If you don't grasp what Pullman is about, if you're still hooked on the notion that he hates God, you'd not go far wrong than to look at the lyrics of the first two verses of John Lennon's
Imagine (read them if you prefer, if you're like me you'd prefer not to listen - heresy! I prefer George Harrison and Macca... ). I'll say it yet again, Pullman isn't anti-God, he is anti-Religion.
Of course, like I've already said, he knows there is a massive market out there of people who don't like fantasy and view things like Lewis and Tolkien through narrowed eyes, and what is he doing? He's opening his big mouth and being controversial. It sells. If you stray from the path of his Big Statements, you find a gentle, thoughtful and modest man. The deep, deep irony of course is that his big mouth is in good company as Lewis and Tolkien themselves were all-mouth-and-no-trousers when it came to stirring the wooden spoon and making grand statements. Masters of hyperbole one and all.
Still, if you want to let it put you off reading something truly meaty then so be it. It's your loss, not Pullman's. There's enough people out there willing to give him a shot.
I'm really not inclined to give Lewis very much rope however. Not only is Narnia a deadly dull series of books, confusing and childish in the extreme, it's packed full of stuff I find dodgy and the old excuses just do not wash I am afraid.
What he said about Susan is this:
Quote:
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The books don't tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman.
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So he clearly
wouldn't have altered what he said about Susan had one of us "do-gooding feminists" raised a hand of caution, it was
intended that she end up like that. The important word he used was 'conceited' - so the excuse trotted out that it was about her materialism doesn't work. Conceit hasn't got anything to do with materialism, it is about self-regard, which Susan as an attractive young woman, clearly has lots of; Lewis sets it up plainly that she was immoral to grow self-confident and assured of her own sexual attractiveness. Contrast that with the full-figured beauty of women like Arwen and Luthien, even of Rosie, in Tolkien's work.
Other distasteful rubbish is in those books too. He rails against comprehensive education, makes fun of non-smokers, vegetarians and teetotallers - what a cheap shot! He comes across like the reactionary Richard Littlejohn of the Daily Mail once you sit and look at what he was saying. Saying he was a product of his age is no excuse either. So was Tolkien but he doesn't come across as some curmudgeon who despises anyone who doesn't live exactly as he does!
The most amusing thing of all of course is all this rubbish Lewis came up with to explain his allegories. Well I'm one of millions who failed to be taken in by his method of recruiting as I failed to see the analogies and still fail to see most of them - I'd need a Masters in Theology to do so. But I don't fail to see some of his more odious Little Englander attitudes now I look with an adult pair of eyes. Perhaps that's his message? That if you are critical of Little Englanders then you're just like Susan...
Sorry, but as a woman, and as a product of comprehensive education, I find Lewis odious at times and having had 37 years of it, I'm not in the slightest inclined to listen to excuses. If he'd just written about his talking Lions and Beavers and just left it at that his work might have been a lot more charming, but then he had to say nasty things and make nasty allusions...bring on the inflated bladder!
