George MacDonald is my favorite author.
I was thrilled, then, to discover a volume containing three of his stories for $7.99 at Half Price Books several months ago. It had been "edited for the modern reader," the cover proclaimed. I assumed that meant updating obsolete words or words whose meanings had evolved, so I bought it.
I finally had the opportunity to pick it up this past weekend. (I've been reading C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia the past several months, and while I can read numerous nonfiction books at once, I don't have that same capacity for fiction.)
I'd been journaling through a chapter of Christine Aroney-Sine's The Gift of Wonder and savoring a chapter of Christie Purifoy's Placemaker (she just speaks my language, y'all), and I was ready to immerse myself in the characters and stories of my favorite author.
I don't always read introductions and forewards to classics, because they're usually some academic's conclusions about the work, and I'd rather come to my own. My curiosity about why the editor had taken up this project got the better of me this time, however: I was sure I would find a fellow MacDonald lover here.
Reading about the first time he and his wife read these stories, though, I felt my blood pressure rise: "Buried among the debris of an outmoded and difficult literary style was an absolutely readable and relevant mystery/romance/adventure novel."
I'm sorry? I know you did not just use the word "debris" about George MacDonald's writing.
The editor continues, "MacDonald wrote at great length about small events, and used the events as springboards for doctrinal digressions and religious rhapsodizing. Many of these descriptions, dialectics, and dissertations, while fascinating in themselves, do nothing to advance the story..." [Insert gasp of indignation here] "...we edited...striving to acheive a balance between brevity and breadth that would be economical to print, interesting to the modern reader, and faithful to the heart of MacDonald's vision ... The excesses of Victorian style have been trimmed away - but none, I hope, of MacDonald's jewels have perished along with the trivia."
[Insert brain sirens and lockdown here]
Okay, first of all, who are you? And second of all, how dare you?
I enjoy MacDonald's work because of its depth. I enjoy feeling like I know the characters and am in their world because of "the excesses of Victorian style" in his descriptions. I enjoy digging into the thoughts and questions that arise in my mind from his "doctrinal digressions and religious rhapsodizing."
He is the kind of writer I aspire to be: one who helps the reader know the characters and their predicaments, and one who helps the reader ask questions and search their own hearts.
Reading his work is time-consuming and challenging. It's also adventurous, romantic, and rewarding.
So I am a little indignant at the nerve of someone taking many MacDonald's best elements out of it. I'm several chapters in, and occasionally I get a glimpse of MacDonald in the dialogue, but I don't feel like I know the characters like I would if MacDonald had been the one to introduce us. The descriptions certainly have nothing on MacDonald's. It feels like a knock off.
If I'm going to finish it, I'm going to have to abandon the idea that it's MacDonald's work at all. It's not.
I'm even going to have to abandon the idea that it's the work of some supervillain who lives to destroy the work of other writers and crush the dreams of readers.
I'm going to have to read it and evaluate it as the work of a freelance writer from Indiana who has his own style (even if I wish he hadn't applied it to my favorite author's work).
Who knows? Maybe I'll be able to set aside my disappointment and enjoy it this way.
Or maybe this is one of those things that will never go away...
