And I'm indebted once more to the Inter-library Loan program, an amazing service! Thanks to the ILL and its tireless outpost here in Spokane, I have recently been reading three more of the book-length studies of Pullman so far published. I'll review them here in order of how helpful I've found them.
Killing the Imposter God, by Donna Freitas and Jason King
A work similar in spirit to Tony Watkins' excellent Dark Matter, in that Freitas and King situate HDM within a thoughtful Christian context, Killing the Imposter God goes a little further towards building up a scholarly theological apparatus for reading the trilogy. While the background in liberation theology, process theology, and feminist slants thereof is the book's strongest contribution, perhaps its greatest weakness is actually in how little it engages with other critical readers of Pullman, scholarly and more traditionally theological alike. Making a reading of HDM, rather than the secondary literature, their priority, though, is obviously the right move if one of the two has to be sacrificed for the sake of concision, or to appeal to a broader audience.
Their revisionist stance is announced in the authors' contention that Nietzsche's Zarathustra doesn't necessarily speak for the philosopher, emphasizing less the death of God than the birth of a new conception of God. Warranted or not, they place Nietzsche at the head of a lineage that stretches through Whitehead, Gutierrez, Boff, Keller and McFague. In short:
Pullman wrote this trilogy during a theological era when alternative visions of the divine abound, so it is hard to understand how Pullman overlooked all these available alternatives and why he seems unable--or at least unwilling--to consider his own alternative divinity [ie, Dust] in the trilogy. Pullman has by no means killed off God in general. He has killed off only one understanding of God--God-as-tyrant--and an oddly antiquated and unimaginative one at that. (19, cf. Pullman's critique of 'epicycles' in his interview with Watkins)Again, the argument looks at Pullman's story, rather than his public pronouncements:
Once we are able to set aside Pullman's personal professions of atheism, it is not difficult to see how Dust takes on many qualities that are typically associated with the divine. Dust existed since the beginning. It always tells the truth... Dust is the source of all creation... And in The Amber Spyglass, we learn that Dust has yet another name: Wisdom--a name for God that many feminists have devoted much energy to exploring. (27)
Dust holds everything together. It takes on different forms to become spirit, soul, and body, and to make a person. In this way, Dust becomes matter and the world. Even the angels and the Authority are created and formed out of Dust... (51)Now, surely that would imply that Dust does tell lies, starting with Authority claiming to be the Creator, all the way down to Lyra, until she learns the value of telling true stories? It may become a matter of semantics rather than metaphysics, but I wonder if the lengths to which Freitas and King take Dust might have been better informed by a brush with Rogers' vitalist monism. A similar squishiness enters in once they start talking about "agapic love" (93). All sorts of love are represented in Pullman, to be sure, but this one popularized by Lewis is probably further from his mind than Blakean (or even Dantesque) desire, which get much shorter shrift. One interesting distinction does get pushed quite firmly, though:
This claim [by the review in First Things]--that Pullman's notion of salvation is too shallow--is itself shallow. The end of The Amber Spyglass cannot be reduced to two distinct salvific moments--one superficial and one more complex. It should be understood instead as a complicated drama of salvation in three intimately interconnected acts, all of which are linked and indispensable, and correspond to his triune vision of humanity and panentheistic understanding of the divine. (108)Those three moments, if I have them straight, are the descent into the underworld, the romantic awakening, and the final return to their own worlds. This is the strongest stretch of the argument in the book, for me. The tail end of the series has always been the most complex and difficult for me to interpret, and while I don't go along with them all the way, Freitas and King do a great job offering some support for the position that HDM's ending, far from being a disappointment as many readers feel, is worthy of the story as a whole:
In what may be the most powerful section of HDM (when Lyra decides to free the ghosts...) Lyra ... becomes the new Moses... Dorothee Soelle argues that humanity learns its purpose in creation through the Exodus story. "In the beginning," she writes, "was liberation." (120, cf. Soelle, To Work and to Love: A Theology of Creation)
Many liberation theologians read Exodus as logically preceding Genesis; the Israelites have to be liberated from slavery to become a people, and only once they are a people do they ask about and remember their creation. Similarly, it is possible to read God's revelation ... to his chosen people as an act, not only of saving the Israelites but also of saving God... [Pullman's] story culminates, not in the death of God but in God's [ie, Dust's] salvation. (152)
Pullman has come to a surprisingly Christian conclusion. Echoing the Gospel of John, he seems to conclude that the key to the universe is love and that Real Love requires great personal sacrifice for the love of others. Jesus' mission was to save people... (156)
If the preservation of consciousness and creativity and everything else that Dust represents requires sacrifice--even the sacrifice of erotic love, at least on a personal level--then we must be prepared to make that sacrifice, to say the goodbyes that it demands (157)The story of Lyra and Will becomes a new Gospel, "the grand story of salvation," complete with a creed (166).
It is also surprisingly Greek, indebted nearly as much to Socrates and Plato as to God the Father and God the Son. In these novels, preserving true knowledge seems to be more important than preserving true love. In the end, the mind trumps the body. Consciousness trumps matter. Divinity demands the sacrifice of humanity. (158)
Will and Lyra are asked by the force of circumstance to give up the expression of embodied love of each other, in exchange for the realization of a more ultimate love--their Love of Dust. Whether this is good news is up to the reader to decide. But there seems to be something of a Fall, even in Pullman's Gospel. (159)Very much so! And it's an aspect of the story we'll see in a new light, perhaps, with the release of the further Book of Dust. Too much gets conflated and set into rhetorical flourishes there for me. The interview with the author of Wicked also seems like an odd fit, though he has some interesting points. Still, Freitas and King represent an important contribution to the study of Pullman's initial HDM trilogy.
Critical Perspectives on Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials: Essays on the Novels, the Film and the Stage Productions, edited by Steven Barfield and Katharine Cox
As Freitas and King were preceded by Watkins in their religious study oriented towards a popular audience, so Barfield and Cox follow Lenz and Scott down the academic essay collection path. Regrettably, they do not measure up in their scholarship; however, just as in the Lenz and Scott book, there are a few essays here which stand out and are well worth an ILL read.
Introduction, Katherine Cox
In the first place (aside from a plug for her entry on Pullman in the Literary Encyclopedia), Cox mentions Pullman's biographical sketch, but gives little indication of how marvelous it is. Remarking on his interest in education, she does not refer us directly to his essays or their contexts. Nor do I recall any reference to the prior Lenz/Scott essay collection. Nevertheless, the theme of education, specifically Pullman's own, but also the field of Pullman studies, such as it is, seems like it would be a helpful framing principle for a book like this. Instead, it is dropped in favor of brief summaries of each of the pieces within their (tired, arbitrary) thematic groupings. There are pleas for the novelty of perspectives we'll be offered on music, science fiction, Victoriana, gender, adaptation--which is all there, whether it touches the heart of Pullman's work or not--and so are the usual suspects, already adequately trotted out: influences of Lewis and Tolkien, to say nothing of Milton and Blake, and rehashes of theological arguments. The whole thing feels rather dry and desultory, and we haven't even got into the essays themselves...
I. Adversaries and Influences
"Recasting John Milton's Paradise Lost: Intertextuality, Stroeytelling and Music," Rachel Falconer
Aside from pointing us towards a couple of handy reads--one primary, "What! No Soap?" by Pullman (though it turns out this is the same as "Children's Literature Without Borders" in Daemon Voices); the other secondary, Revolution in Poetic Language, by Kristeva--and delivering a few interesting thoughts about Pullman's appreciation of music, with reference to the figure of Orpheus as transmitted by Milton, Falconer provides a decent overview of the story's indebtedness to the epic poet but few substantially new insights. Focusing in on the world of the dead and developing the Orpheus thing further, with greater attention to the Maenad-like witches, say, who actually sing the only song in the whole series, aside from the epigraphs or Mrs Coulter's wordless lullabies, would have been helpful. For a stronger take on Milton, I recommend again Shohet's essay in the Lenz/Scott volume.
"'When I Grow Up I Want to Be...'": Conceptualization of the Hero Within the Works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Philip Pullman," Phil Cardew
Skip this sweeping, facile look at heroism in favor of reading practically any of the numerous entries cited in what is really a ludicrous list of works for such a slight essay: the likes of Frye, Genette, Propp, to say nothing of Tolkien and Lewis' essays, which even Pullman acknowledges the value of, much as he detests their fiction. On the topic of the bear's son motif, briefly brought up by Cardew, a really good essay might be written comparing Will and Iorek; or on the beauty and the beast motif, to bring Lyra into it a bit more... But the insistence on reading Pullman with reference to Lewis/Tolkien is unhelpful and forced and frankly impossible to address in a meaningful way in such a short space.
"Constructions of the Child, Authority and Authorship: The Reception of C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman," Elisabeth Eldridge
Through an intricate use of scare-quoted names, Eldridge shows ample evidence to prove a couple of simple points: that there is an important distance between the author and the narrator, provoking problematic misunderstandings by those who try to read them as if they were the same, and that there is a tension between the reading of these works by adults and children, creative in itself but again problematic when the adults try to make dogmatic assertions on the children's behalf. In a somewhat belabored critique of critiques pro and contra Lewis and Pullman, Eldridge comes to the unsurprising conclusion that these critiques end up mirroring one another, opposed as they are. Fine academic writing, but it really doesn't give us any insight into the story. Gray's work, building on Bloom's theory of anxiety of influence, is considerably more illuminating.
"'Dark Materials to Create More Worlds': Considering His Dark Materials as Science Fiction," Steven Barfield
In this piece, by one of the co-editors, no less, the sloppy editing of the collection really begins to become apparent, both in terms of run-on sentences and typographical howlers, and in the overall arbitrary order of the pieces and division into sections. It's too bad, because there is some interesting material here in the mess. Barfield cites Pullman's Foreword to Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale, and mentions his stage adaptation of Frankenstein--either of which would have been excellent topics to focus an essay around, rather than scattered bits and pieces of science fiction theory: alternate history, Amis' The Alteration, Suvin's novum, Clarke and Asimov's laws, Lewis' Space trilogy, L'Engle's Time Quintet.. .The Kendal Mint Cake parody of Raphael in Milton, from whose epigraph the essay starts, actually supports a read of the trilogy as satire as much as sci-fi. Finally, one more curiosity worth looking up: Uselton's paper on structural myth, hardly less amateurish than the sort of things I write.
II. Traditions and Legacies
"Revitalizing the Old Machines of a Neo-Victorian London: Reading the Cultural Transformations of Steampunk and Victoriana," Steven Barfield and Martyn Colebrook
Again, a lovely mess. Of the two (quite distinct!) topics the essay purports to cover, the authors' look at steampunk technology includes a read of the bomb chapter that's pretty interesting and original, if a little sloppy. We hear about Gibson's The Difference Engine, but not much about the Cave, the computer of Mary Malone. The alethiometer, the subtle knife, the intention craft even, are touched on only very briefly--could it be that they don't actually fit that well into the steampunk genre? On the other topic of Victoriana, we hear a bit about the dystopian London setting and Pullman's Sally Lockhart mysteries and early short stories, suggesting avenues for further study without actually providing much in the way of analysis.
"Revisiting the Colonial: Victorian Orphans and Postcolonial Perspectives," Laura Peters
The first really insightful piece in the collection. Pullman has acknowledged his status as a colonial child, and this is one of the ways in which his life story actually does parallel Tolkien's, besides his semi-orphanhood. Peters notes the echo of boy's own narratives in the descriptions of John Parry, sees the aspiration towards post-colonialism in the figure of King Ogunwe, and the Romantic leanings tempered by Pullman's vaunted realism, but her conclusion suddenly brings in way more material undigested. This by way of sensing, rightly, the crucial importance of that storytelling theme, but that would take another essay, or a book, to adequately treat! To discuss Blake's 'for empire is no more' epigraph alone would have been a much more satisfying way to close the piece.
"Exploring and Challenging the Lapsarian World of Young Adult Literature: Femininity, Shame, the Gyptians, and Social Class," Nicola Allen
Another essay, like Barfield's, riddled with grammatical errors. Sentences that ran on have simply been studded with periods, leaving fragments of what might actually have been interesting thoughts to languish in lapsarian shame. Why not just say fallen? Or better yet, actually explain what that is supposed to mean, in the context of a book which is entirely predicated on reinterpreting the story of the fall? Instead, we get Kruks reading Foucault through Beauvoir. It's hard to take Allen's points about the gyptians and other supposedly representative female characters seriously when the witches are straw-manned and Mrs Coulter's development all but neglected. The seed of a worthwhile essay is there in the use of the word grace for Mrs Coulter's charms and her theological interests, but that is not this essay. Quotes from a Lambert interview take the place of a structuring principle; references to Rowling and Gatty's Tale are beside the point for anyone mainly interested in HDM.
"'Imagine Dust with a Capital Letter': Interpreting the Social and Cultural Contexts for Philip Pullman's Transformation of Dust," Katharine Cox
Maybe the only finished essay in the book. Cox addresses Dust head on, putting her finger on the sort of semantic interplay of levels that reference to grace in the previous essay did, and actually developing an argument from it. For me, there is still too little Dust (which would mean looking at more passages from the text), too much dust (deep dives into the social contexts of domesticity and sanitation, glances at physics and ecology). But that's what the title promised, after all, and as academic papers go, it's perfectly well-written. Cox even references a few other scholars in Bird and Shohet, but does not engage with Freitas and King's sweeping arguments about Dust at all. Nor does she seem any more aware than I was (before Dr Shohet indicated it for me) of Rogers' masterful monograph on Milton and the vitalist moment.
III. Religion, Sexuality and Gender
"The Man Who Walked with God: Philip Pullman's Metatron, the Biblical Enoch, and the Apocrypha," John Haydn Baker
This one is pretty well done, too. Baker tackles Enoch just as squarely as Cox does Dust, and strikes a good balance between drawing on different sources and speculating on how Pullman actually seems to use them in his story. There are even some larger issues hinted at, about the Bible and apocrypha, which I'd have loved to see compared in some way to Pullman's treatment of Christ and the Church, whether in HDM or in The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Say, with more attention to those differences in Asriel's Bible, or in terms of Mary Malone and the Pauline triune nature of body, soul, and spirit? We also get a couple of wild Blake drawings helpfully pointed out for us, which always makes for fun discoveries.
"The Republic of Heaven: East, West and Eclecticism in Pullman's Religious Vision," J'Annine Jobling
For whatever reason, Jobling insists on making Pullman's cosmos fall into line with Buddhism, even whilst acknowledging the vagueness of any attempt to generalize about Buddhism, particularly as it's understood in the West. It's all rather mushy. Again, engaging more with Freitas (who is cited) and Rogers (who isn't) might have provided a little shape to the argument, whereas references to Gresh only compound the sense that what is at stake is only a matter of nomenclature. The verbal echo between Pullman's sraf and karmic asrav is fascinating, but only makes a footnote. A nod towards environmentalism, of course undeveloped, closes the piece. Somehow this essay focused on the East includes nary a mention of the I Ching nor the whole Himalayan interlude of TAS.
"'Walking into Mortal Sin': Lyra, the Fall, and Sexuality," Tommy Halsdorf
Like many of the pieces, this could have fit either into the legacy or the adaptation sections as well or better than it does in the religion and gender one. In a variation on the question (answered by Milton resoundingly in the affirmative) Did Adam and Eve have sex in Eden before the fall? Halsdorf asks if Will and Lyra had sex at the end of TAS, and answers, rightly, that we don't know. Pullman's ambiguity on the point is well attested and would be worth considering at greater length in the light of his statements about authorial intention. Instead, we get some references to Milton and Blake and the bible, but also to Lacan's jouissance and the work of Wright and Butler on the HDM plays, which are worth following up. The quotation from the title about "walking into mortal sin," a very interesting one for this question of authorial intent and narrative voice, is never addressed. It also would have made sense to read Pullman's early Gnosticism- and sex-laden novels, but they're so difficult to find copies of that scholarship on them might never happen.
"Becoming Human: Desire and the Gendered Subject," Sarah Gamble
Another Butler is the subject of this essay, which sets Judith Butler's gender theory against a vaguely posited normative standpoint, and places Pullman's story into the resonating chamber between them to see how it fares. Mrs Coulter and Lord Asriel, Will and Lyra and their daemons, all get somewhat more careful attention than in most essays, but once again, Mary Malone is conspicuous by her absence. Moruzi is cited, along with "Womanliness as a Masquerade," to go along with this Butlerian spine, the upshot of which is to establish Pullman's radical politics and declare HDM safe to read for those concerned about woke bona fides. What a relief.
"After the Fall: Queer Heterotopias," Sally R. Munt
Revised from a book chapter, and it shows at times as the word shame is deployed in a particularly loaded fashion, as if we know what is meant by it. But perhaps we learn through the context of the essay itself, which is really very strong. Munt lays out a theory of self as narration derived from Cavavero and Irigaray, less sociological perhaps than Butler's stance, and places Pullman into conversation with the likes of these authors and Foucault in a remarkably lucid fashion for a change. She demonstrates a knowledge of a range of earlier works on Pullman, including a series of articles by the Rustins, and meaningfully builds on them with a quite novel interpretation of Lee and Hester, Baruch and Balthamos, and the colorful concepts of romantic heterocosms and heterotopias. Probably the essay which I learned the most from, and one that might actually put Pullman's achievement in a new light.
IV. Dramatizing HDM
"Staging the Impossible: Severance and Separation in the National Theatre's Adaptation," Patrick Duggan
"Staging and Performing HDM: From the National Theatre Productions to Subsequent Productions," Karian Schuitema
These are two more of the most interesting pieces in the collection, along with Cox', Baker's, and Munt's essays. Not, perhaps, as insightful into the books themselves as those were, what they do is to give a glimpse into the stage adaptations, which are otherwise inaccessible to us. Along with his illuminating notes on the dramatic experience, Duggan brings to bear trauma theory of dubious persuasiveness, but Schuitema offers a densely researched look at subsequent productions beyond the National Theatre run and includes an interview with the director of Playbox Theatre, to help make the reporting more concrete. Questions of the difference between adults and children, so central to Pullman's story and his great idea of the daemon, are cast in a fascinating new light.
Overall, the collection is a little disappointing, but it highlights a number of other scholars I haven't had time to touch upon, and opens considerable vistas on room for improvement.
Continuum Contemporaries: Philip Pullman's HDM Trilogy: A Reader's Guide, Claire Squires
This is probably the closest thing to what I would want to write, only I would want to write a much expanded, ever-updating version. In many respects, Squires work is consummate competence: her summary of Pullman's biography is excellent, and she does a smooth job of synthesizing a great deal of story and thematic material in a very brief space. There are a few outright errors: her assertion about what Asriel says to Lyra about Dust at the end of the first book and Pan's summary of it later leaves out what Asriel says to Mrs Coulter at the end of that book and then retcons later in his conversation with her in TAS; Squires calls Tony Makarios an old friend of Lyra's, which might be a mix-up with subsequent adaptations where the character is merged with Billy Costa, whose brother is also, confusingly, named Tony. She also puts a great deal of weight on the catch-all term politics, whereas I tend to think of that as largely a red herring in Pullman's story, subsumed under the much more important process of storytelling. Still, she is a perceptive reader overall, asking brilliant questions, connecting widely separated quotes from within the books, as well as essays, speeches, etc, and reviews (up until about 2003). A handy little volume, nothing earth-shattering, but I'll have to check out her other book on Pullman, Master Storyteller.
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