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.

[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.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Mister Underhill

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.
.

It seems many (most?) novelists write with a movie adaptation of the work in mind, & hope the film rights will be sold as a matter of course. Pullman himself in a recent interview about the movie for Empire magazine said he had always had Nicole Kidman in mind as Mrs Coulter. Pullman has had other novels of his adapted for TV - the BBC have done a couple - so I'm assuming that he has an adaptation in mind from the start, in which case he obviously wouldn't have a problem with his works being 'adapted' for the screen.

Tolkien, I assume, never wrote with any thought of a movie in mind - an author like Pullman can include the most fantastical elements/creatures/settings in his work & know that they can be put on screen. Tolkien was writing in a period when a work like LotR could not have made it to the screen (not as live action) in a convincing way. This alone says to me that Tolkien was writing LotR with no thought of a movie adaptation entering his head. Hence, Pullman is writing a book which he hopes to see adapted & which he knows cannot (particularly the religious/anti-religious elements) be turned into a movie without major changes.

What's interesting to me about Pullman's approach here is that in numerous interviews he's stated that he's 'using fantasy to undermine fantasy' that he 'wishes he could write contemporary novels', etc. & implies that the 'fantastical' elements are secondary to the underlying philosophy & the 'deep questions'. However, he seems in this interview to be perfectly happy for that 'underlying philosophy' & those 'deep questions' to be ignored & replaced by a two hour sfx fest. The death of God won't make it to the screen but the armoured polar bears will.

This last point is central to me. Pullman attacks Tolkien for not asking the 'deep questions' but he himself will happily see the 'deep questions' he asks, & the philosophy he espouses, cast away or turned into its opposite. Chris Weitz, in the same Empire feature has stated that the movie will still attack 'totalitarianism', etc, etc. But what we have, in the end, is a writer who claims the intellectual high ground but is happy to see the 'intellectual' dimension of his work twisted beyond recognition in order to have Nicole Kidman playing Mrs Coulter on screen.

[Hookbill the Goomba]

I read the first of His Dark Materials with no real knowledge of who the author was or what his agenda was. By the end of the first and the beginning of the second book I had a pretty good idea of where he was coming from. Perhaps it is naive of me to, but I slowly began to imagine the books not as a story but as a guy stood on a box shouting about how terrible the Church is. I think there is always a problem with writing a story with an ulterior motive which is where Narnia falters in my opinion. I still find the story enjoyable and will read them again and again. But it is a difficult thing to try and get across a message you feel passionately about without being a little overt in its delivery. You fear the risk of being too subtle with what you see as important.

Tolkien approaches the 'deep questions' in the right way, I think. As Davem pointed out, what people assume to be the 'deep questions' (Is there a God? Which one should we worship? and the rest) were not, in his opinion, the best questions to ask. Like the Zen Monk who thought he had found the ultimate question when he asked 'Who am I?' only to be surprised by the reply from within, 'Who's asking?'
By not directly answering the questions of morality or of an afterlife, Tolkien does something brilliant, he leaves it open to more questions. This makes Tolkien's questions much deeper. They are not simply the acquisition of facts, but a search that the reader, if he or she has a mind to, must wrestle with and think about. It is not simply the authors opinion (although that will come into it) but you are open to disagree. To explain; from a point of morality you cannot say that each character always makes the right decision. Sam's prejudice against Gollum could be seen as either a defect or as an insight given later events. You could also see Frodo's trust of Gollum as blindness or kindness born out of the hope to change him. Tolkien seems to question both stances in the story as it plays out.

One must always remember that Tolkien's world is an imaginary one. Although there may be similarities in behaviour or actions to historical, mythical or Biblical events, it is not simply a re-telling of them. It is Tolkien's story and he no doubt wanted his own imagination to play a large roll in the creation of Middle Earth. This doesn't mean there won't be simelarities, but these can only go so far. The fact that the elves always look back on their ancient heroes and the men on their fatherly figures, we cannot automatically assume that such people are Beowulf, or Abraham or someone, they are not. They are their own characters. It may be that the later characters regard these figures in the same light as one may regard Abraham or Beowulf if you happen to believe in them. The same goes for Eru, in my opinion. The point is not if he is God, but how the characters react to him and his work. As George MacDonald said "Attitudes are more important than facts."

In Pullman's work the focus is on disrupting a system he doesn't like. I have no problem with that, people do it all the time. But he criticizes Lewis for doing pretty much the same thing from a different angle. Two armies may critizies one another, I suppose, and be annoyed when they both use similar tactics, but they cannot criticize the tactics because they themselves are using them. This is where Pullman's argument falters, I think. He dislikes Lewis trying to get a message across through his story, yet this is precisely what he is doing.