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The Magician's Book
A recent MR request asked me which book I wished I had written and now I have a recent answer: Laura Miller's The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia. And I'm not even a big Narnia fan (this review aside). Most of all this is a book about what it means to love another book and how deep such a love can run. It also covers the gap between children and adults, how storytelling works, what theology means in art, not to mention it gives an excellent portrait of Tolkien. Every paragraph of this book offers something of value -- how many books can claim that? Bravo, and again you needn't love or even know much about C.S. Lewis.
I'll buy Laura Miller's next book, sight unseen, no matter what the topic.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 10, 2009 at 06:19 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
Testing comments...
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Jan 10, 2009 7:29:11 AM
Thanks for answering my request!
Posted by: Diogo at Jan 10, 2009 8:04:58 AM
okay, cowen: i'll pick this one up...
Posted by: raft at Jan 10, 2009 9:26:29 AM
It's the 4th book I've read covering the fantasy genre in general and C.S. Lewis at least in passing. Quite frankly, I was disappointed and even a bit depressed by the book. I certainly would not recommend anyone waste the money or time. Buy "The Natural History of Make-Believe" instead.
The whole book is very tiring -- the author clearly has some "issues" with Lewis and Christians in general, but she cannot decide whether to come right out and criticize, or laughingly pretend that she's beyond that. She alternates between transparent attempts to show that she is in touch with her previous Catholic values, and passive-aggressive bitterness about how she was somehow damaged by them. She comes across as very schizophrenic, and its exhausting. It's like the woman at the bar who cannot stop talking about how she was hurt in the past while trying to hit on you at the same time -- emotionally draining.
At least "Natural History of Make-Believe" is very direct in its criticisms of Lewis and Christians. And it covers the whole genre, including many other authors, and a more complete narrative.
Posted by: Joshua Allen at Jan 10, 2009 1:12:35 PM
Laura Miller protests too much in this book.
She is right that Christianity is "terrifying." But not in the way she means it.
As Tolkien said, "I am a Roman Catholic. I do not expect history to be anything but a long defeat."
Laura Miller is glad to be off that losing track and among the crowd that expects history to be a long victory.
So far, my bets are with Tolkien.
Posted by: at Jan 10, 2009 1:14:52 PM
I read anything Laura Miller writes. Her reviews on Salon and NYT are consistently high quality. She's terrific.
Posted by: Ben Casnocha at Jan 10, 2009 8:08:16 PM
I went to a talk by Laura Miller about this book last month. To tell you the truth, I was pretty bored. She didn't go too much in-depth about it and stuck to over-arching statements that I could have gotten from the book's jacket or back cover. It's clear she knows a lot about literature, but after that talk I have no desire to read her book, even though I'm a big fan of the Narnia novels.
Posted by: RZ at Jan 13, 2009 3:40:52 PM
