Philip Pullman's Dark Materials
by Cynthia Grenier - October 1, 2001
Reprinted with permission from our good friends at InsideCatholic.com, the leading online journal of Catholic faith, culture, and politics.
This past winter, the illustrious and venerable New York publishing house Alfred A. Knopf published the third and final volume of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Its title is The Amber Spyglass, and it runs 518 handsomely laid-out pages. The English-born, Oxford-educated Pullman had earmarked his first two volumes for the "young adult" market, which spans ages seven to twelve. This third volume, however, was openly marketed to adults as well. Indeed, it was a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection. (The first two volumes of the trilogy-despite their designation as young-adult fare-should also be considered strictly adult fiction, given their high quotient of torture and violence.)
Nonetheless, the first two volumes, The Golden Compass (1996) and The Subtle Knife (1997), which are available in the children's section of every major bookstore in the United States in an attractive Knopf paperback edition, already carry a truly impressive list of honors and distinctions. A sampling: An American Library Association Top 10 Best Book for Young Adults; a 1997 Children's American Bookseller of the Year Honor Book; a Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books award; a Blue Ribbon Book; a Publisher's Weekly Best Book of the Year; Britain's Carnegie Medal and Guardian Prize for Fiction; another Book-of-the-Month Club main selection.
Many authors would readily yield a piece of their immortal souls for the kind of reviews Pullman has received in leading publications. The New York Times: "[V]ery grand indeed...scene after scene of power and beauty"; the Detroit Free Press:
"Pullman is a remarkable writer and his trilogy seems destined to become a classic"; Kirkus Reviews: "Fantastic!.... A shattering tale that begins with a promise and delivers an entire universe." In the July 1, 2001, issue of the Washington Post Book World, staff critic Michael Dirda listed "10 superb 20th century works of fantasy that should appeal to people who only care for 'literature.'" Along with Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Dirda included the three volumes of His Dark Materials, calling the trilogy "the Anti-Narnia, a critique of organized religion, a paean to Blakean joy in life, and, for all its controversy, the most vividly imagined 'secondary world' in 20th century children's literature. But definitely not just for kids."
Also this past summer, the Quality Paperback Book Review ran a four-color spread ad for Pullman's trilogy, leading off with this quotation from the New York Times: "A thrillingly ambitious tale.... [M]ay well hold the most subversive message in children's literature in years." The same ad, illustrated with pictures from the covers of the three Pullman books, included a sidebar quotation in red type from a leading character in the trilogy, the witch Serafina Pekkala: "All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity. The rebel angels, the followers of wisdom, have always tried to open minds; the Authority and his churches have always tried to keep them closed."
The above quotation alone-a broadside against the traditional Judeo-Christian vision of God ("the Authority") as good and the "rebel angels," or demons, as evil-is evidence that his trilogy, as the advertisement puts it, "is not your standard sword-and-sorcery escapism...." It is also evidence that His Dark Materials may not really be the sort of thing that you would want to put into the hands of "young adults," if by that you mean impressionable children between the ages of seven and twelve.
