Pullman: The Humanists' L. Ron Hubbard
Salman Rushdie missed a trick. If he had set the Satanic Verses in the nostalgic Oxford of the establishment and described puddings, punts and shoplifting T. S. Eliot from the Oxford bookshops - What japes! - in his book instead of being so exotically "oriental" then he t0o could have passed under the radar.
Philip Pullman is cock-a-hoop, though. He can't understand why he got off so lightly. Roald Dahl castigated Salman Rushdie for his insensitivity. Philip Pullman deserves a little castigation too.
Philip Pullman thinks the problem with our society is religion. So this is what he does about it. He gets children's attention by using magic and fantasy as a plot device and then, towards the end of his trilogy, once he has enticed them into "His Dark Materials" sweet cart, he then whips away the cover and the promises of magical wonder fade. The children find themselves locked into the barred rationalist cage of materialism and atheism.
Pullman rationalises his narrative deception:
"The 'fantasy' parts of the story were there as a picture of aspects of human nature, not as something alien and strange. For example, readers have told me that the demons, which at first seem so utterly fantastic, soon become so familiar and essential a part of each character that they, the readers, feel as if they've got a demon themselves. And my point is that they have, that we all have. It's an aspect of our personality that we often overlook, but it's there. that's what I mean by realism: I was using the fantastical elements to say something that I thought was true about us and about our lives."
Pullman uses the imagination to parody the imagination.
This is children's fiction equivalent to: "And they woke up and realised that it was all a dream." To use magic as a plot device and then to say you didn't really mean the magic, is a cowardly cheat. In fact the BNP uses much the same trick. Espousing something in order to attack its essence. The BNP, in its leaflets, starts off by saying that it espouses Christian values and then creepily insinuates that this Christianity only holds for the white British in their fair dealings with each other.
Both the BNP and Pullman offend in their duplicitousness and leave a bad taste in the mouth. In both cases the reader is manipulated, but in the case of Pullman he is attempting to manipulate young readers. And here endeth the lessons according to Pullman, a terrorising didact.
Writing partly in the spirit of Stephen King, Pullman also uses murder, abuse, cruelty and death to enrich his plot. What is the justification for this violence in a children's book? Roald Dahl's cruelty was the cruelty of children. Pullman's is the cruelty of a manipulative adult.
And he means it. Pullman is a member of a coalition aimed at abolishing religious schools, of imposing the one sided "authority" of Humanism on hundreds of thousands of children who currently benefit from a religious education. Pullman is an oppressive, intolerant enforcer of the humanist anti-religious orthodoxy. Pullman is there to help civilisations clash. So much for his "enlightenment values". One key enlightenment value in Britain was religious tolerance.
"The Christian religion was a ...mistake"
...writes Pullman through the character of a nun in "The Amber Spyglass" right at the denouement to "His Dark Materials" This he writes after many hundreds of pages of magical action underpinned by an unconvincing and undercooked scientism.
Philip Pullman tries to justify this literary con trick by waffling on about narratives and narrative devices, generously equating the bible story to his own fiction. However, to me reading Pullman is like reading Ron L Hubbard or The Watchtower or listening to the pitch of a time-share salesman. But hey, feel the quality of the manipulation. Drop in references to Milton and insider knowledge of Oxford colleges and hum and murmur what right-of-centre journalists and politicians like to hear, and the establishment will promote you.
In Pullman's trilogy the attacks on "the Magisterium" and "the authority" are relentless. You get the queasy feeling very early on in the books that this enlightened political correctness of someone on the centre right. Here, you get the impression, is someone who believes in "The Clash of Civilisations". Someone who honestly thinks "religion" and not class or inequality or capitalism or greed or exploitation or is at the heart of the world's problems.
The History Man at 57, twenty five years on, would now agree with everything that Pullman says in "His Dark Materials" The History Man was a social climber who used counter culture to gain power and leverage. He was never a socialist. He never really had a Marxist outlook. What happened to the History Man? He turned into Jack Straw. And if Jack Straw could write, he would write His Dark Materials. And if Philip Pullman were a politician he would be the Home Secretary.
Salman Rushdie missed a trick. If he had set the Satanic Verses in the nostalgic Oxford of the establishment and described puddings, punts and shoplifting T. S. Eliot from the Oxford bookshops - What japes! - in his book instead of being so exotically "oriental" then he t0o could have passed under the radar.
Philip Pullman is cock-a-hoop, though. He can't understand why he got off so lightly. Roald Dahl castigated Salman Rushdie for his insensitivity. Philip Pullman deserves a little castigation too.
Philip Pullman thinks the problem with our society is religion. So this is what he does about it. He gets children's attention by using magic and fantasy as a plot device and then, towards the end of his trilogy, once he has enticed them into "His Dark Materials" sweet cart, he then whips away the cover and the promises of magical wonder fade. The children find themselves locked into the barred rationalist cage of materialism and atheism.
Pullman rationalises his narrative deception:
"The 'fantasy' parts of the story were there as a picture of aspects of human nature, not as something alien and strange. For example, readers have told me that the demons, which at first seem so utterly fantastic, soon become so familiar and essential a part of each character that they, the readers, feel as if they've got a demon themselves. And my point is that they have, that we all have. It's an aspect of our personality that we often overlook, but it's there. that's what I mean by realism: I was using the fantastical elements to say something that I thought was true about us and about our lives."
Pullman uses the imagination to parody the imagination.
This is children's fiction equivalent to: "And they woke up and realised that it was all a dream." To use magic as a plot device and then to say you didn't really mean the magic, is a cowardly cheat. In fact the BNP uses much the same trick. Espousing something in order to attack its essence. The BNP, in its leaflets, starts off by saying that it espouses Christian values and then creepily insinuates that this Christianity only holds for the white British in their fair dealings with each other.
Both the BNP and Pullman offend in their duplicitousness and leave a bad taste in the mouth. In both cases the reader is manipulated, but in the case of Pullman he is attempting to manipulate young readers. And here endeth the lessons according to Pullman, a terrorising didact.
Writing partly in the spirit of Stephen King, Pullman also uses murder, abuse, cruelty and death to enrich his plot. What is the justification for this violence in a children's book? Roald Dahl's cruelty was the cruelty of children. Pullman's is the cruelty of a manipulative adult.
And he means it. Pullman is a member of a coalition aimed at abolishing religious schools, of imposing the one sided "authority" of Humanism on hundreds of thousands of children who currently benefit from a religious education. Pullman is an oppressive, intolerant enforcer of the humanist anti-religious orthodoxy. Pullman is there to help civilisations clash. So much for his "enlightenment values". One key enlightenment value in Britain was religious tolerance.
"The Christian religion was a ...mistake"
...writes Pullman through the character of a nun in "The Amber Spyglass" right at the denouement to "His Dark Materials" This he writes after many hundreds of pages of magical action underpinned by an unconvincing and undercooked scientism.
Philip Pullman tries to justify this literary con trick by waffling on about narratives and narrative devices, generously equating the bible story to his own fiction. However, to me reading Pullman is like reading Ron L Hubbard or The Watchtower or listening to the pitch of a time-share salesman. But hey, feel the quality of the manipulation. Drop in references to Milton and insider knowledge of Oxford colleges and hum and murmur what right-of-centre journalists and politicians like to hear, and the establishment will promote you.
In Pullman's trilogy the attacks on "the Magisterium" and "the authority" are relentless. You get the queasy feeling very early on in the books that this enlightened political correctness of someone on the centre right. Here, you get the impression, is someone who believes in "The Clash of Civilisations". Someone who honestly thinks "religion" and not class or inequality or capitalism or greed or exploitation or is at the heart of the world's problems.
The History Man at 57, twenty five years on, would now agree with everything that Pullman says in "His Dark Materials" The History Man was a social climber who used counter culture to gain power and leverage. He was never a socialist. He never really had a Marxist outlook. What happened to the History Man? He turned into Jack Straw. And if Jack Straw could write, he would write His Dark Materials. And if Philip Pullman were a politician he would be the Home Secretary.
Phil, sorry, this is a bit off-topic. Haven’t read Pullman … Did you know that People has a Body Editor – a discovery I made yesterday?
ReplyDelete===All part of a demographic formula that has kept People prospering while so many publications are reeling in these hard times. . . The body editor had a story on a onetime teenage TV star in her 30’s who’d put on the pounds, but was now ready to pose in a bikini for People.===
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/fashion/24generationb.html?_r=1&ref=fashion
… further proof, if any were needed, of how perfectly the online world replicates the offline one. I saw that you were being criticised for a low click count – by someone claiming a high one (Habeas WP stats chart this instant, say I). You do remember, don’t you that IF that’s true, it’s been attained by following to the letter the advice of a consultant with a fine education in I think, Greats?
===
freepoland // February 4, 2009 at 11:13 am
Lower your writing standards, increase footfall to your hub. No fulfilment point needs to be thugged with intimidatory wordage, nor cluttered with thinkage. Open wide your entry facilities; friendful non-hierarchical acceptance strategies bring enhanced marketshare plausability.
You know it makes sense.
===
Can't actually remember how I found my way to your blog (a Guardian link I think?), but just wanted to say that I think your comments on Phillip Pullman are bang on target. You say what I've always thought but never been able to put into words before. Nice job.
ReplyDeleteWordy, Thanks.
ReplyDeleteIn criticising Pullman , Le Guin, Lawrence - Dylan, whoever: and even the odd Guardian editor or two, I think it almost goes without saying that after you do so you say something like:
"But, of course he is a great man, she is a great woman and has achieved a lot of value."
Well, perhaps not always a "great" man-woman, but anyway, a man or a woman just like anyone. Worthy of some respect and deserving of dignity.
As for clickage,that rymes with verbage yardage - of thread - and garbage, as you point out. And blockage, breakage, cleavage, flaotage, forage, bondage, carnage and cabbage. It is not even a word I would use. It is not part of my vocabulary. Whoever used such a word to criticise me has fully identified themselves in the process of doing so. Don't you think? Wouldn't you say? Don't you feel? Thanks.
Anonymous
Thanks. I suppose I should wait for lightning to strike. Pullman and Aaron. How could I dare be so unreverential. How dare anyone touch up the holy silver and brassware, these sacrosanct creations placed on the alter of humanism and atheism.
The God of atheism can be a wrathful God.
These are the invisible doors we must walk through and cut open with subtle knives cut in the current nonclemature of establishment orthodoxy.
=== cabbage ===
ReplyDeleteThere's the word that says it all for me.
... I meant, as in 'silly old ...' for those people repeating all the depressing superficiality in the use of the old communications technologies in the new.
ReplyDeleteWell, my intuition tells me, you know more about the superficiality of the old communications media, than I do. Cath Elliot, for example, a nice person with a line she doesn't stray from. She engages constantly with people who post on her threads. But the non blogging rest of them are laughabe. They deposit their little plogging pieces of pontification and make it a principal never to comment or engage with commentators. What do they think they achieve?
ReplyDeleteAnd of curse the Guradian can't allow these bubbles to be pricked and they will edit out certain legitimate responses because they absolutely require a response and yet none is forthcoming.
Those who avoid debate - fools. BTW you were right about PR. I saw that on the latest Mishari thread. Very problematic.