Feeds:Valentine's Day
"Waltzes are ever so nice," said Mrs. Maggs who had just returned and given MacPhee his slab of cake, "So old fashioned."
Strange to me it seems, to read, in a book I tend to think of as comically old-fashioned, the calling "old fashioned" of something. That I, perhaps, might also think waltzes "ever so nice" and "old fashioned" rather stresses this than diminishes it.
Many books from my childhood I will re-read and think I could not have understood them the first time around. I say 'think' rather than 'believe' because such a thing is typically unbelievable, which is the attitude that invariably asserts itself upon consideration of my childhood regard for the book in question. There are a few things I from time to time that I failed to realize -or at least remember the realization of- on my first readings: the politics throughout the latter part of Lord of the Rings, the sexual episode in Hero and the Crown. But I remember there being one book in particular I just could not fully wrap my head around; and rereading That Hideous Strength, I can see the cause. It's just such an adult novel. The first two novels are fantasy, and fantasy, being based on experiences one is not likely to have had, is far more accessible to children. Strength is about adult things, the kind of things of whick any explanation would be extremely long, fairly tedious, and still very confusing, but which most adult have experienced, the actual experiences typically being often fleeting and generally memorable, but not infrequently still very confusing. Things like relationships gone stale, careerism, and seeking independence through wrongdoing (though admittedly, this is one of the first thing children seem to discover on their way to adulthood). My difficulty, and much of my delight, in reading, is because this contrasts with my thinking of Lewis as a 'children's author'. A very good writer he is, in any case.
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