The Silver Chair (1953)

Even with the clouded mind I finished the book, I guessed that the knight was Rilian. It was just right there in front of your face if you don’t guess right. The Caspian in the real world was a twist I did not see coming. ( )

An interesting story ( )

I like Jack and I like this book, but I don’t have much to say about it. It’s very similar to the first three books, and especially to the first one, (gluttony goes with sloth), except that the girl is more prominent—and the girl is a character whose lore I am no expert in.

So I’ll just talk about Jack, for his crusty old Jesus and the sheer magic of it. I like what Jack represents enough that I am not sure that I am a liberal Christian at all, just a conservative one that’s moderately obsessed with racism and discrimination.

Conservative: Yes, racism, very unfortunate, it used to be practiced on one of the countries on the Continent….
Liberal Conservative: You’re embarrassing me. No, I think they put it in your roast beef; even the best minds and hearts seem to have it, and people didn’t used to even dream it was there….

But I’m not really a liberal without qualification, especially if that implies Ernest Renan and Vicky’s Krauts, you know. I’d read all the books if I could, but I try not to favor the intellectual ones too absolutely, because I know what lies can be in a book. More factoids, more illusions. Of course, I think books tend to militate against gluttony and sloth, held the right way—certainly one kind of sloth, the radio creed. But as something to sacrifice cows to, books aren’t so good.

(And if you were really that kind of liberal, you’d think that once everyone was a biologist, we’d do something other than engage in biological warfare. But what else is there for animal man to do, I wonder? Read the Bible, maybe?)

It’s not that Jack isn’t a little macho in his own bookish little way, but he hasn’t forgotten the magic, either. “Don’t let in the light! No large windows, darkness is essential! Windows make you weak, and I won’t let anyone inside! A man’s home is his fortress, and I am a man, and this is and must be, my dark, cold, damp fortress!”

But he amuses me, because he knows a giant isn’t just something that your nursemaid made up, too.

…. I would say that Jack has a very sympathetic ear for mental illness (madness)—maybe more so than me, for I have been mad, and every bit as mad as the world, and obviously more obviously so. Actually what made me more mad than you was that I tried to apply all my mad ideas consistently. But I was clearly ill. Still, sometimes we are all mad because the rest of us are too. And sometimes when you are not mad, *that* is when you are sure not to be rewarded (that much, if at all), and *that* is ill.

…. And I like how, the Knight (how Jack satirizes his own field of medieval romance) cannot “remember” (accept) the true self in the delusion, but once he comes to, he knows very well, what he has suffered.

A magical journey by two young children to rescue the king's son from the spell of the Winter Witch in the Underworld.