HIS DARKEST MATERIAL
Suicidal impulses, the cruelty of Britain’s school system, his run-ins with Hollywood... and why his home country is becoming ‘a wasteland’. More finds fantasy writer Philip Pullman battling some very personal demons
I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone,’ says Philip Pullman. ‘I’m just trying to stop myself going mad.’ And he means it. The author of the fantasy trilogy His Dark
Materials and other much-loved books is explaining why he goes on writing day after day, even after selling millions of copies around the world. ‘I’m a congenial melancholic, and if I didn’t have a purpose, I’d very quickly begin to think, “Why am I here? What’s my point?” And my thoughts would turn to rope and branches of trees and poison and kitchen knives and all sorts of things.’
I’m shocked by the matterof-fact way this serious, gentle man of 71, who ranks alongside JK Rowling as one of the greatest storytellers of our age, talks about thoughts of suicide. ‘I am serious about that, yes. I could very easily fall into that state of mind. But working as I do is a kind of defence against that because I can say, “At least I’m doing something here. I’m not just taking up space”.’
He could hardly be accused of that. Pullman has produced more than 30 books since he gave up teaching in his 40s to write fulltime. The strong-willed young adventurer Lyra – who first appeared in the three books collectively known as His Dark Materials (Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass) – is a hero to rival Harry Potter for the devotion she inspires in her fans.
Now Pullman is telling the story of Lyra as a baby in La
Belle Sauvage, the first in a new trilogy called The Book
Of Dust. It has already been hailed as a masterpiece.
‘I don’t know what people are talking about when they complain of writer’s block,’ says Pullman, who follows the same routine every day – using a pen to write on paper and filling up three pages with words and then stopping, whether it’s going well or not. ‘Of course it’s difficult sometimes. So is anything. Just stay there until you get it done. And there are various little tricks you can use to get to your three pages. Sometimes, if the evening wears on and I haven’t written anything, I have resorted to a very, very large glass – a wine glass actually – full of gin. It works.’
We’re drinking tea today in the gloriously cluttered study of his farmhouse just outside Oxford. After that confession of melancholy, I feel like thanking him, on behalf of all those fans, for keeping going. ‘Well, it’s self-preservation. I’m not doing it for anyone else. I’m very lucky that the method I happen to use for preserving my sanity is one that can earn me some money.’
Tens of millions by some esti- mates, although Pullman and his wife of nearly 50 years, Judith, a retired teacher, appear to live relatively simply. ‘I have enough, which is an extraordinary position to be in. For most of my life I was nowhere near it.’ His first huge hit was Northern
Lights in 1995, introducing Lyra and her daemon (an animal extension of the soul like everyone has in her world) called Pan. It won the Carnegie Medal for children’s books and was later named as the finest Carnegie winner of them all. The novel was renamed The
Golden Compass in the US and made into a film with Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman, but Pullman wasn’t happy. ‘The cast was great but the movie was muddled,’ he says. ‘You can’t tell a story that long in 90 minutes. There was also a lack of faith by the studio. I
think they saw it as a family adventure. Once they became aware that God was going to kick the bucket later in the story, they felt a good deal more shifty about the whole thing.’
The Amber Spyglass, the third in the trilogy of books, became the first and only children’s book ever to win the Whitbread (now the Costa) Award. And the BBC has just declared that the whole story of His Dark Materials is being made into a big-budget drama with James McAvoy as the charismatic Lord Asriel. This time Pullman is an executive producer.
‘I’ve seen the scripts at every stage. I’ve made copious notes and comments and these have all been followed up. My function is to nudge it back on course if I think it’s going in the wrong direction. I think they will get it right, because they’ve got more time than the film-makers had.’
They’ve started filming in Cardiff and Bristol with a script by Jack Thorne, who created Harry Potter And The Cursed Child on stage alongside JK Rowling. The series is due to air next year.
Meanwhile, La Belle Sauvage takes us back to the very beginning for Lyra, a baby being hunted down by sinister figures as an apocalyptic flood sweeps through Oxford, but it also drops the F-
‘If I didn’t write I’d go mad... and thoughts would turn to rope and branches of trees’
word several times and includes adult themes such as paedophilia and rape. So is this really still a children’s book?
‘I don’t know,’ says Pullman, frankly. ‘I wrote this book for anyone who wanted to read it. I expect some children might want to read it, in which case they’re welcome, but I guess it would be more interesting to people who had already read His Dark Materials and who were therefore probably grown up themselves.’
Some children will read it, won’t they?
‘Yes. But if there’s any parent who sincerely believes that their child has never heard language like that, I don’t think they can know their children very well.’
Why is it so much darker than before? ‘It just is. One obvious feature is the character of Gerard Bonneville, the possible paedophile, certainly a sexually threatening man. In the end, he does threaten Alice. I don’t think he actually rapes her but he certainly threatens to. It’s a dark story, yes. But should I apologise for that? Who to?’
How about any parents who buy the book in error and don’t want their children reading about such things? ‘If the sort of parent who would raise that kind of objection has heard of me at all, it’ll be in the context of my allegedly being some dreadful atheist who wants to forbid children from going to church. So they won’t let their children read the book in the first place.’ Pullman is famously an atheist, although he explores myth, legend and magic in all his writing and will do so particularly in the next book, which sees Lyra losing her sense of magic as an adult and will be called The Secret Commonwealth. You have to be openminded and go where the story takes you, he says. ‘This is why I’m so passionately against the notion that children should make a plan before writing stories at school. Don’t! Write the story first. See what you’ve got and then you can make a plan. They’re taught by idiots who don’t know how to do it themselves. It’s like saying, “I’m going to teach you to play the piano. I can’t play the piano myself, but this note is C… now you start playing Cho- pin”. It’s just stark, flaming ignorance.’
Pullman’s outrage with schools in Britain, as a former teacher, doesn’t stop there. ‘What angers me now is that in order to acquire a sort of humane education where you’re allowed to enjoy books and experience the arts, you have to be the child of rich parents. There’s no problem with the artistic and aesthetic education you get if you go to Eton or Winchester. But if you go to St Swine’s Academy, run by some carpet manufacturer somewhere, you have to do what the government tells you, and then it’s all about these SATs and tests and the imposition of trivial rubbish like fronted adverbials.
‘If you’re not the sort of child who thrives in exams then you’re written off. The cruelty passes belief. It’s based on a lack of empathy, lack of basic decency on the part of the government. It’s one of the many terrible situations we’ve got ourselves into in this country. I sometimes think we’re going down the tubes. It’s sad: our nation is finished. And we’ll be a sort of cultural, social wasteland.’
What good do stories do at a troubling time like this? ‘Samuel Johnson said the true aim of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it. Some books are priceless entertainment when you’re in a dreadful situation. You’ve just been diagnosed with a terrible disease. Or your spouse has, or your children. But you can endure it if you’ve got something comfortable to read that brings you release, consolation, that sort of thing.’
Pullman understands that situation, having suffered complications after a prostate operation last year. He is in much better health now, and the compulsion remains to write, to stay sane and alive. ‘I’d like to think I would be writing the same words in exactly the same way if I was now a retired teacher, struggling to live on a pension. I would still go to my desk.’
La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman, published in paperback by David Fickling Books in association with Penguin Random House.