I’m excited to listen to more pobcasts. Thanks.

I’m glad to see that there’s at least one other person who liked His Dark Materials. It’s amazing how people can read (or listen to) the same thing and have completely different reactions. I actually like the discussions about ideas that other people find “preachy’ or think slow down the action, but to each his/her own. Personally, I would love to hear you guys talk to Travis again, but about Harry Potter, please!

Incidentally, here’s a quote from an interview Pullman did with MSNBC (Q&A’s from kids), which sounds eminently reasonable to me:

“In the world of the story — Lyra’s world — there is a church that has acquired great political power, rather in the way that some religions in our world have done at various times, and still do (think of the Taliban in Afghanistan). My point is that religion is at its best — it does most good — when it is farthest away from political power, and that when it gets hold of the power to (for example) send armies to war or to condemn people to death, or to rule every aspect of our lives, it rapidly goes bad. Sometimes people think that if something is done in the name of faith or religion, it must be good. Unfortunately, that isn’t true; some things done in the name of religion are very bad. That was what I was trying to describe in my story.

I think the qualities that the books celebrate are those such as kindness, love, courage and courtesy too. And intellectual curiosity. All these good things. And the qualities that the books attack are cold-heartedness, tyranny, close-mindedness, cruelty, the things that we all agree are bad things….As for the atheism, it doesn’t matter to me whether people believe in God or not, so I’m not promoting anything of that sort. What I do care about is whether people are cruel or whether they’re kind, whether they act for democracy or for tyranny, whether they believe in open-minded enquiry or in shutting the freedom of thought and expression. Good things have been done in the name of religion, and so have bad things; and both good things and bad things have been done with no religion at all. What I care about is the good, wherever it comes from.”

They are probebly not quite as famous as Harry Potter, but a bit less predictable and more varied then HP.

Anti-religious? Religion isn’t bad, people are naturally bad and use religion as an excuse to kill each other.

I was recommended the His Dark Materials series after finishing Deathly Hallows, and I started reading the books just as the email petitions began.

I’m a staunch Christian, and so I had some worries about completing the series…but I did it, with my religious convictions intact.

Pullman makes the same error many other atheists seem to make: they mistake the organization of the church for the doctrine. He never presented any beliefs through his books that challenged my way of thinking; his criticisms are always about the people in charge, their corruption, their bad decisions. Even the main threat of his fantasy world is a corrupt usurper. Ultimately, the anti-religousness didn’t even matter, because the arguments he used were quite weak.

Sorry, I cannot imagine being religiously threatened by this.

Other than the religious content, I found Pullman’s narrative voice too detached and his characters not compelling. The overshadowing agenda was annoying, too; if not for that, it would have been a very interesting, creative series. But he’s too ham-fisted about The Point He Wants to Make.

I know many people claim that Pullman is superior to Rowling, but I’d take Harry Potter over His Dark Materials, always. The characters are more sympathetic and developed better, the conflict is more interesting, and there are mysteries and shades of grey that resonate with and compel the reader. There is far more richness and complexity in HP, whether you consider the religious themes in each series or not.

Great show as always. I came to read HP from the lense of mystery and suspense. Now that this series is over I’m back to good old fashioned detective stories.

i feel like if Phillip Pullman would have wrote Harry Potter, he would have done it in a 250 pages book going: Harry is born, harry saves the philosophers stone, next year kills a basilisk, next year meets godfather… etc

What to read after Harry Potter ? Jane Austen maybe, and if you have more time on your hands, The Wheel of Time.

Great show!!! Keep on keepin’ on !

Loved the show with Travis. Kind of combined my two favorite podcasts on Harry Potter. Just had to make a note on some of the things you all said about CS Lewis & how he didn’t let his characters grow up. Well, for one, not all the characters are in all of the Narnia books, & two, the main characters die young.

As for his portrayal of Susan, which I think people have the most problem with, Lewis is not saying that growing up is bad but that Susan’s obsession with lipsticks & nylons & parties, et al, causes her to forget Narnia. She loses faith as it were & rejects Narnia. Peter is seen studying hard for exams, but he doesn’t forget Narnia. Lucy & Edmund study new subjects & learn new skills in England, but they don’t forget Narnia. So, it’s not growing up that’s the problem, it’s becoming worldly & by doing so, forgetting & rejecting the spiritual realm, represented by Narnia.

Anyway, thanks for the great podcasts.

But wow was I ever disappointed with Mr. Prinzi. Granted, I only minored in lit for a short while, but the first rule of talking about any literature is one first has to READ THE LITERATURE.
I would have been a little more intent to hear Mr. Prinzi’s opinions knowing he had, at the very least, read the first book of His Dark Materials. This was the first and only time I have ever started listening to one of the podcasts and turned it off.

I know it was great of him to take the time to sit and chat with you guys but really I would have just listened to you both talk about the books instead. I am also bummed at the dismal reaction to His Dark Materials. I read the books when the first were published before Pullman made his comments about the books and loved them for what they were. Great pieces of fantasy fiction. And now, being a geographer, I love the way in which there are elements from my discipline intertwined throughout the books going back and reading them now.

Well that’s it… sorry I ranted a bit… LOVE the podcast will listen until I die or you guys quit… I hope neither happens but in the mean time, I will listen to some of my old favs and wait for a new podcast!!!

Thanks!

Sarah B- we have an 8 year old son as well and I personally think that 8 is a bit young for the Golden compass. Even without the violence or mature subjects- I think the writing is above the 8 year old mindset- even kids who have read Harry Potter. Just my opinion.

Alicia-here is how I look at the Colin Creevy line (which is actually one of my tear jerker lines of the book). I don’t think that Jo has kept Colin as that small little first year. I think that she was demonstrating how the war took children and made them grow up faster than they needed to- yet they really were just children. Colin made the choice to sneak back into the castle- he either did it out of a strong sense of responsibilty and with maturity (he was a member of the DA after all) or out of misplaced admiration for Harry. But he was forced to fight as an adult because he made that decision. But it doesn’t change the fact that he was still a kid- whether he was of age or not. I think Harry recognized this when he thought that colin looked tiny in death. And I think that Harry (as opposed to Jo) might have psychologically thought of him as the tiny first year who he met 6 years ago.

On the views of God, the OT spans something like 500 years and the rabbis are a few centuries after that, so it’s kind of hard to make any kind of overarching statement, though the last 4 books of the Torah in particular are more concerned with community and obeying the commandments. Certainly the entire Mediterranean world at the turn of the era was evolving towards the idea of a more personal relationship with God(s), even though the rabbis never went as far as the Christians did.

I still think that Pullman’s Authority is much more a reflection of the worst kind of religion/ideology of any type, and his experience and background are Christian. He has said that he has the same opinion of an atheist authoritarianism like Stalinism. Whatever he may have intended, I definitely have a sense of a kind of benign guiding force in the series, maybe working through Dust, as in LOTR when Gandalf tells Frodo that Bilbo was _meant_ to find the ring and therefore he (Frodo) was _meant_ to have it.

BTW I really did like your point of no one
redeeming themselves. That was disappointing. ANd
the only one that even came close was Narcissa.

That wasn’t the dichotomy I intended. I see the OT as authority and law based, wheras the NT is more based on personal relationship. One creates a political system, the other provides individual salvation. One is more concerned with the public, the other the private. One is particular, the other universal.

We felt the topic was relevant and timely, and prepared as best we could. I stand by my review, having read all three books. I still think that the Golden Compass was good, and it went downhill from there.

As a 34 year old I don’t normally search the teen book shelves for something to read (although I am a big Lois Duncan fan, loved her books as a teen and have since gone on to buy most of them). But the bookshops have been going out of their way to intice the HP adult readers by promoting all sorts of series to us and I am just finding them all much of the same. Nothing will fill my Snapeless void now!

Another thought about this podcast - it also may have been a little too rushed, possibly because of the movie coming out this week, because I didn’t really feel that either you or Travis was that well prepared. It would seem that you should have both at least read the first book if not the whole trilogy, and then given it a little time to stew, because he’s got a lot going on there, and I don’t see how you could have been fair to him even with the best of intentions. I also have to say that you are the only ones I’ve ever heard say that Pullman started out with an agenda and then constructed a story around it. Most people I’ve heard or read, even the ones who feel that he is too preachy at places, allow that it’s a great story.

You would also have found that even though there are world-changing (not necessarily apocalyptic) events near the end, the actual ending is not really that different from Harry Potter. Things improve generally but they’re certainly not perfect, and people have to go on living in a very real and flawed world. Since the idea that this world is all there is and that we need to live life to the full is one of his main themes, I don’t see how it could end any other way.