I received the warning email from my sister. I asked if she had read the books,
and of course she hadn't. I've read all three. After seeing the claim that
Pullman reportedly said that his books are about killing God, I looked at every
interview transcript I could find that featured direct quotes from the author.
None that I saw featured that line. As a Christian, I'm still not sure why some
other Christians are threatened by works of fiction. I would think the chance to
discuss religious themes and ideas would be welcome, but maybe that's just me.
I prepared a synopsis of excerpts from several interviews, some of which cover the
religious question and sent that back to my sister. I challenged her to forward
the information to as many people as she sent the warning. My hope is that maybe
somebody will read the books and make their own, informed decision. The excerpts
are below if you're interested. (I didn't cite sources because I thought I was
only sending the excerpts to a relative, not a professional group.)
Linda Wilson-Brown
Teacher/Librarian
Jonesville High School (MI)
lbrown@jonesvilleschools.org
Philip Pullman: "The trilogy known as HIS DARK MATERIALS didn't have that name in
my mind from the start. In fact it didn't have a name at all; it was just 'the big
book'. When I'd finished the first volume and was talking about it with David
Fickling, my British publisher, we tried various names and couldn't find one that
worked. I knew that the trilogy needed a name, and that each of the books needed
its own separate name too (I don't like numbers in titles: THE GODFATHER PART TWO,
and so on. Just a fad. But it's my fad). So: what should they be called?
My first discovery was the phrase THE GOLDEN COMPASSES (plural, note). This comes
in Milton's Paradise Lost, a poem which inspired me a great deal. The line refers
to the Son of God taking 'the golden compasses, prepared / In God's eternal store,
to circumscribe / The universe, and all created things."
In other words, these were compasses to draw a circle with, not a compass to find
your way with. I liked the phrase, and the trilogy became temporarily, during the
publication process, The Goldem Compasses. And we finally settled on Northern
Lights for the title of the first book.
Meanwhile, in the US, it was being read by the editors at Alfred A. Knopf. Someone
decided (mistakenly, but firmly) that the title referred to Lyra's alethiometer,
which could be regarded as a sort of golden compass, but of the direction-finding
and not circle-drawing sort. So the same someone or another someone decided to
refer to the first book, for their own internal discussing-a-forthcoming-book
purposes, as THe GOLDEN COMPASS.
Meanwhile, back in the UK, I had found the much better phrase, HIS DARK MATERIALS,
for the title of the trilogy. I quote the passage from which it comes at the very
beginning of the first book. Better, because it's more atmospheric, and there's the
uncanny resemblance to 'dark matter', which figures largely in the story. So out
went THE GOLDEN COMPASSES, and in came HIS DARK MATERIALS.
Meanwhile, back in the USA, the publishers had become so attached to THE GOLDEN
COMPASS that nothing I could say could persuade them to call the book NORTHERN
LIGHTS. Their obduracy in this matter was accompanied by such generosity in the
matter of royalty advances, flattery, promises of publicity, etc, that I thought it
would be churlish to deny them this small pleasure.
So that's it. The fact that all three titles refer to an artifact is no more than a
coincidence, though it does make a nice pattern. Before I'd finished the third one,
the artist Eric Rohmann, who drew the wonderful covers the books had in their first
Knopf editions, asked what the third book would be called, and before I could tell
him, volunteered THE SOPHISTICATED MONKEY-WRENCH.
One tiny final thing: my first suggestion for the third book was THE LACQUER
SPY-GLASS. My editor at Knopf, Joan Slattery, pointed out that this might be
mis-heard as LACK OF, and that made sense to me; so it became AMBER instead."
Are people with same-sex dæmons gay?
"It was clear to me from the beginning that occasionally someone might acquire a
daemon of the same sex. What might that mean? I don't know everything it might
mean; it could mean something about their own sexuality, or it might mean something
quite different. It's one of the many things I don't know fully about my world.
Similarly with how daemons are born. There wasn't actually any part of the story
that depended on my studying daemonic gynaecology, so I didn't go into it."
-Will there be any more books?
Yes. But no reunion of Will and Lyra. There will be two companion novels to the
trilogy - Lyra's Oxford
<http://comet1.jonesvilleschools.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.bridgetothestars.net/index.php?p=lyrasoxford>
has already been published and The Book of Dust
<http://comet1.jonesvilleschools.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.bridgetothestars.net/index.php?p=bookofdust>
is tentatively slated for a release some time in 2005. Lyra's Oxford is a short
story about Lyra four years after the end of The Amber Spyglass (along with
'materials' that have slipped between Lyra's world and our own, such as a
postcard... it also includes woodcut illustrations by John Lawrence), while The
Book of Dust will be a collection of stories and information about the worlds of
His Dark Materials (such as how Lee and Iorek met, or the Creation myth for Lyra's
world). Lyra's Oxford came out on October 29th 2003. No date has been announced yet
for The Book of Dust.
-What influenced His Dark Materials?
Pullman's main influence for His Dark Materials is the 17th century epic poem
'Paradise Lost' by John Milton. He also cites Blake, Virgil, and Homer as
influences, and Von Kleist's essay, 'On the Marionette Theatre'
-What does he believe?
"I know full well that the total amount of the things I know is a tiny little
pinprick of light compared with the vast unlimited darkness that surrounds it -
which is all the things I don't know. I don't know more than a tiny fragment of
what it's possible to know about this world. As for what goes on outside it in the
rest of the universe, it's a vast darkness full of things that I don't know. Now,
somewhere in the things that I don't know, there may be a God.
But if we come down - like coming close up with a camera - getting closer and
closer to this little pinprick of light, so that it begins to expand and gets
bigger and bigger until we find ourselves inside it... I can see no evidence in
that circle of things I do know, in history, or in science or anywhere else, no
evidence of the existence of God.
So I'm caught between the words 'atheistic' and 'agnostic'. I've got no evidence
whatever for believing in a God. But I know that all the things I do know are very
small compared with the things that I don't know. So maybe there is a God out
there. All I know is that if there is, he hasn't shown himself on earth. "
-Why did he portray religion as evil?
"When you look at organized religion of whatever sort - whether it's Christianity
in all its variants, or whether it's Islam or some forms of extreme Hinduism -
wherever you see organized religion and priesthoods and power, you see cruelty and
tyranny and repression." Whether he portrayed religion accurately, or in an
exaggerated sense, is again up to the reader to decide. He has said that if he were
able to, he would have put in a good priest here or there "to show that they're not
all bad".
(Different interview now)
Why do you hate God so much as it appears in your books?
Philip: Well, it is not that I hate God, it is just I don't believe in God. I
think the people who do believe in God and persecute the people who don't believe
in God are thoroughly dangerous, that is the way I would put it. People who have
got an idea of God that makes them want to persecute other people for not believing
their idea of God, they are the dangerous ones. People who say we have got the
truth and the truth is in the Bible or the Koran or the whatever it is and we know
the truth, and we are going to kill everybody who doesn't believe things that we
believe, that is a dreadful state of affairs and it is an unfortunate part of human
nature that it seems to be attracted to this sort of extreme certainty and
arrogance and so much so that they want to make everybody else believe the way they
do and kill everybody who believes different. And I think that is the dangerous
thing and those are the people I mistrust and fear and would fight against
willingly.
See another interview he did at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/94589/104-3616301-9523902
<http://comet1.jonesvilleschools.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/94589/104-3616301-9523902>
At the very end of page one, he addresses his idea of Heaven. Be sure to read
the second page, too. It provides good insight into what drove his writing of the
story.
(Yet another different interview)
Why are all the church characters bad? That was due to a flaw in my artistry, no
doubt. But I was trying to hit a target that deserved hitting, and there's no merit
in pulling punches when important issues are at stake. Anyway, every time I thought
I was overdoing it, up came another scandal about brutal monks mistreating children
in Irish schools, or sadistic nuns tormenting children in Scottish orphanages, to
name but two that came up recently. These things do happen.
Will there be a movie of HDM? I haven't the faintest idea. I shan't have anything
to do with it if there is; "take the money and run" are the wisest words of advice
ever spoken on the subject of writers and films. Casting: I like the idea of Nicole
Kidman as Mrs Coulter, myself, and the voice of James Earl Jones as Iorek Byrnison.
(He has, in fact, distanced himself from the movie in several interviews.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Please note: All LM_NET postings are protected by copyright law.
You can prevent most e-mail filters from deleting LM_NET postings
by adding LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU to your e-mail address book.
To change your LM_NET status, e-mail to: listserv@listserv.syr.edu
In the message write EITHER: 1) SIGNOFF LM_NET 2) SET LM_NET NOMAIL
3) SET LM_NET MAIL 4) SET LM_NET DIGEST * Allow for confirmation.
* LM_NET Help & Information: http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/
* LM_NET Archive: http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/archive/
* EL-Announce with LM_NET Select: http://lm-net.info/
* LM_NET Supporters: http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/ven.html
* LM_NET Wiki: http://lmnet.wikispaces.com/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
LM_NET
Mailing List Home