[Guinevere]

Originally said byPhilipp Pullman:
"'Lord of the Rings,' which I take to be a trivial book."
“just fancy spun candy. There’s no substance to it.”
“ ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is fundamentally an infantile work,”

Grrr... reading such public statements really gets my hackles up!

Like gorthaur_cruel and Quempel mentioned,
this is really quite insulting to all of us who love Tolkien's works and have found meaning and timeless wisdom in them.
And how would Pullman explain the fact that there is so much secondary literature about Tolkien, so many educated and intelligent people occupying themselves with Tolkien's works since decades? Are all these people "immature dolts"?
Really, Philip Pullman should be forced to read Prof. Shippeys book "Tolkien, author of the Century"!!

I have read the "His Dark Materials Trilogy" this year, just so I could form an opinion on Pullman's own writing.
I must admit, that they were very thrilling to read, I liked especially the first volume, but the farther I got, the less I liked it, and the end was downright disappointing. (I agree much with William Cloud Hickly's post!)
They are well written, so one can't stop reading, but once finished, there's nothing that would make me go back and reread , quite unlike LotR.

Originally Posted by Lush

Pullman strikes me as very cerebral and high-arty, but it may very well be that the stuff that imititates Tolkien has actually replaced Tolkien in his mind.

Ha! I really think you are on the right track, Lush!

After all, Pullman said he read the LotR as an adolescent and it doesn't look like he has reread the book since then, let alone the Silmarillion. So his misjudgement on LotR derives from hazy memories of an adolescent (who obviously read it just as an adventure story, much like Peter Jackson did) or perhaps even from seeing the movies.

He is obviously biased by knowing that Tolkien was a devout Catholic.
Like Sir Kohran wrote in his excellent post, in LotR God (Eru) is never mentioned. The hobbits have no religion at all.
It's more about the Northern "Theory of Courage":doing the right thing, because it is right, and not because you get a reward in heaven. But obviously Pullman doesn't see or remember this at all.
And if he states that

“Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other.

he should read "Aldarion and Erendis" .