Pullman Comments on Tolkien in Times

[Dragon of Heaven]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 04,00.html
[quote]
"The Lord of the Rings is not a serious book because it does not say anything interesting, or new, or truthful about the human condition.â€Â

[Darragh]

It won because it is a great story and on average most people's favourite book. Well most people who voted anyway. Don't be bitter. It would be in my top 5.

[Dragon of Heaven]

I wouldn't go so far as to say its a great story, its alright. When i read His Dark Materials there were times in the book that i wanted to know what was going to happen on the next page before i had finished the page i was on, hence the expression "a page turner".
LODR is too drawn out, months and days spent at each location, with unnecessary stops along the the road to have a sing song (what were they suppose to doing again, oh yeah destroying a ring). The characters were flat and uninteresting, seriously is there any difference in personalty between the four hobbits or between boromir and aragorn.
In HDM all the characters are interesting with their own distinctive personalties and most importantly: at no point in the story did Pullman write anything that was not furthering the plot.

Tolkien was great writer and he did create an epic but the story severely lacks drama.

[Darragh]

Good points. HDM is my favourite book. I agree the LoTR has it faults. I appreciate the sheer imagination gone into the books and there were some parts of the books that were page turners and some parts that really annoyed me because they were either too long, boring and or confusing. I think on an overview it is a graet story. Your right he was a great writer and story, in places, did lack drama but alot of the issues in the book still hold true today. Well the chopping down of trees and pollution anyway. I really enjoyed it but I prefere Douglas Adams, PP and Irvine Welsh.

[zemarl]

Tolkien was great writer and he did create an epic but the story severely lacks drama.

an epic that lacks drama. hmm. first of all, it does not lack drama as much as you may think. it was written many years before a lot of today's great works of fiction, and tolkien being an english professor he probably would have studied english literature from centuries ago. perhaps that inspired him to make the book as lengthy as it was, as full of description and detail as it was. overall the quest in lord of the rings is dramatic in itself, in part BECAUSE of the descriptions, though i do agree he sometimes went on too much. i'd continue with this but i do believe the thread is for philip pullman, whom i stand by as the better author anyway.

[Qu Klaani]

I massivley prefer LOTR to HDM, but its all opinion aint it?

[Dante]

It would be interesting to find out (this is an obvious thought) how many people actually read the book before they voted. bear in mind, the big read took place during roughly the peak of the LOTR films' poplarity.

[Qu Klaani]

We had this agrument when the poll happened, LOTR has long topped favourite book polls, it doing it on the big read was almost certainly not due to the films.

[jessia]

lotr's been around longer, has a bigger fan base, it just makes sense.

[Max]

Pullman's right - Lord of the Rings was written according to formulae - it's amazing when you read [the formulae], the story seems to develop so organically but you see how it's structured according to basic principles. I'll type them up (it's quite a bit) if anyone's really interested, from a book called Tolkien's World.

The LOTR trilogy doesn't really provide any insight about anything, and so are on a different kind of literary level to HDM. I myself believe that both books written purely for escapsim and entertainment have their place as well as books that have some great message to convey, interwoven with their narrative, but seperately, so despite the apparent parallels, them both being fantasy trilogies, I wouldn't really compare them.

Apologies for the diabolical phrasing of the above.

[Dragon of Heaven]

an epic that lacks drama. hmm. first of all, it does not lack drama as much as you may think.

When I said it lacked drama, I was talking about the fact that LOTR puts more emphasise on describing every intricate detail of what’s happening around them and less emphases on character development and interaction, and getting on with the story. That’s what drama means.

[Ixia]

Don't forget that, for all it's faults, LOTR was written so early on in the history of the fantasy genre, that there was very little to compare it with at the time. Plus Tolkien just wrote it for a bit of fun, he had absolutely no idea of the plot line until he'd written most of the first book. Philip Pullman, on the other hand, was writing with a lot of 'fantasy' history to compete with. Also, his interest is in story and character, while Tolkien was interested in language and geneology and myth. Both writers wrote what was most important to themselves, at the time. So you can't really compare them at all.

[eloquent]

Yes quite. This is why all this 'HDM vs LOTR' (and HDM vs HP for that matter) is rather irritating. Being of different genres, saying you like one more than the other is the ultimate in terms of being subjective, and therefore generally of little interest to others.

[Ixia]

Eloquent thank you you said the things I didn't know how to say.

[Will]

I've yet to see a person on a Lotr versus <book> thread become convinced to change their position, that's certainly true.

[Dante]

I thought his comments were pretty harsh. Just because it doesn't say anything interesting, doesn't mean it isn't serious writing that anyone could have whacked together (I assume that's roughly what he means by 'serious').

[dumbledad]

(Sorry this has turned into such a long rant. I posted it off to another mailing list too but thought you'd all have interesting comments to make here.)
The piece in The Times is actually quoting from an interview in December's "Harpers and Queen" so, needless to say, I rushed out and bought my first ever copy of Harpers. There are several things in it that wind me up.
Firstly, there's an apparent contradiction in Philip's views of Tolkien. Here are the two quotes which I'm having trouble reconciling:

'Tolkein?' he says. 'The Lord of the Rings is not a serious book because it doesn't say anything interesting, or truthful about the human condition'

Then, later in the article we have

'[...] Telling an adventure story with witches and demons is not enough. I am interested in the Quest - and the Quest, however you decide to tell it, is the big story about human nature.'

Now I'm slightly troubled that the capitalization here implies something grander, but isn't Lord of the Rings about the Quest? Or at least a quest?
Then there's a critique of fantasy literature that also troubles me:

'On the whole those writers are uninterested in language, and they live in a cult world of their own. They read me, but I don't read them if I can help it.'

I love reading Pullman interviews as he can usually be trusted to have a thought provoking and quotable view on any subject, but isn't this sweeping condemnation of a genre exactly the kind of prejudice that we have to put up with from people about children's literature?
Certain fantasy authors are clearly concerned with exploring human nature, even if their use of language isn't as impressive as Pullman's. Take China Miéville for example, his books (like "Perdido Street Station" or "The Scar") use fantasy worlds to allow him to examine real moral issues from new angles. He also sides with Pullman about Tolkien, though my favourite criticism he gave was the pithy and rather fun: "rare the clause is that reversed isn't" in the Socialist Review http://www.swp.org.uk/SR/259/SR3.HTM (Tolkien and Yoda alike).
There are also several things that Jeanette Winterson says in the Harpers article that are annoying (though I really like her books too).

he will enter JK Rowling territory, safe in the knowledge that, unlike her, he is everywhere considered the real thing; the best children's writer since Tolkien.

Why should Philip's success be cast in terms of JKR's failure to win over high-brow critics? Surely they are just both brilliant?
Then we have

he is not vain enough to be tempted into sequels he does not believe in. He won't churn it out Harry Potter style.

What? His Dark Materials was conceived as a trilogy, and is now followed up with a fourth book (which I thought was lovely, by the way). Harry Potter was conceived as a seven book series to match Harry's seven years at school, and currently runs to five books. In what sense is JKR churning out unnecessary sequels she doesn't believe in? Do you think Winterson read the Harry Potter books? If she had she'd realise that they cannot stop now, with Voldemort abroad.
Finally Winterson states that

He won't be drawn on whether he will return to Lyra and Will, left parted in parallel Oxfords at the close of The Amber Spyglass.

Won't be drawn eh? I'd have thought publishing "Lyra's Oxford" after "The Amber Spyglass" and talking in interviews about writing "The Book of Dust" was actually 'being drawn'.
Rant over. I was hoping writing you all this post would prove cathartic, but I'm more wound up than when I started

[jessia]

glad to see you back?

do you think you'd be able to scan up that proper interview from harpers?

[Lalura]

I think Pullman is talking about human nature on a philosophical level, although, people can get that from LotR themselves, without someone explaining it, I suppose.

[Kaelri]

Also, his interest is in story and character, while Tolkien was interested in language and geneology and myth. Both writers wrote what was most important to themselves, at the time. So you can't really compare them at all.

As a writer, I can assure you that this is exactly true.