Though I would have made it gender-inclusive:
“Khoomi’s theory was based on the good old Gnostic heresy, which tends to turn up all over the multiverse whenever men get up off their knees and start thinking for two minutes together, although the shock of sudden altitude tends to mean the thinking is a little whacked.” -Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
Since it seems I have generated only confusion in this post about possibilities and the actualization thereof, let me try making the same point using someone else’s words:
Will considered what to do. When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don’t take are snuffed out like candles, as if they’d never existed. At the moment all Will’s choices existed at once. But to keep them all in existence meant doing nothing. He had to choose, after all. (Pullman, Amber Spyglass, p. 12 in my copy)
And I would add that doing nothing would also have obliterated all of Will’s options just as surely as acting. Considering a day, or a lifetime, or the history of the universe as a whole, there are many possible days and lives, but only one of them will actually be lived. If I finish this entry and post it, I will have eliminated from possible existence all of the futures of the universe in which I did not finish it, and vise versa. And my real point was that there must be intrinsic value to lives and histories that are limited in this way since God bothered to create them, and we shouldn’t go through our lives trying to keep all our options open forever because it is neither possible (you don’t have to pick door 1 or door 2, but then you’ll die outside both of them) nor desirable.
Now does it make sense?
I didn’t read much as a kid. It never really occurred to me that reading could be fun until high school, so I kind of missed children’s literature, and generally have no idea what my friends are reminiscing about. I did read the Chronicles of Narnia in fourth or fifth grade, but other than that, I don’t really remember many books written (or at least marketed) to proto-humans that I didn’t associate with school. And since I hated school until about college, that pretty much precluded any chance of anything I read being enjoyable until that association was broken. So after I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows a couple weeks ago, and still in a fantasy sort of mood, I took the advice of some of those who had less deprived childhoods than I and picked up the first book of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. I’m in the bad habit of reading several books at a time, so I only finished it this morning. I went to Border’s this afternoon to get the second book, and I was very irritated to note that it wasn’t in the Sci-fi/fantasy section, which is where I’d found it in the Barnes and Noble in Ft. Worth. So I tried the literature section (side note: I’m not sure what they think the books are that aren’t in the literature section), and had no luck there either. It was only then that it occurred to me that it might be in the children’s section.
To my very great annoyance, not only did I have to go to the children’s section to get the book I wanted, but the only copy they had was in this hideously pastel cover that just screams CHILDREN’S BOOK to anyone who might happen to catch it in their gaze (Laura, you’re going to accuse me of exaggerating if you come over and see it on my coffee table). The cover of my copy of the first book at least had the decency to look like most paperback sci-fi/fantasy books (which are bad enough, but at least they’re cheap).
Now, the point of this entry (if there is one). I am unable to determine what makes some books (e.g. His Dark Materials, or the later Harry Potter books) “children’s literature,” and others simply “literature” (or “sci-fi/fantasy”)? Or perhaps more broadly, why is fantasy associated with children’s literature? A couple posts ago, I referred the reader to Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories,” in which he makes the point (better than I will here) that there is no logical connection between fantasy and children. The Hobbit is a children’s book; Tolkien wrote is as such (though I seem to recall reading somewhere that he later wished he hadn’t). Its famous sequel is not. So what’s the difference?
I suppose that simplicity of language is characteristic of children’s literature (though The Hobbit is perhaps only such in comparison with LOTR), but I don’t think that Pullman’s language is all that simplistic. A preference for “lighter” themes and topics seems likely, in which case Pullman half-qualifies. Perhaps most importantly, the protagonist (or the favored vantage point in the book) is usually a child or youth, in which case Lyra qualifies but Bilbo misses the cut.
I don’t know; I never read children’s books. What do my readers think (all two or three of you)? Is the Pullman trilogy children’s literature, and if so, is it for any reason more intrinsic to the novels than marketing?
Update: From glancing at Wikipedia, it seems that what I have an American version of The Subtle Knife, whereas I have the British cover of The Golden Compass, but with the American title (odd, given that I bought it in Texas). More importantly, the wikipedia article has a quote from the author that totally vindicates my admittedly-nebulous point:
If I think about the audience I’d like to have, I don’t think about a particular age group, or a particular gender, or a particular class or ethnic group or anything specific at all. … I’d like to think that I’m telling the sort of story that holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner, in the old phrase of Sir Philip Sidney. Everyone is welcome, and no one is shut out, and I hope each reader will find a tale worth spending time with.
THE PULLEY.
WHEN God at first made man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by ;
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can :
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.
So strength first made a way ;
Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure :
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone, of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottome lay.
For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewell also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts in stead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature :
So both should losers be.
Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlesnesse :
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least,
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse
May tosse him to my breast.
“…your prison is walkin’ through this world all alone.”
-Eagles, “Desperado”
When you first wake up in the morning, there are infinite possibilities for the day. As soon as you open your eyes, however, the possibilities become limited. If you get out of bed on one side, you do not get out on the other. Whatever could have happened because of the subtle differences that might have made on a quantum level will never be realized. If you have a cup of coffee, then you will not drink tea, unless you drink both, in which case you will not be able to have only one. Every time one possibility is actualized, a multitude of others is eliminated. And so on, throughout your day. Every choice you make closes off God knows how many you might have made, and however many you might then have made based on those outcomes. And finally, when you go to bed, the day that began as an infinity of infinities of possibilities has become a single actuality, and all the others are lost forever. I cannot help but feel a twinge of regret for them, but then I chuckle. How very odd that the Creator, whose glory is limitless, opted for this universe of progressively decaying potentiality. And, though God be without limitation, I wonder whether God’s beatitude might not consist limitlessness after all.
I happened to find myself in a waiting room earlier this week, and I thought I’d pass some of the time by glancing through last week’s TIME. The article I read was a very short comment on Harry Potter by someone named Lev Grossman entitled “Who Dies in Harry Potter? God,” which claims that the universe presented in HP is godless and religionless. The fact that the most popular imaginative work of the generation has nothing to do with religion, unlike Narnia and Lord of the Rings, marks some sort of seismic cultural shift. Here’s the key paragraph:
What does Harry have instead of God? Rowling’s answer, at once glib and profound, is that Harry’s power comes from love. This charming notion represents a cultural sea change. In the new millennium, magic comes not from God or nature or anything grander or more mystical than a mere human emotion. In choosing Rowling as the reigning dreamer of our era, we have chosen a writer who dreams of a secular, bureaucratized, all-too-human sorcery, in which psychology and technology have superseded the sacred.
This is quite possibly the stupidest statement I have heard or read in months. It is true, of course, that Rowling’s fictional story does not involve any characters who are explicitly religious, though in the seventh book, we do catch the end of a Christmas Eve service and read the scriptural epitaphs on gravestones. God is neither seen nor invoked, there are no lions or wizards who rise from the dead, and unlike Tolkien and Lewis, Rowling does not treat us to a cosmogony of her fictional universe. So on account of this, God is dead in Harry Potter?
Look again at the paragraph I have quoted. God is supposedly replaced by love. Now go read 1 John 4:8. I’ve been harping on this point so much for the past several months that my friends are probably all sick of it by now, but apparently this reviewer was too busy reading about Narnia and Middle Earth to have read in the Bible that God is love. At least for the moment, I happen to buy into Augustine’s rather bold reading of that verse in book VIII of The Trinity (which you should certainly read if you haven’t, as soon as you’re done with Deathly Hallows). I certainly wouldn’t be happy with a church service that praised love but never explicitly mentioned God (for a chuckle or an eyeroll, check out the UU hymnal’s version of “What Wondrous Love Is This,” but bear in mind that it doesn’t claim to be Christian). But these novels are not designed for liturgical use (though I can come up with plenty of ways to use to them).
You don’t have to buy into Tillich’s notion of culture as the form of religion and religion the content of culture to see that Harry Potter conveys profound theological insight. You can be an orthodox grouch like I am Tuesdays and Thursdays and expect to find imaginative literature (Christian, secular, or from another religion) to contain insights that are quite consonant with Christianity, or even the same ones you find in the gospel. For theory as to why, you could go read Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories,” published most recently in The Tolkien Reader (which actually doesn’t make the point all that well. If you don’t already own the book, just read the poem “Mythopoeia” instead. Different point, but related).
For a more theological account, you might consider the activity of the Word, “the true light that enlightens everyone” (John 1:9). All truth stemming from the same source, it is to be expected that the best novels will point to the same truths fully revealed in Christ, whether a lion rises from the dead or not. They may even do a much better job of it than any number of Christian sermons. When I see someone reading Harry Potter, the last thing I worry about is “a secular, bureaucratized, all-too-human sorcery, in which psychology and technology have superseded the sacred” (is this idiot even talking about the same book?). Rather, I think to myself what Jesus once said to a scribe after a conversation about love: “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:34). And if this idiot thinks that love is “nothing grander or more mystical than a mere human emotion,” he should probably go and read that verse and the six before it.
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