On Pullman on Lewis

I wrote this response as part of a discussion on Phillip Pullman's essay (of sorts) about C.S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia. Enjoy…

I don’t see much of an argument in Pullman’s writing at all. A huge fraction of the essay is devoted to complaining that too many people like Lewis and Narnia too much. Fine, convince me that I shouldn’t; don’t just tell me not to.

Let’s enumerate Pullman’s actual criticisms of the Narnia story:

  1. Lewis “cheats”. I have a vague idea what Pullman may mean by that, but unless he gets a lot more specific it’s just name-calling. Stricken.
  2. Tolkien disliked Lewis’ “slapdash way with mythology” in the Narnia books. A completely out-of-context bit of hearsay, with no elaboration. Stricken.
  3. One John Goldthwaite had a number of bad things to say about the books. More hearsay, and I haven’t had the good fortune to encounter Goldthwaite’s work. Stricken.
  4. “To slaughter the lot of them, and then claim they’re better off, is not honest storytelling: it’s propaganda in the service of a life-hating ideology.” Even accepting that The Last Battle is not mere Discontinuity, I think this comment reflects more of Pullman’s virulent and aggressive atheism than it does of the actual situation.
  5. “Death is better than life; boys are better than girls; light-coloured people are better than dark-coloured people; and so on. There is no shortage of such nauseating drivel in Narnia, if you can face it.” I don’t think any of us found any of these things in the stories as we read them; in any case tossing off unsupported allegations of fatalism, sexism and racism in the course of a sentence is too sophomoric a ploy to deserve a response, especially followed with an immediate ad hominem attack.
  6. Some sort of attack on Jill and Eustace routing the bullies in The Silver Chair. Honestly, I don’t understand what Lewis is being accused of here, so I’ll let it slide. Anyone?
  7. "There is the colossal impertinence, to put it mildly, of hijacking the emotions that are evoked by the story of the Crucifixion and Resurrection in order to boost the reader’s concern about Aslan in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe.” To me, this seems to be such a gross misreading of what Lewis was doing that I must believe it to be deliberately dishonest. It seems to me that Lewis was telling the story of the Crucifixion and Resurrection in allegorical form not to “boost the reader’s concern about Aslan” but because the whole series is allegorical. In any case, again Mr. Atheism is undoubtedly offended by the gross display of Christianity here more than anywhere else in the book. So sorry for him.
  8. The Susan thing. This seems to me to be the only substantial allegation in the essay. It also seems that Mr. Pullman thought so, as he devoted two whole paragraphs to it, far more than he did to any of the throwaway points above.

Let us talk about Susan’s case, since it apparently need be reviewed again. Pullman’s amateur psychology aside, it is somewhat puzzling that Lewis would relegate Susan to a special outsider status in Heaven. (Condemned to Hell? I think that is left to the reader.) To me, the solution lies in the allegory. It would be important for Lewis in a story of this sort to show that no one, regardless of their special status, is granted Grace excepting by Faith. Perhaps the most powerful way he could choose to emphasize this Christian doctrine is the one he chooses; he exiles one of the Four Kings and Queens of Narnia, perhaps the most exalted beings in the history of that world, for her deficit. I read Susan’s exile as about the lesson. Maybe it’s a bit anvilicious, but it does get its job done.

In any case, I don’t really read The Last Battle anymore; I find it unpleasant for other reasons. But without it Narnia still stands in my mind as one of the great creations of fantasy.

Mr. Pullman’s, work, I fear, holds another place for me. His line about “the supernaturalism, the reactionary sneering, the misogyny, the racism, and the sheer dishonesty of his narrative method” reads to me better as a critique of his own work than of Mr. Lewis’s. As for Mr. Pullman’s vow to “still be arguing” in the future, he would be better served by presenting good solid intellectual arguments now, rather than the baseless and arrogant slander this essay mostly provides. My suspicion based on his previous work is that this is just the best he can write. (B)