Since last night, when I aired some less-than-charitable thoughts about His Dark Materials Illuminated at the end of another day-late Gamecool episode, I've been feeling some remorse. On the one hand, I meant what I said: the texts in that volume are not terribly satisfying as critical essays; on the other hand, they're still interesting enough. I don't know if I could do any better.
And anyhow, I cordially dislike most critical essay-writing of this type. I'm no academic, so whatever I have to say is bound to be marked by that. But I love to be proved wrong: works like Shippey's Author of the Century, Flieger's Splintered Light, Olsen's Exploring The Hobbit, Anderson's Annotated Hobbit, and Tolkien's own critical tours de force, The Monsters and the Critics and On Fairy-stories, have all been truly illuminating. In trying to broaden my knowledge and sharpen my critical acumen, I've begun reading some of the Barfield which Flieger recommends and draws upon for her argument, as well as giants in the field of criticism, such as Morrison's Playing in the Dark, Auerbach's Mimesis, and Frye's Anatomy.
At any rate, I still mean to write out a more coherent and thorough review of the Lenz/Scott book. So that's what I'll do over the next few posts!
As I continue to read through more scholarly/academic and other fannish/mercenary secondary literature that's out there about Pullman, I also stand by my call for help. If you've read any of it and have some thoughts, let me know. If you have, it's probably because you've cited it in a paper, so send that to me, too, while you're at it. There could be a scholarship in it for you!
Mercifully, there are several existing bibliographies of Philip Pullman:
There's the one in the back of Laurie Frost's The Elements of His Dark Materials (and the author's preferred 2006 edition, The Definitive Guide)
And at the end of HDM Illuminated, edited by Millicent Lenz and Carole Scott
Online at isfdb
And at BridgeToTheStars.net
Douglas Anderson's Wormwoodiana (just one entry when I checked, but still impressive)
So that's a start. Meanwhile, I'll also keep advocating what I see as the more important task, the labor of love: close reading of his work, and of relevant primary sources. For that list, see the course page.
I am the author of one of the books mentioned here, Elements, a book which I am glad to see is no longer readily available. It was hacked at in the final stages and never properly proofread. Scholastic UK brought out a much cleaner edition in 2006, The Definitive Guide, and although I suppose it is technically OP (OP [out of print] is problematical now there are e-books), there has been some discussion of reprinting the book.
ReplyDeleteI was fortunate during the writing of my book that there was no full length study available. It was in any event not my intention to provide an overview of the literature or an interpretation. While I consider it apparent Paradise Lost influenced Pullman (and the Bible and Greco-Roman mythology influenced it), I think to concentrate on an aspect like that puts one in the position of the plowman in Bruegel's "Fall of Icarus," so intent on the next step in furrowing his row, that he misses altogether the descent of the winged boy into the sea below.
My preferred approach is to look at art as what comes between: there is a writer and there is a reader and what matters is what they make between them.
Excellent! I appreciate hearing from you on here; I'll add the link to the Scholastic UK edition and see about getting a copy.
ReplyDeletePullman expresses a similar approach, I think, his Reading in the Borderland talk being a good example: "The borderland, the land along the frontier, is the space that opens up between the private mind of the reader and the book they're reading." Makes sense to me!