Waiting for Lyra: Pullman Weighs in on the Film

My Golden Compass sets a true course – Times Online

Waiting for Godot in New Orleans

Writing is everywhere in the Lower Ninth Ward. The faded circles, X’s and numbers spray-painted on vacant houses by search teams after the storm continue to tell their coded tales: No bodies found. Two bodies in attic. Dead dog under porch.

A board propped against a ruined church carries a hand-painted text: “Can these bones live? Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and ye shall live.” The words, evoking an apocalyptic future, are from Ezekiel.

Sometime in October, new words began to appear. Printed on small cardboard signs, they consisted of the same three phrases: “A country road. A tree. Evening.” — an exact quotation of Beckett’s scene-setting for “Godot.”

Holland Cotter on Paul Chan’s New Orlean’s Production of “Waiting for Godot” in The New York Times

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Waiting for Lyra: Highly Recommended Pullman Interview

Philip Pullman was interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel for the CBC program, “Writers & Company.” Parts One and Two can be heard here.  They are both outstanding.

Waiting for Lyra: The Grandfather’s Rocking Horse

Here’s a lovely profile of Philip Pullman in The Guardian.

Waiting for Lyra: Catholic News Service Review

To the extent, moreover, that Lyra and her allies are taking a stand on behalf of free will in opposition to the coercive force of the Magisterium, they are of course acting entirely in harmony with Catholic teaching…Is Pullman trying to undermine anyone’s belief in God? Leaving the books aside, and focusing on what has ended up on-screen, the script can reasonably be interpreted in the broadest sense as an appeal against the abuse of political power….

From the very, very thoughtful CNS Movie Review: The Golden Compass

Waiting for Lyra: Pullman Encourages Thinking Through His Stories

The always thoughtful Laura Miller (who knows her Pullman, having done a New Yorker profile on him a couple of years ago,) has a sensible article today in the LA Times. In it she addresses the current religious furor (as the title of the article terms it) about the forthcoming movie. She points out that Pullman’s views are not new and the idea that he is mounting a stealth campaign to indoctrinate young readers (as certain folks are proclaiming) is preposterous. She reminds us that he has been invited time and again by religious leaders in the U.K. to participate in conversations on faith and belief. In fact I was fortunate enough to see one of these conversations at the National Theater a few years ago. This was with Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, and can be heard here.

Miller also addresses the complaints (I’m getting a lot of them these days) about Pullman’s provocative comments. As those from far past interviews and essays are pulled off and tossed about I get people coming to me and sometimes have a hard time explaining that this is not someone who is trying to impose anything on anyone (other than, perhaps, an appreciation for the importance of storytelling and an insistence that reading is a private affair that we cannot impose upon — his “democracy of reading” idea). “His practice of tossing out provocative statements,” writes Miller, “struck me as a habit acquired during his years as a middle-school teacher, intended not to shut out opposing ideas but to flush them from the underbrush of adolescent inertia.” Exactly.

Those of us who admire this storyteller and his books are not going to change the minds of those who are deadset against them, but at least we can perhaps help those willing to think deeper about them to do so with pieces like this one. Thanks, Laura.