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In which I nerd about Philip Pullman
Dec. 13th, 2017 04:45 pmLast night, A & I trundled off to the Piccadilly Theatre: A had acquired us tickets to go see Philip Pullman in conversation on the general topic of La Belle Sauvage. I was very pleased I'd recently completed a reread; I was very pleased that I'd read the new book, so that I could flap happily throughout.
(I objected rather to the moderator describing His Dark Materials as having an "omniscient narrator"; it's multiple tight third innit? However! I restrained myself from asking, in the questions section, how that description had been arrived at; instead, I asked about the divergence and reconvergence of Lyra's Oxford and our own -- Jordan College in place of Exeter, but Lyra's friend's initials still carved into a wall somewhere -- and got an answer that didn't particularly address the worldbuilding, in preference saying that he is cheerfully stealing things from everywhere.)
My favourite fact is that baby's daemons are named by the parent daemons. The section we had read was Hannah Relf in the Bod with the alethiometer, up to being reminded of the name she had forgotten. There was a lot of discussion of where things had come (or been stolen) from: an illustration of Father Thames; the real pub; the fifty years spent walking around Oxford and looking at it; the science (and his great relief that he finished The Amber Spyglass before we worked out what dark matter is); the babies and their daemons, chattering like swallow chicks; the great flood Pullman was taken to see as a boy, when he was eight or nine, in Australia. (Why John Parry, and his relationship with Will, and Will's relationship with him: asked very solemnly by a child who will, no doubt, read it all very differently in ten years' time. Pullman's father, I had not realised, died when he was very young.) Serafina Pekkala's name is not from the Helsinki telephone directory (but he likes saying that, because it gets a laugh): it's from Whitaker's Almanac. Malcolm in contrast to Lyra: someone with a happy family.
There was also, naturally, discussion of his mode of writing, and another earnest question from a young child about Does He Actually Think The Church Is Really The Enemy (answer: political power and tyranny is the problem, not religion), and the power and purpose of story.
He still doesn't know how daemons are born.
And, possibly a spoiler: ( Read more... )
(I objected rather to the moderator describing His Dark Materials as having an "omniscient narrator"; it's multiple tight third innit? However! I restrained myself from asking, in the questions section, how that description had been arrived at; instead, I asked about the divergence and reconvergence of Lyra's Oxford and our own -- Jordan College in place of Exeter, but Lyra's friend's initials still carved into a wall somewhere -- and got an answer that didn't particularly address the worldbuilding, in preference saying that he is cheerfully stealing things from everywhere.)
My favourite fact is that baby's daemons are named by the parent daemons. The section we had read was Hannah Relf in the Bod with the alethiometer, up to being reminded of the name she had forgotten. There was a lot of discussion of where things had come (or been stolen) from: an illustration of Father Thames; the real pub; the fifty years spent walking around Oxford and looking at it; the science (and his great relief that he finished The Amber Spyglass before we worked out what dark matter is); the babies and their daemons, chattering like swallow chicks; the great flood Pullman was taken to see as a boy, when he was eight or nine, in Australia. (Why John Parry, and his relationship with Will, and Will's relationship with him: asked very solemnly by a child who will, no doubt, read it all very differently in ten years' time. Pullman's father, I had not realised, died when he was very young.) Serafina Pekkala's name is not from the Helsinki telephone directory (but he likes saying that, because it gets a laugh): it's from Whitaker's Almanac. Malcolm in contrast to Lyra: someone with a happy family.
There was also, naturally, discussion of his mode of writing, and another earnest question from a young child about Does He Actually Think The Church Is Really The Enemy (answer: political power and tyranny is the problem, not religion), and the power and purpose of story.
He still doesn't know how daemons are born.
And, possibly a spoiler: ( Read more... )
