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Philip Pullman

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Philip Pullman
Pullman in April 2005
Pullman in April 2005
Born (1946-10-19) 19 October 1946 (age 77)
Norwich, England
OccupationNovelist
EducationEnglish literature
Alma materExeter College, Oxford
GenreFantasy
Notable worksHis Dark Materials trilogy,
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
Website
http://www.philip-pullman.com

Philip Pullman CBE, FRSL (born 19 October 1946) is an English writer from Norwich. He is the best-selling author of several books, most notably his trilogy of fantasy novels, His Dark Materials, and his fictionalised biography of Jesus, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. The first book of His Dark Materials has been turned into the film The Golden Compass and the first two books from his Sally Lockhart series as well as his children's novel I was a Rat! or The Scarlet Slippers have been adapted for television.Most children will recomend his books 10/10.

In 2008, The Times named Pullman in its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[1]

Life and career

Philip Pullman was born in Norwich, England, the son of Audrey Evelyn Pullman (née Merrifield) and Royal Air Force pilot Alfred Outram Pullman. The family travelled with his father's job, including to Southern Rhodesia where he spent time at school.

His father was killed in a plane crash in 1953 when Pullman was seven, being awarded posthumously the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). Pullman said at the beginning of a 2008 exchange that to him as a boy, his father "was a hero, steeped in glamour, killed in action defending his country" and had been "training pilots, I think." Pullman was then presented with a report from The London Gazette of 1954 "which carried the official RAF news of the day [and] said that the medal was given for 'gallant and distinguished service' during the Mau Mau uprising. 'The main task of the Harvards [the squadron of planes led by his father] has been bombing and machine-gunning Mau Mau and their hideouts in densely wooded and difficult country.' This included 'diving steeply into the gorges of [various] rivers, often in conditions of low cloud and driving rain.' Testing conditions, yes, but not much opposition from the enemy, the journalist in the exchange continued. Very few of the Mau Mau had guns that could land a blow on an aircraft." Pullman responded to this new information, writing "my father probably doesn't come out of this with very much credit, judged by the standards of modern liberal progressive thought" and accepted the new information as "a serious challenge to his childhood memory."[2]

His mother remarried and, with a move to Australia, came Pullman's discovery of comic books including Superman and Batman, a medium which he continues to espouse. From 1957 he was educated at Ysgol Ardudwy in Harlech, Gwynedd, and spent time in Norfolk with his grandfather, a clergyman. Around this time Pullman discovered John Milton's Paradise Lost, which would become a major influence for His Dark Materials.

From 1963, Pullman attended Exeter College, Oxford, receiving a Third class BA in 1968.[3] In an interview with the Oxford Student he stated that he "did not really enjoy the English course" and that "I thought I was doing quite well until I came out with my third class degree and then I realised that I wasn’t — it was the year they stopped giving fourth class degrees otherwise I’d have got one of those".[4] He discovered William Blake's illustrations around 1970, which would also later influence him greatly.

Pullman married Judith Speller in 1970 and began teaching middle school children ages 9 to 13 at Bishop Kirk Middle School in Summertown, North Oxford and writing school plays. His first published work was The Haunted Storm, which joint-won the New English Library's Young Writer's Award in 1972. He nevertheless refuses to discuss it. Galatea, an adult fantasy-fiction novel, followed in 1978, but it was his school plays which inspired his first children's book, Count Karlstein, in 1982. He stopped teaching around the publication of The Ruby in the Smoke (1986), his second children's book, whose Victorian setting is indicative of Pullman's interest in that era.

Pullman taught part-time at Westminster College, Oxford, between 1988 and 1996, continuing to write children's stories. He began His Dark Materials in about 1993. Northern Lights (published as The Golden Compass in the US) was published in 1995 and won the Carnegie Medal, one of the most prestigious British children's fiction awards, and the Guardian Children's Fiction Award.

Pullman has been writing full-time since 1996, but continues to deliver talks and writes occasionally for The Guardian. He was awarded a CBE in the New Year's Honours list in 2004. He also co-judged the prestigious Christopher Tower Poetry Prize (awarded by Oxford University) in 2005 with Gillian Clarke. Pullman also began lecturing at a seminar in English at his alma mater, Exeter College, Oxford, in 2004,[5][6] the same year that he was elected President of the Blake Society.[7] In 2004 Pullman also guest-edited The Mays Anthology, a collection of new writing from students at the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge.

In 2005, he was awarded The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award by the Swedish Arts Council.

In 2008, he started working on The Book of Dust, a sequel to his completed His Dark Materials trilogy, and "The Adventures of John Blake", a story for the British children's comic The DFC, with artist John Aggs.[8][9][10]

On 23 November 2007, Pullman was made an honorary professor at Bangor University.[11] In June 2008, he became a Fellow supporting the MA in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University.[12] In September 2008, he hosted "The Writer's Table" for Waterstone's bookshop chain, highlighting 40 books which have influenced his career.[13] In October 2009, he became a patron of the Palestine Festival of Literature.

Pullman has a strong commitment to traditional British civil liberties and is noted for his criticism of growing state authority and government encroachment into everyday life. In February 2009, he was the keynote speaker at the Convention on Modern Liberty in London[14] and wrote an extended piece in The Times condemning the Labour government for its attacks on basic civil rights.[15] Later, he and other authors threatened to stop visiting schools in protest at new laws requiring them to be vetted to work with youngsters—though officials claimed that the laws had been misinterpreted.[16] In 2010, Pullman left the Liberal Democrats, the party he supported.[17]

On 24 June 2009, Pullman was awarded the degree of D. Litt. (Doctor of Letters), honoris causa, by the University of Oxford at the Encænia ceremony in the Sheldonian Theatre.[18]

His Dark Materials

Main article: His Dark Materials

His Dark Materials is a trilogy consisting of Northern Lights (titled The Golden Compass in North America), The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. Northern Lights won the Carnegie Medal for children's fiction in the UK in 1995. The Amber Spyglass was awarded both 2001 Whitbread Prize for best children's book and the Whitbread Book of the Year prize in January 2002, the first children's book to receive that award. The series won popular acclaim in late 2003, taking third place in the BBC's Big Read poll. Pullman later wrote two companion pieces to the trilogy, entitled Lyra's Oxford, and Once Upon a Time in the North. A third companion piece Pullman refers to as the "green book" will expand upon his character Will. He has plans for one more, the as-yet-unwritten The Book of Dust. This book is not a continuation of the trilogy but will include characters and events from His Dark Materials.

In 2005 Pullman was announced as joint winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for children's literature.

Perspective on religion

Pullman is a supporter of the British Humanist Association and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. New Yorker journalist Laura Miller has described Pullman as one of England's most outspoken atheists;[19] Pullman describes himself as being an agnostic atheist.[20]

On 15 September 2010, Pullman along with 54 other public figures signed an open letter, published in The Guardian newspaper, stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI being given "the honour of a state visit" to the UK, arguing that he has led and condoned global abuses of human rights. The letter says "The state of which the pope is head has also resisted signing many major human rights treaties and has formed its own treaties ("concordats") with many states which negatively affect the human rights of citizens of those states". Co-signees included Stephen Fry, Professor Richard Dawkins, Terry Pratchett, Jonathan Miller and Ken Follett.[21]

Literary critic Alan Jacobs (of Wheaton College) said that in His Dark Materials Pullman replaced the theist world-view of John Milton's Paradise Lost with a Rousseauist one.[22] Donna Freitas, professor of religion at Boston University, argued on BeliefNet.com that challenges to traditional images of God should be welcomed as part of a "lively dialogue about faith", and Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has proposed that His Dark Materials be taught as part of religious education in schools.[23] The Christian writers Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware "also uncover spiritual themes within the books."[24] Pullman has also referred to himself as knowingly "of the Devil's party", a reference to William Blake's revisionist take on Milton in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.[25]

Pullman's latest novel, a contribution to the Canongate Myth Series, is The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. It is "a far more direct exploration of the foundations of Christianity and the church as well as an examination of the fascination and power of storytelling."[26]

The His Dark Materials books have been criticised by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights[27] and Focus on the Family.[28] Peter Hitchens has argued that Pullman actively pursues an anti-Christian agenda.[29] In support of this contention, he cites an interview in which Pullman is quoted as saying: "I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief."[30] In the same interview, Pullman also acknowledges that a controversy would be likely to boost sales. "But I'm not in the business of offending people. I find the books upholding certain values that I think are important, such as life is immensely valuable and this world is an extraordinarily beautiful place. We should do what we can to increase the amount of wisdom in the world".[30]

Peter Hitchens views the His Dark Materials series as a direct rebuttal of C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia;[31] Pullman has criticized the Narnia books as religious propaganda.[32] Both Pullman's and Lewis's books contain religious allegory that features talking animals, parallel worlds, and children who face adult moral choices that determine the ultimate fate of those worlds.

Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, praised His Dark Materials as a fresh alternative to C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and J. K. Rowling. He described the author as one "whose books have begun to dissolve the frontier between adult and juvenile fiction."[33]

Screen adaptations

Bibliography

Pullman's books include the following works.[35]

Non-series books

Sally Lockhart

The New-Cut Gang

  • 1994 Thunderbolt's Waxwork
  • 1995 The Gasfitter's Ball

His Dark Materials

Companion books

Plays

  • 1990 Frankenstein
  • 1992 Sherlock Holmes and the Limehouse Horror

Non-fiction

  • 1978 Ancient Civilisations
  • 1978 Using the Oxford Junior Dictionary

Comics

  • 2008 The Adventures of John Blake in The DFC

Further reading

  • Hugh Rayment-Pickard, The Devil’s Account: Philip Pullman and Christianity (London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 2004).
  • Lenz, Millicent (2005). His Dark Materials Illuminated: Critical Essays on Phillip Pullman's Trilogy. Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0-8143-3207-2.
  • Wheat, Leonard F. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials – A Multiple Allegory: Attacking Religious Superstition in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Paradise Lost.
  • Robert Darby: Intercision-Circumcision: His Dark Materials, a disturbing allegory of genital mutilation [1].
  • Gerald O’Collins SJ., Philip Pullman’s Jesus (London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010).

References

  1. ^ The 50 greatest British writers since 1945. 5 January 2008. The Times. Retrieved on 2010-02-05.
  2. ^ Moreton, Cole, "Philip Pullman: His dark materials: The death and absence of his father has informed so much of the fiction written by this highly acclaimed author over the years, but he has never known – or wanted to know – the truth about what really happened. Until now...", The Independent, 25 May 2008. Retrieved 2010-10-21.
  3. ^ "University of Oxford, Cherwell newspaper Interviews: Philip Pullman". Cherwell. 2 September 2009. Retrieved 2 August 2009.
  4. ^ Growing Pains – Features – The Oxford Student – Official Student Newspaper
  5. ^ Acclaimed Author Philip Pullman to Visit UCE Birmingham. uce.ac.uk. 6 May 2004
  6. ^ Undergraduate Life. exeter.ox.ac.uk
  7. ^ Report to St James’s 2004. blakesociety.org
  8. ^ Philip Pullman writes comic strip, The Times, 11 May 2008
  9. ^ Deep stuff, The Guardian, 24 May 2008
  10. ^ Pullman's page at the DFC website, The DFC
  11. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7109377.stm. BBC News (2007-11-23). Retrieved on 2012-01-02.
  12. ^ "Philip Pullman Creative Writing Fellow for new MA". Oxford Brookes University. 11 June 2008. Retrieved 26 January 2009.
  13. ^ "Philip Pullman To Host Next Waterstone's Writer's Table". booktrade.info. 2 July 2008. Retrieved 26 January 2009.
  14. ^ The Convention on Modern Liberty. Modernliberty.net (2009-02-28). Retrieved on 2012-01-02.
  15. ^ Pullman, Philip (27 February 2009). "Malevolent voices that despise our freedoms". The Times. London. Retrieved 22 May 2010.
  16. ^ School safety 'insult' to Pullman. BBC News (2009-07-16). Retrieved on 2012-01-02.
  17. ^ Philip Pullman quits Liberal Democrats. mirror.co.uk. Retrieved on 2012-01-02.
  18. ^ Honorary degrees awarded at Encaenia – University of Oxford. Ox.ac.uk. Retrieved on 2012-01-02.
  19. ^ Miller, Laura. "'Far From Narnia'" (Life and Letters article). The New Yorker. Retrieved 31 October 2007.
  20. ^ Williams, Andrew Zak (25 July, 2011). "Faith no more". New Statesman. Retrieved 28 July, 2011. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  21. ^ "The Guardian: Harsh judgments on the pope and religion". London: The Guardian. 15 September 2010. Retrieved 16 September 2010.
  22. ^ "Mars Hill Audio – Audition – Program 10". Retrieved 13 November 2007.
  23. ^ "Golden Compass Film Angering Christian Groups – Even With Its Religious Themes Watered Down". MTV Asia.
  24. ^ Bruner, Kurt & Ware, Jim. "'Shedding Light on His Dark Materials'" (Tyndale Products review). Tyndale. Retrieved 1 October 2007.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  25. ^ Whittaker, Jason. (2010-04-09) His Dark Materials – Blake and Pullman. Zoamorphosis.com. Retrieved on 2012-01-02.
  26. ^ "Pullman Risks Christian Anger With Jesus Novel". ABC News.
  27. ^ ""The Golden Compass" Sparks Protest". Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
  28. ^ Jennifer Mesko. "Golden Compass Reveals a World Where There is No God". Focus on the Family citizenlink.com. Retrieved 7 December 2006.
  29. ^ Hitchens, Peter. "'This is the most dangerous author in Britain'" (Mail on Sunday article). The Mail on Sunday. Retrieved 21 September 2006.
  30. ^ a b Wartofsky, Alona (19 February 2001). "The Last Word". The Washington Post. Retrieved 29 November 2007.
  31. ^ Hitchens, Peter. "A labour of loathing" (Spectator article). The Spectator. Retrieved 21 September 2006. {{cite news}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
  32. ^ Crary, Duncan. "The Golden Compass Author Avoids Atheist Labels" (Humanist Network News Interview). Humanist Network News. Retrieved 1 December 2008. [dead link]
  33. ^ Oxford's Rebel Angel. Vanityfair.com. October 2002 Retrieved on 2012-01-02.
  34. ^ http://www.tbtproject.com
  35. ^ "Philip Pullman". FantasticFiction.
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