'Spun Candy' anyone?

[davem]

Found a link to this speech by Pullman, & I think it gives a real insight into his approach to fantasy & his feelings about LotR. Some quotes:

It's not just character-drawing, either; it's moral truthfulness. I can't remember anything in The Lord of the Rings, in all that vast epic of heroic battles and ancient magic, that titanic struggle between good and evil, that even begins to approach the ethical power and the sheer moral shock of the scene in Jane Austen's Emma when Mr Knightley reproaches the heroine for her thoughtless treatment of poor Miss Bates. Emma's mortification is one of those eye-opening moments after which nothing is the same. Emma will grow up now, and if we pay attention to what's happening in the scene, so will we. That's what realistic fiction can do, and what fantasy of the Tolkien sort doesn't. ..

Because when I thought about it, there was no reason why fantasy shouldn't be realistic, in a psychological sense - and it was the lack of that sort of realism that I objected to in the work of the big Tolkien and all the little Tolkiens. After all, when I looked at Paradise Lost, there was plenty of psychological realism going on there, and the fantastical elements - the angels and the devils, the landscapes of hell, Satan's encounter with Sin and Death, and so on - were all there to embody states of mind. They weren't unreal like Gandalf; they were nonreal like Mary Garth - convincing and truthful in every way except actual existence....

Tolkien, by contrast, didn't question anything: it didn't occur to him to do so, because for him, as a Catholic, all the big questions were settled. The Church had all the answers, and that was that. Is there any doubt anywhere in The Lord of the Rings, even for a fraction of a second, about what is good and what is evil, what is to be praised and what is to be condemned? Not a flicker. No one wonders what the right thing is: they only doubt their own capacity to do it. The whole thing is an exercise in philological and social nostalgia, a work of immense triviality, candied like fruit in an Edwardian schoolboy's idea of fine writing.

The final quote is, for me, the silliest thing Pullman says. The idea that Tolkien didn't question anything because all the big questions were settled by the Church is just wrong. Certainly he made a moral & philosophical choice to accpet the teacjings of his faith, but to imply that was a simple thing for him is a statement based on ignorance of the facts. No-one could go through what Tolkien did could make a simple decision to just believe everything he was told from a pulpit. He was way too intelligent for that.

Yes, in Middle-earth there is no question about what is Good & what is Evil. This was the core of Tolkien's philosophy - Good & Evil are absolutes: our task is to find the strength to do what's right, not to agonise over what good & Evil actually are. There isn't any struggle about what a good person should do, only over how to find the strength to do it.

Pullman actuallly contracicts the final statement in his 'epic' here. He has Lyra state that the task of everyone in the post 'Death of God' era is

being “all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we’ve got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds.”

Pullman has a very clear idea of what is 'Good' & what is 'Evil'. Organised Religion & all its restrictions, is 'Evil', Human freedom of thought & the freedom to build a better world is 'Good'. Now, this view of what is Good & what is Evil, may be different from Tolkien's but it is there in Pullman. What Pullman doesn't like about Tolkien is not that Tolkien believes in Moral absolutes where Pullman doesn't, but that Tolkien's moral abolutes are different to his own. Pullman no more questions his own views of what is Good & what is Evil than Tolkien does.

Whatever. Tolkien has created a world in which Good & Evil are (& must be) moral absolutes, which cannot be questioned. Pullman presents us with a world in which moral absolutes must be defined & then lived up to. Tolkien presents us with a world where moral absolutes have already been defined & must be lived up to. As I said earlier, Tolkien begins where Pullman ends.

EDIT

I have to wonder what Pullman thinks there is to agonise over in the sense of 'what is good, what is Evil' in Tolkien's world - should one wonder whether to side with Sauron of not, whether to claim the Ring & become a Monster or not, whether to desert ones friends or not, the value of mercy, etc. In fact, Tolkien & Pullman seem to share a sense of what's right & what's wrong in terms of basic ethical behaviour. Both have a belief in objective moral standards & the requirement to try & live up to them. I think the difference between them is that for Pullman these objective standards, if they are to be truly, morally, Good, must be seen, & stated in no uncertain terms, to come from Humans themselves, whereas for Tolkien, if they are to have any validity they must have an external, objective origin in 'God'/Eru. For Tolkien Humans are fallen & therefore fallible & require Divine guidance . For Pullman they are not - they just fail to do all they can, to achieve their full potential - by not living up to Pullman's own ideal standard for them. Pullman himself takes the place of Eru in his own Secondary World, lays down the moral standards for his characters. Tolkien lays down the standards of his own Judeo-Christian faith for the characters in his Secondary world.