[Aiwendil]

Originally Posted by Pullman

"You have to surrender. You can't have control over everything. And it would be foolish to — I'm not a filmmaker. But I've seen the shooting on set, the scripts along the way, and I've been allowed to offer advice, so I can't complain. I gather that's unusual!"

I don't like the implication here. So only filmmakers are qualified to have opinions on films? The author has to just sit back, watch what they do, and (if he's lucky) offer a comment from time to time?

Originally Posted by Pullman

"For Tolkien, the Catholic, the Church had the answers, the Church was the source of all truth, so 'Lord of the Rings' does not touch those big deep questions. The 'Narnia' books are fundamentally more serious than 'Lord of the Rings,' which I take to be a trivial book."

Now this is an unusual claim - and no doubt one intended to be provocative. It seems to me to be exactly the other way around. 'Narnia' may ask 'big questions', but it treats them in the most superficial manner; it doesn't explore them at all but merely offers dogmatic answers. Tolkien addresses big questions too, of course, though apparently not the ones Pullman considers worthy of literary treatment. But Tolkien treats them with more than a modicum of subtlety, which apparently goes over Pullman's head.

Davem wrote:

I think the difference between Tolkien & Pullman is that Tolkien asks deep questions, but refuses either to offer glib answers or brush them under the carpet.

I think this is quite correct. I'd add something to it, though: another difference between Tolkien and Pullman is that for Pullman, literature is about asking and answering so-called 'deep questions'. A book is, for him, a platform from which to promulgate his Message. He is like Lewis in this regard; and while Pullman's world-view is closer to mine than is Lewis's, I cordially dislike this attitude toward literature in both of them. For Tolkien, what is important is not allegory but story.