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Perhaps, that is one reason JRRT's characters seem "real" to me. (Child)
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Real! That is the wonderful thing! But what if we talked about
real 'psychological depth.' What is psychology? I think first we must answer that.
All people of some intelligence are going to have a psychological part, if you will, of their lives or minds. There is some degree of psychology related to everything, as the human mind is really related to everything: thoughts, actions, speech.
Pullman sees this all in an obviously 'scientific,' or, as Child so nicely put it, 'modern' way. And, the modern way is secularism, atheism. So, when Pullman searches for his 'psychological depth,' he will not find it in Tolkien's 'outdated' writing, or any writing by someone who knows of more to psychology - has faith. Many times people feel like they need to delve deep into someone's thoughts, know their memories, know their darkest temptations, in order to understand them or at least, in books, to get the most out of following a character in a story. Or, sometimes - actually, many times - people just want to read about all these complex thoughts just to get into all the 'juiciness' of the drama. The thing is, these people don't think they experience enough 'psychological depth' in their own minds. Part of the reason they believe this is that they don't have something to
really believe in, and the other part is that they just don't get it. I think they make the whole idea of psychology and the human mind in general a much larger deal than is truly necessary.
Okay, one last thought: How can someone say that there is no 'psychological depth' in a work (literature or otherwise), when it is written by a human being with a human mind. (Well, most have a human mind.)
At least, that's what I think. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]
-Durelin