Webblogger of educating alice was in attendance at the October 30th talk with Philip Pullman at The Times Center in New York. Her event write-up follows.
Last night I was at an intellectually stimulating evening where Chip McGrath, former editor of the New York Times Book Review, and Philip Pullman conversed. I loved Philip’s strong insistence that reading is a private act between the reader and the book. How he inhabits his books completely until they go out into the world and become the readers’ — “a democracy of reading.” Among many other subjects, he spoke of his own background, the writing of The Golden Compass, his involvement with the movie, Milton, Elizabeth Bishop, and first kisses.
Questions from the audience were asked (several from young people) and politely and thoughtfully answered. At one point I was delighted when Philip mentioned Erich Kastner’s The 35th of May, a fondly remembered book of my childhood. We also were shown what looked like a souped-up movie trailer. That is, there were a few scenes (notably those with Lyra and Iorek Byrnison) that I don’t recall seeing in any of the trailers. Certainly it was thrilling to see them on a larger screen with an audience for the first time.
I was seated with GraceAnne A. DeCandido who took terrific notes, posted the following on child_lit, and graciously allowed me to post it here as well:
The New York Times Center is a fine space: and you can see some of how fine here
Chip McGrath, writer at large (what a lovely title) for the NYTimes interviewed Philip Pullman for about an hour and then Philip took questions from the audience. I cannot guess numbers of those present, but the range of ages was great: children from Lyra´s and Will´s age to Philip´s age (which is also mine, that is, early 60s). It was easy and funny and wise.
“The story begins” said Philip, “when you realize you have been born into the wrong family.” And he went on to talk about story, the one long story that is His Dark Materials. Chip said he thought daemons were the best idea, but Philip noted he thought how daemons settle was “the best idea I ever had.” He promised us not only a book about the backstory of Iorek and Lee Scoresby(Once Upon a Time in the North, coming in Spring 2008) but a book about a somewhat older Lyra, The Book of Dust.
“The most private space” is between the reader and the book, Philip said, and railed, rather gently, against those with no understanding of metaphor who think a story can only be read one way. He talked about that wondrous first scene in the first book, and how we get “from this world where we are to the other world where the story is.”
He talked a little bit about his years of teaching, and how in writing he got from here to there, and how some characters just came to him, like Lyra, walking into his mind. He credited the city of Oxford and the Ashomolean Museum and the Bodleian Library, Milton, Blake, Whitman and Wallace Stevens, and The Magnificent Seven among his many sources of inspiration.
We got to see a perfectly splendid trailer for The Golden Compass movie, which if you have not seen online I urge you to go right now and search for. It´s breathtaking.
Philip was asked by members of the audience what his daemon is, and he said a sort of bird that is attracted by shiny, sparkly things - and steals them. He was asked his favorite piece of his own writing, and he mentioned the delicious and very subversive trial scene in The Scarecrow and His Servant. He called true education the marriage of delight and responsibility - what could be better than that?
3 comments - Add yours
#1
I made the trip to NYC to see Philip speak at the Times Talks, and was first in line, and so got to sit quite literally at his feet (where better?).
The Times Talks are held in a small auditorium; I doubt if it seats more than 350 or 375. Podcasts and videoclips of earlier events in this series can be found at the Times Talks website (http://www.nytimes.whsites.net/talk/). I don’t know what the time lag between the appearance of these files and the live interview is, or if Tuesday’s interview with Pullman will be among them. But a short clip is already available at MTV on http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1573211/20071031/story.jhtml.
The double blog report Erica filed here is among the best I’ve seen thus far on the evening. I didn’t take notes; I wasn’t there as a journalist, and didn’t want to have my head down and my mind divided between listening and writing. So I’ve just a few observations to add, and these are simply my remembrances and impressions.
One is that in the course of the entire interview, the words “church” and “Magisterium” were never spoken, not by Pullman or critic Chip McGrath. To McGrath’s comments/questions about the gathering storm of controversy, Pullman reiterated what he has argued before, that when religion and power are linked and manipulated by autocrats, societal freedoms and personal fulfillment are oppressed and human potential diminshed, and that these theocracies can emerge in atheistic contexts, with a prime example being Stalin’s Soviet regime. (This example will be familiar to those who have read Pullman’s essay “The War on Words” in The Guardian (http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1343733,00.html).
On a lighter note, when McGrath tried to get Pullman to say what Lyra and Will really got up to in the grove in the world of the mulefa, Pullman noted one simple fact: what he had described in the text was a kiss – their first kiss—, and that is all. The seasoned journalist McGrath then seemed quite embarrassed to have been caught out insinuating more into the passage than is there, turning bright red. Pullman looked on mischievously, before adding that a first kiss is no trivial thing.
Several times Pullman struck me as mischievous and of great good cheer. But his tone briefly and decidedly changed when he concluded his description of the threat that theocracies pose, stressing that they must be strenuously resisted. At that moment I felt I glimpsed the type of teacher he must have been, one who respects all children and adolescents enough to have put up with no nonsense from any bully: not just the ordinary playground variety, but also, especially, the insidious, sneaky emotional bullies, those who make so many students’ lives so hard seemingly unnoticed by most teachers.
This was the first time I had seen Philip Pullman. He is a very healthy looking man, with brilliant blue eyes and lovely skin. His glass frames are of the thinnest and most highly polished gold, and on the pinkie of his right hand he wore what I think must be the bronze Byzantine ring I once read somewhere was a gift from his wife, and so a wedding ring of sorts.
And he has the most wonderful hands. His fingers are not thin or delicate but neither are they stubby and rough. They are instead what I’ve found to be far less common than either of those extremes. His hands are substantial, powerful, certain and safe—a sculptor’s or a surgeon’s confident and competent hands—graceful and firm.
# November 2, 2007 02:17 by lauriefrost
#2 What?
Is it an error, or is it really true that the Book of Dust will pertain to Lyra? I thought the Book of Dust explained the back stories of other characters?
Or is it that this “Once Upon a Time in the North” is that back story?
# November 3, 2007 04:36 by Optik
#3
The event sounds so lovely! Getting to hear so many perspectives on it is nearly as good as being there when the seating was so limited.
# November 9, 2007 15:57 by Phit