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Movies editors Dawn Burkes and Holly Warren offer views, news and nuggets on all things movies. June 2009
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My copy-editing cohorts Tatia and Laura and I had a discussion tonight about whether Prince Caspian is, as Nancy Churnin writes in her review of the film adaptation, actually the second book in C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. Some research revealed the answer: It is and it isn't. The Chronicles were first published in this order: But if you go to the bookstore or Amazon and buy a boxed set, you'll find they've been rearranged, and are now published in chronological order according to the timeline set forth in the books. That order is: So which is right? Purists insist on published order -- that if you read The Magician's Nephew first, you'll find out all sorts of things you're just not supposed to know yet. Others say that if you're looking for the biblical themes and allusions in the books, those become much clearer in a chronological reading. Lewis himself, in a letter published in 1957, said either one was fine with him, although he expresssed just a smidgen of a preference for published order. What do you think? Discuss.
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Joy, I like the published order. In many great works of literature there are flashbacks that put the present in perspective. But there is a reason that they are flashbacks and the story is not told in chronological order. At the heart of the series are Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. They begin the journey, the end it in The Last Battle. The Magician's Nephew may be chronologically first but it is a flashback in the series -- not the heart of the series. That said, I love The Magician's Nephew. It is in a way C.S. Lewis' wistful look at a Garden of Eden story in which Adam and Eve do not eat the apple.