This is why I find his reaction so staggering. He actually wrote an allegory of the very same barbarism that he now seems to defend. I feel similarly let down by Margaret Atwood, who fails to see how the Handmaids Tale and he current gender ideology are connected. Pullman is worse though, because he is so vigorous in defending the indefensible.
I don't know Philip Pullman or his writing, though I understand what you mean. I am familiar with Margaret Atwood and I'm very disappointed by her response. I thought she was more robust.
I was about to write the exact same thing! The mind boggles at how someone can write a book like the Handmaid’s Tale and NOT see what’s going on. The same with Pullman. How do these seemingly highly intelligent people manage to miss the blindingly obvious point? (Genuinely interested if someone has an answer to that.) Are they just pretending to be ignorant? Or is literary-fiction talent a sign of an otherwise inane brain? (Maybe JKR is an exception to the rule 😉)
You have to remember -- I have to keep reminding myself to remember! -- that these two authors live in a very privileged world. They don't worry about how they're going to pay their rent, they are feted everywhere they go, and they're both aging (I'm aging and I'm finding that many people's intelligence seems to diminish with age, which I do not believe is inevitable). I suspect there is little in their environment that is challenging them to think and think hard about what is going on in the society around them.
Absolutely agree with you on both counts . The parallels between these fictional stories and what's happening now in real life couldn't be more stark.!! Maybe Stonewall & co read them .😭👎💔
Don't forget, this is the guy who had his twelve-year-old heroine have a fully sexual relationship (which was described as pretty blissful and rewarding - unlikely, frankly) at the end of the trilogy. He also put a rape into his prequel children's book.
Philip Pullman is wonderfully imaginative, but unfortunately very suspect in his sexual views.
I couldn't bear them or suspend reality enough to properly enjoy them, despite some adult friends and Eng Lit students loving them. Neatly sidestepping those elements. People naming their little girls after his characters always gave me the creeps.
Just your archetypal upper-middle class English establishment figure who has never, I expect, moved out of his privileged, mostly Oxford bubble and barely ever spoken to anyone working class except when they come to fix his plumbing or clean for him at his Oxfordshire pile. The English publishing world is chock full of these characters and complacency and smugness come very naturally to them. So they go in for a few pet Good Causes here and there to cover their arses. The trans cause is a gift for these people. They can be suitably Caring about The Most Marginalised People Ever without it in any way affecting their own privilege, social standing or income. Who cares if some working class women end up in jail for not paying their BBC licence and have to put up with a male claiming womanhood alongside them in their prison cells? The Pullmans and the women they care about will never end up in that situation themselves so, oh dear, how unpleasant, but never mind.
Children's literature is even worse for this type because it generally takes connections rather than talent to get a foothold into it and so there's an awful lot of dross which adults think is 'good enough' for children and young adults to read. To be fair to Pullman, I do think he's a very good writer and a bit of an exception compared with other more recent offerings in young people's fiction. But I could never get beyond his persona otherwise. And now this, and his vague handwringing statements over the last few years about "toxicity" on "both sides", yadda, yadda, yadda. I lived in Oxford for a long time and it was full of these men and women. Kind of dusty, tweedy types, who have never been significantly challenged about anything once in their lives, so there's very little self awareness.
That he and Joanne Harris head up the Society of Authors tells you everything you need to know about the chummy, class-riven state of British publishing. Utterly shameful that he and his cronies fail persistently to call out the violent and bullying online abuse of JK Rowling. There is no doubt, as far as I am concerned, that their silence at the Society of Authors leads directly to the emboldening of hideous incel types one of whom only this weekend tweeted JK Rowling's address alongside an image of a pipe bomb and the front page of a bomb making handbook.
That’s staggering. The guy can’t see the correlation between what he wrote and what is currently being done to children? Geez. He must have had his daemon cut out at some point.
This is why I find his reaction so staggering. He actually wrote an allegory of the very same barbarism that he now seems to defend. I feel similarly let down by Margaret Atwood, who fails to see how the Handmaids Tale and he current gender ideology are connected. Pullman is worse though, because he is so vigorous in defending the indefensible.
I don't know Philip Pullman or his writing, though I understand what you mean. I am familiar with Margaret Atwood and I'm very disappointed by her response. I thought she was more robust.
I was about to write the exact same thing! The mind boggles at how someone can write a book like the Handmaid’s Tale and NOT see what’s going on. The same with Pullman. How do these seemingly highly intelligent people manage to miss the blindingly obvious point? (Genuinely interested if someone has an answer to that.) Are they just pretending to be ignorant? Or is literary-fiction talent a sign of an otherwise inane brain? (Maybe JKR is an exception to the rule 😉)
You have to remember -- I have to keep reminding myself to remember! -- that these two authors live in a very privileged world. They don't worry about how they're going to pay their rent, they are feted everywhere they go, and they're both aging (I'm aging and I'm finding that many people's intelligence seems to diminish with age, which I do not believe is inevitable). I suspect there is little in their environment that is challenging them to think and think hard about what is going on in the society around them.
That’s a good point, thank you. In their rarefied environment, the dirtiness of the reality of gender woo doesn’t penetrate.
Are we sure they wrote the actual words?
Maybe they were ghostwritten?
Absolutely agree with you on both counts . The parallels between these fictional stories and what's happening now in real life couldn't be more stark.!! Maybe Stonewall & co read them .😭👎💔
Love Jo Bartosch' response to his tweet
Don't forget, this is the guy who had his twelve-year-old heroine have a fully sexual relationship (which was described as pretty blissful and rewarding - unlikely, frankly) at the end of the trilogy. He also put a rape into his prequel children's book.
Philip Pullman is wonderfully imaginative, but unfortunately very suspect in his sexual views.
I couldn't bear them or suspend reality enough to properly enjoy them, despite some adult friends and Eng Lit students loving them. Neatly sidestepping those elements. People naming their little girls after his characters always gave me the creeps.
Same here. I felt there was far too much of the author possible enjoying what was written.
It didn't feel like a warning.
Just your archetypal upper-middle class English establishment figure who has never, I expect, moved out of his privileged, mostly Oxford bubble and barely ever spoken to anyone working class except when they come to fix his plumbing or clean for him at his Oxfordshire pile. The English publishing world is chock full of these characters and complacency and smugness come very naturally to them. So they go in for a few pet Good Causes here and there to cover their arses. The trans cause is a gift for these people. They can be suitably Caring about The Most Marginalised People Ever without it in any way affecting their own privilege, social standing or income. Who cares if some working class women end up in jail for not paying their BBC licence and have to put up with a male claiming womanhood alongside them in their prison cells? The Pullmans and the women they care about will never end up in that situation themselves so, oh dear, how unpleasant, but never mind.
Children's literature is even worse for this type because it generally takes connections rather than talent to get a foothold into it and so there's an awful lot of dross which adults think is 'good enough' for children and young adults to read. To be fair to Pullman, I do think he's a very good writer and a bit of an exception compared with other more recent offerings in young people's fiction. But I could never get beyond his persona otherwise. And now this, and his vague handwringing statements over the last few years about "toxicity" on "both sides", yadda, yadda, yadda. I lived in Oxford for a long time and it was full of these men and women. Kind of dusty, tweedy types, who have never been significantly challenged about anything once in their lives, so there's very little self awareness.
That he and Joanne Harris head up the Society of Authors tells you everything you need to know about the chummy, class-riven state of British publishing. Utterly shameful that he and his cronies fail persistently to call out the violent and bullying online abuse of JK Rowling. There is no doubt, as far as I am concerned, that their silence at the Society of Authors leads directly to the emboldening of hideous incel types one of whom only this weekend tweeted JK Rowling's address alongside an image of a pipe bomb and the front page of a bomb making handbook.
But "both sides" and all that, right?
Superb comment!!!!!
Not dissimilar to the writer of the Handmaid's Tale.
That’s staggering. The guy can’t see the correlation between what he wrote and what is currently being done to children? Geez. He must have had his daemon cut out at some point.
He invented Mrs Coulter - like the contagion came directly from his pages.
WOW!!
And that section from Pullman's book is why I hated that trilogy.