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Originally Posted by MatthewM
Thanks for the Letter quotes Beth, but I didn't understand anything Tolkien was saying on Shakesphere, as he usually speaks in riddles. I couldn't tell if it was for or against. Maybe it was neither? Ah well, it's not what the topic is about anyway.
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It seems to me that Tolkien feels the same way as I do about studying drama texts from books, that it just isn't satisfying, and it does the plays an injustice. I always found myself frustrated reading plays out of books, I wanted to
see the plays and hear them. I had to ask myself if people in Shakespeare's day would have sat in earnest groups reading his plays from the page. No, they would have been in rough, bawdy, crowded theatres watching the action, listening to these lines being said aloud, and probably shouting and heckling and stuff too.
I can't read Marlowe's Doctor Faustus without constantly stopping to visualise it, and wish there was a modern film of it to watch with all the mad stuff made real on the screen. I've seen the Revenger's Tragedy performed where they handed out plastic capes for the front row audience to wear as the actors flung around fake blood and raw meat. That's what Drama's about, noise and action, and singing and hearing someone read the poetry aloud.
I think that is exactly what Tolkien's getting at.
Anyway, back on topic...
Tolkien's work exists within its own world, its own universe. Arda is a different place. Pullman's world however, exists alongside our own world. I wonder just how much Pullman hates the notion of an entire other world? He mentions Narnia which is also accessible from our own world. I wonder if he is reacting against this detachment from the Real World that Arda has? And I wonder if he has read (or even is aware of) Tolkien's experimental fictions such as The Lost Road which tried to link Arda to the Real World? I suspect he never will know about this as he has no desire to explore Tolkien's work further.
What he is missing with the accusation of 'spun sugar' aimed at Tolkien's writing is something important in literature, subtlety. Tolkien's work has a grip on and deals with some of the biggest issues of the modern age, such as environmental disaster, totalitarianism, war and the enslavement of mankind to the 'machine' of society. He also has incredible characters such as Gollum who make us stop and think about who and what is 'good' and 'evil'. In Tolkien's work, this is all put across with subtlety. His style is poetic, and by that I mean his work works on many levels like a poem does; there is the surface 'plot' but underneath are the layers - language revealing history, events having several interpretations, dialogue revealing character rather than internal monologue doing so (the usual modern form).
This may reveal a lot about the two writers' reading preferences - certainly Tolkien was fond of old epics, usually in the poetic form, where a few lines can reveal a whole host of details and allow for many speculations.
What I found in HDM was a wonderful work, which itself had a lot of potential for speculation and mystery, but which fell down towards the end with some very shaky storytelling; it was clear that the 'point' was more important than the 'story' towards the end as so little of it rang true. I do suspect that he began in much the same way that Tolkien did, just writing, and the 'point' only became apparent at a later stage, at too late a stage to correctly tie it in with the plot. In any case, he clearly could not let go of the 'magic' himself as he later produced a short story about Lyra and a 'Book Of Dust' may be written; holding true to his own 'point', surely Lyra should just now 'grow up'? So he's not that different to Tolkien after all.