Phillip Pullman

[Dollpiglet]

I'm not a huge user of Twitter but I do follow Phillip Pullman who seems to have stepped out on this issue now. I'm gutted!

twitter.com/PhilipPullman/status/1417467807873241088?s=19

Given the current gender bubble we are in, men like Pullman will do the safe thing which is to side with those who would really go after him if he did not.

It's dreadfully sad.

Pullman has resigned as president of the Society of Authors over the Kate Clanchy issue (presumably).

When it became clear that statements of mine were being regarded as if they represented the views of the Society as a whole (although they did nothing of the sort, and weren’t intended to), and that I was being pressed by people both in and out of the Society to retract them and apologise, I realised that I would not be free to express my personal opinions as long as I remained President.

@VeryLongBeeeeep

Show us on the book sale charts where JK hurt you, Philip.

@Slythermum

Also should mention that all my kids gave up on his books saying they found them humourless and boring. Even though I read them all it was a chore, and felt like a tediously long children's book written by an adult who does not like children.

Oh — me too. I was surprised how tedious they became. Never bothered to read any after plodding through the first trilogy. And I love a good fantasy read.

@JustSpeculation

I've found myself thinking more and more about Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" recently. He looks at the world in terms of a romantic understanding vs a classical one, by which he means seeing quality in impressions and appearance on the one side, and on the other seeing it in the underlying systems and principles behind the world. It has always struck me that GC types are much more classical, and the TRA types more romantic. Pullman is a complete romantic. To TRAs, we are square and they are hip.

I must re-read the book.

I've had this book for years but never actually read it, I must!

Years ago someone asked me about Philip Pullman's books and I said I like them, but there's something weird about them. The more I thought about it, the less I could understand why a middle aged man chose to write about a precocious adolescent who is held back from the awakening of her sexuality by conservative forces.

@HelenJoyce

Never thought I’d say it, but when I read tweets like this it makes me thankful TP died when he did. I couldn’t bear it if he did similar.

He would never have I'm convinced, despite what RP or NG think. The TRAs will point to the dwarves as proof but I don't think it shows what they think it does. TP was too keen an observer of the human condition to fail to see it, and he was a very angry MSN, I don't believe he'd have kept quiet about his thoughts. NG is just jealous of everyone around him, especially JK, I mean his books are ok but his best books are those he's written with others. Must sting.

Abhannmor I couldn't agree more. He's a very confused man. Vehemently atheist, but brought up by his vicar grandfather whom he loved and respected. Anti God, but loves the Book of Common Prayer. I liked the first 3 Dark Materials books, but he is a dishonest writer, pretending to oppose Christianity by building his own bizarre version and knocking that down.
That sounds a familiar method, actually.

Thanks for reminding me of this book. I will re-read. I wonder how much influence it had on my long-held distrust of Romanticism? I long since came to the conclusion that it's all about selfishness and self-importance

@JustSpeculation

I've found myself thinking more and more about Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" recently. He looks at the world in terms of a romantic understanding vs a classical one, by which he means seeing quality in impressions and appearance on the one side, and on the other seeing it in the underlying systems and principles behind the world. It has always struck me that GC types are much more classical, and the TRA types more romantic. Pullman is a complete romantic. To TRAs, we are square and they are hip.

I must re-read the book.

Using the Classical vs Romantic analogy is an interesting idea JustSpeculation.

I think dissolving boundaries in general is artistic, and Romantic.

But there is something about literally cutting up bodies and hurting them with hormones, or being unable to be flexible within the boundaries of the canvas/sculpture/building /your born sex which is un Zen and un-artistic imo

Think of a Cezanne mountain with all the myriad parts still reassembled back into a unity which is quite as strong as any in Poussin.

We need to understand the many parts that make up each of us without destroying our integrity in the process.

In the back of my mind I think I have a memory of P P being against FGM. Can anyone remember this from the books, or something he said in the 1990s?

@tabbycatstripy

Years ago someone asked me about Philip Pullman's books and I said I like them, but there's something weird about them. The more I thought about it, the less I could understand why a middle aged man chose to write about a precocious adolescent who is held back from the awakening of her sexuality by conservative forces.

What is your point?

“tabbycatstripy
Years ago someone asked me about Philip Pullman's books and I said I like them, but there's something weird about them. The more I thought about it, the less I could understand why a middle aged man chose to write about a precocious adolescent who is held back from the awakening of her sexuality by conservative forces.“

I didn’t see that post. I never read the books as meaning that. More the horrific interference with and harvesting of children’s souls by adults.

'I didn’t see that post. I never read the books as meaning that. More the horrific interference with and harvesting of children’s souls by adults.'

They gave me the ick as I got older.

Kimikos:

Was I vague? I didn't think I was.

Just to say that it’s perfectly possible to love PP’s books, as I do, and to disagree with him strongly on the gender issue. One of the most irritating things about the TRAs and their supporters is the way so many of them go on about how they loved Harry Potter but of course hate it now because JKR etc etc. A subset make it their life’s work to go through everything JKR has ever written in a frankly creepy way to find things to be offended about. I do think PP should come off Twitter though. Every time he says anything on that forum he makes a twat of himself.

I do like his books, but even before I knew he was on the other side of this debate to me I thought they were slightly off.

Years ago someone asked me about Philip Pullman's books and I said I like them, but there's something weird about them. The more I thought about it, the less I could understand why a middle aged man chose to write about a precocious adolescent who is held back from the awakening of her sexuality by conservative forces.

I was posting on the other thread on Pullman in feminist chat last night, and saying something very similar to you @tabbycatstripy.

I thought the first book was good, but the second and third baggy and disappointing -- and I could never quite get on board with the whole titillating the reader with the coy do-they-or-don't-they implication that two twelve year old protagonists might be saving the world by having sex under a tree. He's always been very coy in interviews about whether that's intended, but in a way that clearly goes along with the narrative trajectory that it does.

Even when I first read them when they first came out and I was much younger, this kind of stuck in my craw rather and set off my ick factor somewhat. Okay if the protagonists were fifteen or sixteen, say, and he wanted to write about adolescent sexuality in a YA-oriented book. But twelve year olds? Nah, there's something off and a bit "in plain sight" about that; and it's always really bothered me to be honest. There's no especial need why that has to be the implied resolution of the story and I'm always surprised at how many people don't seem to think there's something weird about it.

Couldn't agree more, nightwaking.

He does make it clear in The Secret Commonwealth that though Will and Lyra are in love they do not have sex . Adult Lyra says : ‘ All we ever did was kiss...And that was enough. If we’d been older then it wouldn’t have been enough. But for us then it was’. Of course you could argue that he only makes this so clear because of criticism of that scene in The Amber Spyglass. But I still find it less troubling than CS Lewis condemning poor old Susan to losing her entire family because she likes ‘lipstick and nylons’. I am in general a Narnia fan though. It’s possible to like them both.

@tabbycatstripy

Kimikos:

Was I vague? I didn't think I was.

Well I don't know what point you're trying to make.

On Twitter Pullman calls the voice of those who protest his agreement with that tweet 'squeaking.'

His slip is showing.

Arrogant, patronising, nasty misogynist.

The bit where they were petting each others daemons always squicked me out more than the sex under a tree (which of course they did, the whole trilogy was leading towards that point). That just annoyed me because it was such an obvious plot point,

A motto i have is never to @ my heroes

@tabbycatstripy
I was not young when I read the first two but an adult reading them out loud to a child. I now realise I did not read The Amber Spyglass as the child took over on their own.

I am going to take your word for it and read it later. I can see what you might be meaning in theory.

The first two books though are certainly brilliant and thrilling I think; and the daemons are a marvellous concept. Even now too the idea of Spectres and their destructive effects is so powerful in our family understanding that it is a point of reference for us when someone is so wounded by events that they give up and their eyes look dead.