Road maps for Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials”

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One reason for the furor over ‘The Golden Compass’ is that author Philip Pullman’s entire ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy has been mislabeled as young adult fantasy. This description is somewhat true, but as readers plunge into the story, they’re suddenly confronted by adult-size concepts of philosophy, string theory, consistorial courts, a Virgil-inspired underworld and an extinct papacy (once ruled by Pope John Calvin).

Huh? Isn’t this a kids’ story about talking animals and balloon rides? What’s going on here?

Below you’ll find a sampling of new books that explain what’s going on in the trilogy. One of the most interesting points made here--see the entry for Claire Squires--has to do with an increasing number of ‘children’s’ stories that are in fact ‘crossover books.’ Pullman is hardly the only author blurring genre lines today. Readers approaching these works with traditional expectations are bound to be shocked--much as, I imagine, someone is stunned when they open the Brothers Grimm and don’t find the Disneyfied fairy tales they were raised on.

If you’re interested in learning what Pullman’s trilogy is really about, a good place to start--aside from the books themselves--might be one of the following:

‘The Rough Guide to Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ ’ by Paul Simpson (Rough Guide: $12.99 paper): This is a glossy little package containing overviews of the trilogy, Pullman’s other books and the new ‘Golden Compass’ movie that has the slight whiff of a press release worked up into book form. Some features are silly (what are Pullman’s favorite foods? Cheese and ginger cake. Color? Green.) but others are intriguing, such as the inclusion of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting ‘Lady With an Ermine,’ which Simpson says was influential in Pullman’s imagining of daemons. When you see the painting, you may imagine it as I did: as Lyra and Pan dressed in Renaissance attire. In compact, very accessible form, Simpson presents the case for why he thinks Pullman’s trilogy is ‘arguably more ambitious than the fictional sagas by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis it is inevitably compared to.’

‘Philip Pullman: Master Storyteller’ by Claire Squires (Continuum: $14.95): Published last year, this book is by far the best at explaining the literary and religious aspects of the trilogy. Squires also explains in a chapter that helps decode the current controversy over the movie-- ‘What Type of Story is ‘His Dark Materials?’ ‘--how the works of Pullman and others are ‘fostering a changing perception of children’s literature ... crossing and redrawing their boundaries.’ Among her other examples of crossover books are, not surprisingly, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and Mark Haddon’s ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.’ Though Pullman ‘uses tropes that reoccur in writing for children,’ Squires explains, his works have also managed to defy simplistic categorization. Once the current movie controversy cools (will it?), it may be time for a fresh discussion of how genres are defined and packaged. Quick, somebody call the marketing department.

‘Discovering ‘The Golden Compass’ ’ by George Beahm (Hampton Roads: $16.95): All the guides in this list overlap, and Beahm’s book is much like ‘The Rough Guide’--a light, swift general introduction. But the book also includes an interesting autobiographical sketch Pullman has written--’I Have a Feeling This All Belongs to Me’--as well as illustrations of gadgets and technology from the parallel worlds where Lyra and other characters live. With help from illustrator Tim Kirk, Beahm explores the many gadgets and inventions of everyday life in the book--anbaric parks, zeppelins, naphtha lamps and more--that are as real to Pullman’s characters as cellphones and coffee makers are to us.

‘Exploring Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ ’ by Lois H. Gresh (St. Martin’s Griffin: $9.95): While all the books in this list include sections on science, Gresh’s discussions (she has written several other books about science and fictional worlds) are the best of all. Dark matter, dark energy--she updates us on the science of neutrinos, black holes, neutron stars and how these may relate to Dust, which has a biblical and scientific import for the trilogy. In case we needed reminding, Pullman is hardly a religious believer, but Gresh argues that he does have a faith in something greater than ourselves. ‘In ‘His Dark Materials,’ Pullman seems to be attacking traditional notions of God and religion, while supporting the notion of cosmic consciousness.’

‘Paradise Lost’ by John Milton (Oxford University Press: $28): Finally, let’s hear from Pullman himself. OUP published a beautiful hardcover edition of Milton’s epic last year with engravings from the first illustrated edition in 1688. Although the book doesn’t have a scholarly apparatus, it includes an introductory essay by Pullman and his brief prefaces to all 12 of the poem’s books. Here we have Pullman explaining that he never set out to be a children’s author like Kenneth Grahame or A.A. Milne, but rather meant to explore the same theological issues that Milton did. Inspired by ‘Paradise Lost,’ he writes, ‘I found that ... I was beginning to tell the same story, too. I wasn’t worried about that, because I was well aware that there are many ways of telling the same story.’ Pullman’s way of telling the same story, then, gives us Lord Asriel in place of Milton’s Lucifer, Lyra and Will in place of Adam and Eve, and panserbjorne, mulefa and witches in place of Milton’s clashing angels and demons.
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A final thought: Milton is a standard, stable part of the Western canon today, although in his time he found himself opposed (and, often, in physical danger) for his challenges to government and his views of free speech. The Modern Library has just published ‘The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton,’ a spectacular annotated volume edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich and Stephen M. Fallon (1,368 pp., $55). It includes, among much else, Milton’s argument that, when told not to read a book, people should exercise their judgments and think for themselves. ‘I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue,’ Milton writes, ‘unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.’

No wonder Pullman admires him.

Nick Owchar