https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCipem2XoG4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMffwQPp2FM&t=1s
Many critics deem this to be Lewis's best novel. It isn't fair to judge a book I haven't read, but at the same time there's a reason I never read it. Watching the lecture is a nice of a cheating. Giving me insight as a substitute for reading the book. I think a lot of Lewis fans haven't read it because:
i) It isn't Christian. It's a reversion to Lewis's lifelong fascination with Greek mythology. So the pagan setting is off-putting, and unlike the Greco-pagan elements in The Chronicles of Narnia, this isn't diluted.
ii) The main characters are women, it's written from a female perspective (insofar as Lewis can get inside a woman's mind), and it seems to have a female slant in terms of all the psychologizing and relational dynamics. This may reflect the influence of his wife reading the drafts. He's not merely adopting a feminine voice or viewing but taking his clues from her critical feedback.
That's less appealing to the stereotypical male reader than some of his other fiction, with their more externalized focus on exploration and exotic landscape.
iii) Whether or not I read a fictional book depends on a snap judgment from reading a plot synopsis. If the plot doesn't interest me I don't read the book. Same thing with movies and TV dramas.
I've read the book [TWHF for short] twice. It really is his best fictional book. In my opinion only the ending was disappointing. But I suspect that's due to the constraints placed on Lewis due to his having to follow the actual myth. What's great about the book is how truly human and realistic the characters are.
ReplyDeleteI don't recommend young Christians reading it. Especially those who don't have some background in apologetics because it brings up issues of theology, theodicy, salvation and final judgment which it doesn't answer. They hang there in the air such that if you didn't know any better, you might wonder whether Lewis had abandoned the faith by the end of his life. Similar to how some wonder whether near the end of his life Boethius may have lost his Christian faith when they read his book The Consolation of Philosophy. But in both cases, I suspect it's the genre of the books that gives that false impression of apostasy. TWHF is partly about how non-Christian pagans in the dark may have tried to understand the ways of the gods prior to the dawning of the light of the Christian Revelation.
Though Lewis had addressed many of the topics in his previous apologetical books, someone ignorant of Christian apologetics might read TWHF and come away an atheist, or seriously doubting their Christian faith. I highly doubt that was Lewis' intention. By all the evidence I'm aware of, Lewis was strong in his faith in his latter years and to his dying day.
Some of the arguments and speculations in the book are similar to the kinds of objections made by simplistic internet and YouTube atheists. Atheists reading the book might actually feel embarrassed that their objections which they think are brilliant, insightful and novel/new were already openly expressed by a Christian apologist in one of his works of fiction.
I think seasoned Christian apologists might enjoy the book. As well as non-Christians who [not to deny Total Depravity] are, from a psychological point of view, "open" to the existential solutions of Christianity. I can imagine some teenagers reading the book, enjoying it, then finding out later that the author was a Christian apologist. Then, because of that, reading Lewis' apologetical books and eventually coming to faith in Christ. So, in a strange and ironic way, it might hurt the faith of a young Christian, yet pave the way to faith for a non-Christian.
BTW, I'm probably not the only one who sees similarities betweeen TWHF and The Horse and His Boy. If they enjoyed the latter, they might enjoy the former.
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