The Shepherd’s Scrapbook has a bit on Pullman posted today. They refer to an interview about Pullman’s writings. Here is what the Scrapbook has:
“Alan Jacobs is a literary critic and professor of English at Wheaton College. In 2000 Jacobs was interviewed on the Mars Hill Audio Journal about Philip Pullman’s writings (like The Golden Compass) and why he hesitates using Pullman’s works in teaching literature to his college classes. About midway through the interview Jacobs explains how gifted “world-making” authors are especially effective at communicating ideology. He says:
“There is no question that there aren’t very many writers out there more gifted than Philip Pullman and of course that’s what makes it the more disturbing when the gifts are abused. … We [he and his Senior college class] spent a lot of time talking about what’s involved in reading a world-making author like this. It’s an enormously seductive experience. As you come to trust in the author’s ability to make a compelling and fascinating world it becomes harder and harder to mistrust that author’s leadership and direction in moral matters. And so it’s very hard to sort these things out. If you begin to suspect the moral tendency or direction that the book is taking the imaginative wholeness of the vision becomes less compelling to you as well. So I think many readers who love and relish being put into these secondary worlds, who love to immerse themselves in the textures and shapes of a world different than ours, those readers are faced with a great temptation to turn off their moral and spiritual discernment so they are not disturbed in their immersion in this world. It’s a tough thing to try to keep those moral and spiritual antennae working to discern the spirits because you want so much to have an enjoyable reading experience. You don’t want it all to collapse all around your ears.”
You can get to the interview here. I found it very engaging. Any thoughts from the above quote?
December 13, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Well, if we’re talking about adult readers being exposed to these books and not teenagers, as we’ve done ad nauseum, I think it’s a different ball game.
I fit the profile that Jacobs describes: when I read a good work of fantasy, particularly one that has roots in the real world, I get pulled in. I see it like a movie unfolding in my mind’s eye. In some of the better stories, such as the Lord of The Rings, I even become emotionally invested in some of the various characters.
Perhaps I am an anomaly, but I would respectfully disagree with Jacobs, at least from my experience and standpoint, that my experience of a book like The Golden Compass would be hampered by the anti-Christian agenda told therein. I have also found it not very difficult to engage in story and disengage from philosophy. For example, I read The Da Vinci code several years ago. I read it because my boss told me about it, knowing that I was a Christian. He said that the book debunked many entrenched Christian ideas about the nature and identity of God, and that he would be interested to know what I think about it. I read the book because I felt obligated from a duty to defend my faith, and because I was interested in the notions put forth.
The Da Vinci Code was a compelling story with paper-thin characters and horrible dialogue. The author’s research and reasoning was so full of theological and historical holes, straw men and outright lies, that I found it almost laughable.
To this day I am glad that I read the book. Did it tempt me to believe that divinity truly lies in the person of Mary, that Peter was a bigot, that the Council of Nicaea was a farce, and that the true Gospel message was just recently discovered in the “lost” gospel of Thomas? Heck no. I walked away stronger in my faith because I knew the enemy’s arguments, and by doing some basic research, I was able to find their flaws.
The same can be said of The Golden Compass. I read the book and detected to anti-Christian agenda. I have not read the second and third books, which are apparently much more blatant in their attack against the church. I realize that I cannot speak for everyone, but reading such a book does not tempt me into a twisted worldview. My faith and hope is built on nothing less than the rock of Christ.
As I said to Jared Stinehagen in a recent email, I would equate this issue with food sacrificed to idols. There are those of us who are able to engage with such anti-Christian media and walk away unscathed, possibly even strengthened in our orthodoxy because our enemy forces us to ask serious questions about what we claim to believe. There are also those of us who are in fact tempted into moral and theological shaky ground by reading anti-Christian philosophies wrapped in the guise of fiction novels. I do not condemn these brothers and sisters, I simply acknowledge that their boundaries are different than mine.
December 13, 2007 at 2:33 pm
second to last paragraph should say “I read…and detected NO anti-Christian agenda.”