HisDarkMaterials.org

Pullman has an article in the New York Times today on Halloween and writing about fantasy:

Tonight is Halloween, All Hallows' Eve, a time of ghosts and spirits walking by night . . . which leads me naturally to think about literary realism, and about politics. How can you write in a truthful and realistic way about something that doesn't exist?... I don't take much notice of critics, except when they praise me extravagantly. But one of the remarks they sometimes make about my work does coincide with a mild puzzlement I feel about it myself: in common with some other writers whose work is read by children, I am chided for writing fantasy, because fantasy is a lesser form than realism, and everyone knows that there are no such things as elves or hobbits or, for that matter, ghosts and disembodied spirits, so nothing interesting or truthful can be said about them.

My usual response to that is to deny that I'm writing fantasy at all, and to maintain that all my work is stark realism. But that implicitly accepts the basic stance of the critic: that fantasy is a lesser kind of thing, and that realism is the highest form of literary art.

And there may be something in that. For example, take ghost stories. I don't believe in ghosts and disembodied spirits. I used to believe in them, and I can remember how thrilling it was, when I was a child, to read ghost stories with the thought, "This could be true, this could really happen. . . ." But that was a long time ago. I don't enjoy ghost stories in quite the same way these days. The trouble is that such tales have to convince you on the supernatural level as well as on the mundane. Part of your mind has to believe that there could be a disembodied spirit full of malice haunting this old house, there could be a nameless evil presence lurking in the crypt