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Originally Posted by davem
Its no coincidence that Pullman was a teacher before he became a full time writer - it is clear that his approach to fiction is exactly as Tolkien describes here: "a tendency both to believe and teach in schools and colleges that “enjoyment” is an illiterate reaction; that if you are a serious reader, you should take the construction to pieces; find and analyse sources, dissect it into symbols, and debase it into allegory. Any idea of actually reading the book for fun is lost."
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I'm afraid I'll have to defend Pullman on that point as I don't think he would agree with that method of reading at all. See my earlier post
number 34 on this thread and
The Isis Lecture for what Pullman thinks about the analytical method of teaching literature and English language. He advocates a creative approach, and is very much against the idea of too much adherence to and analysis of structure.
I still think that he 'kind of knows' what he wants to say, but he is getting his messages confused. It does seem that with his statement on 'spun candy' he would indeed advocate Structuralism and all that malarkey, but he's actually more in favour of a creative free for all and is closer to Tolkien than he dares to acknowledge. The main differences seem to lie in the moral messages (that's probably not the right term, but I can't think of the exact way of saying what I mean right now; oh, the irony!) the two wish/ed to put across.