Mood:
not sureTopic: Entertaining Insights
Let me say that I have EXTREMELY mixed feelings about this Pullman yarn; I read the books when I was younger (and have yet to even get to the third one, I confess... so I left off with the li'l male protagonist approached by Angels lookin' to kill their mean 'ol bastard of a God...)
But I did read the synopsis, so there.
So Philip Pullman, no surprise here, is a rabidly anti-Christian (and other religions I suppose, though the cross has a special place in his antipathic heart) and he sees himself as the children's version of atheist gadfly Christopher Hitchins. The mantra espoused in each of the 'His Dark Materials' books is simple: 'God's NOT in his heaven, and all is WRONG with the world' (for those that got my Tess of the d'Urbervilles reference, I thank you...)
Alright: simple enough. But there's also another problem: anti-religious, rabid and insipid hatred-spouter that he is (and he IS...) Philip Pullman is also an immensely talented writer and I count 'The Golden Compass' book as a fantastical and extremely satisfying adventure story despite the rank anti-Christian (and I'll say in particular anti-Catholic) spiel that is evident throughout. The man's prose FLOWS, for God's sake (and but for His sake...) and the story's absolutely gripping.
The whole 'daemon' thing? Lord, sheer brilliance...
'The Subtle Knife' was slightly less entertaining to me (enough so that I didn't go on, obviously) but I was rather affected by this storyline. So much so that, in fact, you can trace the name of my second TYPERS book, 'His Moral Antipathy', to a ripoff of his series title: 'His Dark Materials'.
They say that the anti-religious fervor will be toned down in the upcoming film, and I believe that. I'm not saying I'm in favor of the movie, and I'm not gonna picket it either. One problem some people note is that kiddies who see the flick will be tempted to start readin' the books and, thus, more li'l kids will be indoctrinated into the Church of the Anti-Christians.
Whatever. More salvation for me, I suppose. Pullman's anti-religious themes within the HDM books are actually most juvenile and weak: if C.S. Lewis made his readers think with some of the tropes in his 'Narnia' books then Pullman makes readers see how petty he really is as a debater: of COURSE God is a twitty prawn if you create a whole universe around the fact that he is and simply cast the opposing side as more evil and stupid twits (C.S. Lewis, you'll remember, at least had the Good Calormen soldier in 'The Last Battle'...)
The books're the cheapest of shots, and don't constitute satire as much as laughable parody. The subtext within them reads not as a clever analysis and critique of religion, but more as a window into the empty heart of one very, very, very talented man.
My Justin Storm is a religious, marginally, and that mirrors myself somewhat, but guess what? Instead of painting atheism and agnosticism as EVIL and DISGUSTING from the outset I'm bein' realistic: so far in my writing I've shown that religion is somewhat less than a healthy force in my main character's life at the moment. The fact that, ultimately, it becomes a MOST crucial plot point due to the fact that something theoretical is shown to probably exist isn't until later, and even then I'd never assault the opposing side so much as Pullman derisively chooses to do (my main female character is a rank atheist, for example, and I happen to adore her, so I've built myself a complicated platform from which I must proceed...)
However, some people don't seem to do well with 'complicated' arguments. It's all just black and white to them. Good and bad, smart and dumb...
Gods, and devils...
