[The Saucepan Man]

I thoroughly agree, Lord of Angmar. As Lush said the very forst page of this thread:

I mean, it shouldn't matter if Aragorn will never be as psychologically deep as King Lear.

As I have indicated previously, I personally feel that some of Tolkien's characters are developed psychologically to a greater extent than Pullman gives them credit for. But the fact that others are not is not, as I see it, a ground for criticism, since Tolkien was not seeking to write that kind of novel. As I said back on page two:

Now, as many have pointed out, that is not necessarily a criticism of Tolkien. Perhaps the word “lack” is slightly emotive, suggesting as it does that there is something lacking in Tolkien’s works. But, going back to littlemanpoet’s quote from the book by Orson Scott Card, it is fair to say that Tolkien was not writing a character driven novel. The fact that he does not imbue each of his characters with immense psychological depth cannot therefore be a failing, for that is not what he was setting out to achieve.

Although, to be fair to Pullman, I don't, on reflection, think that he was levelling a general criticism at LotR. I think that he was simply saying that there is insufficient psychological depth in the characters for his taste. Which is a perfectly valid comment to make.