This month, Toby discusses The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
HarperCollins ISBN 0006727735 |
|
|
C.S.Lewis got it wrong.
In the Puffin editions, which were the ones I first read, there occurs the following paragraph:
All seven stories of Narnia are published by Puffin,
and the correct reading order is:
THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW
THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
THE HORSE AND HIS BOY
PRINCE CASPIAN
THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER
THE SILVER CHAIR
THE LAST BATTLE
With a change of publishers, his dictum has been mitigated. It, nowadays, reads as follows: ‘THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA / are all available from Collins / In the reading order / recommended by C.S.Lewis’.
Most people would assume that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, not The Magician’s Nephew, comes first - and they would be right. It was the first of the series to be published, in 1950; shortly followed by Prince Caspian (1951 - the masterpiece), The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952 - more satiric), The Silver Chair (1953 - more allegorical). And this, I’d argue, is still the best order in which to read them - at least for the first time. Lewis took an excursion with The Horse and His Boy (1954 - very Arabian Nights) and wrote a prequel in The Magician’s Nephew (1955 - very charming). I would put these aside until I had got as far as The Silver Chair - then I would read them both, and finish with The Last Battle (1956 - further up and further in).
The thrill of these words ‘They say Aslan is on the move. Perhaps he has already landed...’ surely comes from not having met Aslan before, face-to-face. The Magician’s Nephew stands, in relation to the other Chronicles, as a creation myth. It is backstory, and one only appreciates it after one has come to care about the world - Narnia - that has been brought into being. It is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe which makes one care.
Similarly, The Horse and His Boy is a deviation from the main line of the story, which is that of Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, the four children who find their way through the wardrobe into the already fallen kingdom, and whose task it is - along with their followers - to help redeem it.
I was in Melbourne recently, for the 2002 Writers’ Festival, and one of the events I took part in was a discussion of Cult Books. The question of children’s books came up. How could they be said to be cult?
A recent poll of readers, both adult and children, put The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at number 8 in an all-time Top 100. (Potter took up the top three slots, followed by the Famous Five, Winnie the Pooh, Lord of the Rings and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.) Something so popular, so widely known, surely isn’t cult?
During the Melbourne discussion, some interesting ideas were thrown around. I’d kicked off by giving the definition: ‘Cult books are books overvalued by a tiny minority because undervalued by the vast majority.’ But another definition slowly began to form itself: ‘Cult books are books of becoming.’
The way I picture readers of cult books is the way I remember myself, as a young reader. I was reading in two directions: away from myself (who I was, where I lived), towards something else (who I wanted to be, where I wanted to live). Reading, for me, as it is for most children, was becoming.
There is also a sense in which the isolation of a reader, their feeling that the only thing which connects them to their own future is this book that they hold in their hands - there is a sense in which that is an even truer definition of cult: a book of necessary becoming.
Because these books palliate the reader’s isolation, by showing that there are other people out there who are interested in the same things - interested in them enough to write about them, make them into books, put them in shops.
Eventually, hopefully, the young reader finds their way out of their solitary becoming and into a community of readers, who have in common their own past solitudes.
There is a loss here, and it’s tempting to call it innocence; one will never again read in such an enraptured, desperate way. But similarly, one will never read so gullibly, so ignorantly - and if The Chronicles of Narnia are about anything, it is the necessity of growing up, of coming to terms with the sins of one’s ignorant innocence.
|
Author interviews
