If anyone perusing this blog is unaware, Philip Pullman was on Vimeo this past week. He was interviewed by another writer, Charles Rosen, and the talk is well worth your time. As always, Pullman proves a wonderful storyteller, whether he is actually telling stories or simply recounting memories from his childhood, expounding on writing, or musing on literature.
Tragically, we came very close to hearing a reading from the third volume in The Book of Dust series, but alas, Pullman forgot to bring it with him for the interview. He does talk about the final book a little however, and I found it intriguing that he classifies The Book of Dust trilogy as a "Romance" rather than an "Epic," like His Dark Materials (a Romance in the style of something like "The Faerie Queene").
As he has alluded to during other interviews, his composition schedule is down to writing a single page a day as opposed to the three he once was able to produce. So we still have a wait ahead of us, though he was happily confident the quality of his writing hasn't substantially decreased, which is of course the most important thing in the long run.
The interview is about 90 minutes long, and features questions from a select group of students at the end as well. One quote in particular that stuck with me was regarding his issue with writers who feel that they have to denigrate men and boys in their stories to elevate women and girls. He rightfully calls them writers with "more dogma than inspiration" in their pens. Indeed. In these increasingly toxic, politically-drenched times, that was good to hear.
Of course, he has given us one of the most wonderful, fearless, inventive, brave, and loyal girl protagonists of all time in Lyra Silvertongue, but let us not forget he did the same with her male counterpart, Will Parry, the boy protagonist who is by equal turns loving, caring, gentle, courteous, but also strong and dangerous and capable.
Any young boy could do far worse than model himself on such an amazing character, and that is something that is becoming something of a rarity these days.
Anyway, you should be able to watch the whole event here for free even if you don't have a Vimeo account.
Thanks to the Centre for Language, Culture, and Learning for hosting the event!
#HisDarkMaterials #TheBookOfDust #PhilipPullman
No comments:
Post a Comment