A strange alchemy

In England, there’s a children’s author who has become a household name, whose series of fantastical books captured the nation’s imagination, whose sales have reached stratospheric proportions.

No, this time it isn’t J.K. Rowling.

Instead, it’s Philip Pullman, an avuncular 57-year-old with rimless glasses and thinning gray hair who speaks in a quiet, clear, precise voice. An ex-schoolteacher, Pullman was for years a respected author without achieving much commercial success; but his celebrity has grown rapidly in Britain since 1995, the year his children’s book “Northern Lights” was published. The first volume in a supernatural trilogy called “His Dark Materials,” it was followed in 1997 by “The Subtle Knife” and in 2000 by “The Amber Spyglass.”

In the trilogy, an adolescent girl named Lyra and later a boy called Will battle dark forces on Earth, then find themselves fighting ignorance and corruption in worlds unknown to humankind. The books have sold 2.7 million copies in Britain -- a remarkable figure for a country with a population of 60 million -- and have been featured on U.S. bestseller lists.

The trilogy has been adapted for the stage and starts previews this week at London’s prestigious National Theatre, opening for reviews Jan. 3. Playwright Nicholas Wright has condensed the three books into two three-hour plays, directed by Nicholas Hytner, the National’s artistic director. It is the most hotly anticipated event at the National in several years, and advance sales for tickets exceed $1.7 million. Again, this is an astonishing figure for a theater in the subsidized, not-for-profit sector.

Before long, “His Dark Materials” is also certain to become a film, or rather, three; Tom Stoppard recently completed adapting the trilogy for the big screen. With such a flurry of activity on various fronts, Pullman’s celebrity has crescendoed to a volume that cannot be ignored.

“I’m glad this fame happened to me when I was in my 50s,” he said mildly. “If it had come before, I think it would have thrown me completely.”

He reflected on this in the below-stairs office of his publisher, David Fickling, situated near the center of this ancient university city; Pullman lives a few miles outside Oxford.

During a long, wide-ranging conversation, it was one of the few mild opinions he ventured. Pullman may look placid, but he feels passionately about any number of issues. He incites equally strong feelings: His devotees, especially his adult readers, are more ardent than Rowling’s fans, but opposition to him is fierce, particularly among religious conservatives.

Borrowing from Milton

“His Dark Materials,” according to Pullman, is suitable for any kids 12 and older: “But very bright children of 9 can get into it, and do.” Younger readers follow the fast-paced narrative at different levels from adults; the trilogy is also a dazzling intellectual conceit.

Basically it is a playful reworking of Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost” for modern audiences. The first volume, retitled “The Golden Compass” for the U.S., follows the adventures of Lyra, a 12-year-old girl significantly on the verge of adolescence -- free-spirited, almost barbaric, but eager for knowledge and truth.

She is growing up among academics in an Oxford college. But this is an imagined Oxford; the book is a universe of witches, talking polar bears wearing armor, angels and gypsies. All humans have a “daemon,” an animal spirit that follows its owner everywhere, changing form with its mood. Lyra’s daemon Pantalaimon mutates from a leopard to an ermine, a goldfinch or a mouse at will. Lyra’s adventures take her to the Arctic Circle’s frozen wastes, literally and metaphorically at the edge of the world.

“The Subtle Knife” introduces Will, an Adam to Lyra’s Eve, a boy with the ability to move between parallel universes. When he and Lyra meet in “The Amber Spyglass,” they find themselves fighting a war in heaven, where God is portrayed as a weak old man on a life-support machine.

Pullman’s trilogy references not just Milton but also the book of Genesis, Dante, Greek mythology and William Blake’s notions of innocence and experience -- as well as such modern scientific ideas as quantum physics and elementary particle theory.

But it’s his attitude to organized religion that divides opinion about him. He is an avowed atheist, and his trilogy features a weak, corrupt God and a cruel, oppressive church. Pullman specifically dislikes the Catholic church, and the feeling is mutual: The British newspaper the Catholic Herald condemned the trilogy as “worthy of the bonfire.” Britain’s Association of Christian Teachers stated: “This trilogy ought to carry a spiritual health warning.”

Pullman insists he is anti-ecclesiastical but not anti-religion: “I’d be a fool to be anti-religious any more than I would to be anti-laughter,” he said. “The religious impulse is a basic part of human nature, to look at the universe with awe and wonder, to feel delight in one’s own existence, to feel a moral connection between oneself and the rest of creation. These are religious things, and they’re certainly what I feel.

“What I mistrust and suspect and criticize is the tendency of human beings to set up human structures such as churches, which have hierarchies of power and authority within them and seem to be designed almost entirely to perpetuate themselves and impose a vision on those people outside them.” He stresses these “churches” need not be religious; communism had a sacred book (“Das Kapital”), prophets (Marx, Engels) papal figures (Lenin, Stalin), even holy relics (Lenin’s embalmed body).

Champion of reading

British attacks on Pullman have been deeply felt but sporadic, as he expected in a relatively secular country. Before he toured the United States, which he has now done extensively, he expected more trouble. In fact, he has inflamed little controversy.

“I had one letter from one boy who wanted to sue me for insulting God,” Pullman recalled, an amused smile playing around his lips. “He was about 12, I think. I wrote back and said I would be pleased to hear from his lawyers. I had another letter after the second book was published from a woman who accused me of promoting Satanism. My response to that was: ‘Wait till the whole thing’s published.’ ”

He feels he has enjoyed “a lucky passage through the Bible Belt” because Rowling’s Harry Potter books have drawn the heaviest flak from conservative Christian groups. “While they’re busy burning them or banning them from libraries,” he said dryly, “I’ve been able to fly in under the radar.”

But he is appalled at the treatment meted out to Rowling by such groups: “They have misunderstood the nature of reading, which is a risky, democratic thing that emerges between reader and book. To say Harry Potter is promoting Satanism and pushing children toward evil is such a difficult thing to believe that you could only do it if you read strenuously in the wrong way.”

For now he can fix his mind on happier thoughts, starting with the National’s production of “His Dark Materials.” He had no desire to adapt the work himself: “Never. You spend seven years on it, and it’s done. To make it into a film or play you’d have to take it all apart, do it again. And if the National Theatre comes to you and says: ‘Hytner to direct, Wright to write,’ I’m not so vain as to say: ‘Oh, I could do better than that.’ And when the film people appointed Tom Stoppard to write the script, I respectfully doffed my hat and said: ‘Please carry on, you’re much better at this than I am.’ ”

The stage version of “His Dark Materials” promises to be an extravagant production on a huge scale. The plays, which can be seen as a double bill or in repertory, have a cast of 30. Pullman, who visited rehearsals and offered a few suggestions, is particularly thrilled with the casting of Anna Maxwell Martin, an actress in her early 20s, as Lyra. To create the daemons, Hytner called on Michael Curry, who designed the puppets for Julie Taymor’s stage version of “The Lion King.”

When Hytner was appointed the National’s artistic director a year ago, he wanted an epic play to which young people could relate. He was only halfway through Pullman’s second volume when he asked the theater’s literary manager to secure the rights. “If you hesitate, you don’t do it,” Hytner said. “It felt crazy and unstageable, but I felt we had to try.”

It’s been even more of a challenge than Hytner anticipated. He had to cancel some early previews and delay the press opening by two weeks. But ticket sales are still strong. Most of the scheduled performances are sold out.

The film trilogy will be produced by Scholastic Entertainment, the New York-based movie arm of Pullman’s U.K. publishers, for New Line -- the studio that brought the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy to the big screen. “They’ve done a long film in three parts successfully,” said Pullman, smiling at his own understatement. “So I thought, well, they know how to do it. And they’ve got lots of money now. I’m encouraged by the way they talk.”

Always telling stories

If “His Dark Materials” shifts easily among page, stage and screen, it’s because it’s built on a strong structure of pure storytelling. That’s something Pullman knows plenty about.

He grew up in a Royal Air Force family (ironically, his grandfather was a vicar) and lived in Australia and southern Africa as well as England. As a child he invented stories to tell his younger brother after lights out. Pullman began writing after graduating from Oxford University. He taught at a school in the city, was put in charge of producing school plays, and soon began writing them.

“I put on six or seven, learning all the time how to tell stories and entertaining mixed audiences,” he recalled. “You don’t only have to entertain the kids, you have to entertain the parents. You don’t want them sitting there, having been dragged there, furtively looking at their watches and wondering will the pubs still be open. I wanted to write stories that would simultaneously entertain an audience both innocent and experienced.”

He also cast himself literally in the role of storyteller, relating classical Greek myths in episodic form to generations of 12- and 13-year-olds: “I learned how to pace to a climax in the story. I’d get there, the bell would go, and I’d say, ‘OK, more next time.’ ”

Now he is so adept at telling stories that there’s a literature about his books growing up around them. A book about to be published in Britain examines the way Pullman deals with scientific themes. (“It’s very good,” he said. “I had no idea I was so clever.”) Another, “Darkness Visible,” is by Nicholas Tucker, a psychologist interested in child development. He calls Pullman “a master drawing on skills and experience built over years of patient apprenticeship.”

Now Pullman finds himself being approached by university students who are writing theses on his trilogy.

“I’m gratified,” he noted, “but they ask you to answer dozens of questions, which is time-consuming. I’ll help, but I refuse to advise on the matter of interpretation. I won’t say: ‘It doesn’t mean that, it means this.’ I won’t interfere with the democracy of reading.”