<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt">I'm one who felt betrayed by /TLtW&tW/, and as David Stockhoff said, timing was important. I read all the Narnia books eagerly when I was seven. When I was maybe 10 or 12, I learned the story of Jesus' redemptive sacrifice, and at some point I connected that with Aslan (and the end of /TVotDT/). So Lewis had tried to trick me! These books I was attached to were a covert attempt to advertise that religion that besieged me and my family, that continually tried to blandish and harangue and peer-press and maybe, under the surface, even threaten me into submission. It was an unpleasant moment.<br><br>(This was in the early or mid '70s, by the way, a time when American Christians may have felt equally besieged.)<br><br>It was just a moment, though. I soon learned
to see Christianity in fiction as an appealing fantasy, and I could enjoy it in the Narnia books and the Space Trilogy and many other books. In /Crime and Punishment/ and /War and Peace/ I may have sighed "This again" when I got to the Christian message, but no more than that. Otherwise it was in the same category as the Greek and Norse myths that I read when I was little, or Robertson Davies's Jungianism and Ursula Le Guin's attempt at an indigenous belief system in /Always Coming Home/.<br><br>I went through a Rand phase around my last year or two of high school. I don't mind preaching if it's done in a way I can enjoy.<br><div><br>Jerry Friedman<br></div><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> John Watkins
<john.watkins04@gmail.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> The Urth Mailing List <urth@lists.urth.net><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Sat, June 5, 2010 6:01:27 PM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: (urth) Religious writers and audiences<br></font><br>
<div>Do people feel similarly betrayed by Doestoevsky?</div>
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<div>Again, I find it bizarre. I can't imagine thinking to myself "How dare Author X have different views than me!" I can imagine thinking "Well, I don't choose to spend time on this," but not a sense of betrayal per se.<br>
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<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:58 PM, David Stockhoff <span dir="ltr"><<a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:dstockhoff@verizon.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:dstockhoff@verizon.net">dstockhoff@verizon.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote">The comparison is a personally interesting one. Perhaps the difference is largely one of timing. I too felt somewhat betrayed by Lewis; I encountered Narnia not long after Middle-Earth, around second and third grade. <br>
Wolfe I discovered much later, and while I'm still waiting for the Great Atheist Novel, I don't feel betrayed at all. And Rand was clearly insane from the beginning.<br><br>------------------------------<br><br>Message: 4<br>
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2010 16:53:02 -0400
<div class="im"><br>From: John Watkins <<a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:john.watkins04@gmail.com" target="_blank" href="mailto:john.watkins04@gmail.com">john.watkins04@gmail.com</a>><br>To: The Urth Mailing List <<a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net">urth@lists.urth.net</a>><br>
</div>Subject: Re: (urth) Religious writers and audiences<br>Message-ID:<br> <<a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:AANLkTinjYKw22zcNqAXleQGE49YCYlD9jhZRTChMEgF5@mail.gmail.com" target="_blank" href="mailto:AANLkTinjYKw22zcNqAXleQGE49YCYlD9jhZRTChMEgF5@mail.gmail.com">AANLkTinjYKw22zcNqAXleQGE49YCYlD9jhZRTChMEgF5@mail.gmail.com</a>><br>
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<div class="im"><br><br>Personally I find the "betrayal" narrative bizarre whenever I hear it.<br>Secular writers and religious writers alike "color" their fiction to reflect<br>their political, moral and/or metaphyiscal beliefs, yet one very rarely<br>
encounters this "betrayal" storyline outside of discussion of certain<br>Christian genre writers. I guess in the right-wing fringe media we hear<br>about evil homosexual/pagan agendas hidden in works, but no one takes that<br>
stuff seriously.<br><br>I might ascribe this to the generally liberal or progressive attitudes of<br>most literary critics, academics, and, plausibly, much of the educated<br>reading class in the United States. But that doesn't really wash in my<br>
experience. I know countless people, many of liberal predispositions, who<br>have read and allegedly enjoyed The Fountainhead--and Rand is far preachier<br>than Lewis, Wolfe, or even Card. And Neil Gaiman has written about his<br>
feelings of betrayal as to Lewis's religiousity, but never expressed similar<br>feelings toward, for example, Kipling's imperialism.<br><br>I think the problem (if there is a unique problem here and not just soft<br>
bigotry against religion in general or a particular religion) must be the<br>perceived deception. The idea that Lewis might be planting ideas and images<br>surreptiously in one's head that would act to soften one's views towards<br>
traditional Christianity can be conceived of nefariously.<br><br></div>
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