on Madeleine L'Engle

I've been re-reading Madeleine L'Engle's books recently. It's a risky business, re-reading authors I liked before I was very analytical about my entertainment; sometimes I discover I never loved them as well as they deserved, other times I realize just how much nastiness I overlooked and feel sick at the values I must have absorbed. L'Engle, mercifully, is one of the former type.

Here's L'Engle, the devout Christian whose works were challenged and banned by fundamentalists across the board because her theology is too inclusive, who believed love was the most powerful force in the world and rejected violence and hate. The avid Biblical scholar who described her own holy text as a storybook, impossible to take literally, not factual but true. The lover of science – especially physics – whose stories reflect the delighted curiosity of a small child playing with magnets or making a baking-soda-and-vinegar volcano, only it's warping space and time she's playing with. I really love L'Engle. She's so – true? Pure? She doesn't compromise or play politics with her values. You look up an interview with her and she's saying she hated the film adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time or spouting theology that would make fundamentalists faint (often including how little she thinks of fundamentalism) and atheists squirm in equal measure, or she's talking about gender roles and war. What she isn't doing is giving a shit what other people think of her.

( Now I will spoil the Time Trilogy by talking about why I love it )