As noted last month, there was a special event held yesterday in celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Northern Lights, the first and arguably most famous book in the His Dark Materials trilogy.
While I don't regret buying an online ticket to said event, all in all it was a little underwhelming.
First off, simply by virtue of the fact that it had to be held via Zoom rather than at a grand hall somewhere. The big launch for The Secret Commonwealth comes to mind, courtesy of Waterstones just last year. That was great, and I have watched it several times on YouTube.
Second off, the interview didn't involve only Pullman, but rather several other people, with various cast members from the HBO series reading book passages throughout.
Not to be disagreeable, but the interview with Jane Tranter was the least interesting. She is the executive producer of the abovementioned series, and I remain rather unimpressed with the whole endeavor. Again, the goal of the series was to be as faithful to the books as possible thanks to the long form television provides, but it hasn't really turned out that way in my opinion.
During the interview, Tranter repeatedly confused The Subtle Knife with The Amber Spyglass, as well as calling characters wrong names, such as "Joe Parry" rather than "John Parry." Not the most inspiring. More on that later, but flaws aside, I still prefer the look and tone and overall feel and aesthetics of the film.
Pullman was charitable about the work, as opposed to falling back on his usual lines about a book remaining whole and intact on the shelf, regardless of the amount of adaptations and mediums it is passed through. He usually talks around such things, though he stated this time he finds the series "wonderful" and has "complete faith" in the producers. So more than me, though honestly it seems he is more removed from adaptations of his work than perhaps his readers.
One of the most intriguing things I did learn however was that he had no idea Will Parry was going to be in the trilogy at all before The Subtle Knife, and thus was supportive of his inclusion in the first series. Considering Will's importance to the story, that was pretty intriguing.
I personally am not convinced of that addition to the series storyline at all, nor of Will's casting in general. As for Lyra, it seems to me Dafne Keen would be more suited to play the older Lyra in The Secret Commonwealth. It is a darker novel, and the HBO team seems insistent on making HIs Dark Materials that way as well, regardless of whether or not it fits the story. I suppose my main issue with it is just that the energy that abounds on every page and is embedded in every paragraph of Northern Lights was simply missing from the first series. In my opinion, anyway.
So that was not a highlight of the event for me.
However, I did enjoy the other two guests. One was Chris Wormell, who did the work on the illustrated edition of Northern Lights. This only recently debuted in England, and I can't find a copy here. However, it is available on Amazon UK, and I'm sure it is well worth the price. I am very pleased to know it is getting the illustrated treatment so popular among middle reader and young adult books these days. I truly hope the entire trilogy will follow as the anniversaries continue.
Chris seemed genuinely honored to be working on the project, and excited about it as well. Apparently, the lockdown worked in his favor, as he was able to devote months to nothing but existing in the Pullmanverse. So if you have the means to do so, you should probably pick up a copy!
The next guest and the one I found to be the most enjoyable besides Pullman was a gentleman I've heard about for some time, but never actually seen. This would be David Fickling, who has been Pullman's editor and advisor for decades. Fickling was one of the first people to ever read Northern Lights in its entirety, if not the very first.
His enthusiasm for Pullman's writing was palpable, as he was clearly overwhelmed to find himself a collaborator with one of the world's greatest storytellers. It was so nice to get to see him in person - or as in person as a Zoom interview allows - and he seemed a charming, passionate, knowledgeable, and committed individual.
Still, he did create the "Fred Must Die Rule," regarding a particular character back in the Sally Lockhart days, Pullman's first foray into young adult Victorian thrillers. While I can't say his decision was wrong, I did love that character! Anyway, Fickling also went on to say he believes The Book of Dust trilogy is one of the most important works of fiction cataloging the human condition today, and I really can't argue with that at all. It is pretty extraordinary, regardless of whether or not it is always recognized as such.
As for the rest of it, Pullman went on to talk about other things, some I was familiar with and some I wasn't. I know due to his age and his health, along with the pandemic and the general state of things, he is having a more difficult time writing the last book in the new trilogy than usual. His "Three Pages a Day Rule" which has been in place since he's been writing has been broken of late, with his output sometimes drifting closer to just one or two pages a day.
The fact that interviewers keep asking him about how the various crisis' of the real world are intruding on his fiction does give me the slightest moment of pauses. I personally feel art is always going to trump politics, the former perpetually outlasting the latter. Just as Shelley so eloquently put it in Ozymandias, a poem which Pullman admires.
While it is admirable that Pullman is so engaged with the "real" world - that is after all where we have to build the Republic of Heaven - I can't help but feel politics aren't good or healthy for anyone these days. Of course, this is the week of the latest U.S. presidential election. Politics not only reduce everything to its lowest common denominator - and do so relentlessly - but the news surrounding them only has a tendency to bombard people with irrelevant mountains of depressing information that they simply can't do anything about.
After he works everyday, Pullman admits to watching said news, and he is also a devotee of Twitter. I personally have abandoned Facebook this year, and mainly signed on to Instagram just to look at the pictures. I just hope social media and world events haven't dampened his usual reserves of near endless inspiration and imagination. Our world may not continue to inevitably turn, but that doesn't mean Lyra's can't fare at least a little better.
(Not to mention, one of the rare Pullman narrative missteps had to be in the final act of The Tiger in the Well. It was also the end of a trilogy, and it got unnecessarily political and that clumsily tripped up the story being told. So that would be best avoided, in my view.)
I suppose my point is that if any writing is going to save the world or at least nobly sculpt away at the foundations of our Republic, it's going to be literature and poetry, not endlessly circular tweets and Facebook posts.
Pullman also ended the event by remarking it took him about two years to write Northern Lights and The Subtle Knife, and almost three to complete The Amber Spyglass, which is by far the longest of that trilogy. Obviously The Secret Commonwealth took things to a whole new level, pushing almost 700 pages.
The final unnamed chapter may be a bit shorter, but he has remarked it will also be long. He is currently a year into it, and predictably the finishing line is far off. As usual, he knows vaguely what the ending looks like, but not all the adventures along the way.
I have great faith, and we all know he is a treasure to great to lose anytime soon. He remains a source of profound inspiration to me. I wish him absolutely the best on all fronts, and hope he takes all the time he needs, and that particles of Dust find their way to his writing desk every morning.
But the fact remains that The Book of Dust conclusion will be at least a couple of years away, and my own book on the two trilogies even longer than that. So yes, we have quite a wait ahead of us but, after all, patience is a Republic of Heaven virtue ...
Stay Dusty My Friends
#PhilipPullman #BuildingTheRepublic #HisDarkMaterials #TheBookOfDust
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