A Altar Skirmished

[steepholm]

For those who are interested, here's a thought-provoking post by Michael Berube on Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, with sidelights on Tolkien and on Lewis's SF. The comments too are well worth reading.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh thanks for that link. That was nifty to read over morning tea. (I haven't reread Hideous Strength for years just because of that ending, but now I want to read it for the stuff he highlighted, which whizzed past me at the time.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I've not reread it recently either, but what he said chimed pretty much with what I do remember.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Actually the misogyny started well before the end, and also encompassed Miss Hardcastle the Evil Lesbian. It's a loathsome book.

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

Ah, pipped at the post ... I noticed that last night and thought I must link (and may do anyway) then got lost in dealing with the flood of Bittercon responses. Thank goodness one of us is organised!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised you have time to read anything else atm!

[intertext.livejournal.com]

That was very kewl - thank you for the link. My only complaint is that under all the irony I'm not sure exactly what his position was re Pullman good or bad. Or maybe we're not supposed to be that essentialist.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I got somewhat lost in the cleverness and irony at points too. I wish he'd have used some slightly more intelligent Pullman critiques to critique though - there are plenty out there.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

On the morality, reductiveness, etc, I think there was an element of wanting it both ways. He seemed to come pretty close to saying that, sure, Pullman is reductive, but then epic is reductive, and actually the Church really is pretty evil, so maybe it's not so reductive after all...

But I found what he was saying about the relationship between scale and diction, and managing them over the course of a trilogy, very interesting (and more or less unrelated to the reductiveness point, in fact).

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I liked that bit of it, too. I also really enjoyed the comments.