Nicholas Tucker: Darkness Visible

I’d forgotten how long it was since Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials first appeared; this slim and rather curious volume reminded me. Tucker provides an introduction and potted biography of Pullman; his tone is rather strange, at times almost lecturing his reader and at other times addressing him almost as a child. I found the way he was making judgements and apparently telling me that was the only interpretation rather off-putting at times, too. But he clearly had access to Pullman when he was writing the book.

What is both interesting and useful is the way he links Pullman’s life story and his writing, although again he can be rather sketchy here. He certainly canters through the early novels in an unsatisfying way, delivering rather pat judgements on them. However, Pullman does come across as a very political and a very moral writer, and consistently so.

Tucker’s best section is his very compact and succinct summary of the plots and action of the three novels in the trilogy, which makes and reminds us of all the necessary links and connections between them; it surprised me how much detail it is possible to forget, overlook or simply lose track of in over 1300 pages of superb story-telling. Finally, Tucker explores some interesting parallels between Pullman’s trilogy and C S Lewis’ Narnia novels, which will be of interest if you like the latter – I don’t.

In the end, I think this book has been overtaken by time, and Pullman’s public role and reputation; no doubt someone will write (has written?) a more serious and detailed biography, and criticism of his literary output…

nb I re-read the 2003 edition; apparently there is a second edition from 2017

Philip Pullman: Daemon Voices

A writer writes about his craft, his inspirations, and how he works: fascinating, in the same way that Ursula Le Guin doing just that was fascinating. He doesn’t disappoint in the way he writes, either – there’s more of the fluent clear language and sentence-crafting that one experiences in his novels. Pullman is a very readable writer, accessible, communicating effectively. You may think, well, yes, he would, but that’s not always the case…

He’s very strong and forthright on a writer’s responsibilities, fascinating on how stories work, and challenges literary theorists. He writes about his experiences as a teacher and rages against the insanities and inanities of our ‘National Curriculum’. He’s forcefully and coherently atheist, anti-God; this I found quite challenging myself, and though I appreciated his stance, decided to continue to differ with him there…

Out of his atheism there arises a sense of wonder: for Pullman, the more we discover, the more wondrous the universe seems to be, an approach which chimes in with my own ever since my childhood excitement at looking at the skies and learning about other worlds.

Clearly I was looking for further understanding of the genesis of, and intentions behind, the Dark Materials trilogy, and I was not disappointed. There was a detailed personal response to Milton‘s Paradise Lost, and how the Fall story and his anti-religious stance worked together to create a story in which the Fall was a good thing: the loss of innocence and a knowledge of good and evil is what makes us human; that knowledge of evil does not imply that all humans therefore embrace it. There is a myth of the Fall in the world of the mulefa in The Amber Spyglass; it both resembles the one in our world and is very different from it, and Pullman’s clarification was very interesting.

Pullman is interesting on the craft of the writer, too, and open about his need and desire to make a decent living out of it. He’s scathing about Tolkien‘s trilogy, which he compares with Middlemarch (!) from the perspective of characterisation, and finds seriously wanting, and he has no time for C S Lewis‘ Narnia books either, because of their reactionary, anti-human, anti-life and pleasure content. I didn’t disagree with him there, either. Perhaps the most eye-opening section for me was a chapter on the nature of the narrator, where he raises a whole raft of issues with which I was familiar as a life-long student of literature, but to contemplate them from the perspective of a practising writer was really illuminating. He also takes issue with the current trend for people to write stories in the present tense and demonstrates clearly how limiting a choice this is.

Pullman shares a good deal of himself with his readers here. Most of the pieces in the collection were originally lectures or talks; a few are introductions he has written to various books. The whole is a book full of surprises; I found him reflecting on a wide range of books I had also known and loved in the past, and also came across a few recommendations for my to-read list. As an insight into the mind and art of one of our best living writers, it’s really good: challenging and thought-provoking.