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Originally Posted by davem
I wonder if the comment in OFS is actually 'criticsm' of Shakespeare as a playwright.
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Well, I suppose we could quibble over what you mean by criticism, but I had used the words 'objection' and 'correction' and suggested that the main point of Tolkien's comments derived from the question of the nature of fairy. Clearly the quotations available show that Tolkien thought Shakespeare worth 'doing'. The signficant issue I think is that Shakespeare provided Tolkien with a valuable 'place' from which to consider fairy. Tolkien's thoughts about fairy are, to my mind, substantial and significant and clearly Shakespeare played some part in helping him think about how to represent the land--or at least in part how to explain the lay of said land to his audience. It was, then, a very important and complex relationship, one which allowed Tolkien to develop his thought.
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Originally Posted by davem
Anyway...
Pullman's statement that LotR is 'infantile' clearly sets out Pullman's position - fantasy is inherently 'childish' & it is the 'duty' of an author to help his child readers 'grow up' & put away childish things. So Pullman uses fantasy to undermine fantasy (in his own words). The end of HDM is the end of fantasy. The worlds seperate forever, & the children proceed to get on with the 'grown-up' task of 'building the Republic of Heaven'. Now, being that 'Heaven' is essentially a metaphysical concept, its difficult to work out what this statement actually means, or how it could be achieved.
What Pullman seem s to mean is that everyone should work to make the world a better place, where everyone is nice to each other all the time & they all live happily ever after. And this is a 'grown up' novel according to the Literati (among whom Pullman presumably numbers himself!
Of course, this 'Republic of Heaven' is anything but 'Heaven' in the sense we understand the term. It is 'Heaven' without any spiritual aspect at all - yet Heaven is spiritual if it is anything. We have to conclude that the whole 'building a Republic of Heaven' idea is a meaningless phrase. To have read a thousand page novel & end up with a piece of nonsense like that as the author's final word is enough to make you throw the book across the room & demand those lost hours of your life back. To compare the words 'build the Reublic of Heaven' with Sam's final words: 'Well, I'm back' is to experience a real shock - the power of Tolkien's simple statement (what Pullman would describe, one assumes, as 'infantile’ with Pullman's bland & meaningless rhetoric, is almost overwhelming & shows that if either work is 'infantile' it is certainly not Tolkien's.
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With Tolkien, we have a very fine essay in OFT and the "minor works" to help us discuss his thoughts on fantasy. What we have of Pullman in this thread is nothing like that and your comments seem to be moving back and forth between reported statements and HDM for analysis. What I think would really give us something substantial to compare would be Pullman's actual lectures themselves rather than a few choice phrases reported by a journalist.
For instance, the first post for this thread starts with:
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Originally Posted by first post
In an essay in the New Yorker Pullman states
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At one point, Pullman and I stopped by the Eagle and Child, an Oxford pub where Lewis and Tolkien used to meet regularly with a group of literary friends. (They called themselves the Inklings.) A framed photograph of Lewis’s jowly face smiled down on us as we talked. In person, Pullman isn’t quite as choleric as he sometimes comes across in his newspaper essays. When challenged, he listens carefully and considerately, and occasionally tempers his ire. “The ‘Narnia’ books are a real wrestle with real things,” he conceded. As much as he dislikes the answers Lewis arrives at, he said that he respects “the struggle that he’s undergoing as he searches for the answers. There’s hope for Lewis. Lewis could be redeemed.” Not Tolkien, however: the “Rings” series, he declared, is “just fancy spun candy. There’s no substance to it.”
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Yet Pullman here is himself quoted, and the actual passage itself is written by the journalist Laura Miller. It is Miller who makes those statements, not Pullman himself directly. We are certainly right to take umbrage with such characterisations, yet it seems to me that 'sound bites' aren't always the full story. I would much rather prefer to read Pullman's thought in its entirety, in his own words and then to take issue with him.
Laura Miller's article is fascinating for it seems to me to suggest subtly connections between Pullman and Tolkien and those connections stand in contrast to Pullman's antipathy to Tolkien and Lewis. Pullman chooses to buy organic bacon? Sounds like something Tolkien would do today. Telling stories and jokes? Sounds to me a fair bit like our Tollers. She's up to something here--not a bad thing by any means--but what she is up to isn't necessarily what Pullman himself may be up to.
The passage which
davem quotes from Tolkien's essay on Smith has a fascinating comment, which I don't think we've really explored much:
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Originally Posted by Tolkien
BUT Faery is not religious. It is fairly evident that it is not Heaven or Paradise. Certainly its inhabitants, Elves, are not angels or emlssares of God (direct). The tale does not deal with religion itself.
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Would Pullman say this, that fairy (or fantasy) is not religious? Or his his 'story' not the same thing as 'fairy'? We need to examine these kinds of differences between their thought, I think.
So, I suggest that, before we really get our knickers all in a knot, we try to track down Pullman's full statements and then give him due process.