Not having read the novels currently being worked over. . uh, through. . .I don't have much to back this up other than the brief snippets
davem gives above, but it would seem to me that this Pullman fellow is writing fantasy, and has had the wherewithal to realise that one of the best ways to sell his books is by generating a bit of controversy around them. If Madonna wrote a fantasy novel, you can bet she'd be saying pretty much the same sort of thing. . .
The question of money and marketability just pops something else into my head. Tolkien did very well (financially) from LotR, and somewhere in his Letters he says that in making the decision of whether to sell the rights of the book to a movie maker he would do so either for "art" -- if the script were good -- or "cash" if it were not.
Now, I do
NOT want to kick of yet another round of the movie debate here -- so please nobody reply to that particular strand of my ramblings (ample room for that in the Movies forum). All I am working toward is the question of profitability and marketability for Tolkien.
It strikes me, that at least part of his 'intent' in writing a rip-roaringly good and entertaining book would be to make it have as wide an appeal as possible, that is, to find as large a potential market as possible. Without suggesting that Tolkien was in it "for the money" -- which is patently untrue (he was stunned by his financial successes) -- this has led me to wonder to what extent did questions of the marketplace influence the nature of his story? If he went "all out" with the religious views that underly the text, then it would have turned people off. By focusing so much more on the more ambiguous (I can practically hear
Mark 12_30 and
davem yelling "Universal") appeal of a "successful" eucatastrophe, was he not also writing a more appealling/saleable book? You know: happy ending -- unlike Pullman -- and not all "preachy" -- like Lewis?