What balderdash. (Pullman.) He is entitled not to like Tolkien, but these continued pathetic attempts at discrediteding Tolkien and convincing people that he should not be enjoyed are just silly.
Back up a ways there was mentioned the Oedipal complex of Pullman wanting to kill his "father" in Tolkien, and wondering what then the "mother" he wanted to possess would be. Seems pretty clear the "mother" is the reading public. Pullman wants everyone to see things his way and the fact that Tolkien (who has different beliefs about the universe and different ways of putting together a story) is still very influential galls him.
That, or his arrogance is simply such that if he dislikes something he has to discredit it because heaven forbid anything he dislikes or disagrees with should be allowed to have merit. (Someone mentioned above that the reason he prefers Lewis is that he feels he could debate with Lewis but is at a loss when it comes to Tolkien -- and I think that's spot on.)
Either way, if I were to get a chance to speak to Pullman I'd tell him to bloody well get over it and get on with his life.
The fact of the matter is that Tolkien/LotR is not a bad author/book and not the be all end all, either. Tolkien's method is not the only good or right method, just as whatever method Pullman prefers is not the only and the right. The fact that many, many,
many people have found depth and worth in Tolkien's books means there IS something there. It's not the same as "if everyone does it, it must be right" or "if all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you too?" It's not, because we have reasonable, logical proof that there is depth, in the many intelligent, indepent-thinking human beings who can
explain what depths they find. There are books exploring meanings, there are oodles of threads here and in other internet locations of people discussing the books and the characters. If Tolkien offered nothing of substance, we fans must be making it all up. Even then, the fact that he created a framework that fans can expound on so deeply speaks in his favor.
I also believe in the flip side of this coin, that sometimes Tolkien is over-analyzed and too much is read into it, or that it's glorified a bit too much, but all this really has more to do with reader approach than the book itself. Whatever other people think/thought of the books, I know that I enjoyed them a great deal, found them satisfying, etc. I find it rather insulting, really, that Pullman would try to convince me I was wrong to enjoy them, or that it was mindless of me to enjoy them. But then, there are a lot of things about Pullman's apparent worldview that I don't agree with and couldn't be persuaded to agree with, so that's another matter altogether.
I do know that all this makes me quite sure I never want to waste my time on HDM.
