I remember Winter, Turkish Delight, Aslan, and a big fight at the end.

That’s pretty much my take on it as well. The first time I ever had Turkish delight, I was so disappointed, I think it’s gross.

1950 isn't, but Lewis was born a bit over 100 years ago, was raised by an overprotective widowed father who kept him and his brother fairly isolated from the surrounding community; eventually he was sent to a private boys' school run by a certifiable lunatic (sadly, not actually certified and removed from the educational system until a full decade later), then to several years of one-on-one tutoring with a man who was certainly brilliant but had had all of his training and social conditioning in the 1860s and '70s.

From there, Lewis went to university, war, and more university, and until he encountered Dorothy Sayers, the wives of some of the other Inklings, and Joy Davidman decades later, literally the only adult women in his life were the scarily possessive mother of a war friend of his to whom he'd made a deathbed promise (which he stuck to, caring for her until her death, but by all accounts she was batshit crazy and jealous, plus HOTT, so there was a whole twisted mothersexlover thing going on that left him emotionally fucked for a good many years), and that woman's daughter, who was nice and sane and kind but who looked to him as not just a replacement older brother but a quasi-father, even though he was not many years older than she was.

A lot of what he wrote still makes me roll my eyes forever and grit my teeth, but he had an emotionally demanding, motherless childhood, inconsistent and occasionally violent father/authority figures, and a sexually complex and mutually emotionally abusive relationship with a quasi-mother figure that would've been a trainwreck for a much older, healthier and wiser man, much less Lewis in his early twenties. I still think he was so smart and educated and intellectually hungry and fearless about challenging his own assumptions that his mid-period writings are still somewhat shameful (and I totally share Betsy's Hideous Strength eyeroll), but everything I know about his history makes me feel like he's earned a bit of slack. Maybe not much, but a bit.

I never had any use for Susan Pevensie -- in my pretty suburban community there were so many girls like her, who at eleven and twelve had put aside all that childish business about horseback riding and biking over the hills and playing soccer and softball, who already owned twenty shades of flavored lipgloss and sighed over the tallest boy in school and were planning their weddings, and who thought that any girl who wasn't just like them was a freak and a baby.

I hated them and I hated myself for not being more like them, and the Narnia books were a huge fucking revelation to me. Whatever the larger culture was saying about feminism and girls' potential and shattering stereotypes, my own insular suburban bubble was incredibly conformist and oppressive and very successful in shouting down all the messages from the outside world. Narnia was a series of books, a world, in which a girl who behaved like those girls who made girls like me feel like shit was NOT privileged, was NOT held up as an example for us all. A world where girls who defied their parents and ran away from home, who sneaked up to the attic to write pirate stories, who were hunters and trackers and archers, who had daggers and knew how to use them, who stubbornly held to their own beliefs when everyone told them they were wrong, were praised and honored, were queens (not Disney princesses, but Queens) -- that world was a revelation to me.

YSusanMV; my reading of Susan and response to her was totally based on my own very oddball, atypical experiences and I don't mean to universalize them, or even to deny the ick factor that's very definitely there. But it's not the only thing that's there, and to some girls in some circumstances (or at least to the girl JZ in the girl JZ's circumstances) the notion that Susan might be punished for her Susanness (that her Susanness might itself be a punishment) and the grubby and often quarrelsome Jill become a Queen for her Jillness (that her stubbornness and doggedness and craft might be her (continued...)

( continues...) strength and glory) -- oh, it was liberating for child-me. It was a lifeline. Not one that I need so much anymore, but back then I was drowning.

Those are all chocolate. I've never had a chocolate candy cigarette.

Hmm.

JZ is me, only with added eloquence.

Classic Candy Cigarettes

I'm not big on cutting people slack because they were "products of their time." I always wonder where it ends. How close to now does someone have to be before they are responsible for their own views, instead of being excused by their age?

I haven't heard a single person advance that argument.

I'm making the assertion since the references to 1950 not being that long ago and your own point about not seeing oneself in their worlds might lead another to wonder about their relevance. I'm not well-equipped to be a defender of Lewis (and on cue, JZ has arrived) but I do have an opinion on Tolkien.

I remember buying candy cigarettes in 1995 or so, maybe later.

CS Lewis? I loved the Narnia books as a child. But dddly enough, despite the fact that he's within my supposed period, I never returned to study him seriously. I have always been much more interested in the freaks and pervs (and I use the terms lovingly) of the modernist period than in the more conservative writers.

But more importantly, I feel I must weigh in on this ridiculous discussion of toxic fumes. You guys are warped. Paint thinner, markers, pipe smoke, they all stink. Tobacco only smells good before it's lit.

JZ, that's a lovely defense, and raises some points I don't think I'd thought about re Susan.