Lately I have been reading The Chronicles of Narnia. I haven't finished all the books yet, being about three quarters of the way through The Silver Chair. They are rather short, and I fully expect that by the end of the week I'll have finished the whole series, unless work gets in the way of my free time, as work is wont to do. As I read them at last (I've been meaning to for years) I realize how they shout "children book" at every paragraph. Nonetheless, I am enjoying their simple fantasy.
Sadly, every other page or so, I remember that Neil Gaiman has spoiled these books for me, kicking my suspension of disbelief hard in the nuts.
Let me explain just how.
There is an Italian comedian that used to have a gag in one of his shows. The whole show he'd be sitting behind a small desk, reading from a notebook and old newspapers and purportedly commenting on the news. Now, I don't rightly remember how he would lead to it, but at a certain point he would muse, all the time keeping the straightest face, about the possibility of Christianity and its symbols if Jesus had been a masochist: the crucifix with an hard on. This of course caused the hilarity of the crowd, until he pointed out that we had all been ruined for life, as we would never again be able to enter a church without smirking.
Neil Gaiman did pretty much the same to with his short story "The Problem of Susan" from the collection "Fragile things" (which I fully suggest everyone reads, for it contains a few pearls). The short story is, I think, a critique to something I haven't read yet, so I can't say I fully understand all the references and the background, but it contains a description of Aslan eating the girls, and then having sex with the White Witch, while the beheaded Susan wonders about centaur cock.
These two things combined make my reading The Chronicles of Narnia just that bit harder. (I still think that "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is one of the most brilliant book title in history, though).
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