Last night I went to B&N to purchase the His Dark Materials triology so that I could read first-hand the Phillip Pullman book, The Golden Compass. While Shannon got drinks from the cafe and Asheton played at the Thomas the Train table, I read a quick book called Discovering the Golden Compass: A Guide to Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials.
The Discovering book described in the author's words his upbringing and his purpose in writing the story. During his childhood, Pullman lived and had fond memories of his grandfather, an Anglican parish pastor who nurtured Pullman. He reminisced with keen affection the time he spent with his grandparents and said nothing antagonistic toward the church or the faith of his grandfather.
While many of the critiques I have read charge Pullman with writing this novel to promote his atheist/agnostic philosophy, I have not read anything from Pullman himself to validate the claim. In the book Discovering and on Pullman's website www.philip-pullman.com, he emphasizes telling a great story. On his website, he continually downplays the notion that his aim is to promote atheism; or to deal with difficult questions like God, the Church, good and evil, and love; or that he demands a particular interpretation of the story.
While his atheist/agnostic world-view will make its way into the story and, no doubt, find its way out, the shock reviews about Pullman's desire to brainwash your children is ridiculous. I read on one review that the movie was bait to get your kids to read the book, which will rob them of their belief in God. If your child's faith is being nurtured in such a way that a movie and a fantasy novel can rob his faith, you are failing as a parent.
Since this is a pre-read introduction, I will withhold the practical implications of the world-view of the story and how the readers can and should respond to the characters. At this point, I want to be very cautious about making Pullman the big bad Boogey man who wants to steal away our children.
More to come...
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4 comments:
There are fighting Polar Bears! How bad can it be! :-)
Kurt, You are doing a great job of staying away from some of the hype about this book! I've been going and back and forth about Pullman. Read this and see what you think.
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/11/philip_pullman_realizes_underm.html
CJ - His fans always point out that Pullman is down on "organized religion," a term which is utterly meaningless. Does this mean they and Pullman are for "disorganized religion?" It's a good thing that Asheville is one of the holes in the Bible belt and that we can think through this a little more carefully with some fair criticism. We don't simply do what we're told by the guys on tv with funny hair (our people have funnier hair, and tattoos, and they don't watch a lot of tv).
If I get one more "boycott Golden Compass" e-mail... I might puke. I'm still waiting for the DisneyLand boycott to be revoked so that I can finally take my kids down to meet the real Buzz Light Year. Looking forward to the thoughtful engagement!
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