Laurie Frost: The Elements of His Dark Materials

      This will be the last Pullman-focused post for a while, I think. But if you are as hooked on His Dark Materials as I am, in the sense that you both enjoy the story, and admire the inventiveness of the alternative universes and the writer’s philosophical and theological explorations of the human condition, then I’d say this book is for you.

It’s encyclopaedic. All the necessary connections, references and links are here for you to check and explore or remind yourself about if you’re slightly lost or confused. There are reflections, perspectives and thinking points a-plenty, about characters, peoples and worlds, as well as more general mini-essays; it’s clearly a labour of love by someone who is even more taken with His Dark Materials than I am; it’s a serious companion to the novels, not a work of fandom.

At the same time, there are some things that are not explained, along with a few inevitable minor errors and inconsistencies. Why, for instance, is the college in Geneva St Jerome’s College? Geneva I understand, St Jerome I know about, but the connection in his mind that led Pullman to the name eludes me… And a real index at the end would be very useful, too. It’s not a book for constantly referring to as you’re reading – Pullman’s storytelling isn’t that impenetrable – but each time I’ve delved into this book and read large chunks of it has been after a reading of the novels, to help me get my thoughts and ideas clearer in my mind, and it has worked.

Phillip Pullman: Parallel Universes

Pullman uses a common SF trope in His Dark Materials, the idea of a parallel universe, one which resembles our own, but with certain differences. The concept is often used to show an alternative history, such as in Philip K Dick’s well-known novel The Man in the High Castle, set in a United States where the Axis powers won the Second World War. Pullman’s parallel universe is rather different, in that it doesn’t represent an alternate direction after a fork in time, as it were, but is one of a myriad of possible universes, one that happens to be quite similar to our own.

The conception is carefully done, even down to the level of the language used, with different but logical terms used for ideas like electrical power; different technology, with airships being the modern mode of transport; countries having slightly different names reflecting the way in which recent history has also obviously been different. A great deal of careful thought has evidently gone into constructing this world, and in a sense Pullman has far less ‘conceptual freedom’ in the framing of such a world than an SF writer constructing a forked path. One might compare a twentieth century USA in which the Confederacy won the Civil War, as portrayed in Ward Moore’s interesting Bring the Jubilee, or a world several hundred years in our future, where the Nazis had been victorious in the twentieth century, as in Katharine Burdekin’s Swastika Night, which is all the more chilling a tale for its having been written before the Second World War…

Because Pullman posits an infinity of possible worlds, the other two he develops in depth can be radically different: the empty world of Cittàgazze bears some resemblance to our own, though we cannot really map very much of our world onto it, and the world of the Mulefa visited by Mary Malone and in which she plays out her role as temptress, is alien in terms of creatures, but flora and fauna are still recognisable.

Where Pullman is at his most radical, and deliberately so, is in his vision of daemons in Lyra’s world. Every human has a daemon – a creature of the opposite gender, and this bears some thinking about – from which they are inseparable; their form is mutable until maturity or puberty is reached, at which point they become fixed permanently. We need to think about what Pullman seems to be saying here. There is obviously something about the plasticity or mutability of human personality in the younger years, and the eventual development of a more recognisable and permanent personality as we grow older.

Is the daemon a soul? It’s an inseparable part of a human, visible rather than invisible as the soul posited by various religions in our world. And we see the interaction between human and daemon, through looks, closeness or distance, and conversation. There is also conversation between daemons…. And there is also the taboo on touching someone else’s daemon, as well as the horrific process being developed by the Magisterium and Mrs Coulter, to sever the connection between a human and their daemon; here Pullman wants his readers to think about, or imagine, what exactly it is that makes us human, and what the effect of such a severing would be. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, our attention is also focused on this question, and ultimately we are pushed to the realisation that the inhabitants of that society may look and behave like us at times, but they aren’t actually humans as we know them…

So what is the intercourse that goes on between human and daemon? It’s clearly far more than just a visible friend: there is advice, discussion, reflection back of ideas and decisions: daemon as therapist/counsellor? Somehow it’s possible to see humans in Lyra’s world as more fortunate than we are here in our world, in that such interaction is more obvious, more foregrounded? And yet Pullman also plays, at some length, with the notion that in our world, if we get to know and understand ourselves well enough, we can see our daemon and converse with it, too.

More to come…

Philip Pullman: The Collectors

     There’s a whole series of mini-books by Philip Pullman that are in some way connected with the events or characters of His Dark Materials. Sometimes they read like add-ons, other times like rough sketches or drafts from the days before the trilogy; this is one of the latter. They’re always pretty short, but beautifully produced, and, I suppose, aimed at readers like me who are fascinated by the creations of Pullman’s imaginations and will happily devour anything… So they’re not bargains, or big reveals, but are nonetheless fascinating.

This one is a vignette about the young Mrs Coulter, via a painting of her and bronze statue of a monkey, and their strange and malign influence on people even at this early stage in the sequence of events. The idea of multiple universes, and connections between them is also introduced, along with the idea of humans with daemons in another one of these universes…you can see what’s happening here.

It really does feel like a precursor, and the character of Mrs Coulter is given another edge. Recently watching the final TV series I found myself much more aware of the complexity of her character; along with pure evil, and a fatal attraction to power, there is a fully developed antithesis to this in Coulter’s complex relationship with and feelings for her daughter Lyra, and perhaps it is the visual medium and the talents of the actor which allow these aspects to emerge more fully.

It’s a brief but gripping read, and nicely illustrated.

2022: My year of reading

A house move early this year has had a major impact on my reading: books boxed up, being unable to find books that I wanted to read, far less time to read due to having so many other pressing things to deal with: are those excuses or reasons? I’m not sure. But the books are now, much later, out of boxes and on shelves, although in different places, so tracking down and finding a book still isn’t easy, until my ageing brain has internalised my new system…

There has been a certain amount or re-reading; there has been the usual ‘compulsory’ reading for our book group, some of which were real eye-openers. In 2022 I bought or was given (and kept) all of 19 books, which represents a slight decrease on 2021; I read 50 books, which marks a serious decrease on last year’s total, for the reason above-mentioned.

I have a number of resolutions for 2023: to continue buying fewer books – and this is partly because a good number of the new books I come across I only want to read once, and I know I shan’t return to them – to return to my interrupted project to re-read all of Shakespeare’s plays in chronological sequence, to revisit a lot of the poetry I cherish, to revisit some old favourites including Josef Skvorecky, Garrison Keillor and Amin Maalouf, and to continue weeding my library and disposing of books I no longer want. And, driven by the final TV series which is currently being screened, I want to re-read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy: I’ve watched the TV adaptations and loved them, and I’ve listened several times to the excellent full audiobook recording of the trilogy while I’ve been on my travels, but it’s a good few years since I actually consumed the printed volumes…

I’ve read far fewer travel books this year, and I’m wondering if I’ve finally exhausted that bug. There does seem to be a limit to the number of new travelogues through Siberia, or the various deserts of the world, that a person needs.

This year’s awards:

Best novel: Sequioa Nagamatsu How High We Go In The Dark. A novelist I’d never head of and took a punt on; a challenging fantasy which I really enjoyed and hope to go back to shortly. It’s good to read new authors.

Best non-fiction: Alberto Angela Une Journée Dans La Rome Antique. I’ve liked everything I’ve read by him.I’ve been fascinated by ancient Rome since my school days, and this historian brings it to life with a wealth of detail, without ever being patronising or talking down to his readers.

Best travel: Edward Abbey Desert Solitaire. I love deserts, and travel in deserts, and this journal of time in one of the US natioanl parks by an early ecologist (as you’d have to call him nowadays) is a gem: he shows you the desert and makes you love it as much as he does.

Best re-read: Jan Potocki Manuscript Found in Saragossa: an astonishing novel, a tour de force from the early 19^th century; it was good finally to find time to re-read this one. And I have the film, waiting to be watched, too.

Best book group discovery: Ben MacIntyre Agent Sonya. I thought, “Do I really want to bother reading this? Why would I read this?” and I did, and it was another object lesson in not dismissing books too easily. A fascinating and thought-provoking account of pro-Soviet espionage in the twenties, thirties and forties, and out book group discussion was enhanced by a guest appearance from one of the heroine’s relatives.

I’m hoping to resume normal service in 2023, ie lots more reading and re-reading, further pruning of my library, and continuing to buy rather fewer books than previously.

ed Stevan Davies: The Gospel of Thomas

    Having realised long ago that Christianity, despite its spiritual origins and intentions, is also a construct of those fallible human beings who shaped and directed it particularly in its earliest years, I’ve been exploring some of the writings which, for all sorts of reasons, are nowadays regarded as apocryphal, unorthodox or deuterocanonical; the Gospel of Thomas is one of those.

There is, of course, ongoing debate about its status, authenticity, and whether it’s gnostic or not; it appears to be synchronous with other of the earliest accepted writings, though offering a different perspective. It’s a list of sayings of Jesus, with almost no narrative content at all; there is considerable overlap with what Jesus says in the synoptic gospels. So, is it actually another source for those?

I don’t particularly care, although the scholarly debate is mildly interesting; what interests me is the content. And the sayings of Jesus as reported in this text offer a rather different perspective: the kingdom of heaven is here and now, within us – reminds me of Philip Pullman’s Republic of Heaven at the end of the Dark Materials trilogy! – and there is no place for the sin and salvation narratives of the canonical gospels. Self-knowledge is the road to salvation. There are no miracles, and no prophecies about the future.

Davies’ commentary I found not particularly helpful, ranging from the obvious to the purely speculative, and I was thrown by a basic error in his Latin at one point, too. I’m not sure he offers very much enlightenment, but he does provide a clearly accessible text for the general reader, which I suppose I am, in the end. What I did notice were clear links between the simplicity of Jesus’ message in the Gospel of Thomas and the Quaker approach to the scriptures, and I was reminded of what I’ve read about the beliefs and practices of the Cathars, too.

Philip Pullman: The Tiger in the Well

     Another ripping yarn, and with characters and events linked to the others. Reading this, years after meeting His Dark Materials, you can see an accomplished writer, assured of his audience, shaping up to write his masterpiece. There is, for example, a clear forerunner of the sinister Mrs Coulter and her monkey daemon in the villain of this novel, whom we previously met in The Ruby in the Smoke; indeed you can see how the whole concept of the externalised aspect of the personality and soul which a daemon is, may have developed from here.

We are thrust head-first into an outrageous situation and mystery: why should anyone forge a marriage and then a divorce with the aim of seizing a child? Pullman also hints at the darker side of sexuality in Victorian times: paedophilia is not a late twentieth century evil, and some readers may recall Anthony Horowitz digging deeper into this murky cesspit in The House of Silk, one of his excellent additions to the Sherlock Holmes canon.

Pullman makes clear the potential for unfairness in the application of the law of the land, with the balance in favour of those with money and influence, and also in favour of men in an age when women were mere chattels. There is no protection for the innocent or the underdog when they are faced with corruption and crooked lawyers and policemen.

Equally, Pullman creates strong female characters, independent women with determination, living towards the end of the nineteenth century when women were getting their struggle for equal rights and the vote under way. There is a strong advocacy of social justice in the book, and somehow Pullman just manages to avoid being preachy, and sliding into a roman à thèse for young adults.

The plot of the novel involves a revenge plot consequent on the dénouement of The Ruby in the Smoke, and a good deal focused on poverty in the East End of London, as well as the anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia which led to an influx of immigration, consequent exploitation, and resentment by the local population which was fomented by unscrupulous politicians for their own dark purposes: Pullman seems to be suggesting that nothing much has changed in a century or more in this country. It’s pretty unputdownable, really: well-written, fast-paced and with plenty of twists in the plot, cliff-hangers, and interesting incidental characters. I’d have loved meeting a novel this well-written in my schooldays of exploring Stamford Public Library.

Philip Pullman: The Tin Princess

     This is another of the four Sally Lockheart novels, detective stories of a sort, set in the late nineteenth century. It’s clearly a tribute to Sherlock Holmes in some ways, in terms of time and place, and there is also a gang of helpful street children clearly modelled on the Baker Street Irregulars. There are also links to an earlier novel in the series, The Ruby in the Smoke.

What interests me is that Pullman’s target audience is evidently younger teenagers, even more so than with His Dark Materials, but his readers are treated from the start as intelligent and thoughtful, and Pullman weaves in complex ideas and themes without ever being patronising, preachy or moralising.

It’s a fast-paced story, as Pullman knows that is what his readers will expect. The setting quickly shifts from Victorian London to an invented, small Central European kingdom threatened by the global ambitions of both the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires. This was perhaps the aspect of the plot that I found least convincing, but then I’m an ageing reader well-read in history, and of Eastern European origin myself.

Pullman doesn’t avoid emotional attachments between his characters, and complex relationships either; nor does he dwell too long or in too much detail on them. It really is quite eye-opening to see how such a skilled writer has a sharp focus on the people he’s writing for. As in his better-known series His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust, Pullman shows his strong belief and trust in uncorrupted young people, who will be decent and do the right thing given the opportunity; corruption and deceit comes with adulthood, and this theme is obviously developed more thoroughly and in a much more complex manner in the later books, where innocence and experience are more foregrounded, and the myth of the Fall is much deliberately under the microscope.

It’s a ripping yarn in which despite the heroic efforts of the young, in the end evil triumphs – Pullman is only being harshly realistic here, and in our sad world, young people need such lessons – and adults are exposed as corrupt, servile and hypocritical. And Pullman does ultimately leave his readers with a glimmer of hope at the end, in that there are also some decent grownups in the world too. But it’s clear, good must be fought for, cannot be assumed.

Philip Pullman: The Ruby in the Smoke

     Philip Pullman has written a series of mystery/detective stories featuring a young woman – Sally Lockheart – as the heroine, set roughly in the Sherlockian/ Victorian London of the late nineteenth century; I’ve read some of them and had been intending to revisit them when my hand was forced, by the absence of my library during our recent house move. As with the His Dark Materials trilogy, there’s both the sense that the novel is written for a young adult readership, and also the feeling that Pullman writes for everyone and for all time, if I may put it like that; I certainly didn’t feel excluded.

We’re thrown in at the deep end, and Pullman quickly shows how he can create a sense of mystery, and speedily develop real characters with whom we can empathise. It’s a fast-paced yarn, that develops well – no surprises there, then, given the writer’s pedigree – and various political and social messages and moral lessons are also woven in as the plot progresses, linking in to behaviour and attitudes, but even more into the idea of trusting oneself and believing in oneself.

There is the sense of a debt to Conan Doyle, perhaps particularly in the way that children and young people assist the hero in her quest (in the vein of the famous Baker Street Irregulars), but here, while the hero of the story is female, the villain is a particularly vicious and nasty woman, too. There are echoes of The Sign of Four, too. Plenty of excitement, tension and suspense here, although there was a bit of a deus ex machina moment in the denouement which I found a trifle disappointing. Overall, though, a superb story which gripped me thoroughly, and I’ll be looking out for the rest of the series some time soon.

Susanna Clarke: Piranesi

     Spoiler alert!

Well, in all honesty I should go back and amend this post – or not write about a year until it’s properly over, because this novel deserves an accolade. Read it in a day, and it stunned me, so utterly weird it was. Initially it reminded me of some of the drug-crazed ramblings I read during my hippy days, then reminded me of the utter weirdness of Ben Marcus’ The Age of Wire and String, finally reminded me of some of the best detective stories I’ve ever read.

Weird beyond belief, the tale of someone trapped or marooned in what seems at first a strange parallel universe modelled on the bizarre drawings of the eponymous Italian artist: at first I found myself wondering whether there was some complex allegory developing. A world with only two people in it. And the behaviour of the other (or the Other) was quite quickly not exactly what it seemed to be. A story that defied attempts to parse it from the outset.

Do the two characters have anything in common, do they share a goal? Is one misleading the other? Do they understand each other, have they a rapport or were they just thrown together? And why is the Other so much better equipped than the narrator?

Another weirdness: although the narrator/writer of the journals is named as a male character, I cannot fathom why I never shook off the very strong impression that the story was being told by a female.

What triggered the comparison with Ben Marcus was the initial impression that there was just enough commonality between my world and my language and those of the narrator for me to be able to make some vague sense of what was going on. Gradually, as the plot develops and ideas suggest themselves, the story begins to mutate into detective fiction, although that term fails to do justice to the tour-de-force of motivations, clues and evidence that Susanna Clarke weaves to deceive and delude. It turns in on itself, there are wheels within wheels, and then there are doors between universes à la Philip Pullman in His Dark Materials.

Incomprehensible things have been happening, and rightly do we wonder, along with the narrator, where our and her (!) sanity lies; the mind plays tricks – has mountains, as Gerard Manley Hopkins once said – and the gradual and painful unpicking by the narrator of what actually happened to him, aided by his meticulous and obsessively-indexed journals, and his coming finally to entertain the possibility of being rescued from the bizarre world which he has grown to know and love unfold beautifully, sweeps you along.

It’s a truly mind-blowing tale as it plays with your head all the while you are reading. It’s really a stunner. Unputdownable.

Philip Pullman: The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

     For some reason, despite being a great admirer of Philip Pullman, I’d deliberately avoided this novel when it was published; a chance encounter with a pristine copy in a secondhand bookshop was an impulse buy…

Mary has twins in this version of the story: Jesus and Christ, which did feel like a very clumsy device. Jesus is the human Jesus we would probably recognise, Christ a background figure who at times overlaps with the Tempter/Satan figure, and who is initially manipulated by a mysterious stranger – some kind of angel – who encourages Christ to see the future potential of Jesus’ story and message, if only it is recorded and used correctly… you can see pretty early on where Pullman is going with this, and it’s not very subtle at all. He’s doing what many have done over the ages, exploring the contrast between the original Jesus and what Christianity has become over the centuries, while recognising that unravelling the deliberate obfuscations of the past is pretty impossible. And, as an avowed materialist, Pullman is having none of the miracles nonsense.

It’s a roman à thèse, didactic, what have you. Christ starts out following the stranger’s instructions faithfully to record Jesus’ sayings and actions but soon realises that he can embellish for a more effective future purpose. And yet Pullman is a very skilled and experienced novelist, and his Christ character is not as baldly presented as this: he does have a character of his own, doubts and concerns about what he’s been drawn into, feelings and weaknesses that are gradually revealed. But in the end he does what is asked of him, and allows the obvious fraud of the resurrection to be perpetrated – you saw this coming a mile off, after all.

You can see why traditional Christians either avoided this novel like the plague, or attacked it roundly. So, what was Pullman trying to achieve? Obviously, to rattle his readers, to make them question what they may long have accepted as ‘the truth’. There is the idea that realpolitik ruins everything: for Pullman, it elides Christ and Judas at times, and he dares to offer a slightly sympathetic picture of Caiaphas, too. And there is the recently translated Gospel of Judas, which dared to suggest that Judas’ betrayal was a necessary part of the entire Christian redemption story, and therefore offered a judgement of Judas rather different from the traditional one: that Gospel died almost without a trace, too.

Pullman is clear that two millennia later we have no chance of separating truth from invention, and that too much is invested in the ‘accepted’ narrative. His Afterword is very interesting, perhaps the most interesting part, reflecting on his own journey and his motivations. His Jesus, in the novel, is abandoned or ignored by any existing God the Father figure. I think we have to go back to the end of His Dark Materials, to the idea that we must get on, by ourselves, and build the Republic of Heaven here on Earth, for ourselves, etsi Deus non daretur (as if there were no god) as it has been succinctly put.

An interesting read, and a challenging one if you are a traditional Christian. But then, your faith is strong enough to stand up to challenge.