Factual Errors
4 December 2007 - 25 כסלו 5768 by Huw
I’m not sure what more enjoyable: reading the right wing writings on Pullman’s The Golden Compass or reading the Left-wing writings about the right wing writings about Pullman’s The Golden Compass.
Over at Episcopal Cafe, the Lead’s Andrew Gerns follows the right-wing by implying that Pullman’s trilogy isn’t very popular… (why would anyone make a movie from an unpopular book?) I’ve heard that 5,000,000 copies have sold in the US. Don’t know. But that’s not too unpopular in my book.
But then he says the Catholic League is organising a boycott…
*sigh*
This is a factual error (and the second time this week the Lead has made the same error). Newsweek is already reporting the boycott and, predictably, press releases have gone out.
But there is nothing about it on the League’s website, however.
The left seems to want the right to be evil and make a boycott. I mean the right is EVIL, right? They just have to boycott! But the right has not yet obliged. Mores the pity. I think the best thing for the movie would be a boycott. But the left is so certain the right is evil that the left has created a rightwing boycott whole cloth. (Not to say the right isn’t complaining - they are.)
I also wonder if anyone commenting has actually read the book. I think the right has started to complain - and the left is replying to the right. But it seems no one has read the book.
First off: the book is “alternative history” like the sort of fiction that answers the question, “What if the South had won the war?”
It’s also steampunk - armoured bears, elaborate oil lamps, dirigibles delivering the mail. Think Jules Verne and you’ll be on the right track. I love that the London Underground is called the “Chthonic Railroad”.
The first major alternative I’ve noticed in reading is that the Protestants won the Reformation. John Calvin was elected Pope. The entirety of the Catholic Church was dismantled. “The Church” that the book is always talking about seems Protestant through and through. As is only logical, of course: Pullman was at Oxford, the Church that Pullman would complain about would be Anglican and Protestant.
Actually, the MOST enjoyable thing to read… is Pullman’s tale.
I’ve read all three of the books in the series. I wouldn’t call it “alternate history” but an “alternate world/universe”. Have you read “The Subtle Knife”? In it a teenage boy from what looks very much like *our* Universe is introduced. By using the knife of the title which is so sharp that it can cut doors between the worlds he goes to Lyra’s world as well as at least one other if no more.
The first book set up an interesting world and situations. The second book was not as good, imho, and I found the image of the young man getting a hand maimed by the knife Very Unpleasent. The third volume had some good bits but much of it was a slog and full of “THE MESSAGE” that Pullman was getting out. It in places interfered with the plot and characters I think.
err. that was supposed to read “at least one other if not more.” Sorry
I’m only halfway through the first book. Since that’s the movie coming out…
I’ll reserve my judgements on the books as a set until I’ve read them. So far I have a very different take on them than most of the conservative catholic sites I’ve read which leads me to wonder if they’ve read them or, at least, did so with an open mind.
I’ll trust your opinions since, at least, you’ve read them!
I find that many authors with A Message™ have trouble dealing with message and plot at the same time. Look at Harry Potter 7. Lewis made no bones about Narnia being allegory and so, in the places where the story vanishes under the sermon, we at least expect it. Personally, Pullman’s (and Rowling’s) protests aside, I doubt you can write non-allegorical fiction “with a message”.
As with any book review there’s an element of “ymmv” since everyone is different. I not only have read all three books, I read them when they first came out and when they hadn’t been noticed by most people who didn’t read YA/Fantasy. So there was no ‘cloud’ of news/opinion/etc along with them.
And your wondering about some of the ones making public remarks is a good one: Have they actually *read* the books? And then there’s understanding the idea that a “world”/universe in a fantasy novel does not have to be and often isn’t intended to be *ours*, to be the Universe we know. It is a world an author has set up with its own structure and rules and ideas. The whole matter of the “daemons” for example. They are NOT some kind of summoned spirit, or ‘magic’. They are the external depiction of the person’s soul/spirit. The point that servants have daemons that settle into the form of some variety of dog is, I would say, a *Symbol*. Look at the ones the more important adults have and what those sorts of creatures represent.
But it is clearly written that they are with a person when they’re born, and they die when the person does. The image of ’severing’ a child from its soul is chilling and the damage done is meant to say something as well.
I’ll stop now. 8-)
Of course, Symbols can have various levels of meaning.
I’m on page 319 of 399. Lyra is on her way to rescue her father having just liberated all the sparks.. um.. I mean children.
At this point I feel comfortable categorising this as a retelling of a Gnostic Myth. But that’s my read. I can also imagine (right now) it as a retelling of Moses’ story. And, depending on how it goes, as a retelling of Jesus story (she has just harrowed Hell). These two biblical readings may fall by the wayside as I finish reading. No spoilers, please!
But as I said that, the possibility of reading it as opposed to the organised religions is clear to me. But it’s not a Catholic Church: where John Calvin is Pope, they are talking about scientific “heresies”. The Church in this book actually sounds less like Catholicism (in our world) and more like James Randi and CSICOP disproving miracles and Uri Geller.
Now, the question for me is not what the author intended but what people pull out. This is a problem for any author, of course. I loved the Narnia books as a Wiccan because Pagan deities ran rampant through them. What would a modern Gnostic make of “The Silver Chair” or “A Horse and His Boy”? I can make a bet on the answer. These meanings from the reader are just as valid if not moreso than the author’s.
You’ve caught something that others who have posted are the charge of “heresy” in the books apparently have not noticed. That it is scientific heresy to say that there is more then one universe. The structure of some of the college studies is on the science of Lyra’s world and the “Proper” ideas about it and not going beyond them or questioning assumptions
Btw, when you wrote “sparks” do you also read “Girl Genius”?
8-)
No on Girl Genius. I was thinking of the Gnostic idea that Jesus (or Sophia) came to this world to liberate the sparks of divinity in all of us.
I think perhaps Pullman knew* whose whiskers he was tweaking in order to get his ‘message’ out. I also read these when they first came out.
*Any, right wing Xian picking up a book entitled His Dark Materials from his child’s reading materials, cracking the binding back to read the words, “daemon”. Would more than likely get a shiver. Heck, that was my reaction too. It’s like the Stone Goathead soup. It’s meant to tweak and be provocative.
But, the truth within the story (as Huw has explained contextually above) was far less dangerous. But, also I eventually came to think Pullman was just a mean spirited author, a bit joyless… sadly.
But, maybe he’ll mature.
;-)
“It’s meant to tweak and be provocative….
Pullman was just a mean spirited author, a bit joyless… sadly.”
David, I agree here. This makes good sense (especially now that I’ve finished the book). I wonder a lot about a book that is so dark yet claims to be written for CHildren.
More to the point, I wonder about the culture that produces buyers for the book.
This says nothing about the theology behind the books: the “Left Behind” series was just as dark.
I haven\’t read the Left Behind series…
I did read The Ever Present Darkness, Almost 20 years ago, yikes. Then again maybe 3 years ago aloud to my sons. Lot\’s of darkness described, but real moments of love in the face of it too. And the teens loved the demonic descriptions. Great pulp fiction.
Theologically more allegory than real. So, it ends up on the entertainment side. Could make a great movie if they really do it right.