Monday, March 31, 2008

Word Association

Recently, I've been reading CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, books I haven't read since I was around nine years old.

They've been a tad disappointing, if I'm honest, but I suppose I should have expected that, given that they were written for a young audience more than 50 years ago.

I've been reading a lot more since my transformation from car-bound commuting drone to train-bound commuting drone, and I now spend around an hour and a half each day immersed in a world of Fauns, Dufflepuds and Marshwiggles. (I think I should probably read War and Peace or something equally weighty once I've finished the Narnia series....)

Today, on my journey into Aberdeen, I reached chapter nine of The Silver Chair. And if any one passage summed up the differences in the use of language in literature from 50 years ago, it is the following excerpt detailing how a girl called Jane curried favour with the inhabitants of a household of giants:

"She made love to everyone - the grooms, the porters, the housemaids, the ladies-in-waiting and the elderly giant lords whose hunting days were past. She submitted to being kissed and pawed about by any number of giantesses."

Maybe it's my dirty mind, or maybe any other grown-up would think the same, but those two sentences sound more like the script for a Jenna Jameson* movie than a passage from one of the world's best-loved children's books.

Given that the books are a thinly-veiled allegory for Christian teachings, perhaps Clive Staples Lewis could have chosen his words slightly better.....

* Jenna Jameson is, I believe, the female star of many pornographic movies. Having never seen such a thing, I base this reference entirely on sources from the internet.

And that means Wikipedia, before any smart arses pipe up about my internet browsing habits.

1 comment:

BobG said...

Personally, I liked his space trilogy better.