Pullman rips on LOTR, others

[Sauron the White]

http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/artic...hooNewscrawler

seems that another fantasy author has some problems with Tolkien and Lewis.

Thoughts?

[Sephiroth]

Ok, I admit I never read HDM, but this really seems something like "Come on, I need some attention, pleeeease watch the movie!".

About Narnia, the "religion-is-all-around" really bothered me, but I still liked it. I think LOTR faces religion as a part of the tradition it praises... in a much more subtle, beautiful way.

[davem]

The thing that struck me (& which I was going to put into the recently closed thread) is

Pullman liked "Lord of the Rings" when he first read it as a teen ("We were all out pretending to be Gandalf"), but after thinking about it more recently, he doesn't feel it's as engaging as it could have been. "For Tolkien, the Catholic, the Church had the answers, the Church was the source of all truth, so 'Lord of the Rings' does not touch those big deep questions," Pullman said. "The 'Narnia' books are fundamentally more serious than 'Lord of the Rings,' which I take to be a trivial book."

"You have to surrender," Pullman said. "You can't have control over everything. And it would be foolish to — I'm not a filmmaker. But I've seen the shooting on set, the scripts along the way, and I've been allowed to offer advice, so I can't complain. I gather that's unusual!"

So, Pullman seems happy for his staory to be 'adapted', whereas Tolkien seems not to have been. I wonder if that means that Tolkien cared more about his creation than Pullman did - or if Tolkien was simply more precious.....

Then, there's his statement:"For Tolkien, the Catholic, the Church had the answers, the Church was the source of all truth, so 'Lord of the Rings' does not touch those big deep questions," Pullman said. "The 'Narnia' books are fundamentally more serious than 'Lord of the Rings,' which I take to be a trivial book."

So what are these 'deep questions'?

"I didn't read the 'Narnia' books until I was grown up," Pullman said, "and I could sort of see what he was getting at, and he was getting at the reader in a way I didn't like. The 'Narnia' books are full of serious questions about religion: 'Which God should we worship? Is there a God at all? What happens when we die?' The questions are all there, but I don't like Lewis' answers.

Well, no, Tolkien doesn't ask 'Which God should we (or rather the characters) worship?' because in M-e there is only one true God. One could ask whether Tolkien simply avoids that 'deep question' by ruling out any possibility that there is a choice of Gods to worship. Neither does he leave open the option that there is no God at all. Of course, one could argue that he has chosen to create a world where there is only one true God, & that he actually explores a much more difficult question - 'How can there be suffering in a world created & ruled over by a good God?'- Personally I find that a much 'deeper' question than whether there is a God at all. The final 'deep question' Pullman claims Tolkien avoids is 'What happens when we die?' Now, Pullman does answer that question - but the problem is he makes up an answer. He knows no better than anyone else what happens to any of us when we die. Tolkien leaves that question alone, & never states what happens to his characters beyond death. So, one could argue that Tolkien does avoid that one - but how could he answer it? What Tolkien does is show us characters with faith in Eru & that in some way everything will be ok in the end.

Now, in my opinion, it is Pullman's book which is the 'trivial' one - because he either avoids the difficult questions - 'Which God should we worship'? Pullman avoids the question by getting rid of God (a 'God' btw who is a senile ex dictator) - a 'God' who isn't really 'God' anyway. He avoids the difficult questions by brushing them aside & pretending they weren't asked, or by a reductio ad absurdam. His 'answer' to what happens after death is, as I said, to make something up.

I think the difference between Tolkien & Pullman is that Tolkien asks deep questions, but refuses either to offer glib answers or brush them under the carpet. Tolkien gives us a world created & sustained by a good God, but one in which evil flourishes & bad things happen to good people. In this I think Tolkien's work is far more realistic than Pullman's - Tolkien's work ends with Sam's 'Well, I'm back', Pullman's with some nonsense about 'Building the Republic of Heaven' - & no-one, however big a fan of Pullman they may be, has been able to tell me what that is supposed to mean.

[Aiwendil]

Originally Posted by Pullman

"You have to surrender. You can't have control over everything. And it would be foolish to — I'm not a filmmaker. But I've seen the shooting on set, the scripts along the way, and I've been allowed to offer advice, so I can't complain. I gather that's unusual!"

I don't like the implication here. So only filmmakers are qualified to have opinions on films? The author has to just sit back, watch what they do, and (if he's lucky) offer a comment from time to time?

Originally Posted by Pullman

"For Tolkien, the Catholic, the Church had the answers, the Church was the source of all truth, so 'Lord of the Rings' does not touch those big deep questions. The 'Narnia' books are fundamentally more serious than 'Lord of the Rings,' which I take to be a trivial book."

Now this is an unusual claim - and no doubt one intended to be provocative. It seems to me to be exactly the other way around. 'Narnia' may ask 'big questions', but it treats them in the most superficial manner; it doesn't explore them at all but merely offers dogmatic answers. Tolkien addresses big questions too, of course, though apparently not the ones Pullman considers worthy of literary treatment. But Tolkien treats them with more than a modicum of subtlety, which apparently goes over Pullman's head.

Davem wrote:

I think the difference between Tolkien & Pullman is that Tolkien asks deep questions, but refuses either to offer glib answers or brush them under the carpet.

I think this is quite correct. I'd add something to it, though: another difference between Tolkien and Pullman is that for Pullman, literature is about asking and answering so-called 'deep questions'. A book is, for him, a platform from which to promulgate his Message. He is like Lewis in this regard; and while Pullman's world-view is closer to mine than is Lewis's, I cordially dislike this attitude toward literature in both of them. For Tolkien, what is important is not allegory but story.

[Sauron the White]

Pullman seems to be espousing the Ernest Hemingway theory of selling film rights to one of your books. Hemingway said that the only way to do it was to meet the producer on a beach at midnight. The author tosses the book to the producer while the producer tosses a briefcase filled with cash to the author.

And truthfully, given the very different nature of both mediums, I do think that both Hemingway and Pullman have than right.

[Rumil]

In my view a main prerequiste for a 'great' book is an emotional attachment to the protagonists. Tolkien did it, but for me Pullman didn't, I can't even remember their names now, having read the books 5 years or so ago.

I read the Pullman books avidly (always a sucker for trilogies) but never felt any need to re-read tham which is very unusual for me. Eventually they went to Oxfam.

In contrast my battered, creased, torn, pages-stuck-in-with-sticky-tape copy of LoTR will never leave me.

[Nerwen]

I have never read His Dark Materials, but many people do seem to think it's pretty good.

However, Pullman's view of the purpose of fiction seems, well, odd. Forget other fantasy writers– his criteria for a book being worthwhile would exclude much of mainstream literature!

[Mister Underhill]

Pullman again? It seems sometimes like he gets more press off of his jabs at Tolkien than he does for anything he's actually written himself.

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

I don't like the implication here. So only filmmakers are qualified to have opinions on films? The author has to just sit back, watch what they do, and (if he's lucky) offer a comment from time to time?

In this case, Pullman's right -- authors rarely have much creative input beyond token gestures. There are a few big dogs who attempt to negotiate more creative control, but even with a contract things don't always work out -- just look at the whole Clive Cussler debacle of recent years. On the other hand, I heard that J.K. Rowling was able to exercise considerable control over the later Potter films. Funny, if Tolkien had survived and held on to his rights, I'll bet he could have cut a very strong deal for the films. I wonder what that might have looked like.

Anyway, Hollywood has little respect for writers in general, screenwriters included. In fact we're about to see a strike that's motivated at least in part by that fact.

Of course, no one's holding a gun to any author's head to force him or her to sell their movie rights. But that filthy Hollywood lucre is soooo much more, well, lucrative than the comparatively puny payouts that most authors earn that many are happy to cash in and let the filmmakers do what they will.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Mister Underhill

In this case, Pullman's right -- authors rarely have much creative input beyond token gestures. There are a few big dogs who attempt to negotiate more creative control, but even with a contract things don't always work out -- just look at the whole Clive Cussler debacle of recent years. On the other hand, I heard that J.K. Rowling was able to exercise considerable control over the later Potter films. Funny, if Tolkien had survived and held on to his rights, I'll bet he could have cut a very strong deal for the films. I wonder what that might have looked like.
.

It seems many (most?) novelists write with a movie adaptation of the work in mind, & hope the film rights will be sold as a matter of course. Pullman himself in a recent interview about the movie for Empire magazine said he had always had Nicole Kidman in mind as Mrs Coulter. Pullman has had other novels of his adapted for TV - the BBC have done a couple - so I'm assuming that he has an adaptation in mind from the start, in which case he obviously wouldn't have a problem with his works being 'adapted' for the screen.

Tolkien, I assume, never wrote with any thought of a movie in mind - an author like Pullman can include the most fantastical elements/creatures/settings in his work & know that they can be put on screen. Tolkien was writing in a period when a work like LotR could not have made it to the screen (not as live action) in a convincing way. This alone says to me that Tolkien was writing LotR with no thought of a movie adaptation entering his head. Hence, Pullman is writing a book which he hopes to see adapted & which he knows cannot (particularly the religious/anti-religious elements) be turned into a movie without major changes.

What's interesting to me about Pullman's approach here is that in numerous interviews he's stated that he's 'using fantasy to undermine fantasy' that he 'wishes he could write contemporary novels', etc. & implies that the 'fantastical' elements are secondary to the underlying philosophy & the 'deep questions'. However, he seems in this interview to be perfectly happy for that 'underlying philosophy' & those 'deep questions' to be ignored & replaced by a two hour sfx fest. The death of God won't make it to the screen but the armoured polar bears will.

This last point is central to me. Pullman attacks Tolkien for not asking the 'deep questions' but he himself will happily see the 'deep questions' he asks, & the philosophy he espouses, cast away or turned into its opposite. Chris Weitz, in the same Empire feature has stated that the movie will still attack 'totalitarianism', etc, etc. But what we have, in the end, is a writer who claims the intellectual high ground but is happy to see the 'intellectual' dimension of his work twisted beyond recognition in order to have Nicole Kidman playing Mrs Coulter on screen.

[Hookbill the Goomba]

I read the first of His Dark Materials with no real knowledge of who the author was or what his agenda was. By the end of the first and the beginning of the second book I had a pretty good idea of where he was coming from. Perhaps it is naive of me to, but I slowly began to imagine the books not as a story but as a guy stood on a box shouting about how terrible the Church is. I think there is always a problem with writing a story with an ulterior motive which is where Narnia falters in my opinion. I still find the story enjoyable and will read them again and again. But it is a difficult thing to try and get across a message you feel passionately about without being a little overt in its delivery. You fear the risk of being too subtle with what you see as important.

Tolkien approaches the 'deep questions' in the right way, I think. As Davem pointed out, what people assume to be the 'deep questions' (Is there a God? Which one should we worship? and the rest) were not, in his opinion, the best questions to ask. Like the Zen Monk who thought he had found the ultimate question when he asked 'Who am I?' only to be surprised by the reply from within, 'Who's asking?'
By not directly answering the questions of morality or of an afterlife, Tolkien does something brilliant, he leaves it open to more questions. This makes Tolkien's questions much deeper. They are not simply the acquisition of facts, but a search that the reader, if he or she has a mind to, must wrestle with and think about. It is not simply the authors opinion (although that will come into it) but you are open to disagree. To explain; from a point of morality you cannot say that each character always makes the right decision. Sam's prejudice against Gollum could be seen as either a defect or as an insight given later events. You could also see Frodo's trust of Gollum as blindness or kindness born out of the hope to change him. Tolkien seems to question both stances in the story as it plays out.

One must always remember that Tolkien's world is an imaginary one. Although there may be similarities in behaviour or actions to historical, mythical or Biblical events, it is not simply a re-telling of them. It is Tolkien's story and he no doubt wanted his own imagination to play a large roll in the creation of Middle Earth. This doesn't mean there won't be simelarities, but these can only go so far. The fact that the elves always look back on their ancient heroes and the men on their fatherly figures, we cannot automatically assume that such people are Beowulf, or Abraham or someone, they are not. They are their own characters. It may be that the later characters regard these figures in the same light as one may regard Abraham or Beowulf if you happen to believe in them. The same goes for Eru, in my opinion. The point is not if he is God, but how the characters react to him and his work. As George MacDonald said "Attitudes are more important than facts."

In Pullman's work the focus is on disrupting a system he doesn't like. I have no problem with that, people do it all the time. But he criticizes Lewis for doing pretty much the same thing from a different angle. Two armies may critizies one another, I suppose, and be annoyed when they both use similar tactics, but they cannot criticize the tactics because they themselves are using them. This is where Pullman's argument falters, I think. He dislikes Lewis trying to get a message across through his story, yet this is precisely what he is doing.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Hookbill the Goomba

I read the first of His Dark Materials with no real knowledge of who the author was or what his agenda was. By the end of the first and the beginning of the second book I had a pretty good idea of where he was coming from. Perhaps it is naive of me to, but I slowly began to imagine the books not as a story but as a guy stood on a box shouting about how terrible the Church is. I think there is always a problem with writing a story with an ulterior motive which is where Narnia falters in my opinion. I still find the story enjoyable and will read them again and again. But it is a difficult thing to try and get across a message you feel passionately about without being a little overt in its delivery. You fear the risk of being too subtle with what you see as important.

And yet, when it comes to the changes which Pullman is 'happy to accept' in a movie adaptation its this very message he's prepared to see downplayed, or thrown out. In the book he shouts it too loudly, but for the movie he's prepared to see it silenced. And let's face it the only reason that message will not make it to the screen is because New Line fear a backlash from the Bible belt. I'm pretty sure that Tolkien would have made the opposite choice - if it was a choice between keeping the message & losing (for example) the Fell Beasts, or keeping the Fell Beasts & sacrificing the message he would have gone for the former - or raised a big stink. He certainly wouldn't have just smiled & said 'Well, movies are different.' If Pullman's target is God - & it is, because, for all he now claims he's attacking 'organised religion'/totalitarianism in the book, his 'final solution' is to kill God off & build the 'Republic of Heaven' - then he should stand his ground & demand that theme remains central to the movie adaptation. If he is so willing to have that message thrown out then it says to me that actually he doesn't care that much about it - for all his shouting of it in the book.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Pullman has been doing this for years, although in earlier comments he's called Narnia both more 'serious' but also much worse- I believe he used the word 'fascist.' All because, of course, Tollers and Jack don't share Pullman's nasty little world-view.

What struck me about HDM was how fundamentally *adolescent* its thesis was- that all good would derive from sexual liberation and casting off authority. Nietzche for bratty teenagers.

Indeed there's something of the bratty teenager in Pullman's habit of slagging off the giants of his profession.

[gorthaur_cruel]

Yes, well...this is the guy who said that "'The Lord of the Rings' is fundamentally an infantile work"

Apparently from some article in the New Yorker some years ago:

Pullman loves Oxford, but he’s far from donnish. His books have been likened to those of J. R. R. Tolkien, another alumnus, but he scoffs at the notion of any resemblance. “ ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is fundamentally an infantile work,” he said. “Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other. He’s interested in maps and plans and languages and codes.” When it comes to “The Chronicles of Narnia,” by C. S. Lewis, Pullman’s antipathy is even more pronounced. Although he likes Lewis’s criticism and quotes it surprisingly often, he considers the fantasy series “morally loathsome.” In a 1998 essay for the Guardian, entitled “The Dark Side of Narnia,” he condemned “the misogyny, the racism, the sado-masochistic relish for violence that permeates the whole cycle.” He reviled Lewis for depicting the character Susan Pevensie’s sexual coming of age—suggested by her interest in “nylons and lipstick and invitations”—as grounds for exclusion from paradise. In Pullman’s view, the “Chronicles,” which end with the rest of the family’s ascension to a neo-Platonic version of Narnia after they die in a railway accident, teach that “death is better than life; boys are better than girls . . . and so on. There is no shortage of such nauseating drivel in Narnia, if you can face it.”

At one point, Pullman and I stopped by the Eagle and Child, an Oxford pub where Lewis and Tolkien used to meet regularly with a group of literary friends. (They called themselves the Inklings.) A framed photograph of Lewis’s jowly face smiled down on us as we talked. In person, Pullman isn’t quite as choleric as he sometimes comes across in his newspaper essays. When challenged, he listens carefully and considerately, and occasionally tempers his ire. “The ‘Narnia’ books are a real wrestle with real things,” he conceded. As much as he dislikes the answers Lewis arrives at, he said that he respects “the struggle that he’s undergoing as he searches for the answers. There’s hope for Lewis. Lewis could be redeemed.” Not Tolkien, however: the “Rings” series, he declared, is “just fancy spun candy. There’s no substance to it.”

Seems to me he's saying "My writings are good, and for real adults. Anybody who likes Tolkien is immature." Seems really snobbish to me, as if he knows he's right, and how close other authors' opinions are to his is his measurement of "quality"

I understand he isn't too fond of Tolkien or Lewis, but it seems to me plain rude to call their works "nauseating drivel", "infantile", or "fancy spun candy".

[Sir Kohran]

Pullman is the Noel Gallagher of literature, constantly criticising pretty much everyone else in the business.

As to the 'Republic Of Heaven'...it's his dream; Pullman's idea of a perfect world - an atheist republic without a single ruler - a world without God. Personally I find the idea and his portrayal of Christianity revolting but then free speech must be maintained.

As for the movie versions of HDM...I don't expect much. It'll be like the Potter or Narnia movies, with plenty of special effects and 'drama' with no real reason to watch again after the initial view. I might be dragged along by my family at Christmas or something but I think that's as far as it'll go.


Tolkien's view on 'God' is interesting in that it is not what you'd expect of a Christian writer. He was a devout Catholic and indeed, the characters in his book show very Christian outlooks and themes (temptation, pity, etc.). However I've always found it interesting that Eru, regardless of his boundless power and influence, is, to the people in the story, almost non-existent. None of the characters ever pray to him; in fact he is not even mentioned once in all of LOTR. As it is the only 'faith in a higher power' is in the Valar (angels, not God). Eru does little or nothing to stop the spread of evil in his perfect world, stepping in only once to remove Morgoth from Arda - and only once much of the world has been ruined and corrupted (also note that Eru does nothing to help the world after this). Some might argue that he caused Gollum to slip - but this is never confirmed by the text (there is in fact the slightly chilling possibility that it was literally just a random slip - that Middle-Earth was saved by accident). Tolkien's portrayal of God is surprising - Eru is not loving, or even present. Eru doesn't seem to care for his world.

[Lush]

Pullman's still at it, eh? Well, in regards to filming "His Dark Mojo" (haha) - he knows how the business works, I'll give him that much. And he's a wonderful writer and deserves all the success and adulation this little world of ours can offer.

However, the attacks on Tolkien are getting a bit tiring. First Hitchens, now this... I understand that for Pullman, it's probably very frustrating to invariably get lumped together with Tolkien when it comes to the way that HDM is assessed and placed in context of literary history. Which is, perhaps, why he feels the need to trash Tolkien repeteadly.

But doesn't he realize that, on some level, these attacks are hurting him, not Tolkien? That it's starting to look like the lady doth protest too much and all that?

He must. He's probably one of the smartest men alive in the world today. Maybe it's the media attention that's really at stake here. God knows, the culture is almost entirely soundbyte-driven these days. And who could pass up a soundbyte before the release of a major motion picture?

[Quempel]

I have read HDM, and if Pullman could get passed re-writing Paradise Lost to fit his own needs, I might have something more to say. At least Tolkien went all the way back to the European Mythos to draw from.

I guess I will stand as one of the immature dolts that read Tolkien.

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Lush

However, the attacks on Tolkien are getting a bit tiring. First Hitchens, now this... I understand that for Pullman, it's probably very frustrating to invariably get lumped together with Tolkien when it comes to the way that HDM is assessed and placed in context of literary history. Which is, perhaps, why he feels the need to trash Tolkien repeteadly.

Or maybe, when he was still an unknown, one too many publishers sent back his manuscripts with advice to write something more like The Lord of the Rings, because that's what sells.

[Lush]

I think you've brought up an interesting point, N. Bookstore are littered with these carbon-copies of Tolkien - and that stuff sells also. Some of it is very good... some of it is like a romance novel with dragons.

Pullman strikes me as very cerebral and high-arty, but it may very well be that the stuff that imititates Tolkien has actually replaced Tolkien in his mind. Although I do not know how that man thinks. Just total speculation.

I'd ask him if I ever met him, but what if he totally loses it then?

[Nerwen]

He probably would!

[Guinevere]

Originally said byPhilipp Pullman:
"'Lord of the Rings,' which I take to be a trivial book."
“just fancy spun candy. There’s no substance to it.”
“ ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is fundamentally an infantile work,”

Grrr... reading such public statements really gets my hackles up!

Like gorthaur_cruel and Quempel mentioned,
this is really quite insulting to all of us who love Tolkien's works and have found meaning and timeless wisdom in them.
And how would Pullman explain the fact that there is so much secondary literature about Tolkien, so many educated and intelligent people occupying themselves with Tolkien's works since decades? Are all these people "immature dolts"?
Really, Philip Pullman should be forced to read Prof. Shippeys book "Tolkien, author of the Century"!!

I have read the "His Dark Materials Trilogy" this year, just so I could form an opinion on Pullman's own writing.
I must admit, that they were very thrilling to read, I liked especially the first volume, but the farther I got, the less I liked it, and the end was downright disappointing. (I agree much with William Cloud Hickly's post!)
They are well written, so one can't stop reading, but once finished, there's nothing that would make me go back and reread , quite unlike LotR.

Originally Posted by Lush

Pullman strikes me as very cerebral and high-arty, but it may very well be that the stuff that imititates Tolkien has actually replaced Tolkien in his mind.

Ha! I really think you are on the right track, Lush!

After all, Pullman said he read the LotR as an adolescent and it doesn't look like he has reread the book since then, let alone the Silmarillion. So his misjudgement on LotR derives from hazy memories of an adolescent (who obviously read it just as an adventure story, much like Peter Jackson did) or perhaps even from seeing the movies.

He is obviously biased by knowing that Tolkien was a devout Catholic.
Like Sir Kohran wrote in his excellent post, in LotR God (Eru) is never mentioned. The hobbits have no religion at all.
It's more about the Northern "Theory of Courage":doing the right thing, because it is right, and not because you get a reward in heaven. But obviously Pullman doesn't see or remember this at all.
And if he states that

“Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other.

he should read "Aldarion and Erendis" .

[davem]

Brilliant demolition of HDM:
http://johncwright.livejournal.com/134046.html

[Alonna]

If Mr. Pullman thinks as highly of himself as he seems to based on his interviews, I wonder if he can explain why everyone is trashing the film version of his book. It is currently labeled as rotten by Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps he should take a long look at why the film version of the "trivial book" turned out to be a far better film than the adaptation of his own.

[Nerwen]

Hang on. Any book can be made into a bad film. That doesn't prove anything.

[davem]

I think its plain that in HDM the message became so dominant in Pullman's mind that the story was thrown away. Pullman is a talented writer - but that's the problem: he's talented enough that he can present boring, illogical & frankly silly ideas in an exciting & interesting way.

The whole 'killing the ghosts' thing in HDM is typical. As the writer of the piece I linked to states, Pullman, in getting rid of God & Heaven & being unable to adopt an idea like reincarnation, is left with offering nothing at all - when you die that's it. You get dissipated into some kind of 'ocean' of matter.

Now that strikes me as being a pretty depressing concept, even if was true - all the people you care about, your friends, family & pets, will die & disappear forever & you'll never see them again, & when you die you'll also just disappear forever.

OK - let's say that's true - & for all I know it may be. It seems to me that the most honest response is to acknowledge the sadness of that, even to grieve over it. The most dishonest response is to present it as some kind of glorious 'liberation' from boredom. But, as I say, Pullman is a skilled writer & can present the ugly in a beautiful way, or the hopeless in a positive way. And too many readers fall for the style & miss the substance. I mean, could we not expect just one character out of all of Pullman's Multi-verses to mutter 'Ey up - that's a bit rubbish!' But no - everyone seems blissed out by how fantastic it is to dissipate into nothingness.

Its a bit like one of those 'well-meaning' adults who can't wait to tell children (for their own good, of course) that there's no Father Christmas or Tooth Fairy - some do it in a stark & simple way, others, the more 'creative' ones, do it in a 'positive', upbeat way, but in the end the children have some of the magic taken from their lives for no better reason than that an adult decided they would be better off without it.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I absolutely *love* this:

Philip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass, hits back at critics who accuse him of peddling "candy-coated atheism". "I am a story teller," he said. "If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon."

Like he wasn't peddling a message? Like he didn't write a sermon? Puh-leez.

As one commentator at the link site said, it appears that somewhere towards the end of writing Book I Pullman was visited by annoying Jehovah's Witnesses and therefore spent the rest of the time scribbling "GoD SukZ!"

[Lalwendë]

More Pullman/Tolkien hype eh?

Because that's all it is. Hype. He plays on how he's not like Tolkien all the time and for a very good reason. Which author could ever even hope to be like Tolkien? You very rarely see any fantasy author laud Tolkien because as an inevitability they are all compared to him in reviews an on blubs (even on the covers of HDM); writers instead choose to brush over the influence Tolkien has had as something from childhood (Pratchett, Gaiman, Rowling etc) or they go for the anti-Tolkien thing (Pullman, Moorcock etc). To open up and say "Oh yes, I'm the biggest fan of Tolkien, ever" would be tantamount to admitting you are, in fact, Terry Brooks.

So Pullman is simply doing what others have done and going for an angle. There's a blog he writes on somewhere or other on t'internet where he quietly mentions how much he likes Tolkien's work but that never makes it into his hype...it doesn't 'sell'.

And remember who he is, a member of the British Chattering Classes, and one thing they Do Not Like is Fantasy. To do what Pullman has done and produce a work, nay, a trilogy of fantasy novels is tantamount to heresy. The Chattering Classes like their younglings to read serious works of fiction about 'real' things, such as the Tracy Beaker books and whatnot. Things About Dragons And Wizards are only to be tolerated, you can tell this by the fact that Potter novels are published in 'discreet' adult covers so you can hide the fact that you are reading something 'silly and childish' on the tube. And the sheer number of parents I've heard attaching the words Harry and Potter to swear words and exasperation...you can just tell they'd far rather their kids were reading novels about African orphans or something. When Pullman is quoted in The Observer as saying Tolkien Is Pants you can hear the cogs whirring in the minds of Jocasta and Tarquin of islington thinking "Hmmm, these Dark Materials books might be just the ticket for the children" because they are Not Like That Silly Tolkien.

The proof for me is however in the pudding and His Dark Materials is awesome and I'm not going to let what the writer says in his Observer interviews sway me towards dislike.

A lot of people do not and did not like Tolkien but this won't stop me liking their work. Now I must dig out that particularly nasty passage in A Writer's Life which details exactly what Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin thought of Tolkien's lecturing style.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Ah, yes, Amis. Who is at least honest enough to admit he didn't give a tinker's damn about Old English and was only there because it would be on the exam. No wonder he was bored.

Surely we've all encountered a professor or two like Tolkien. The Freshman English 101 survey in the 500-seat lecture hall is not their milieu- but catch them in a seminar with a few genuinely interested upperclassmen......

[Gwathagor]

I have only read the last ten pages or so of HDM, so this is very helpful and interesting. With my limited knowledge of Pullman, I'd have to say that my first impression of him is a rather sour one, based on his criticisms of Lewis and Tolkien ("infantile", "immature", "dolts"). He comes off as pathetic, whiny, and self-centered; I am inclined to dislike and ignore him.

[Lyta_Underhill]

And remember who he is, a member of the British Chattering Classes, and one thing they Do Not Like is Fantasy. To do what Pullman has done and produce a work, nay, a trilogy of fantasy novels is tantamount to heresy.

Thanks, Lal, for enlightening this backwoods Tennessee-American about an important aspect of Pullman's personality in a cultural context. I haven't really followed the brouhaha concerning the author himself that much, but I did enjoy the books quite a lot. I think every country and culture has a version of these "Chattering Classes." My own father disparages my tendency to base many of my moral values and spiritual truths on things I read in Lord of the Rings. Truth is everywhere, whether it be nestled in Fangorn Forest or hiding in the particles of Dust along a fantastic Northern Bridge. I enjoyed LOTR, Narnia AND His Dark Materials, all for different reasons. It doesn't matter what the authors think of other authors, what personal conceits underlie a writer's personality, or what political strategems are employed by writers to cater to a niche. The words speak for themselves; the worlds shine through the words, and Pullman did accede to the idea that the story lives in the interface between reader and author. There is no critic who can stand in this realm if one truly reads the words on the page. Second-guessing by authorial temperament seems to be a dangerous business, doesn' it?

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

What struck me about HDM was how fundamentally *adolescent* its thesis was- that all good would derive from sexual liberation and casting off authority. Nietzche for bratty teenagers.

I was put off by exactly the same atmosphere of juvenile posturing. It's also evident in Pullman's comments about Lewis' treatment of Susan Pevensey in the Narnia books, in which he appears entirely to miss the point: Lewis isn't casting his character out for growing interested in boys, but for abandoning her faith in favour of parties and nylons. Sexual maturity and only thinking about clothes and social gatherings are not the same thing, and only a fool or a charlatan would confuse them.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

I was put off by exactly the same atmosphere of juvenile posturing. It's also evident in Pullman's comments about Lewis' treatment of Susan Pevensey in the Narnia books, in which he appears entirely to miss the point: Lewis isn't casting his character out for growing interested in boys, but for abandoning her faith in favour of parties and nylons. Sexual maturity and only thinking about clothes and social gatherings are not the same thing, and only a fool or a charlatan would confuse them.

Yes, it is so very inappropriate to show up for Sunday service in nylons, and likely directly displaying the ill after affects of Saturday night partying. If only Susan had become interested in hats and the modest covering of one's head with them, that kind of vanity (and sinful coverup) would without a doubt have escaped Lewis' chastisement.

[davem]

I don't think Lewis can be exempted from criticism - though I take Squatter's point that what Lewis is attacking is Susan's materialism, rather than her sexual maturity. For one thing, Lewis chose one of his female characters to be cast into outer darkness rather than one of the males.

Of course, The Last Battle is seriously weird anyway, & I wouldn't have been surprised if Susan had been kept out of Paradise for an unhealthy obsession with rabbit hutches ... if you ask me, she was well out of the whole thing.

[Gwathagor]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Yes, it is so very inappropriate to show up for Sunday service in nylons, and likely directly displaying the ill after affects of Saturday night partying. If only Susan had become interested in hats and the modest covering of one's head with them, that kind of vanity (and sinful coverup) would without a doubt have escaped Lewis' chastisement.

I don't understand what you mean at all.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Gwathagor

I don't understand what you mean at all.

I suppose you could put that down to my being one of the folks who Squatter anathamatised in his post. I wasn't aware that at the Barrow Downs we stigmatise people for holding opinions contrary to our own however much we delight in excoriating the opinions.

Originally Posted by davem

I don't think Lewis can be exempted from criticism - though I take Squatter's point that what Lewis is attacking is Susan's materialism, rather than her sexual maturity. For one thing, Lewis chose one of his female characters to be cast into outer darkness rather than one of the males.

The problem with any kind of allegorical work like Narnia is that their images, symbols, events, plot lines get all tied in with the major tendencies of the bit being allegorized.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

Like he wasn't peddling a message? Like he didn't write a sermon? Puh-leez.

All writers--all writers--display a fundamental world view in their work. Lord of the Rings has one--one that puts off some readers because it offers a 'sanitised' version of class social structure.

The presence of world view becomes particularly apparent in science fiction and fantasy where, because the genres are designed to present imagined/alternate worlds, writers can fall into the habit of overemphasising the world view, so much so that it becomes dogmatic rather than merely assumed.

Milton had a similar problem. Swift toyed with the possibilities. It's what puts me off Heinlein. It isn't peddling a message so much as struggling with the genre.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Of course all writers have a worldview. But the amount of didacticism with which they present it varies considerably. I was responding to Pullman's claim that he wasn't sermonising, which is blatantly untrue.

I fact, in an interview done long before he had to worry about boxoffice, he expressly said his purpose in writing HDM was to 'undermine Christianity.' Now he has every right to do so if he wants: but please don't turn around later and fib about it.


On to Susan Pevensey and her nylons: I rather suspect that if someone had pointed out to Lewis pre-pub that that line could be interpreted the way Pullman (and others) have, he would quickly have amended it. He was trying to say that Susan had become enamoured of the trivial, the 'things of this world;' and had moreover confused them with being 'adult' whereas Narnia was 'childish.' Both Jack and Tollers really, really resented that sort of thinking; and unfortunately Lewis was enough of an Edwardian bachelor-chauvanist to associate 'trivial' + 'young woman' with a sort of Seventeen magazine caricature. He could just as well have said 'records and parties' or 'soap operas' or, if he were really aggressive, 'political theory and macroeconomics.' Rather like Jane at the beginning of That Hideous Strength.

Lord of the Rings has [a worldview]--one that puts off some readers because it offers a 'sanitised' version of class social structure.

However LR isn't about 'class social structure.' Aragorn or for that matter the Shire's squirearchs aren't engaged in stamping out democracy or an anarcho-syndicalist movement or whatever: whereas HDM is specifically at its core about resisting the evil Church and ultimately killing God and overthrowing the Heavenly dictatorship.

[Lalwendë]

If you don't grasp what Pullman is about, if you're still hooked on the notion that he hates God, you'd not go far wrong than to look at the lyrics of the first two verses of John Lennon's Imagine (read them if you prefer, if you're like me you'd prefer not to listen - heresy! I prefer George Harrison and Macca... ). I'll say it yet again, Pullman isn't anti-God, he is anti-Religion.

Of course, like I've already said, he knows there is a massive market out there of people who don't like fantasy and view things like Lewis and Tolkien through narrowed eyes, and what is he doing? He's opening his big mouth and being controversial. It sells. If you stray from the path of his Big Statements, you find a gentle, thoughtful and modest man. The deep, deep irony of course is that his big mouth is in good company as Lewis and Tolkien themselves were all-mouth-and-no-trousers when it came to stirring the wooden spoon and making grand statements. Masters of hyperbole one and all.

Still, if you want to let it put you off reading something truly meaty then so be it. It's your loss, not Pullman's. There's enough people out there willing to give him a shot.

I'm really not inclined to give Lewis very much rope however. Not only is Narnia a deadly dull series of books, confusing and childish in the extreme, it's packed full of stuff I find dodgy and the old excuses just do not wash I am afraid.

What he said about Susan is this:

The books don't tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman.

So he clearly wouldn't have altered what he said about Susan had one of us "do-gooding feminists" raised a hand of caution, it was intended that she end up like that. The important word he used was 'conceited' - so the excuse trotted out that it was about her materialism doesn't work. Conceit hasn't got anything to do with materialism, it is about self-regard, which Susan as an attractive young woman, clearly has lots of; Lewis sets it up plainly that she was immoral to grow self-confident and assured of her own sexual attractiveness. Contrast that with the full-figured beauty of women like Arwen and Luthien, even of Rosie, in Tolkien's work.

Other distasteful rubbish is in those books too. He rails against comprehensive education, makes fun of non-smokers, vegetarians and teetotallers - what a cheap shot! He comes across like the reactionary Richard Littlejohn of the Daily Mail once you sit and look at what he was saying. Saying he was a product of his age is no excuse either. So was Tolkien but he doesn't come across as some curmudgeon who despises anyone who doesn't live exactly as he does!

The most amusing thing of all of course is all this rubbish Lewis came up with to explain his allegories. Well I'm one of millions who failed to be taken in by his method of recruiting as I failed to see the analogies and still fail to see most of them - I'd need a Masters in Theology to do so. But I don't fail to see some of his more odious Little Englander attitudes now I look with an adult pair of eyes. Perhaps that's his message? That if you are critical of Little Englanders then you're just like Susan...

Sorry, but as a woman, and as a product of comprehensive education, I find Lewis odious at times and having had 37 years of it, I'm not in the slightest inclined to listen to excuses. If he'd just written about his talking Lions and Beavers and just left it at that his work might have been a lot more charming, but then he had to say nasty things and make nasty allusions...bring on the inflated bladder!

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Lal:

You write as if I haven't read HDM. I have. And I realize that Pullman is (or can be) a pleasant tweedy sort who calls himself a 'cultural Anglican' and enjoys singing Christmas carols- but who also doesn't find anything unseemly in publicly slagging off other writers, whether he really means it or no.

None of that alters the fact that in Vol III his storytelling collapses under the weight of his preaching: and however much he wanted his finale to evoke Blake and Milton, to me at least it's more like Act III of Faust as retold by William Burroughs. So it's disingenous of him to disclaim sermonising when he so plainly is. At least Lewis, love him or hate him, never denied writing Christian apologias.

The important word he used was 'conceited' - so the excuse trotted out that it was about her materialism doesn't work. Conceit hasn't got anything to do with materialism, it is about self-regard, which Susan as an attractive young woman, clearly has lots of; Lewis sets it up plainly that she was immoral to grow self-confident and assured of her own sexual attractiveness.

There you're really, really reaching. One can be conceited about one's looks- but also about one's intelligence, wealth, athletic prowess, social status..... If Lewis were fixated on the physical he could have used, say, 'vain.' Nor would I equate 'self-confidence' with 'conceit.' The one is an excess of the other, which is perjorated and rightly so. By trying to force a feminist narrative of sexuality and female submission onto this (like your snark about 'keeping her head properly covered') you really make yourself sound like those old Freudian critics to whom a cigar was never just a cigar.

All Lewis was saying was that Susan had become self-absorbed, prideful, and obsessed with the 'things of this world' (by which is not meant the material, but rather the evanescent)- and thereby forgot and so lost Narnia. This is hardly radical or reactionary: even atheists will acknowledge that humility and selflessness are virtues.


(NB: Eustace's school was not a Comprehensive, which IIRC didn't exist in the early 50's, but a non-state 'experimental' school.)

[davem]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

(NB: Eustace's school was not a Comprehensive, which IIRC didn't exist in the early 50's, but a non-state 'experimental' school.)

Made me wonder about Waldorf Education/Steiner schools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_schools, & whether CSL was having a bit of a dig at Barfield....

[Folwren]

Lal, you really miss the point of Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. You shouldn't carry on so about something you obviously don't understand. You only make yourself appear foolish and snobbish. I know better than to think that you really are foolish, but if I didn't, I'm afraid I'd have to think very poorly of you after that last post...

You'll notice I don't go on for pages about how awful Pullman's writing and beliefs are.

-- Folwren