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Just a couple of responses from Philip Pullman in an interview with Brian Sibley in the BBC Radio 4 documentary 'Fired by the Ring':
Sibley asked Pullman whether fantasy stories are needed.
Pullman: We need all sorts of stories. I think we don't need that sort of story as much as we need realistic stories. My view of fantasy is that its inherantly a trivial form, a form of less importance than realism & speaking for myself if I could write interesting stories of everyday people I'd gladly do that. I can't do that & make it interesting, so I have to write fantasy.
(Sibley then asks about the idea that the stories of Middle Earth are set in a period of our own ancient history) .
Pullman: Yes, well if he said that its the purest bunkum. I will believe that if they find a fossil Hobbit. Its not the real world, but there are large numbers of fantasy fans who hold conventions & who know a great deal about the Saga of the doomsword or frithlefroth or whatever it is, but who don't know what day it is& haven't changed their t-shirt for a month & clearly they're getting something out of it. What they get out of that sort of genre & this sort of thing is a mystery to me because I don't get it.
I think that kind of sums up Pullman's whole attitude to Fantasy & the 'value' he feels it has. (Its not very complementary about fantasy fans, either!)
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