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

[quote ScrollingLeaves]@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.[/quote]
I agree. The first 2 books are splendid. Oxford and Cittigazi are such real places. The daemons , the spectres, the witches and the armoured bears are marvellous creations.

The Amber Spyglass lost it a bit - it was overwritten and perhaps had too many ideas.

I enjoyed La Belle Sauvage but The Commonwealth of Dust fizzled out.

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

If NG is Neil Gaiman, this is a ridiculous comment. You might not like Neil Gaiman as a person but he's a hugely successful and imaginative writer.

@KimikosNightmare

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

If NG is Neil Gaiman, this is a ridiculous comment. You might not like Neil Gaiman as a person but he's a hugely successful and imaginative writer.

Really?

Because he wrote this huge part of steaming sexist horseshit for a children’s book of questions and answers. Given how many times he manages to describe Mrs. Claus as ‘soft’ in three paragraphs, I certainly wouldn’t call him ‘imaginative’.

Hmm image didn’t seem to post? Let me try again:

Oh bloody hell! Ignore the photo of me trying to get my five year old to show his tonsils (gp wanted a photo before prescribing antibiotics!)

And don't forget that she does his laundry!

@pollyhemlock

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.

Surely authors don't have to give all characters ideal outcomes though, even beloved characters?

Susan's problem wasn't really the lipstick, it was that she'd allowed less important things in the world to suppress the memory of Narnia altogether, which is not an unusual phenomena. Had she died with the others she might not have found her way there. Since she didn't die, the reader can hope that she will become wiser and remember.

Personally I much prefer Neil Gaiman to JK Rowling. I came quite late to Harry Potter and neither my son nor I enjoyed the first one. I read the first one and thought - well what's all the fuss about?

Neverwhere or Stardust or The Sleeper and the Spindle for example made far more impression on me than Harry Potter.

That's just my personal taste and irrelevant really, but saying Gaiman is just jealous of everyone around him, especially JK makes you sound about 10.

@EvilGoldfish

Hmm image didn’t seem to post? Let me try again:

Coal dust is not the same as soot, and Santa would pick up soot going down chimneys anyway.

(Sorry, not a terribly intellectual reply, but it grates.)

@ScrollingLeaves

“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.

Pullman intended them to be about the idea of original sin, the idea being that in the Christian story, Adam and Eve were intended to remain childlike, but really eating the apple was the beginning of wisdom. In the story, beginning to accumulate dust which causes the daemon to stabilize is supposed to be analogous to becoming wise, and the Church and Mrs Coulter are trying to prevent that by severing the children from their daemons, even at the cost of making them zombies. He seems to think that the "original sin" was sex, so it makes sense that is how he presents it in the story.

Should have added, it's a fairly uninformed reading of the text to base his whole set of novels on, given it was a theme pretty well address by patristic authors who were quite clear that humans remaining childlike in a foolish sense wasn't the intent of the story.

@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.

Urghh. I hope you're wrong - but I'm also someone who does, broadly, like the books (I think we can all agree that Secret Commonwealth jumped the shark - NO idea where that's going!) but is also unsettled by ... something.

plus the whole Dust thing is really wonky and inconsistent and I'm not sure he always knows what he means by it himself.

I understand Pullman’s work. It’s anti-establishment and draws on Blake, who was (or was regarded as) in favour of the removal of State control of sexuality, believing religious and State control of those areas of the human experience were oppressive. Pullman uses ‘dust’ as a metaphor for knowledge, and the control of dust/knowledge by the Magisterium allegorically, symbolising the control of human thought and action, including of sexuality, by conservative forces.

All well and good, but when he chooses specifically adolescent ‘knowledge’ and sexuality as his theme, it makes me think he’d been watching a bit too much The Blue Lagoon.

@MangyInseam
Thank you for that explanation. I had never realised that. I was always a bit perplexed by the Magisterium’s aims apart from removing free will/killing the children’s souls.

I always noticed in my own life, and guessed that it might be universal, that pre about 14 people seem to have a completely different way of experiencing the world - with all the senses, saturated by every moment - then quite suddenly that capacity disappears. (Hence a childhood memory is always richer and more evocative than one acquired later.)
I thought the change from mutable to fixed daemons reflected that.

Anyway, thanks again for explaining. I hadn’t realised there was a hint of a ‘sex will save you’ message ‘don’t let the Magisterium stop you.’ I do find that a bit creepy when adults enter into that on behalf of children.

I am horrified to hear what has happened to Rachel Rooney, that P P seems to have endorsed by backing up Clare’s bullying attacks against her. I plan to order My Body is Me and any others by her and ask local libraries to get It if they haven’t got it already.

I always noticed in my own life, and guessed that it might be universal, that pre about 14 people seem to have a completely different way of experiencing the world - with all the senses, saturated by every moment - then quite suddenly that capacity disappears. (Hence a childhood memory is always richer and more evocative than one acquired later.)
I thought the change from mutable to fixed daemons reflected that.

Yes, and it's the same time that people tend to lose the capacity to play in the same way that children do, totally absorbed in a pretend world. I think it's about the development of abstract thought.

There's actually a ton of really interesting theological writing about the implications of the idea of innocence and it's relation to free will and knowing, including in literature, Pullman always seemed to me to start off with an interesting scenario and some of the images and ideas are exciting, but it didn't quite come out in the end. It falls flat in some way, or starts to strain to try and push the story to say what he wants.

It might be the case as a pp says that the problem is his own view is not really that systematic. Too many contradictions that he doesn't know how to untie.

@ScrollingLeaves a patch of black in a wonderful Rooney book if you have young children.

@MangyInseam
Thank you, that is very interesting.
@MyLittlePhonyPony
Thanks, I’ll look for that book too.

@MyLittlePhonyPony
I have just looked at ‘A Patch of Black ‘ by Rachel Rooney read on You Tube. I agree, it is enchanting. It is terrible to know she has been so badly bullied, and her book ‘My Body is Me’ accused of being political anti- trans propaganda.

As for the people who lobbied schools into teaching children the harmful idea that people can be born in the wrong bodies, is that in itself political propaganda coming from a lobby group?

I meant, isn’t that in itself …

Philip Pullman is one of the many people who would be well-advised not to post on Twitter. He repeatedly weighs in on subjects he doesn't understand.

@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 this with the His Dark Materials trilogy. I thought it a brilliant piece of writing - far better than Harry Potter: I'm not so far gone that I can't see that despite my admiration of Rowling's tenacity and contempt for Pullman's recent display of cowardice.

But the 'relationship' between Malcolm and Lyra in The Book of Dust, albeit unconsummated by the end of the second volume, is as unconvincing as it's creepy on every conceivable level.

Then I look back and see that the primary antagonist of His Dark Materials was a female, the figure who takes the role of the serpent, Mary Malone, another female, and 'Eve', like a good little girl, resists the temptation this time around ...

Yep, definitely a pattern emerging there.

He’s a fantastic writer. No arguments from me. But the work itself raises questions.

Oh dear. Our Phillip has jumped in again. This time questioning a tweet about an article by Jo Bartosch on Mermaids.

Such an odd man

twitter.com/philippullman/status/1543312447762735106?s=21&t=R0U_M5mo7e2h-ZjrOLjpxg

Article:

www.spiked-online.com/2020/07/03/mermaids-leading-children-up-the-trans-path/

’You believe [insert name here]?’

It doesn’t matter who says it. It matters what evidence they have.

His ability to occasionally open his mouth just long enough to put another foot in it are quite astonishing.