Editorial: I Don’t Want This Pullman to be MY Conductor

Here’s an editorial that columnist Joseph Ravitts sent to me a while back. I decided that now was as good a time as any to post it! Here, he delves into C.S. Lewis’ writing of Narnia and Philip Pullman’s criticisms of the works. MAJOR SPOILER WARNING, DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU’VE READ ALL OF THE CHRONICLES

-Paul Martin

I Don’t Want This Pullman to be _MY_ Conductor
By Joseph Ravitts

Join me in a preliminary scenario. Suppose that you want to write some Christian fantasy novels–but you are keenly aware of how many God-haters are hovering over the book review pages, waiting eagerly for any opportunity to accuse Christians of racism and fascism.

So you take some preventive measures. In your first novel, you make the villain fair-skinned and fair-haired. At the same time, you populate the world of your story with such a variety of intelligent beings as to make it clear that anyone living there would have to be able to tolerate considerable diversity. Then you go farther: in the _second_ book, you design your bad guys unmistakably on the model of Western civilization, even more specifically Anglo-American civilization, making them embody all the worst qualities of the West. Only after these books have been published do you create some other human evildoers who are described as having darker skin, and whose culture is clearly based on a mix of pagan and Islamic societies. Even then, in both of the two books that feature this non-Western-type nation, you make sure to include _sympathetic_ characters who belong to the quasi-Middle-Eastern ethnic group.

That should be enough to safeguard you against critics claiming that you preach an automatic moral superiority on the part of white people just because they’re white.

It _should_ be–but it isn’t, if you’re C.S. Lewis. Everything I’ve described is exactly what Mr. Lewis DID DO in writing his Narnian tales, except that in the early 1950’s he was unaware of any need to go so far to avoid being called a bigot. He didn’t have to be aware of such a need to take the course of action I’ve described, because he just wrote what came naturally for him. And what came naturally for him DID contain the above-indicated counterbalances against white supremacism…because, well duh, Mr. Lewis was NOT a bigot. But mere facts like this never stopped a dishonest man from flinging the tedious false accusation.

The dishonest man in question is named Philip Pullman; and– like Michael Moorcock and James Blish before him, he is an atheist who writes fantasy for the grimly determined purpose of persuading readers to reject and ridicule God. Before discussing Pullman’s agenda-driven fantasies, let us examine an article he wrote concerning the centennial of C.S. Lewis’ birth. Published in 1998 in the British periodical “The Guardian,” the essay is titled “The Dark Side Of Narnia.”

Pullman opens with lines which startlingly remind me of the sour envy so often encountered in high schools. A weak, skinny boy envies the strong, athletic boy; a slow-witted boy envies the straight-A student; and the envious ones talk bitterly about how undeserved is all the favorable attention enjoyed by those whom they envy. (I’m also reminded of one of Marie Renault’s historical novels, in which a character observes that men who possess wisdom and insight are treated “as if they had gotten them by theft.”) Pullman complains bitterly about the amount of attention given in Britain to the celebration of Mr. Lewis’ birthday; then, having done so, he tries to make it look as if he has a more valid reason for his resentment than selfish envy:

The interesting question is why. What is there in this tweedy medievalist that attracts such devoted (and growing) attention, not only to the works but to the life? Acolytes know all the facts: how he and his brother Warnie made up stories during their Ulster boyhood; how he promised a soldier friend in the First World War trenches that he’d look after the friend’s mother, and maintained a curious relationship with her for years thereafter; how as an unbeliever he wrestled with belief and gave in one famous night after a long conversation with his friends Hugo Dyson and J R R Tolkien, coming to the conclusion that the story of the Gospels was a myth like those he already cherished, ‘but one with this tremendous difference, that it really happened;’ how he went on to write all the books, and how late in life he married Joy Gresham, who soon afterwards died.

Note his use of the word “acolytes” to identify Lewis’ fans; for a fanatical atheist to use this term is to accuse Lewis’ fans of being blind and slavish in their admiration, stubbornly unwilling to see the gross faults which Pullman insists were there. I don’t know if Pullman considers Lewis’ charitable donations to be among the Oxfordian’s crimes; I do know that Lewis gave away most of the money earned by his books, and did so without blowing the trumpet for himself. I wonder how much of Pullman’s writing income goes to charity?

But to go on with another portion of Pullman’s article:

But there is no doubt in the public mind that what matters is the Narnia cycle, and that is where the puzzle comes, because there is no doubt in my mind that it is one of the most ugly and poisonous things I’ve ever read.

Why the Narnia books are popular with children is not difficult to see. In a superficial and bustling way, Lewis could tell a story, and when he cheats, as he frequently does, the momentum carries you over the bumps and the potholes. But there have always been adults who suspected what he was up to. His friend Tolkien took a dim view of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, particularly disliking Lewis’s slapdash way with mythology: ‘It really won’t do, you know!’ And the American critic John Goldthwaite, in his powerful and original study of children’s literature “The Natural History Of Make-Believe” (OUP, 1996), lays bare the misogyny, the racism, the sado-masochistic relish for violence that permeates the whole cycle.

I haven’t seen Goldthwaite’s work; but right here, I’m seeing Pullman’s shameless use of any weapon he can improvise. Tolkien was indeed obsessive with consistency in details; but frankly, great as Tolkien’s own epic is, it NEVER DID benefit me spiritually to anything like the degree the Chronicles of Narnia have done. If only Tolkien had understood better, Lewis’ approach was not so slapdash–because the world in which Narnia exists DIDN’T come about by millenia of historical processes; Aslan purposely created it to contain a mixture of beings reflecting multiple human myths, the better to edify arriving humans by the variety of intelligent beings to be encountered.

It so happens that a number of non-Christian fantasy stories, such as the “Riverworld” series and the “Heroes In Hell” series, also toss together whatever oddly-mixed combination of characters the author feels like tossing together; but I’ll wager that Pullman feels no bitterness against them.

Anyway, didn’t I tell you that nothing would protect Lewis from being accused of racism by those who hate his message? As for misogyny, it’s true that Lewis did not consider Xena the Warrior Princess to be what most women could and should be; but there _have_ been a few other men who also didn’t think Xena was the pattern real-world women could expect to fit into, and yet who did not therefore despise women.

The bit about “sado-masochism” is perhaps even more absurd. Just how many fantasies written for audiences over the age of three DON’T show some conflict or pain? And Lewis–as Pullman perfectly well knows–put far LESS graphic description of violence into his narratives than many other fantasy authors.

Lewis himself remarked in a nonfiction piece, “Don’t they know that, bomb or no bomb, all men die?” Even if no one ever fought anyone else, we would still have to leave this world sooner or later. But Pullman, as this next portion shows, hates Lewis for the terrible offense of believing in something _after_ death…

One of the most vile moments in the whole of children’s literature, to my mind, occurs at the end of “The Last Battle,” when Aslan reveals to the children that “The term is over: the holidays have begun” because “There was a real railway accident. Your father and mother and all of you are – as you used to call it in the Shadowlands – dead.” To solve a narrative problem by killing one of your characters is something many authors have done at one time or another. 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. But that’s par for the course. Death is better than life; boys are better than girls; light-coloured people are better than dark-coloured people; and so on.

So Christianity is a “life-hating ideology,” because it believes in life continuing beyond death instead of being absolutely cut off as soon as the earthly body perishes. By Pullman’s own reasoning, if I hire you for a permanent job instead of hiring you for only one day and then firing you, this means I have an employment-hating ideology. But perhaps Pullman is imagining that Lewis’ heroes would have lived on forever IN EARTHLY LIFE if their train hadn’t crashed. Some such nonsense must be in his mind for him to assert that an offer of endless and joyous life in Heaven constitutes a belief that death is better than life. (Note also that Scripture says death, not life, is the last enemy which will be destroyed.) Meanwhile, notice that he adds a repetition of his racism and sexism charges; repetition, after all, is a beloved tactic for the propagandist in the service of a Heaven-hating ideology. Atheists have their own litany. Pullman goes on–

There is no shortage of such nauseating drivel in Narnia, if you can face it.

There is the loathsome glee with which the children from the co-educational school are routed, in “The Silver Chair”…

But Pullman seems to have been untroubled by the loathsome glee with which those bullies had enjoyed tormenting smaller children with impunity until finally receiving a hugely-deserved yet non-lethal comeuppance. I don’t think Pullman wants you to think about a real- world FACT which HE KNOWS to be true: the fact that evil conduct by schoolchildren HAS increased as the Experiment House approach has grown more commonplace. Note further how Pullman implies that Lewis regarded Experiment House to be bad _because_ it was co-educational; but Lewis made it _very_ clear that what made it bad was the refusal to hold children accountable for bad behavior. Pullman himself knows this; and he also knows that, if it were up to him to stamp out the racism he professes to hate, he would need to hold children accountable for any intentionally racist actions or they’d never learn better.

He still isn’t finished shooting himself in the foot…

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.”

And in The Last Battle, notoriously, there’s the turning away of Susan from the Stable (which stands for salvation)…

Since Aslan is supposed to BE Jesus Himself, there’s nothing impertinent about guessing that He might extend His sacrificial act into another world as depicted. And Susan was NOT “turned away” from the Stable, because she wasn’t AT the Stable TO be turned away. She had not gone with her siblings and Eustace and Jill on the train, so she was still in England with her ultimate destiny not yet finalized. Lewis did not rebuke Susan for wanting to be an adult; she had BEEN an adult in Narnia. Her sin was in desiring a shallow, materialistic VERSION OF maturity. To argue that Lewis despised adulthood per se is to argue that Lewis considered all the brave soldiers whom he admired from his war experience to be childish.

I’m near the gagging point on this dish of “bricks and centipedes” being served up by a man who so obviously has a crude ego-based envy of Lewis. But we’re almost finished. Here’s Pullman’s grand conclusion:

I haven’t the slightest doubt that the man will be sainted in due course: the legend is too potent. However, when that happens, those of us who detest the supernaturalism, the reactionary sneering, the misogyny, the racism, and the sheer dishonesty of his narrative method will still be arguing against him.

Goodness, how awful for a fantasy writer to like supernaturalism! But seriously, folks, I’ve already shown you through Pullman’s own words just where the sheer dishonesty is to be found.

Pullman reportedly will soon have his big chance to get revenge on Lewis for Lewis’ unforgivable crime of being more popular than Pullman. That is, New Line Cinema (too bad that the company which brought “The Lord of the Rings” to the screen should turn to this) will reportedly make one or more movies of Pullman’s anti-God fantasy stories. And I mean “anti-God” most literally, since in his books the specific purpose of the good guys is to get rid of “the Authority.” When the time comes for marketing, I expect to see a particularly sheer bit of sheer dishonesty: advertisements which will say “If you liked the Chronicles of Narnia, you’ll love this!”–trying to sucker CHRISTIAN families into spending money on a project whose only aim (besides making money, and puffing up a certain author’s vanity) is to ridicule and vilify Christ and Christianity.

G.K. Chesterton wrote about unbelievers whose hate for the truth was so frantic that “They smashed their own tools trying to smash [the Christian faith]; they burned their own corn trying to set it ablaze.” Philip Pullman and his following don’t have to look as far away as Narnia to see a dark side; it’s as close as their own hatred.

Yours in Christ,

Joseph R. Ravitts