord of the Rings moview, which I can't stand, or some weird statistical nodal point.  That they were trying to debunk Lewis or steal his "throne" is ridiculous.  There is nothing to debunk or steal. I dont believe science fiction and fantasy are secretly plagued by Christianity and a conservative political agenda, and I find that kind of thinking supercilious and dissapointing.

I am of course open to debate on this subject and will try not to snap. I haven't gotten a chance to read "the problem of susan yet" but I've read an essay Gaiman wrote on his feelings towards Lewiss before he wrote the story and it feels very much like it would be a piece of propaganda to me. I dont know how Gaiman can hate Lewis and like Michael Moorcock.  He just doesn't seem to have good taste.    

 p.s. I am writing from  hell, of course, so it should be perfectly obvious I am not a sheep in wolf's clothing.

p.p.s. if you are looking to avoid a heated debate on Tolkien and Lewis's "racial agenda", do notr ask me if I think Lord of the Rings or Narnia is about the crusades or the Moors.

p.p.p.s If Barliman does not deliver this, I will roast him.