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Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 01:57:06 -0700
To: classics@u.washington.edu
From: Jack Kolb <kolb@ucla.edu>
Subject: Re: Harry Potter: Editors or Marketing Assistants?
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>>> Well, frankly, I think they're better than Lewis, whose Narnia gets more
>>> and more Christianized (and that's a pretty venerable commodity).  

At one point I had a full Narnia first edition set, my parents having
bought them, after I read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and asked
for everything after published, when we lived in England (1955-56).  Only
two volumes remain; we don't know (both my father and I are book
collectors) what happened to the others.  Sigh.

Forgive a little nostalgia:  I continue to love the Narnia series NOT just
for its fiscal value {grin}.  They too create an alternative
fully-dimensional world, and at first seeming good/evil values.  I guess I
reacted a bit when I grew older--I've always been a skeptic--and found a
few of Lewis' obviously high church doctrines (Susan was to be
excluded--rather than the sinner redeemed Edmund--because she was tainted
too much by the materialist world) objectionable.  Why shouldn't she be
saved too?  And though the enhanced Narnia was quite wonderful, would I
want to live in it FOREVER?  Even at age 11, I understood that immensity of
time, and had suggested to me what I then couldn't understand, that the
universe began at some "time."  In other words, I'd begun to read
science-fiction, in preference to the wonders of dogmatic fantasy.  I
lost--temporarily, I hope--an appreciation of literary quality in the midst
of a wider breadth of imagination.  

Jack Kolb
Dept. of English, UCLA
kolb@ucla.edu


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