George MacDonald discussion

Hello to all in the group! I am delighted to find this place on Goodreads, and I'm wondering how active your gathering continues to be. I cannot over-state the degree to which G.M. has influenced my thought, my faith, my work, and my writing, and I would welcome conversation about this author and his body of work and life. I have not read everything he has written, but I have read in him extensively, including both fictional and non-fictional works, and am nearly always reading *something* by him, including nearly daily his "Unspoken Sermons." Like all of you, I am busy with so many other things, but I hope I can contribute on a fairly frequent basis to conversations. By the way, I have spent considerable time England, Scotland and Wales over the years, and am always eager to return and settle in!

There's not a lot of activity on Goodreads but I would recommend the Wingfold email list (details on www.george-macdonald.com) and the George MacDonald Facebook Group on both of which you can be sure of a warm welcome. Equally it would be nice if we got something going here. Mike.

Thanks for the tip, Mike. I will check those out -- but I'm going to try to keep involvement limited to just three or four groups so I can be and remain engaged. I'll double back after checking out the MacDonald site and the Facebook page. Again, thanks, and best.

Well I think it would be great to get things going a bit more on this group, too. I'm fairly starved of GM conversation in real life because I can count on my thumbs the number of people I have met in person who are familiar with his oeuvre - in spite of the fact that I live in (arguably) the theological capital of Britain (Durham). Y'all on the other side of the pond seem to be a lot more clued in ...

I have to scour and mine for those few folk I encounter who know much about, much less care about, the work of GM. Fortunately, I stumbled on one last year, and yet we continue to struggle getting together to talk about MacDonald (and Lewis, among others). It is conversation around the theology that perhaps most interests me at this point, especially since, while I have read a lot of his work, getting back up to speed regarding any particular novel or story will be perhaps too time-consuming, and my comments about anything in particular in that regard will take place on an almost accidental basis as the various works are discussed in this forum. By the way, I was at a well-attended conference on Austin Farrer perhaps five years ago at Oxford. I don't think that could have taken place successfully here. Hence, some things are going on there theologically that you and I might find important (and about which "Y'all" on this side of the pond are far more clueless). Thanks for your reply.

I would love to discuss more of George's books and theology. I've only read three of his books and a few Sermans but I love his works.

It's his theology that perplexes and thrills me in equal measure. I do know this, though: GM has done more than any other(noncanonical)author to help me know and love my Father.

For me, much of his theological thought is *felt* rather than grasped in a way that can be dissected - it's very slippery. Maybe this is why so few people seem to "get" him. In a sense I'd be glad to catch that butterfly for long enough to get a good hard look at it, but I don't think I have the skill to take an academic approach to it and I also wonder if it would take the magic out of it to look too closely.

Would you be able to summarise your understanding of GM's "theology" in a few sentences? (There's a challenge)...

Seymour wrote: "It's his theology that perplexes and thrills me in equal measure. I do know this, though: GM has done more than any other(noncanonical)author to help me know and love my Father.

For me, much of h..."

Hi, Seymour: Let me give it a little thought, and then get back to you on the question of his theology in a few sentences. Part of what is going on is that he is *showing* the way to how he thinks in his fiction, even though his characters often get fairly didactic, and often (in my view) tediously so. Where a reader of his fiction can be fooled is the tendency to think he is neither organized nor systematic in his theology. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. C. S. Lewis once said, 'all that I believe can be found in the Unspoken Sermons.' I told our five children the same thing. If you really want to know his theology, then I'd (heartily!) recommend the Unspoken Sermons, warning you that you need to give them a chance. They are spun-out, with often exceedingly long sentences and paragraphs, and it feels like they are a stream of consciousness, when nothing could be further from the truth. I have been reading in the Sermons on almost a daily basis for years, and I have been through them - oh, God - maybe six of seven times, taking my time with them each time! Part of it, too, if you don't mind my saying so, is that GM, while a brilliant story-teller, is not a great (perhaps not even a good) writer, and Lewis said as much. I'll double back. Best reading!

Ha, thank you, James, for your thoughts - it is super to hear from someone who is much further along the GM path than I am. I am still on my first read of the Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, III. I keep catching brilliant glimpses of things that make my heart pound with the truth but I find it diffcult to name and defend them as "doctrines" yet.

As with Lewis, It was "Phantastes" that provided my GM epiphany. Up until then I had read "The Diary of an Old soul" repeatedly and devotionally. I like to absorb doctrine by way of stories and can even forgive the didactic tone of some of the characters in his novels. I still find him easier to read than Dickens. It was "Donal Grant" that provided my first keys into the underlying theology and, after reading it, I had several very vivid dreams in which I conversed with Donal Grant himself!

The pivot in this book for me was the conversation he has with the minister:

"No, sir; why should a man fear the presence of his saviour?"
"You said God!" answered the minister.
"God is my saviour! Into his presence it is my desire to come."
"Under shelter of the atonement," supplemented the minister.
"Gien ye mean by that, sir," cried Donal, forgetting his English, "onything to come 'atween my God an' me, I'll ha'e nane o' 't. I'll hae naething hide me frae him wha made me! I wadna hide a thoucht frae him. The waur it is, the mair need he see't."

I turned to "Hope of the Gospel" soon after that in order to go a bit deeper. I still recommend this book to people who ask me where to start with trying to get a feel for the Good News according to GM. Upon finishing that I realised that I was becoming a "MacDonaldist" in my entire outlook and finding myself somewhat at odds with the assumptions of other believing friends. I'd like to come to a place where I can discuss and defend GM more robustly. However, the tantalising shadowy, flickers of truth that appear in his fairy tales were what first drew me in and what continue to inspire what I am trying to achieve with my own short fiction.

I am amused that, by virtue of his apologetics writings, Lewis remains one of the most highly recommended authors in reformed evangelical circles over here. If, as you say, everything Lewis believes is to be found in the Unspoken Sermons, then why is GM not top of the list? If only most people who recommend Lewis knew how unorthodox the roots of his thought really were ...

... and ... yes ... speaking as an editor, I agree that our dear grandfather, George, was a terrible "writer", but we love him all the more for it :-)

Seymour wrote: "Ha, thank you, James, for your thoughts - it is super to hear from someone who is much further along the GM path than I am. I am still on my first read of the Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, III. I..."

Oh, yes...it is amazing how much one will find devotees of both Lewis and MacDonald among our more fundamentalist brothers and sisters, when neither one was even close to such a posture. By the way, MacDonald has a few places in his sermons (including the Gospel of Hope) where he rails against 'the doctrine of the atonement' as it was being advanced back then (and now). Highly unorthodox, and I think he is dead on! You are well into GM - and I look forward to learning from you. P.S. I loved Donal Grant, with lots of marginal notes placed on the pages by me, but, for the life of me, I would not be able to tell you what the plot was about any longer! Thanks for your engaging note! P.P.S. I was first introduced to GM through Phantatastes. I know Lewis loved it, and that it has a big following. I have read it twice now, and I simply cannot get into it -- why is that?

I agree that I don't have the most detailed recollection of the plot of Donal Grant either - something about two generations of wives being walled up in a secret dungeon (proper gothic stuff)? I guess it testifies to the extent to which the details of the plot are secondary to its role as a receptacle for GM's teachings.

As far "getting into" Phantastes goes ... well I don't know if I can help because my response to it probably had a lot to do with it coming into my hands at just the right moment. I know one or two other people I have lent it to have read and returned it without comment because it didn't get to them - that's the funny thing about books, it's not just the book but where and when you read it and who you are at that point in time.

I began reading Phantastes one Spring morning in the grounds of Melrose Abbey, just over the Scottish border. My own experience over the next month was of being thoroughly "processed" by the narrative. At the core of this is a story about a young man experiencing some sort of rite of passage. At so many points the reader wants to say to him "don't go there" and yet he does, inexplicably, put himself at risk and make foolish decisions that culminate in him unleashing his "shadow" that continues to dog him until his final act of self sacrifice in which everything is purified.

As I finished the book, I felt as if I was waking from a dream, too, but that somehow I had been healed in it - my own shadow had been defeated. I think I realised, then, that as a reader engages with a narrative imaginatively, they can be therapeutically processed, purged, reoriented by that experience.

Another way that I look at Phantastes and a lot of GM's faerie tales is in the same way I look at impressionist pantings. Close up, you see colours and textures that are marvellous but don't make a lot of sense. However, as you move away, downstream from being exposed to it, you are left with an impression - it makes more sense the further away you stand. But, it makes sense on a level that often by-passes the intellect. It's my (subjective) view that GMs stories get into us below the radar of our rational and analytical mind and work directly on the soul? That's what makes him a preacher such as I wish we had more of.

Any chance we could get this discussion up and running again? It seems to have petered out 4 years ago, and i only joined goodreads within the past year. I'm a huge fan of MacDonald's and in fact I have undertaken the task of translating his Scottish novels into English for non-Scottish folk's ease of understanding!
I have to differ with regard to the allegation that he's a terrible writer-even Lewis himself, who made a similar claim said that the so-called 'baser elements' of his style were often burned away in his fantasy works, but I actually enjoy the style of his realistic novels too...I do have a natural bias, being Scottish, and perhaps Lewis was right that a) it helps to love Scotland when you're reading GM and b) his florid style is characteristic of even the best of Scottish authors (of whom he didn't consider GM to be one) such as Walter Scott. Anyway, we don't have to agree on that, but like everyone else here, I have been influenced massively by MacDonald's teaching, and rarely have my nose out of one or other of his books. I've just completed a re read of his two 'Curdie' novels for children.

I am a big fan of his fantasy, I've read most of them and am amazed at how he can write on so many levels at the same time. I recently purchased a group of his realistic works weeded from a local library and hope to give them a try as well.

Michael wrote: "I am a big fan of his fantasy, I've read most of them and am amazed at how he can write on so many levels at the same time. I recently purchased a group of his realistic works weeded from a local l..." Great, Michael! If you want specific recommendations for the realistic novels, I'd be glad to mention a few favourites!

I actually translate the Scottish novels from the North East Doric dialect of Scots into English-a project I began a year ago with 'Robert Falconer'. But like yourself, I love the fantasy too. Phantastes was the first I tried, and it's still perhaps my favourite along with 'At the back of the North Wind', but to be honest they're all so good, it's hard to single out any and it's really down to what I'm reading at the time. I got a new edition of 'The Golden Key' last Christmas, illustrated beautifully by Ruth Sanderson, that being another of the more famous ones of course, but lesser known ones like 'Uncle Cornelius, His Story' or 'The Cruel Painter' are just as captivating...and the non-fantasy short stories (though some of them border on fantasy) like 'The Wow o' Rivven' are also superb.

"At the Back of the North Wind" is my favorite of his novels and "The Light Princess" of his short stories, although the Curdie series is wonderful as well.