Backward Mutters

  • On adult fairy tales

    When a the movie is better than a book “This grew out of a conversation I had yesterday with a student over lunch. He was talking about why the books are nearly always better than the movies that are made based on them. I said that this is true, but…

  • Of dragons and stories

    “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” G.K. Chesteron

  • How can right belief be maintained…?

    Michael Ward on C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair: “How can right belief be maintained in a hostile environment? It is not through superior insight that the heroes win the day, but through corage, through sacrifice. Philosophizing and rhetoric cannot settle this dispute because the Witch’s logic is impeccable — only…

  • Of Magicians and Mad Scientists

    “The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavor are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of…

  • More Out There

    David Brooks in a 2008 Op Ed piece on our need for enchantment and the benefits of the ‘discarded image’. The medievals had a tremendous capacity for imagination and enchantment, and while nobody but the deepest romantic would want to go back to their way of thinking (let alone their…