Book Encounters: "There is Such a Thing as a Tesseract!"

One physicist says that the big question is: Are we alone in the universe or not? I go out at night and look at the stars, hundreds of billions of stars, and think that there are surely other galaxies whose solar systems include planets with thinking life. I don't believe that we are alone, and that brings up more questions. When I look at the night sky I'm looking at time as well as space, looking at a star seven light-years away, and a star seventy light-years away, or seven hundred or seven thousand or...

-An Introduction By The Author, Madeleine L'Engle

I first read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle when I was in grade school. A lot has changed since then, I suspect. For one thing, my mother isn't reading the novel to me and suffering through my habit of asking too many plot-related questions, my requests for glasses of milk when she's mid-sentence, and my general peskiness. These days she only has to tolerate this behavior when we watch movies together.

For another thing, I was too young to be wary of literature with Christian underpinnings. But so far, and I'm only three chapters in, I detect more of a happy medium between science and spiritual matters. Meg's parents are physicists, after all. Meg is a math genius. Unlike the Narnia series, we have not entered into a world of pure scientific exclusion; this is not pure unredeemed fantasy. In fact, many Christian sects contend that L'Engle's narrative is not at all in keeping with their values.

What with all the magical beings who've already been introduced, it seems like AWIT has a more gnostic vibe than any dogmatic Christian proselytizing. Which I like. Mythical creatures are the shit.

But, to be honest, if L'Engle starts preaching at me, I'll probably put the book down. And that will make me feel sad, because I loved this story as a kid. I'm just really uncomfortable with propaganda when it's directed at children. Even light propaganda.