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February 16, 2008
Just, Wow.
I finally finished Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials triology last night (i.e. The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass.) I haven't enjoyed a piece of fiction this much in a really long time. I know the books were immensely popular in Pullman's native UK, but I completely missed their release here. You really have to read all three books in succession; despite the fact that they made it into a movie (which I haven't seen), the end of the first book is really just the beginning of the story. It's just a very emotional, beautifully written fantasy story.
I find the objections to the books due to their "atheism" especially funny now that I've read them. Pullman is an out atheist, and though the villans of the book are the Church authoritarians, the message is so much more beautiful and complex. It deals with individual responsibility, love, the interconnectedness of everything, and God is actually a benevolent (though impotent and deposed) character. The evil in the book is less about religion and more about blind authority and fear of the unknown. It doesn't challenge any specific religious doctrine, so I think much of the outrage over the book is from people who are a) (ignorantly/misguidedly) afraid of atheism in general and b) have not read the books. One aspect I found extremely interesting (and this is probably very threatening to fundamentalist thought) is that there is a shared mythology not only amongst people from different cultures, but also different worlds. The details and interpretations are the different, but the interpretations differ. This sort of ecumenical/universalist outlook is, in my humble opinion, a very healthy thing for kids to grasp.
My favorite character by far was Iorek Byrnsson, the king of the armored polar bears. The book made me cry at least four times, and Adam kept picking on me that I was crying over my drunken polar bear. Wait 'till he reads it...
Posted by mwashburn at February 16, 2008 03:56 PMPosted to literature
Comments
Ah yes, Iorek. Yongi got the stuffed version for me for xmas, and he's still sleeping on the bed. Tell Adam that crying over drunken bears is an upstate thing he just wouldn't understand.
Posted by: patita at February 18, 2008 12:25 PM