More puffery from Pullman
Nov. 27th, 2004 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamflowerHere's some more of Phillip Pullman's *opinions* on the great JRRT (courtesy of rec.arts.books.tolkien):
> The following, forwarded without permission, was posted by Philip
> Pullman on the Child_Lit email list hosted at Rutgers University. I
> thought it might be of interest since it's his own defence of what he
> said:
>
> "I see that some reported words of mine have annoyed Tolkien fans. Well,
> just for the record, I said almost everything I wanted to say about
> Tolkien in the article "The Republic of Heaven" in The Horn Book
> Magazine, November/December 2001. One other thing has occurred to me
> since then, and it's to do with his style. At its best it is plain,
> vivid, and muscular, but at its worst it's like an impressionable
> Edwardian schoolboy's idea of great writing - a fin-de-siecle
> preciousness, a ponderous solemnity, a fake archaism in which, as
> pointed out by someone recently, backwards everything is said. I don't
> think he ever came to terms with the twentieth century, and modernism in
> literature, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway, might
> as well not have existed for him. He remained that turn-of-the-century
> schoolboy intoxicated by nostalgia for a world that had long gone, and
> for a fustian style of prose that had long ceased to be able to say
> anything that didn't smell of mothballs. And that, I maintain, is a
> serious problem for a writer trying to tackle serious subjects, and for
> a readership trying to defend him.
>
> Philip Pullman"
******
And now my rant:
Pullman is such an ignorant fool. But to be so arrongant with it just irritates me. He seems to feel that "speaking forsoothly" has no place in anything written in "modern times". I agree that it sometimes is done badly--but never by JRRT, who knew *exactly* how to use language, archaic or otherwise. I think perhaps it is a shame that there have been a few generations who have grown up not really understanding archaic language because it's avoided as irrelevant. Probably in another generation, Shakespeare will have to be translated for students to be able to read it. It burns me up to think that young people are not given credit for having a brain or two.
When I was in the fifth grade (10 years old, for non-Americans) I first read Howard Pyle's Robin Hood. I loved the archaic language. Like LotR would a few years later, it transported me to another time and place. This is NOT a Bad Thing! for heaven's sake!
****
Okay, rant over. Thanks.
> The following, forwarded without permission, was posted by Philip
> Pullman on the Child_Lit email list hosted at Rutgers University. I
> thought it might be of interest since it's his own defence of what he
> said:
>
> "I see that some reported words of mine have annoyed Tolkien fans. Well,
> just for the record, I said almost everything I wanted to say about
> Tolkien in the article "The Republic of Heaven" in The Horn Book
> Magazine, November/December 2001. One other thing has occurred to me
> since then, and it's to do with his style. At its best it is plain,
> vivid, and muscular, but at its worst it's like an impressionable
> Edwardian schoolboy's idea of great writing - a fin-de-siecle
> preciousness, a ponderous solemnity, a fake archaism in which, as
> pointed out by someone recently, backwards everything is said. I don't
> think he ever came to terms with the twentieth century, and modernism in
> literature, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway, might
> as well not have existed for him. He remained that turn-of-the-century
> schoolboy intoxicated by nostalgia for a world that had long gone, and
> for a fustian style of prose that had long ceased to be able to say
> anything that didn't smell of mothballs. And that, I maintain, is a
> serious problem for a writer trying to tackle serious subjects, and for
> a readership trying to defend him.
>
> Philip Pullman"
******
And now my rant:
Pullman is such an ignorant fool. But to be so arrongant with it just irritates me. He seems to feel that "speaking forsoothly" has no place in anything written in "modern times". I agree that it sometimes is done badly--but never by JRRT, who knew *exactly* how to use language, archaic or otherwise. I think perhaps it is a shame that there have been a few generations who have grown up not really understanding archaic language because it's avoided as irrelevant. Probably in another generation, Shakespeare will have to be translated for students to be able to read it. It burns me up to think that young people are not given credit for having a brain or two.
When I was in the fifth grade (10 years old, for non-Americans) I first read Howard Pyle's Robin Hood. I loved the archaic language. Like LotR would a few years later, it transported me to another time and place. This is NOT a Bad Thing! for heaven's sake!
****
Okay, rant over. Thanks.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-29 07:51 am (UTC)I am afraid I did not like his books, although I confess I liked parts of them until I finally got to the end--and then I felt cheated. If I had liked his fiction, I too, would have read it anyway, while holding my nose on his RL opinions. (I feel that way about some actors whose work I admire, but whose opinions make me cringe.)
I've not read any of Orson Scott Card's opinions yet. Since he is an author whose work I *do* enjoy, I will take warning, and try to avoid reading any interviews with him.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-29 08:04 am (UTC)