Pullman rips on LOTR, others

[Sauron the White]

http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/artic...hooNewscrawler

seems that another fantasy author has some problems with Tolkien and Lewis.

Thoughts?

[Sephiroth]

Ok, I admit I never read HDM, but this really seems something like "Come on, I need some attention, pleeeease watch the movie!".

About Narnia, the "religion-is-all-around" really bothered me, but I still liked it. I think LOTR faces religion as a part of the tradition it praises... in a much more subtle, beautiful way.

[davem]

The thing that struck me (& which I was going to put into the recently closed thread) is

Pullman liked "Lord of the Rings" when he first read it as a teen ("We were all out pretending to be Gandalf"), but after thinking about it more recently, he doesn't feel it's as engaging as it could have been. "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," Pullman said. "The 'Narnia' books are fundamentally more serious than 'Lord of the Rings,' which I take to be a trivial book."

"You have to surrender," Pullman said. "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!"

So, Pullman seems happy for his staory to be 'adapted', whereas Tolkien seems not to have been. I wonder if that means that Tolkien cared more about his creation than Pullman did - or if Tolkien was simply more precious.....

Then, there's his statement:"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," Pullman said. "The 'Narnia' books are fundamentally more serious than 'Lord of the Rings,' which I take to be a trivial book."

So what are these 'deep questions'?

"I didn't read the 'Narnia' books until I was grown up," Pullman said, "and I could sort of see what he was getting at, and he was getting at the reader in a way I didn't like. The 'Narnia' books are full of serious questions about religion: 'Which God should we worship? Is there a God at all? What happens when we die?' The questions are all there, but I don't like Lewis' answers.

Well, no, Tolkien doesn't ask 'Which God should we (or rather the characters) worship?' because in M-e there is only one true God. One could ask whether Tolkien simply avoids that 'deep question' by ruling out any possibility that there is a choice of Gods to worship. Neither does he leave open the option that there is no God at all. Of course, one could argue that he has chosen to create a world where there is only one true God, & that he actually explores a much more difficult question - 'How can there be suffering in a world created & ruled over by a good God?'- Personally I find that a much 'deeper' question than whether there is a God at all. The final 'deep question' Pullman claims Tolkien avoids is 'What happens when we die?' Now, Pullman does answer that question - but the problem is he makes up an answer. He knows no better than anyone else what happens to any of us when we die. Tolkien leaves that question alone, & never states what happens to his characters beyond death. So, one could argue that Tolkien does avoid that one - but how could he answer it? What Tolkien does is show us characters with faith in Eru & that in some way everything will be ok in the end.

Now, in my opinion, it is Pullman's book which is the 'trivial' one - because he either avoids the difficult questions - 'Which God should we worship'? Pullman avoids the question by getting rid of God (a 'God' btw who is a senile ex dictator) - a 'God' who isn't really 'God' anyway. He avoids the difficult questions by brushing them aside & pretending they weren't asked, or by a reductio ad absurdam. His 'answer' to what happens after death is, as I said, to make something up.

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. Tolkien gives us a world created & sustained by a good God, but one in which evil flourishes & bad things happen to good people. In this I think Tolkien's work is far more realistic than Pullman's - Tolkien's work ends with Sam's 'Well, I'm back', Pullman's with some nonsense about 'Building the Republic of Heaven' - & no-one, however big a fan of Pullman they may be, has been able to tell me what that is supposed to mean.

[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.

[Sauron the White]

Pullman seems to be espousing the Ernest Hemingway theory of selling film rights to one of your books. Hemingway said that the only way to do it was to meet the producer on a beach at midnight. The author tosses the book to the producer while the producer tosses a briefcase filled with cash to the author.

And truthfully, given the very different nature of both mediums, I do think that both Hemingway and Pullman have than right.

[Rumil]

In my view a main prerequiste for a 'great' book is an emotional attachment to the protagonists. Tolkien did it, but for me Pullman didn't, I can't even remember their names now, having read the books 5 years or so ago.

I read the Pullman books avidly (always a sucker for trilogies) but never felt any need to re-read tham which is very unusual for me. Eventually they went to Oxfam.

In contrast my battered, creased, torn, pages-stuck-in-with-sticky-tape copy of LoTR will never leave me.

[Nerwen]

I have never read His Dark Materials, but many people do seem to think it's pretty good.

However, Pullman's view of the purpose of fiction seems, well, odd. Forget other fantasy writers– his criteria for a book being worthwhile would exclude much of mainstream literature!

[Mister Underhill]

Pullman again? It seems sometimes like he gets more press off of his jabs at Tolkien than he does for anything he's actually written himself.

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

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?

In this case, Pullman's right -- authors rarely have much creative input beyond token gestures. There are a few big dogs who attempt to negotiate more creative control, but even with a contract things don't always work out -- just look at the whole Clive Cussler debacle of recent years. On the other hand, I heard that J.K. Rowling was able to exercise considerable control over the later Potter films. Funny, if Tolkien had survived and held on to his rights, I'll bet he could have cut a very strong deal for the films. I wonder what that might have looked like.

Anyway, Hollywood has little respect for writers in general, screenwriters included. In fact we're about to see a strike that's motivated at least in part by that fact.

Of course, no one's holding a gun to any author's head to force him or her to sell their movie rights. But that filthy Hollywood lucre is soooo much more, well, lucrative than the comparatively puny payouts that most authors earn that many are happy to cash in and let the filmmakers do what they will.