Pullman rips on LOTR, others

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

There you're really, really reaching. One can be conceited about one's looks- but also about one's intelligence, wealth, athletic prowess, social status..... If Lewis were fixated on the physical he could have used, say, 'vain.' Nor would I equate 'self-confidence' with 'conceit.' The one is an excess of the other, which is perjorated and rightly so. By trying to force a feminist narrative of sexuality and female submission onto this (like your snark about 'keeping her head properly covered') you really make yourself sound like those old Freudian critics to whom a cigar was never just a cigar.

All Lewis was saying was that Susan had become self-absorbed, prideful, and obsessed with the 'things of this world' (by which is not meant the material, but rather the evanescent)- and thereby forgot and so lost Narnia. This is hardly radical or reactionary: even atheists will acknowledge that humility and selflessness are virtues.

Come on, it's really pushing it for an excuse when talking about a character who is said to be interested in 'lipstick, nylons and party invitations' - all shorthand for a young woman who is plainly interested in attracting men! If Lewis had been criticising conceit about intelligence he might have had a go at her Beatnik beret and clutch of shiny paperbacks by Sartre and Proust.

I wouldn't dare say you or any of us here would equate self-confidence with conceit, but Lewis plainly did. And I'm afraid that if someone makes a very odd and arresting comment about the nature of womanhood then it is an inevitability that women will wish to comment upon that. And we have every right to do so.

None of that alters the fact that in Vol III his storytelling collapses under the weight of his preaching: and however much he wanted his finale to evoke Blake and Milton, to me at least it's more like Act III of Faust as retold by William Burroughs. So it's disingenous of him to disclaim sermonising when he so plainly is. At least Lewis, love him or hate him, never denied writing Christian apologias.

Preaching or imagining? I'd say it rather collapses under his ambition and the whole weight of story comes down upon him here. This is something I've noticed in a lot of the best fantasy, that towards the finale the writer struggles, and sometimes just about 'loses' it. Tolkien did it, you can tell by the high falutin' language and the headlong rush of the narrative; Peake did it, with the sparse and weird third volume of Gormenghast; Rowling does it in the final volume of Potter which is seriously intense. Pullman does it too - he even loses his main protagonist somewhere along the way. What all of them have in common is that they have said things along the lines of they were 'trying to find out what happened'.

In the melee of Pullman's third book I rather found that the 'sermonising' was lost! There was so much in there that it's incredibly hard to find exactly what he is on about.

Where Pullman differs in essence to Lewis is that he does not deny that he has an agenda in there somewhere. We know some of what he's about. But not so with Lewis with his mumbo-jumbo about creating myths to lead people to something or other, which just doesn't work - and I am so not alone in thinking that!

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Come on, it's really pushing it for an excuse when talking about a character who is said to be interested in 'lipstick, nylons and party invitations' - all shorthand for a young woman who is plainly interested in attracting men!

Or rather shorthand for a Paris Hilton, a Britney Spears or an Anna Nicole Smith. Surely you're not asserting in some uber-Pagliesque way that bimbohood is the new postmodern feminism, are you?

[davem]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

Or rather shorthand for a Paris Hilton, a Britney Spears or an Anna Nicole Smith. Surely you're not asserting in some uber-Pagliesque way that bimbohood is the new postmodern feminism, are you?

"She's interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up."

It seems Susan's 'sin' was wanting to be a 'grown-up' - which is not necessarily the same as becoming an adult. Its not that she's interested in 'nylons and lipstick and invitations.', its that she's interested in nothing except 'nylons and lipstick and invitations.' - ie not in Narnia, Aslan, or anything else beyond those superficialities.

Of course, Lewis left Susan's ultimate fate a mystery. In a letter to one 'Martin' he wrote:

“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. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get into Aslan’s country in the end – in her own way.”

Susan's fate has interested other writers - from a Wikipedia article on Narnia:

Fantasy author Neil Gaiman wrote the 2004 short story "The Problem of Susan", in which an elderly woman, Professor Hastings, is depicted dealing with the grief and trauma of her entire family dying in a train crash. The woman's first name is not revealed, but she mentions her brother "Ed", and it is strongly implied that this is Susan Pevensie as an elderly woman. In the story Gaiman presents, in fictional form, a critique of Lewis' treatment of Susan.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

Or rather shorthand for a Paris Hilton, a Britney Spears or an Anna Nicole Smith. Surely you're not asserting in some uber-Pagliesque way that bimbohood is the new postmodern feminism, are you?

Yes many people (well, women, men are after all only interested in intellectual pursuits aren't they? ) do have little interest in anything other than clothes and make-up and socialising. But the point Lewis makes is odious. There is nothing wrong in women (let's stick to it) being interested in these things, in fact it's perfectly ordinary and always has been - and I find it quite insulting that because I'm overly fond of handbags and enjoy reading about fashion in Grazia, some old professor in his dusty tweed suit thinks I'm at best 'silly' and at worst 'immoral'.

Had Lewis said that Susan had grown interested in little else than jackboots, knives and guns then he may have had a moral point to make, but there is nothing wrong in the harmless pursuit of the trappings of adult womanhood - I'm afraid that he did not see that such things as clothes and make-up are enjoyed by about 99% of women and there is absolutely no harm in that, even if their insistence that getting their lippie just so before going for a night out does make you half an hour late and give you something to moan about at length when you meet your pals in the pub.

I'm reminded of the saying 'typical man'.

It's rather as if someone has just spent ages and ages creating this beautiful (but quite twee) painting and then has got in a temper towards the end and dropped a blot of red paint on it.

Whatever, all the lengthy essays in the world to explain away this inkblot by Lewis only serve to make the excuses even more tortured. Why not just be done and say "Sorry, Miss, the dog ate my homework." I'd rather leave it that Lewis just didn't know what to do with a character he didn't like any more so he decided to write her out in a most unpleasant and dissmissive way, because the alternative, that she was in some way immoral just for doing what girls do, is quite disturbing and says a whole lot more about Lewis and his Victor Meldrew-ish attitude towards young women than it does about such young women.

Let's contrast the attitude of Lewis with that of Tolkien who cast no moral judgements on his own 'silly women' who clearly took huge pleasure in such trivialities as dancing and embroidery - in fact their indulging in 'silly' girlish things became heroic - Arwen's 'silly' embroidery was taken into battle in the form of Aragorn's inspiring standard; Luthien's 'silly' dancing managed to attract the love interest of Beren and we know the rest...

Tolkien was a man who knew a little more of what women were about, because he'd loved one from a young age and had a clutch of children with said woman; what's more he had even more contact with women in his professional life - due to being a married man he was permitted to be personal tutor to female students. He lived in a wider world than Lewis and you can tell by how he writes about his women. Sure, they're not the modern women that Pullman and Rowling write so wonderfully about (don't get me started on how Lyra and Hermione are marvellous...) but they aren't cloistered either. They do bad things, trivial things, and heroic things, but what's more, there's not a lot that the Tolkien fan must find excuses for...

Now excuse me while I go and put my face on.

[davem]

Now I'm wondering about Pullman's attitude to relationships - in HDM he has Lyra & Will get together & then immediately splits them up forever, & in an adaptation of one of his Sally Lockhart stories by the BBC over Christmas he has Sally get together with her lover, who immediately afterward gets killed in a fire! Does PP have a problem with his characters being together? Happily ever after doesn't seem to appeal to him...

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by davem

Now I'm wondering about Pullman's attitude to relationships - in HDM he has Lyra & Will get together & then immediately splits them up forever, & in an adaptation of one of his Sally Lockhart stories by the BBC over Christmas he has Sally get together with her lover, who immediately afterward gets killed in a fire! Does PP have a problem with his characters being together? Happily ever after doesn't seem to appeal to him...

Could say similar about Tolkien with his profusion of orphans There's quite likely something psychological about why writers choose their characters as they do, but in the case of Lyra and Sally, the loss of a love is simply part of the story. Without saying more about Lyra (spoilers, davem, spoilers! Tch), Sally has to be an unmarried mum as otherwise the plot of the third novel would not work - she is subject to some serious exploitation owing to her vulnerable place in Victorian society. What Pullman doesn't shirk on though is Love - the characters always experience Love, even if it is doomed!

[William Cloud Hicklin]

But even if we take The Shire as Home, which you very interestingly and imaginatively suggest, Tolkien's assumption--or is it yours?-- that Home is always so comfortable is . . . a political statement about that form of domestic organisation. And, if you are going to argue that The Shire is Home, then that tantalizingly suggests the Ring story is almost an allegory about not wanting to grow up, Frodo wanting to save the Shire and all. Was he a kind of Peter Pan, wanting to preserve that comfortable childhood, and when he found he couldn't

No, it's not a political statement: it's an emotional statement. "It was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort:" you don't have to be a Freudian to see how womby it is. Tolkien was calling up his own nostalgia-gilded memories of the place where he was a little boy, with a mother and everything. Political matters weren't an issue for seven-year-old Ronald; and in the Shire he could sweep them away with a sort of 'if men were angels' sleight of hand: Hobbits apparently don't have or want any kind of government at all (it's not like the Mayor counts for anything). "Growing food and eating it took up most of their time."

But in the end of LR Frodo doesn't compare to Barrie's eternal boy PP at all. "You have grown, Halfling. You are both wise and cruel." Even the other Travellers might see returning as 'going back to sleep'; but Frodo is clearsighted enough to confront the awful reality: his mother has been raped (to push the Freudian thing rather too hard). Childhood always ends, whether you want it to or not.

However-- adults have homes too, you know.

(Incidentally, pre- and early agrarian societies were hardly some nonviolent Rousseauvian golden age of Noble Savages: recent research indicates that in late Paleolithic and Mesolithic societies 40 to 50% of the population died at the hands of their fellow humans. And the Vikings, my God: a sanguinary epoch of murder, outlawry and blood-feud- and that's just among themselves.)

If you have a philosophy/theology that develops a schism between mind and body, between spiritual and material, then it's going to be a problem handling the very material question of procreation

Which isn't remotely Lewis' philosophy/theology. He had no problem at all with the physical and material- a boisterous, active man who relished his pipe, his beer, his dinner and his friends. No aescetic he! What Lewis dstinguished was the important from the unimportant, which is a very different thing. (I should point out also that , based on The Four Loves, Lewis had a perfectly healthy attitude towards eros).

[William Cloud Hicklin]

But the point Lewis makes is odious. There is nothing wrong in women (let's stick to it) being interested in these things, in fact it's perfectly ordinary and always has been - and I find it quite insulting that because I'm overly fond of handbags and enjoy reading about fashion in Grazia, some old professor in his dusty tweed suit thinks I'm at best 'silly' and at worst 'immoral'.

Had Lewis said that Susan had grown interested in little else than jackboots, knives and guns then he may have had a moral point to make, but there is nothing wrong in the harmless pursuit of the trappings of adult womanhood

I rather think you skipped or skimmed Davem's post above: what's wrong with Susan was that fripperies were ALL she cared about. Which rather counters your "harmless pusuit of the trappings of adult womanhood." I'll grant that Lewis slipped into something of the 'typical man' thing: but it wasn't his *point.* Whether it was lipstick or jackboots or stamp collecting, the essential point is that Susan had allowed the unimportant to consume her entire existence.

Certainly Lewis by this time had no problem at all with Joy, who was always nicely turned out- but who was about much, much more than merely the latest issue of Vogue. As are you.

There is a secondary point in there about 'growing up' and its connection to sexual maturity (or at least the perception thereof): but Lewis' point here is that sexual activity and mental/emotional maturity are not remotely the same thing; and while maturity and Narnia apparently cannot coexist, there is nothing mutually exclusive between maturity and the *memory* of Narnia: a fallacy which Susan fell into when she chose to jettison it in favor of the false 'grown-uppishness' of the Spears sisters.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

No, it's not a political statement: it's an emotional statement. "It was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort:" you don't have to be a Freudian to see how womby it is. Tolkien was calling up his own nostalgia-gilded memories of the place where he was a little boy, with a mother and everything. Political matters weren't an issue for seven-year-old Ronald; and in the Shire he could sweep them away with a sort of 'if men were angels' sleight of hand.

Yes, this is precisely my point. Tolkien's Shire is gilded with nostalgia, in contrast to some very non-nostalgic Victorian views of womby things. Pullman's Dust falls over all, but it doesn't gild things. His fantasy is all the more intriguing because it isn't rosy.

(Incidentally, pre- and early agrarian societies were hardly some nonviolent Rousseauvian golden age of Noble Savages: recent research indicates that in late Paleolithic and Mesolithic societies 40 to 50% of the population died at the hands of their fellow humans. And the Vikings, my God: a sanguinary epoch of murder, outlawry and blood-feud- and that's just among themselves.)

Again, you are mischaracterising my comments, this time as Rousseauvian rather than Marxist. Careful now. The traditional view of Vikings has recently come in for some rethinking, particularly as that notion of them comes down to us from those who fought with them. Rome, after all, had a vested interest in explaining just how and why she was conquered.

Which isn't remotely Lewis' philosophy/theology. He had no problem at all with the physical and material- a boisterous, active man who relished his pipe, his beer, his dinner and his friends. No aescetic he! What Lewis dstinguished was the important from the unimportant, which is a very different thing. (I should point out also that , based on The Four Loves, Lewis had a perfectly healthy attitude towards eros).

So Lewis can have his pipe, his beer, his dinner and his friends, but Susan may not because he determined that she was placing too great a value on her friends, her parties, her salon. Role playing kings and queens in Narnia might not have been all that different from role playing drama queen wannabe--in fact, it might have 'preconditioned' Susan to enjoying stylish things and powerful people.

Thank you, Child, for mentioning Till We have Faces. It's a hard book to find (I'm always too lazy to special order) but I'll keep looking for it.

[Child of the 7th Age]

Does PP have a problem with his characters being together? Happily ever after doesn't seem to appeal to him...

Tell that part about "happily ever after" to Frodo! The poor hobbit doesn't even have the memory of such a relationship, unless we are to believe the many trash fanfictions that exist on the internet. Surely we can't condemn Pullman for his inability to supply a wholly happy ending given the concluding chapter of LotR. There is a "sacrifice" made in both books.

Like Lalwende, I have considerable admiration for Pullman's books, despite the fact that the author's world view is leagues from my own. I gobbled up each of the hardcovers when they first came out (still have the first printings with a signed bookplate tipped in.) Pullman is not on the same level as Tolkien, but I do see his work and that of Lewis as similar in many respects, and I enjoy both HDM and Narnia. (If I only enjoyed books that closely mirrored my own world view, I would probably only have a total of two or three to read!) However, I could do without Pullman's bombastic manner in interviews. He certainly does not have the public grace that Tolkien had.

The movie Golden Compass was a real disappointment. I don't expect to see later installments. But then the same thing happened with Tolkien. The earliest film adaptations were very flawed, and we had to wait a long time to see something better. OK, so maybe that latter statement is debatable! But the basic idea is that there's no sense judging a book on a film adaptation. Someday, somewhere, some filmaker will try again with Pullman, if the books continue to appeal to readers, and I believe they will.

[Lyta_Underhill]

This is something I've noticed in a lot of the best fantasy, that towards the finale the writer struggles, and sometimes just about 'loses' it. Tolkien did it, you can tell by the high falutin' language and the headlong rush of the narrative; Peake did it, with the sparse and weird third volume of Gormenghast; Rowling does it in the final volume of Potter which is seriously intense. Pullman does it too - he even loses his main protagonist somewhere along the way. What all of them have in common is that they have said things along the lines of they were 'trying to find out what happened'.

At the risk of lagging and taking off on an aside, I might address something that made me think in Lal's quoted post here: the inclusion of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast "trilogy." I think this body of work is wrongly labeled thus, since Titus Alone is so very different from the other two preceding volumes and Gormenghast itself is conspicuously absent, as is the main (and most interesting) antagonist, Steerpike. Also, Peake was himself "fallen off" into the ravages of Parkinson's disease, which rendered him unable to finish his third volume definitively and coherently. The work we see is edited into shape by his wife, Maeve, and seems to reflect confusion of mind at work. Alas for Mervyn Peake, whose work I greatly admire!

The inclusion of Peake also put me in mind of the subversive mindset embodied by Pullman's Lyra Belacqua. While we are dazzled in Titus Groan and Gormenghast by the machinations of the careful villain Steerpike, we also see the development of Titus, himself a subversive character and original thinker. He is drawn to the Wild Girl, drawn away from the ages-old tradition represented by Gormenghast itself, drawn away from the rock of unchanging thought that, in Peake's case, seems to have represented the monarchy of Britain, but underneath this is also a hint that it might have included the "rock" of the established church as well. The clue comes in his ancillary work "Boy in Darkness," wherein the young Titus gets lost in the forest and meets archetypal animal characters who hold him captive. One, the Lamb, seems to represent acquiescence, a laying down before that which "is and always has been," an acceptance of his place as heir and the mindset that is required for him to become part of the unending "stones" of Gormenghast. Titus has what it takes to break away from tradition and to think for himself. We see that Steerpike, although he is clever and uses his vast knowledge to his advantage, is limited in this capacity, and he cannot think beyond the tradition and "stones" of Gormenghast. Titus goes beyond, and I think Peake wanted to explore this "beyond" in Titus Alone, but, alas, he himself went beyond before he could bring it to clarity for us readers.

In a sense, I get the hint that Pullman wishes to do this by the device of laying bare the veneer of the Church and the false gods it has raised to be the projections of its self-serving policy. This is an agenda, certainly, and it is rarely done perfectly; I don't think Pullman did it in a way that could separated his secondary world from the primary world he is criticising. But I admire someone who can illustrate this concept in a believable way, even if it does fall short of perfection.

I think the reason I raise Tolkien above all these authors--Pullman, Lewis, Peake and the rest--is that he evokes a delicate and fragile realm that cannot be directly looked into--Faerie comes alive in that "corner of the eye," "edge of the forest" way that keeps Samwise forever looking for Elves in the Shire in his early days. Tolkien may have his own "agenda," but he is not stuffing down anyone's throat. His world, in my opinion, is the finest for his light touch upon it. For all its "high-falutin'" language in Return of the King, the very richness of Middle Earth transcends these imperfections. I guess maybe this post should be "why Tolkien is my favorite author," eh? I am not even going to get into the Lewis thing right now!

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Thank you Lyta. This is a point which Tolkien, as so often, expressed felicitously; "the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."

I can't really concur in "towards the finale the writer struggles, and sometimes just about 'loses' it. Tolkien did it, you can tell by the high falutin' language and the headlong rush of the narrative". If by 'finale' you mean the denoument, from coronation to Scouring and Havens, it's quite the reverse of headlong: almost too drawn-out. If you mean the Fall of Sauron, again we get the latter part of Book V and the whole Passion of Frodo Baggins setting it up. And I think that Tolkien's skill with "high-falutin' language" demonstrably increased with practice, from hit-or-miss in Book I (the Goldberry passages are excruciating) to the masterful exchange between Eowyn and the Witch-king, and Denethor's speeches of near-Shakespearean subtlety and grandeur.

Nor- and this is key- does Tolkien's many-headed finale ever become confused or lose clarity. Titus Alone and, to a lesser extent AS (and all the Dune books after the first) by contrast induce a massive ***??? on first (and often subsequent) reading.

[davem]

Its a long time since I read TLB, but I have to admit that when I heard of Susan's fate I didn't feel that Lewis was attacking either feminism or 'shallow' women, I just felt very sad that she had missed out. Maybe that was Lewis intention - that his readers would feel that way & not make the same choice she did. Susan 'grows up' & consigns Narnia to the Nursery - exactly the attitude Tolkien condemns in OFS. Some people do make that choice & surely it would have been dishonest if Lewis hadn't acknowledged that via one of his characters - &, as the letter I quoted shows, he never stated that Susan had lost her chance of entering Aslan's country, & left open the possibility that she could find her own way there one day.

Don't know how different this is from Boromir's fate - he misses out on his chance of coming through the war & living in peace & happiness through pride, but we see that as a tragedy. Surely Lewis has the right to 'sacrifice' one of his characters to bring home to his readers the danger of what he considered a 'sin', while leaving open the possibility of her salvation?