Narnia – Deborah Makarios

I have long felt ambivalent about house names. Which is to say, I liked the idea, but feared being derided for it.

There are, it seems, three levels of house-naming. There’s the housing-of-the-nobility type, where your ancestors named it centuries ago: Blenheim Palace, for example, or Windsor Castle. Or El Escorial (although who came up with the idea of naming a magnificent palace complex after a slag-heap I do not know).

Then there’s the houses of the upper middle class, often appearing in Sherlock Holmes stories. Frequently named after plants: Copper Beeches, Wisteria Lodge. The Elms, that sort of thing. Not quite posh enough to be aristocratic, but definitely above the mere house-number.

And then there’s the lower end of the scale: little houses of, perhaps, lower middle class retirees, which they have given a cutesy name. Something cottagey, such as Ivy Cottage or Lilac Cottage or Bluebell Corner. Or something cheesy, like Wyshcumtru, Mon Repos (even if not Francophone), or Dunroamin.

Not having the kind of ancestors who qualify for houses ending in “palace” or “castle,” and not having any particular plants of distinction (“Next But One To An Enormous Pohutukawa” is not a catchy name), I am forced into the third category.

I don’t think of our house as a cottage, although I suppose by some definitions it could be considered one. It isn’t rural, but it is a smallish house (99m2 or just over 1,000 square feet), built to house a working-class family. According to Wikipedia, being a terraced or “row” house does not preclude cottage-hood. (Wikipedia: learn something new every day.) However, my overdeveloped sense of aesthetics prevents me going down the cutesy and/or cheesy road. (How does “Cheesy Road” sound for a house name? Perhaps not.)

So I had to strike out on my own, and come up with a name I not only liked, but would use. I did consider The Abode of the Blessed (Makarios meaning blessed) but it was a bit too unwieldy. “I’ve just got to take the shopping back to the Abode of the Blessed and then I’ll come round for a cuppa.” I don’t think so, do you?

So then I was thinking about what I wanted the house to be like to live in, and I thought of the name Narrowhaven. Our house is tall and thin: two stories tall and five and a half metres (18 feet) wide – hence the Narrow part; and it is a peaceful house, both for us and, I hope, for those who come to visit us – hence the Haven part.

Narrowhaven is also the biggest town in the Lone Islands (attached to the kingdom of Narnia) and is the centre of the slave trade. Not such a good association, true, but the town’s one appearance in the Chronicles concerns the abolition of slavery by Caspian X, and I am a big fan of the abolition of slavery (despite what the Gumpases of this world fear the effect on the economy might be).

I suggested the name to the Caped Gooseberry, and he seemed to like it too, so our house is now (un)officially called Narrowhaven. I haven’t worked up the nerve to put a sign on the gate yet – I’m not even sure that I want to, really. The last time I put up a sign it said “No Admittance Except on Party Business” which is a terrible name for a house, but a great sign for a mathom-party. We’ll see…

Thus goes up the cry from many a small child, with their insatiable desire for the same bedtime story to be told, over and over (and over) again.

But it’s not just little kiddies who do it. Scratch a reader and you will find a re-reader – but what is it we’re re-reading? And why?

The winner of the gold medal, blue ribbon and all-around first prize for re-reading (re-readiness?) is the Scriptures; unsurprising given the emphasis so many traditions put on reading, re-reading, memorizing and internalizing the words of God. As Jesus said, these are “foundational words, words to build a life on.” But, leaving the Scriptures aside, as the best-seller lists do (since the same book invariably tops the list), what are the most popular re-reads?

The comments on this post reminded me of the widespread passion for re-reading The Lord of the Rings – and not just re-reading it, but re-reading it again every year. That’s dedication, especially if you aren’t a fast reader.

Some people re-read other classic novels such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, although I have yet to hear of anyone who repeatedly reads War and Peace – apart from Countess Tolstoy, who apparently recopied and edited it seven times. That’s going above and beyond the call of duty, it seems to me. Bearing thirteen children is one thing; reading War and Peace seven times is quite another.

Many people obsessively re-read C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia as children, and some continue the habit. I myself, as a child, re-read pretty much everything I could get my hands on, as I was a voracious reader with limited (re)sources. I even read our children’s encyclopaedia by the volume (Vol. 1, Article 1: Abbey, which may be connected to my subsequent interest in all things monastic).

More recently, I have noticed a pattern to my re-reading. When I am tired and want to relax, I read either an old favourite – Agatha Christie, Patricia Wentworth, Ngaio Marsh, Ellis Peters – or a book by an author with whom I am sufficiently familiar to be sure I will enjoy the book. And yes, this means that when I want to relax I almost without exception curl up with a mystery (although I did curl up with The Curse of Chalion the other day).

When I am not in need of book-induced relaxation – when I have more mental energy – I tend more toward the reading of non-fiction. Books about writing, books about whatever I have an interest in at the moment, books which happened to show up in an old box from someone’s grandmother. Reading entirely unfamiliar fiction doesn’t happen as often, unless the book is very compelling when I glance into it, because it doesn’t fit into either of my two settings: Relax or Absorb Information.

But once I’ve read a non-fiction book, I seldom feel the inclination to re-read it, and I think this reveals something about why people re-read – or at least why I re-read. I re-read books because there is something in them which I cannot fully obtain from one reading. If it’s non-fiction, it’s because I didn’t absorb enough of the information it contained the first time round.

With fiction, that doesn’t apply. I mean, look at the enormous popularity of P.G. Wodehouse’s novels. Read one, you’ve got a pretty good idea of them all, but that doesn’t stop people reading the rest and then re-reading them. Because the essence of the book isn’t in the facts of it, it’s in something altogether more evanescent. The style of the book, or perhaps its soul. You can’t break that down to its component parts to analyze why it works. The letter kills, but the spirit gives life, you could say.

Or, to steal a structure from Maya Angelou, people will forget what the book said, they’ll forget what the characters did, but they will never forget how the book made them feel. And that, I am convinced, is the secret of all re-reading. Reading the book produced in us a feeling – and with great books it’s a feeling no other book creates – and re-reading the book is the only way to feel that again. This is how reading prescriptions work; and also why we have fan-fiction.

What do you think? What books do you re-read, and why?

Tag: Narnia

Naming My House

Read It Again!