Sep 17 2005 1:18PM
Further Up and Further In will enhance the Narnia's joy in reading it.
I wanted in writing Further Up and Further In to provide both novice and experienced readers something that will increase their enjoyment every time they come to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (or the movie made of it).
Further Up and Further In won't explore every possible detail you may want to know about Narnia because that is not its design, and, there is plenty to be discovered that this small volume could not possibly include. I had no incentive to provide encyclopedic coverage of each jot and tittle becauseother volumes already do that.
The truth is, literary encyclopedias provide a specific service and are useful particularly after we have put the book down. They represent an "outside-in" approach-forging facts and compiling connections exterior to the text and
using them to interpret and elucidate what you have already read long after you have left the intimate setting of the book itself.
They draw you naturally outside the world the tale has created; they occupy you with things and ideas and people the book points to and try to answer
nagging questions you may have. And then, at their best, they will send you back to the text for more interaction with Aslan and his creation. But at their
worst-and I am afraid this is what most encyclopedias do-they may take you
"further out and further away" and, in this case, force you to remain an
outsider to the continuing experience of Narnia. (One can become an "expert"
on Narnia, so to speak, without ever living there. What a pity!)
A large part of what makes Narnia terrific, engrossing, and lifechanging is its
ability not only to deliver a world that is strange and compelling but also to
make our own world strange and compelling as well. Its genius, if you will, is
its ability to make us long for a world like Aslan's and then to help us
discover in ours the evidence that Aslan has been here too and motivate us to
uncover the implications of that visit. A Narnian sojourn makes us dissatisfied
with our world for all the right reasons and then points us to a
pathway to our true home and our true identity. Indeed, that is what any
reading of The Chronicles ought to evince and maybe even what a book about
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe should do as well!
That indeed is my challenge in Further Up and Further In. I am attempting
what I call an "inside-out" approach, designed to increase your appreciation
for the strangeness and oddness of what is going on inside Aslan's story on
several levels while we are inside Narnia, not outside of it. I don't want you to
spend a minute more outside the text than you have to because our time in
Narnia is too precious to waste in search of external sources. The Chronicles
tell a simple story on the surface but one that is actually clever and complex
and thus one that repays many visits and rereadings. At the same time,
because of those very revisits, our experiences threaten to become
commonplace and ordinary.
My job is to help you keep coming back to Narnia and finding it as
exhilarating and as disarmingly fresh as the first time you visited it. A tall
order, yes, but one worth the risk. Fortunately, Lewis has written just the sort
of work that enables us to enjoy that freshness every time!
In the final analysis, Narnia is a "cosmos," an orderly, yet created world that
has a discernible beginning, middle, and end. Narnia's ordered existence is
willed-rather, sung-into being by Aslan. Under Aslan's rule, there is, if you
will, both a "natural order," and a "supernatural" or spiritual order. There is,
on the one hand, the day-to-day, the deeds, the thoughts, the outcomes
wrought by each individual; on the other hand, there is a meaning and an
impact beyond these deeds, thoughts, outcomes that point to Something
Else, and, what's more, to Someone Else. Here we discover that we are not our
own. Our lives rest in Another.
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