No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Talking to Philip Pullman: An Interview
Abstract
The Lion and the Unicorn 23.1 (1999) 116-134
Philip Pullman has been described as a storytelling mariner, a Tolkien of our time. He would not be entirely happy with this comparison. He is an outstanding writer for children who has published a diverse range of literature that includes historical and modern thrillers, fairy tales, comic stories, and graphic novels. In 1995 Northern Lights (American title, The Golden Compass), the first volume of his ambitious magnum opus, appeared to widespread critical acclaim and won him recognition as a writer whose appeal is not limited to children. Readers of all ages have been gripped by the multiple levels of engagement and interpretation that this book and its recent companion The Subtle Knife (1997) have offered. Now we await the final part of the trilogy which, Philip has explained, is his version of Paradise Lost for young people.
Earlier this year, we talked to Philip Pullman in the riverside garden of a twelfth-century Oxford pub. It was a place frequently visited by J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis and is said to be where Lewis Carroll often entertained the Liddell children. Across the Thames, on a small island, stands one of the last remaining ornamental statues from a former Italian garden. It is a huge imposing lion, believed by some to be the inspiration for Lewis's creation of Aslan. Against the background screeching of strutting peacocks and the sounds of weir water, we talked to Philip about his work and, in particular, the influences, concepts, and central themes behind his trilogy, His Dark Materials. We discussed how the structure and scale of the narrative form he has chosen allows him to explore powerful human themes within its epic architecture.
Philip's belief in the power of stories and the ways in which they can teach us about the world we create, and the morality by which we live, has been an insistent theme in much of his fiction and critical writing. In this conversation, he developed his views on how a single story can encompass issues that seem to transcend time and place. We talked about the extraordinary publishing phenomenon generated by the first two volumes of his trilogy, about the differences in writing for children and writing for adults, about perceptions and representations of childhood, and about the creative influences that have shaped his thinking and inspired his writing.
We began by talking about "grand" or "overarching narratives" and how they can be used to offer certainties and liberating possibilities for the child reader. Philip regrets the reluctance of many contemporary writers to take on such ambitious challenges.
PP: I think the grand narratives aren't so much played out or exhausted in contemporary writing, as abandoned for ideological reasons, because they're felt to be somehow impure or improper. Maybe the whole thing is weakened by a fatal lack of ambition. This is what I find most irritating in my contemporaries among writers: lack of ambition. They're not trying big things. They're doing little things and doing them well.
Q: There are some writers who manage to deal with the "incommensurable," the "unpresentable," the ideas that are just starting to gel, which they bring into consciousness without fully explaining. That's what Philippa Pearce did in Tom's Midnight Garden with the concept of Time. It's what you have done, in terms of the way in which preadolescents suddenly become aware of human sexuality and that loss of innocence which changes the way they perceive reality.
PP: That's the central idea of the whole thing, and of course that is part of what is happening in Book Three. It's my starting point; well, actually, there are several starting points. There's the Milton, which of course I quote and take as my title for the trilogy. There's another influence that planted and watered this particular seed. I first came across -- twenty years ago -- in a copy of the Times Educational Supplement, a translation by Idris Parry of an essay by Heinrich von Kleist, called "On the Marionette Theatre." This essay has subsequently been published in a little Penguin book...
This dissertation is devoted to Philipp pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, his novellas Lyra's Oxford, Once Upon a Time in the North and The Collectors, as well as his novel La Belle Sauvage. The texts are analysed together and referred to as Multiverse ensemble. This work studies the ensemble as a space created by the author to illustrate his poetics, storytelling, completed by the act of reading, is presented as a, active process thanks to which knowledge, wisdom and experience are passed on. The ensemble functions as a self-reflexive comment on literature and stories in general, showing them to be passages through which meaning can circulate , means of teaching, learning, and gaining experience. Readers are presented with diegetic examples of the act of reading and its effects, and with readerly challenges that train them to become more competent readers, who can then tackle any text. The ensemble thus works as a formative experience, an initiation to active reading.
My master dissertation is on crossover fiction, a kind of literature which is able to equally appeal to children and adults alike. Although the phenomenon is not limited to the English-speaking world, Anglo-American literature (and especially the British one) has seen a rise in novels with a dual appeal at turn of the twenty-first century, the most famous instances being J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (1997-2007), Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (1995-2000) and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), the latter being also the case study of my dissertation.
The term crossover fiction has been widely used in both academic and more popular contexts in Britain during the first decade of the new millennium, but even though crossover fiction can be described in a few words as children’s literature crossing over to an adult readership, this short sentence cannot possibly illustrate all the aspects as well as issues that are involved in such a notion. This is why my dissertation opens with a detailed investigation on the definition and meaning of this category of fiction, taking into consideration also matters such as the different dynamics at play in its success, and whether it can be defined as a separate literary genre, besides discussing its historical background. An investigation which, however, is not very easy to conduct since there is a scarcity of relevant academic literature directly addressing the topic, with the noteworthy exception of Rachel Falconer and Sandra Beckett’s studies on crossover fiction, possibly the only two works entirely and explicitly devoted to crossover fiction. What appears quite evident from Beckett and Falconer’s academic studies is that crossover fiction can hardly be considered as a distinctive genre. Rather, it can be better described as a phenomenon or process, since it represents the movement between two other macro-categories – namely, adult and children’s fiction. Moreover, what is crucial to always bear in mind when discussing crossover fiction is that one has to think of it as tripartite system, featuring both crossover texts, cross-writing and cross-reading and that similarly, three are the key players in the crossover process: authors, publishers, and readers.
After having clarified what it is generally meant with the label crossover fiction, and in order to provide an in-depth picture of the crossover phenomenon, in the second chapter I have also tried to pinpoint as far as possible the characteristic features of this text-type, which ultimately are a certain complexity in form and themes not usually associated with children’s literature, such as genre blending and the presence of controversial topics; the important role of marketing as in the case of dual editions (two separate editions of the same book, one for children and one for adults); and the kidult discourse which has influenced many crossover novels. The term kidult is a blend of the words “kid” and “adult” which denotes the hybrid figures of adults with childish tastes and interests, and it is a key concept in understanding the social and cultural context from which the millennial crossover fiction emerged. Indeed, the latter is not only a literary phenomenon, but also a cultural one, and as a matter of fact to study and research the field of crossover fiction is of particular significance also and especially in order to understand the changing reading habits in our contemporary culture as well as the deep transformations of our notions of childhood, the child and children’s literature. One of the main aims of my work is precisely that of questioning the natural or essential binary child/adult as well as the modern perception and representation of childhood, an aspect which is strictly connected to crossover fiction as the latter can be considered a consequence of the blurring of age identities in our time.
Therefore, my focus in this work has been twofold: on the aforementioned cultural dimension of the phenomenon alongside the more literary one, and on the harsh criticism it has attracted from some critics and commentators. Because of the controversy this kind of fiction tended (and still tends) to stir in both academic and mainstream discussions on the topic, crossover fiction may still be defined as a contentious issue, on which critics and scholars have very divergent opinions. This is why, in order to develop a complete understanding of the subject crossover fiction as well as of the controversial issues related to it, I have also devoted a separate chapter on the cultural infantilism debate and other common criticism that crossover fiction is often faced with. These include the role of nostalgia which is sometimes present when adults engage with children’s literature, the financial factors involved in crossover fiction, the threat that crossover fiction would allegedly represent for children’s literature, and the uncertain future of this category of fiction. These are all aspects which should not be neglected in an in-depth discussion on the matter. However, although these objections may at time be partly true, they ultimately do not invalidate the overall literary and cultural value of crossover fiction.
Finally, I have also analysed one particular crossover text, namely Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which is the case study of this dissertation and helps us to better understand the factors and characteristics that may turn a children’s book into a crossover title. Haddon’s novel, which is (apparently) about a boy with Asperger’s syndrome and his dysfunctional family, was published in the UK in 2003 in a dual edition and it is considered one of the prime examples of crossover novels. It is often defined as a peculiar text even within the crossover discourse, since it is one of the first novels to have been published simultaneously in dual editions, as well as being the conclusive evidence that not only fantasy, like Harry Potter, but also realist fiction for children can easily cross over to an adult readership. Moreover, some of the key strengths of the book are its protagonist-narrator with his idiosyncratic and disarming narrative voice and his defamiliarizing gaze, the postmodern nature of the text and the many different ways in which the novel can be read, making it a reading accessible to young readers but at the same time sufficiently challenging for the adult ones.
Therefore, throughout the dissertation and taking into consideration all these different matters concerning crossover fiction, my aim is partially also that of encouraging scholars in the field of literary studies to engage eagerly with children’s and crossover fiction, an area too often neglected also because of the biased opinions and Romantic preconceptions both scholars and non-scholars often hold with respect to a literature originally aimed at children, but which can in fact offer adults not only an enjoyable reading experience but also lead to some important considerations on the deep transformations of our culture when it comes to the notion of the child and children’s literature.
This essay has a twofold purpose: to consider the issues of contemporary Young Adult literature addressed to “the children of the videosphere” within the context of globalized culture and to assess the importance of postmodern Baroque aesthetics in the “Star Wars” system of modern Letters and mass-media. Writers often resort to such aesthetics with the prospect of commercial hegemony, but some of them find their “distinction” (in Pierre Bourdieu’s delineation) through intertextuality – be it avowed or hidden – with the great masters of the past (William Blake and John Milton). We will investigate the secret workshop of Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy and some of his other works, as well as Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World and diverse literary productions. With their arresting butterflies as significant baroque emblems, these works provide a new and spellbounding vision of the Western hero and offer a new “reterritorialization” of Letters. More particularly, Philip Pullman’s literary gesture has been to extract the baroque message from the vulgarised versions of popular mass media and to give it a new distinction.
Key words: Postmodern baroque, William Blake, picaresque, humour, parody, Philip Pullman, Jostein Gaarder.
With the extraordinary success of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, crossover fiction has often been seen first and foremost as a commercial phenomenon. However, it has long been a literary phenomenon that is only recently receiving the acknowledgment that it deserves from the literary establishment. Child-to-adult crossover books have now become contenders for prestigious mainstream literary awards. A few rare examples even pre-date the crossover craze issued in by Harry Potter. In 1995, Dianne Hofmeyr’s Boike, you better believe it was awarded the M-Net Book prize, the most important literary prize in South Africa, beating out J.M.G. Coetzee’s Master of Petersburg. Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer had also been nominated, but withdrew. In 2001, the final volume in Philip Pullman’s His dark materials became the first children’s book both to win the Whitbread book of the year award and to be longlisted for the Booker prize. The next year, the award was given to Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, the first Booker prize winner ever to have true crossover appeal. In 2008, the most prestigious literary prize of all, the Nobel prize for literature, was awarded to the French novelist JMG Le Clézio, a crossover author who has never distinguished between adult fiction and children’s fiction. This paper proposes to examine Le Clézio’s place within the crossover phenomenon and to show how his winning of the Nobel prize for literature marks a very significant milestone in crossover fiction’s path to literary respectability.
In 2001 Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass—the third novel in his trilogy His Dark Materials—won Britain’s Whitbread Prize. The award made clear Pullman’s status as both a bestselling author of young adult fantasy and “an important contemporary novelist regardless of genre.”1 Book one, called in America The Golden Compass, begins on an alternate earth where an ecclesiastical hierarchy rules Europe. Everyone on this Earth has a “daemon,” an animal that represents part of his or her soul; the eleven-year-old heroine, Lyra, discovers a Church-sponsored plot to cut children away from their daemons, and joins an expedition to discover its source. Book two, The Subtle Knife, introduces multiple Earths (including our own), witches, and angels; its boy hero, Will, acquires the titular blade, which cuts passages between worlds. The Amber Spyglass leads Lyra and Will through the land of the dead, into a war in Heaven, and to a new Eden, where their love will determine the fate of all the worlds.
Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho was published in the UK by Picador in 1991. The subject of the novel, his third after Less Than Zero (1986) and The Rules of Attraction (1988), became infamous. In summary, it catalogues in frequently banal and occasionally lurid detail the life of Patrick Bateman, a Wall Street yuppie whose narrative is packed with the details of designer clothes, modish restaurants, and the torture and dismemberment of his (mostly) female victims.1 Ellis is an American writer, but the publishing history analysed here is principally of the UK publication and reception of his third novel. Nonetheless, it is worth noting the pre-publication trouble that the book ran into in the US. A report from The Times dated 19 November 1990 picked up the story:
A full-scale storm erupted in Manhattan’s literary village last week when Simon and Schuster, the publishers, decided to scrap the book just as it was about to be sent to the shops, on the grounds that it was just too shocking. Writers cried ‘censorship’, denouncing the publishers for caving in to the pressure of Paramount Communications, their new corporate owners […]
With advance publicity like that it took about a microsecond for Ellis to find a new publisher courageous enough to issue the book.2
The Independent on Sunday maintained The Times’s cynical tone in its report the following Sunday:
The end of the American Psycho saga turns out happy for all, depending on your point of view. Its original publisher are now the proud guardians of taste; Mr Mehta [head of Knopf] is the saviour of freedom of expression; and Mr Ellis is even richer.3
This article examines the multiple worlds in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy in light Pierre Bourdieu’s “space of possibles” and the combination of chance and choice that impact Lyra and Will’s
decisions. Rather than viewing chance or destiny as disempowering, this article considers how the protagonists’ choices also
encourage readers to confront their own notions of space in the world outside the narrative. As Lyra and Will work to escape
and restore the dystopic multiverses through which they travel, Pullman’s text challenges readers to recognize and repair
the dystopias in their own worlds and to accept the Keatsian “negative capabilities” of ambiguity and mystery in place of
facile escape. Given this pedagogical imperative, Pullman’s enclosure of Lyra and Will in their separate worlds lies at the
heart of his resistance to escapist tendencies of fairy-tale endings. Fantasy must be grounded in reality because Pullman’s
readers must also continue the struggle for wisdom in their own worlds no less than Lyra and Will.
Keywords
His Dark Materials
-Philip Pullman-Space-Multiple worlds-Parallel universes-Adolescence-Dystopias in literature
In the His Dark Materials trilogy, Pullman reworks the fall of humanity into an ascent and suggests that ascent into adulthood through sexual experience is the desired goal for children. Although this ascent is accompanied by a radical reconceptualization of life and death, Pullman fails to offer any genuinely new ideas of the world with respect to adult–child relationships and the roles that children play in our society. Situated as it is at the crossroads of childrens literature and fantasy, His Dark Materials fails to take advantage of the freedom these two genres provide and reinforces current conceptions of children and their role in society.
This article argues that Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials may be read as a series which attempts to assault the Christian doctrine of God. We believe that this demonstrably accords with Pullman’s personal views, and that, through his story, he seeks to foster such views in his readership. However, the accuracy of his attack falls short of its intended mark when it is examined alongside classical Christian theology. The Authority which Pullman’s narrative destroys is actually more akin to the Christian view of the devil than he is the divine, and the victories of Will and Lyra — as a new Adam and Eve — have strong resemblances to the victories which Christianity claims for Christ and Mary. Pullman’s narrative, therefore, becomes an inversion of his deicidal intention rather than an inverting and revolutionary destruction of theology.
Over 2,000 years ago, the Greeks thought they had it all worked out. In their cosmology, the entire Universe was composed of four elements: earth, wind, fire and water. Now, despite several millennia of effort, modern cosmologists are significantly worse off. We have no idea what the bulk of the Universe is composed of. We cannot even tell whether the majority of matter in the Universe is in some microscopic form (such as axions or other exotic particles) or in some macroscopic form (such as brown dwarfs or primordial black holes). Our ignorance of the mass of the basic building blocks of the Universe spans a good 50 orders of magnitude. In a paper in the Astrophysical Journal last month, Metcalf and Silk1 propose that, by observing the gravitational effects of matter on the light from distant supernovae, it is possible to distinguish between microscopic and macroscopic forms of matter.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.