Pullman rips on LOTR, others

[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.