Earlier this week, while I was buried in work, Tobias Buckell pointed to a post at the Guardian blog in which China Mieville calls for more kid-lit agitprop. It's a nice example of why I have a hard time with Mieville. Or, quoting Toby because he puts it more concisely:
I'm left of two minds. One, I'd hate to see it become a war zone.
On the other hand, how cool was Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials?
The answer is: "For the first two books, very. The third book, not so much."
The Golden Compass is a wonderful piece of work-- richly detailed, deeply imaginative, full of lovely images (I particularly liked the armored bears). There's an anti-clerical message there, to be sure, but what stands out the most is the story.
The third book, on the other hand, is completely overwhelmed by Message, and as a result just isn't anywhere near as good a book. The plot gets buried in polemic, the rich and three-dimensional world of the first book flattens into a background for a hectoring morality play, and he even cheats the reader of a satisfying resolution to the main character arcs for reasons that seem to have more to do with making a Point of some sort than anything the grows naturally out of the story itself.
It's tremendously disappointing, precisely because it's polemical. Or, rather, because it's ham-handedly polemical.
Somewhat ironically, the problem with His Dark Materials more or less exactly parallels the problem with The Chronicles of Narnia, which he hates with the white-hot passion of a thousand burning suns. Both authors managed to write series that allegorize their preferred points of view, and both are good for a while (Pullman for two books, Lewis for five). Neither can abide the thought that somebody might miss the point, though, so in the final volumes, they drive their point home with a sledgehammer, and wreck everything in the process.
The Jesus stuff in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is obvious enough if you look for it, but if you're not looking, you can perfectly well read it as a straight adventure story (I know, because I did). The next couple of books likewise have a number of strongly Christian themes, but again, you can skip past that, and enjoy them just for the story (my personal favorite was Prince Caspian, as I recall).
It's kind of hard to miss the Christian allegory in The Magician's Nephew, though. But just in case you were sufficiently dense or stubborn to manage it, Lewis rounds things out with The Last Battle, which is sort of Left Behind with talking animals. And to round it out, there's the Problem of Susan.
It's completely ham-handed, and retroactively wrecks the other books. In fact, I think the reason I wound up liking Prince Caspian the best is that it's the book that's hardest to find obtrusive Jesus stuff in-- some of the others have stronger stories, but after reading the final two books, the Christian content is distractingly obvious.
The only other book Mieville cites approvingly that I've actually read is The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, and again, the agitprop content works to the detriment of the book. I'll admit that I remember it more clearly than most other Dr. Seuss books, but it's not in a good way. It's hard to escape the knowledge that this book is Making a Point, and that sucks some of the fun out of it. All of Seuss's books have points to make, of course, but The Lorax is much more didactic about it than most, and that hurts the book. It's not one I remember all that fondly.
Of course, it's probably not a surprise that I don't see eye to eye with Mieville on the question of polemical books for kids, given that I don't agree with him about polemical books for adults. I struggled to make it through the first half of Perdido Street Station, and then gave up because he was so obviously working hard to make everything as unpleasant as possible, and I have better things to do with my time. I thought he said some remarkably fatuous things about art in general when I saw him at Readercon, too, so I suspect there's just not going to be much overlap between our tastes in literature.
It's a pity, though-- I sort of like the idea of one of the conceits of his own polemical kids' book (Un Lun Dun, available now at reputable booksellers). I suspect that his general approach will ruin it for me, though, so I'm unlikely to read it.
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It's just like William Horwood's stuff. The first, Duncton Wood, was fun to read until the last few pages when it becomes too obviously Jesusy. Other books are vomit-inducing in their explicit Christianity.
Well, sure, they're ham-handedly polemical FOR AN ADULT. Kids are less sensitive to subtlety (I never noticed the allegory in any of Lewis' books, for instance), and need things explicitly spelled out for them. Pro-atheist propaganda fiction for kids is a good thing, I say, even if some adults find it too strident.
Dear Mieville, the same message applies to you as to right wing idiots: If your message is so great, you don't need propaganda, now do you?
Mieville is in the list of authors so damned obnoxious I won't bother to read their stuff, along with people like Stirling and Ringo. It doesn't hurt that Mieville's stuff is grating obnoxious in primary text, either.
"It's just like William Horwood's stuff. The first, Duncton Wood, was fun to read until the last few pages when it becomes too obviously Jesusy. Other books are vomit-inducing in their explicit Christianity."
Which is kinda ironic, given that, if I recall correctly [1], in the Afterword to the third, most explicitly Christian book, he notes that he self-identifies as a Buddhist.
[1] It's been well-nigh on a decade since I read them...