Phillip Pullman gets it

[NewlyGranny]

I know it's an adaptation, but tonight...

Pantalaimon: I don't think I'm ready for changes.
Lyra: I don't think anyone is ever ready for changes.

Children have struggled or been helped through adolescence since forever. Better to find new and more effective ways of helping those who need help than to enable them to avoid it altogether and switch them onto the medicalisation track of drugs for life and even surgery when there is no physical illness or defect to be treated.

Exactly, Mrs Wooster! I simply can't reconcile the writer with the tweeter. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Have you read the more recent books?
The secret commonwealth is most odd.

Yes, for the reasons you say. But also the 'relationship' between Malcolm and Lyra.

Not only is it unconvincing, it's way off for all manner of reasons. This is the gauche, older boy who 'rescued' her as a baby, and was later her university lecturer. Grooming doesn't even begin to cover all that is wrong with this ...

The best writer for children I have ever known had this quotation from Isaac Bashevis Singer's Nobel prize acceptance speech written out on a size A0 piece of pale green paper and and stuck on her study door.

TEN REASONS WHY I WRITE FOR CHILDREN
1] Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.
2] Children don't read to find their identity.
3] They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for
rebellion, or to get rid of alienation.
4] They have no use for psychology.
5] They detest sociology.
6] They don't try to understand Kafka or Finnegan's Wake.
7] They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins,
logic, clarity, punctuation and other such obsolete stuff.
8] They love interesting stories, not commentary, guides or footnotes.
9] When a book is boring, they yawn openly, without any shame or fear of authority.
10] They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know it is not in his power. Only adults have such childish illusions.

@HuckfromScandal

Sadly, no he fucking doesn’t, he is a total MRA.

Is he? Other than the trans sympathy thing on Twitter, what other things has he said or done that specifically mark him an active Men's Right's Activist? Seems a far fetched thing to say to me.

From my fuzzy recollection all the antagonists in HDM weren't very three-dimensional. It was all faceless bureaucracies, authoritarian religions, nasty people pretending to be nice, and "end justifies the means". It was all bad people doing things everyone knew was bad, so they hid it, but they justified it. Not people thinking they were doing good, and doing so publicly and being cheered on for it.

Yes, he seems to buy into the modern idea whereby if people do something you believe is bad, it's because they have decided to be bad people.

But more than that, he wrote the whole series to knock down a straw man version of the story of the Fall. Not unlike his behaviour on this issue.

They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know it is not in his power. Only adults have such childish illusions.

That's a perfect quotation for any of JKR's fans who feel they've been somehow betrayed.

From my fuzzy recollection all the antagonists in HDM weren't very three-dimensional. It was all faceless bureaucracies, authoritarian religions, nasty people pretending to be nice, and "end justifies the means". It was all bad people doing things everyone knew was bad, so they hid it, but they justified it. Not people thinking they were doing good, and doing so publicly and being cheered on for it.

This. I really enjoyed the subtle knife and the subsequent ones were OK but he has the subtlety of a brick.

He's held up as skewering religion but really the books are so silly. His Catholic Church is just cackling and evil but are in direct touch with the Angels who are equally evil for equally pointless reasons. His God is just a senile old git in a pram.

The books would have been much better if the magisterium and the rest of what he thinks Catholicism believes had been either closer to reality or completely divorced from it.

He spent that day poking and prodding twitter to get people riled up, and ordinarily that would be his choice. He wants to troll people under his real name? Crack on.

Honestly I think that's the main point of the books too. He seems to desperately need to always find a RL 'baddie' he can criticise.

I have never read any of his books and now never will, as he comes across as a right misogynist, bullying arse on Twitter.

wonder how somebody could write something so clearly about male/female power play and then be the absolute idiot about it Twitter

Yeah, I wonder about that.

Pullman's books set in the nineteenth century, about Sally Lockhart, seemed to me when I read them (long ago) to be more feminist in their basis than the Lyra series.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

Pullman's books set in the nineteenth century, about Sally Lockhart, seemed to me when I read them (long ago) to be more feminist in their basis than the Lyra series.

In a way. Though they have the annoying quality of characters who think in every way like modern people who just happen to be dropped into a 19th century setting, which makes them seen very smart and progressive and easy to like and admire. And asks very little of the reader.

If I was an author I’d be scared to put my head above the parapet. JKR is a complete legend, beloved by millions and she has been vilified, her life has been threatened, repeatedly.

Daring to say women are women and transwomen are transwomen, well you have to have balls of steel for that. Understandably not many people who dare because the trans crowd have cornered the market on bullying and fear. How ironic.

Daring to say women are women and transwomen are transwomen, well you have to have balls of steel for that.

An ironic phrase, given that we are discussing the bravery of JKR and the cowardice of Philip Pullman.

The books would have been much better if the magisterium and the rest of what he thinks Catholicism believes had been either closer to reality or completely divorced from it.

Is it meant to be the Catholic church? In one of the books, not sure which one, Pope John Calvin is mentioned and the Magesterium is in Switzerland not in Rome. I think in Lyra's world Calvinism became the dominant religion.

@EdgeOfACoin - that did occur to me when I wrote it! Actually it's another rampantly sexist phrase isn't it. The toughest you can be is with a bit of the male anatomy. Maybe it should be ovaries of steel?

Daring to say women are women and transwomen are transwomen, well you have to have ovaries of steel for that. Understandably not many people who dare because the trans crowd have cornered the market on bullying and fear. How ironic.

Much better.

I can get on board with ovaries of steel, RaRa!

@Jackabobbo

I think he does actually get it, but he's happy to play the "ohhh I'm such a confused old man, why can't the nasty women just be nice" game, because it's easier for him and he's clearly a massive coward who cares little for the female sex.

This. I find his comments on twitter so disappointing and rather pathetic.