More Pullman/Tolkien hype eh?
Because that's all it is. Hype. He plays on how he's not like Tolkien all the time and for a very good reason. Which author could ever even hope to be like Tolkien? You very rarely see any fantasy author laud Tolkien because as an inevitability they are all compared to him in reviews an on blubs (even on the covers of HDM); writers instead choose to brush over the influence Tolkien has had as something from childhood (Pratchett, Gaiman, Rowling etc) or they go for the anti-Tolkien thing (Pullman, Moorcock etc). To open up and say "Oh yes, I'm the biggest fan of Tolkien,
ever" would be tantamount to admitting you are, in fact, Terry Brooks.
So Pullman is simply doing what others have done and going for an angle. There's a blog he writes on somewhere or other on t'internet where he quietly mentions how much he likes Tolkien's work but that never makes it into his hype...it doesn't 'sell'.
And remember who he is, a member of the British Chattering Classes, and one thing they Do Not Like is Fantasy. To do what Pullman has done and produce a work, nay, a trilogy of fantasy novels is tantamount to heresy. The Chattering Classes like their younglings to read serious works of fiction about 'real' things, such as the Tracy Beaker books and whatnot. Things About Dragons And Wizards are only to be tolerated, you can tell this by the fact that Potter novels are published in 'discreet' adult covers so you can hide the fact that you are reading something 'silly and childish' on the tube. And the sheer number of parents I've heard attaching the words Harry and Potter to swear words and exasperation...you can just
tell they'd far rather their kids were reading novels about African orphans or something. When Pullman is quoted in The Observer as saying Tolkien Is Pants you can hear the cogs whirring in the minds of Jocasta and Tarquin of islington thinking "Hmmm, these Dark Materials books might be just the ticket for the children" because they are Not Like That Silly Tolkien.
The proof for me is however in the pudding and His Dark Materials is awesome and I'm not going to let what the writer says in his Observer interviews sway me towards dislike.
A lot of people do not and did not like Tolkien but this won't stop me liking their work. Now I must dig out that particularly nasty passage in
A Writer's Life which details exactly what Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin thought of Tolkien's lecturing style.
