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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

His Dark Materials: SPOILERS, and then some

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Alex's Grandma

23:30 / 12.03.05

The way out of prisoncamp afterlife is to recount the story of your life...

Isn't that a bit Carlos Casteneda 101, though ? Having been through all of Pullman's sort of ok novels, I find it a bit hard to picture him as anything other than a burned-out old hippy/ex-academic, someone who might have made a great lawyer, or related, in the mid-to-late Seventies, if he hadn't taken quite so much acid.

I dare say it suits him to play the crusty old bugger these days, in the Evelyn Waugh style, but, let's face it, his opinions are at best a bit confused.

Not that I've got any problem with this or anything, I kind of applaud his efforts, and like to think of him counting the money in front of friends and relatives who've previously doubted him, but I'm really not sure if he ever expected his, er, dark materials to be taken all that seriously, TBH

Our Lady Has Left the Building

16:52 / 14.03.05

I must say how for me the Narnia books were ruined by their relentless pro-Christianity stance, ignoring all the negative things that it brought us (what about the religious purges that the reign of the four Pevenses children against the swarthy Tashites) and suggesting that trying to reach an accomodation between different religions is an evil act in itself, and god forbid if you say "I'd rather play with lipstick and boys than a circus lion!"

Pullman has said in interviews after the book that concentrating on only the bad side of the church was a mistake, but I suggest you just follow the approach the American studios turning this into a film seem to be going for, just pretend it's not your church at all.

Seth

17:25 / 14.03.05

I'm not defending the Narnia books. I'm attacking His Dark Materials. Pullman's a fine writer, but a poor thinker. Indeed in the interviews that Jack Fear links to he seems to only admit to his depiction of Christianity as a "mistake" when the interviewer has him pushed into a corner.

Setting up HDM as some kind of anti-Narnia in order to defend its gaping flaws isn't going to wash with anyone and doesn't do either text justice. Pullman is peddling a lie just as much as Lewis.

_pin

13:31 / 21.03.05

I've only started in this thread from Seth's imput, so I don't know if anyone else has said it, but all the things he removes from Christianity are humanity. Looking back on the book, the Christians in Jordan who just do everyday stuff don't seem like they're going to get stuck in Hell because they can't tell a good story. In his cosmology, all the good things in churches come from people not God, and he wants people to see that.

It just reads like part of the anti-Popery tradition, complete with the slightly idiosyncratic act of conflating it with asceticism.

Seth

20:09 / 21.03.05

The Jordan Scholars' first action in the story is to conspire to assassinate someone. They barely appear besides at the very beginning, and their psuedo-religious titles seem more in keeping with the stuffy tradition of the college than their beliefs, about which we know next to nothing. Nothing about the Scholars reinforces that particular case.

matsya

04:05 / 22.03.05

Mistah Fear:

a lot of moments that should have been climactic (the death of The Authority, for instance) fell terribly flat.

I kind of liked that the death of the Authority should be so far from the central event, the passive passing into dust...

m.

_pin

09:17 / 22.03.05

Seth: The scholars at Jordan don't want to kill, same as Scoresby, but they will to prevent what they see as wrong.

But I didn't even mean scholars: I meant the general staff, Lyra's maid, people who just live in Oxford. I can't think of a character being held up as evil other then those who will commit infanticide to hold their own power.

This is why, in response to you off-thread, I read it more as against authority and dogma then against Christianity. I didn't read it as him doesn't say that humanity can't exist in a religous setting (if he was, then people would be left in hell, and they aren't; everyone there has a story to tell), only that that has nothing to do with dogma or force.

Seth

18:17 / 23.03.05

Which of these characters are Christians? I don't recall anyone of the ones you mention being referred to as such.

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