User talk:ShadowAries

Narnia reading order
It is not "one man's opinion": the scholars are virtually unanimous on this, see refs in Ford's Companion. Why HerperCollins persists in this charade is beyond me. The books are far more effective in publication order. And the notion that MN may have been written before LWW is wrong; all the evidence points otherwise. Just because the topic is controversial doesn't mean the evidence is. -- Elphion (talk) 01:45, 26 May 2020 (UTC)


 * I NEVER claimed that MN was written before LWW, only that Lewis’s own account casts doubt on any publication order matching with written order. But in looking at the wording of the letter I see that “all the others” could only apply to MN, HB, SC, and LB. So ultimately, I agree with your decision to revert that edit. I was just being overly-cautious in wording things in a way that we, as editors, can claim 100% certainty on.
 * On the rest of your response: The irony is that I actually agree with you about publication order being much better (we are on the SAME side)...but that’s all that is: an opinion! No matter what we and the scholars say there are 3 things that remain true: 1) There isn’t unanimous agreement on this among all readers, scholars, publishers, etc. 2) None of us is the the author except for CS Lewis himself, so not a single one of us (or group of us) gets to be an unquestioned/unchallenged carrier of the truth. 3) The only mention by Lewis himself about reading order actually prefers chronological order. Yes, there’s a good chance that he was being kind to the kid in the letter, and yes I personally agree with you and most scholars that publication order is better...but thoughts to the contrary are a far cry from a “charade.” You talk about evidence itself not being controversial...well the only evidence we have from Lewis himself disagrees with us. I hope you are reading this within the good faith that I am writing it in. I still edited out the word “indeed” from the last paragraph for reasons I explain in the edit. I just think we have a high responsibility as editors, and we should not be biased beyond what the evidence presents. And maybe in that we can find agreement (even though, again, we’re on the same side): the evidence should speak for itself, not us speak for the evidence. That’s all I was trying to do.ShadowAries (talk) 14:49, 26 May 2020 (UTC)