{"id":63,"date":"2001-11-13T23:13:32","date_gmt":"2001-11-14T04:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=63"},"modified":"2001-11-13T23:13:32","modified_gmt":"2001-11-14T04:13:32","slug":"macdonald_georg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2001\/11\/macdonald_georg\/","title":{"rendered":"MacDonald, George: Gray Wolf, The"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

I did something fairly rare last night: I gave up on a book. I got George MacDonald’s collection The Gray Wolf<\/cite><\/strong> on a whim, because it was only two dollars and the title story was fairly well done, and because I’ve been reading more collections these days to keep from being sucked into a long story at bedtime. I should have paid more attention to the blurb on the back extolling C.S. Lewis’s admiration of MacDonald; I am not a religious person and do not particularly warm to religious stories (religious characters being a different matter). However, the title story was indisputably fantasy and not overtly religious, so I said why not.<\/p>\n

Well, while I haven’t read all of the stories in the collection, I wouldn’t be surprised if I picked the only one that was<\/em> both actually a fantasy and not overtly religious. Anyway, I tried one more story after reading this passage, but really I should have just stopped there:<\/p>\n

\n

And may it not be believed of many human beings, that, the great Husbandman having sown them like seeds in the soil of human affairs, there they lie buried a life long; and only after the upturning of the soil by death, reach a position in which the awakening of their aspiration and the consequent growth become possible. Surely He has made nothing in vain.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Suffice it to say that when the story’s omniscient narrative voice [*] is espousing a worldview so contrary to my own, I just can’t enjoy the story.<\/p>\n

[*] Habits of precision compel me to describe it this way, though I imagine it’s probably safe, under the circumstances, to assume that it’s simply the author’s voice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I did something fairly rare last night: I gave up on a book. I got George MacDonald’s collection The Gray Wolf on a whim, because it was only two dollars and the title story was fairly well done, and because I’ve been reading more collections these days to keep from being sucked into a long … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “MacDonald, George: Gray Wolf, The”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,15],"tags":[299],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-macdonald-george"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}