The kind people of the National Theatre sent us an interesting interview with Philip Pullman from the Times.
Among other things, it mentions The Book of Dust:
"He is hard at work on (...) The Book of Dust, which continues Lyra
Novelist Philip Pullman is happy that the many universes of his fantasy fiction are spilling over to stage and screen
ON TOP OF everything else, Philip Pullman now finds his fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, among the final 21 contenders for the BBC's Big Read. On top of everything else?
Well, it's hard to know where to begin. Clearly, anything is possible for Pullman, whose rise to the peculiar fame now available to writers of children's books began with the publication of the first of this remarkable trilogy, Northern Lights, in 1995. Before that he had been a moderately successful children's author but one who still had to earn his real living by schoolmastering.
Now he has a fine new house just outside his beloved Oxford; he has appeared on Desert Islands Discs and on TV with the Archbishop of Canterbury. His Dark Materials has been the subject of scholarly analysis: soon to appear are John and Mary Gribbin's The Science of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials (Hodder Children's, Nov 13) and Nicholas Tucker's Darkness Visible: Inside the World of Philip Pullman (Icon Books, Nov 6).
There is also a special treat for his fans: the lovely, little book, Lyra's Oxford, beautifully illustrated by John Lawrence (David Fickling Books, Nov 6), which contains a story, Lyra and the Birds, and a great deal more to entice.
Most remarkable, perhaps, is Nicholas Hytner's production of His Dark Materials, which will open on the Olivier stage of the National Theatre on December 20. The three books (well over 1,000 pages; the audiobooks last for 35 hours) have been transformed into two three-hour plays by Nicholas Wright (Vincent in Brixton) and will star Timothy Dalton as Lord Asriel and Patricia Hodge as Mrs Coulter. If that weren't enough, there will be films, too: Tom Stoppard has just finished the script of the first book.
Stoppard, Pullman tells me as we sit in his cosy study, chose not to see what Wright had done. "I'm the only one who has seen both scripts," Pullman says, with just a hint of a cat-that's-got-the-cream smile. But Pullman's own involvement with the stage show has been limited - despite (or perhaps, because of) his early theatrical bent: one of his pleasures as a teacher was the writing, producing and directing of school plays: he was a veritable one-man-band in this regard.
Not that there aren't any regrets: "Of course I wanted to be involved," he says with a laugh. "I wanted to play all the parts. I wanted to jump up and show them how to stand and where to go and what to do. I wanted to design the sets and write the music, of course I did." It was his admiration and respect for "the two Nicholases", as he calls them, that enabled him to keep his distance.
"Of course, when you take something of that size and condense it down to six hours, you lose quite a lot," he says. "But Nicholas Wright has reshaped and rethought the whole story in theatrical terms, and done it very well. The things that are absolutely essential are there."
When we spoke, Pullman had recently heard the cast read the work; his pleasure was evident, but he was unwilling to reveal much for fear of spoiling the surprise. Quite right: what makes the notion of His Dark Materials so intriguing as a staged production is the apparent impossibility of achieving anything like the book at all.
Here is a work where the Oxford we know exists in parallel to an Oxford - that of the story's heroine, Lyra - that is familiar yet wholly different. How to recreate a battle between armoured bears in a savage arena of ice and stone? How to articulate Pullman's idea - the perfect notion that reveals the mythic scope of his imagination - of the daemon, the soul separate from the body in animal form?
In a novel, writer and reader collaborate to create; in Lyra and the Birds, Lyra learns that things are not always what they seem. "Lyra and the Birds is about learning to read a little more clearly," Pullman says. "Reading is a kind of democracy. We can't create the meaning on our own, the book can't create the meaning. We have to negotiate with the book. There's no other way that reading works. Fundamentalism, for example, which insists on a literal truth, is a denial of the very nature of reading."
It isn't surprising that Pullman should pick on the example of fundamentalism; fundamentalists have picked on him, and are at it again, with Rupert Kaye, chief executive of the Association of Christian Teachers, announcing only last week that Pullman's "blasphemy is shameless". It's true that His Dark Materials contains a savage portrait of a clerical structure, but Pullman's beef is with the structures of human authority, not faith as such.
Yet there is a kind of fundamentalism in the theatrical or, especially, the filmic realisation of novels. I tell Pullman that because I am such an admirer of His Dark Materials I am interested to see the stage adaptation, but I am very resistant to the idea of a film. The film is, in a sense, already in my head, my very own film; I don't want another.
"Cinema is a totalitarian experience," he concedes. "You are dominated by the cinema: by the director's timing, the cuts he chooses, where the camera moves. Then there's the disappointment you almost always feel when you see a film of a book: you know she doesn't look like that, or he wouldn't have worn those clothes, and oh, they've changed the ending. So it's a different kind of experience."
He speaks with warmth and passion, then grins: "So why do it? Why say yes when they come to you with large amounts of money? I can't imagine why." He laughs.
His equanimity springs, I think, from understanding that his is no sudden success. He is hard at work on another fairytale, The Scarecrow and his Servant, and on The Book of Dust, which continues Lyra's story when she's about 16. More than material success, it is clear that what gives Pullman pleasure is to excite debate and interest.
Does he like a fight? "I hadn't considered that," he says at first, then gives in a little. "Yes, I am pleased when people find things to object to, I suppose. It shows that people are intereste d enough to argue. The thing that would make a difference to me was indifference. If a book had come out and been completely ignored and been remaindered after a few months - that would have made a difference."
EVENING WITH THE AUTHOR
Philip Pullman will be in discussion with the author John Gribbin about the new book The Science of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials at The Times Foyles Writers & Readers Forum: Sunday, December 7
The venue and booking details will be announced in T2. [The Times, 27/10/03]
0 comments - Add yours