This is rather interesting. They obviously teach creative writing differently here up north.
I'd like to focus on this comment:
Quote:
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the Lord of the Rings which is written after the shadow of two world wars and written in the cold war, and in that everyone is very anxious but it is quite clear who are the goodies and who are the baddies. Whereas in the recent Golden Compass, Philip Pullman's books it is very murky and unclear no one is sure who's good or who's bad and people's motives are unclear...
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What strikes me as odd is that this murky morality is being, at least in my university, frowned upon. Perhaps it's a case of 'retro is the new 'new'' or something, but the comment has sort of bugged me.
In Middle Earth you do indeed have a divide between good and bad, there are one or two grey characters, one who redeems himself to an extent (Boromir) and one who does not (Gollum)*. The 'good' people are anxious about the enemy, but as a byproduct of this anxiety, as it were, more groups are bound together and a sort of peace can be made. Thus there is a message of hope that, no matter how terrible the enemy, people will always band together and strong relationships can be born.
However, in Pullman's, as it were, 'murky' characters, there is a little less of this. The 'you can't trust anyone' motif begins to raise its head and we are left with a world of despair where each person is out for themselves. Now, it seems to me that, ultimately, Pullman does not take this rout as HDM concludes. I would still argue that there is more 'hope' in Lord of the Rings than in HDM. This may come down to the authors' differing theological stances, or perhaps, as the interview suggests, their cultural setting. Perhaps there is a lot of both.
As far as the tendencies of modern writing students I will make a few observations regarding the idea of 'the age of anxiety'.
A lecturer for one of my classes commented recently that she has seen a 'disturbing rise in the number of stories about murderers, paedophiles and insane people'. What makes them a little more unnerving is the fact that most of them are written in the first person. It seems that this is a good reflection on how people are more aware of 'what the dangers are', so to speak. I think people and writers have always been aware that the world is a dangerous place. In the past it seems to have come down to (I am over simplifying here, but bare with me), whose side you were on. These days, yes, things are more complicated because it is becoming difficult even for the sides to define themselves. Moreover, with the interwebs and all that we do have much more information on the more, shall we say, unnerving aspects of society. Being aware of all these things will, inevitably, lead many people to either become more anxious or to, I suppose, do something about it.
I'm probably rambling now, so... end.
*Although, I'm sure this could be argued further.