Philip Pullman

BIO

Philip Pullman was born in Norwich on 19th October 1946. The early part of his life was spent travelling all over the world, because his father and then his stepfather were both in the Royal Air Force. He spent part of his childhood in Australia, where he first met the wonders of comics, and grew to love Superman and Batman in particular.

From the age of 11, he lived in North Wales, having moved back to Britain. It was a time when children were allowed to roam anywhere, to play in the streets, to wander over the hills, and he took full advantage of it. His English teacher, Miss Enid Jones, was a big influence on him, and he still sends her copies of his books.

After he left school he went to Exeter College, Oxford, to read English. He did a number of odd jobs for a while, and then moved back to Oxford to become a teacher. He taught at various middle schools for twelve years, and then moved to Westminster College, Oxford, to be a part-time lecturer. He taught courses on the Victorian novel and on the folk tale, and also a course examining how words and pictures fit together. He eventually left teaching in order to write full-time.

His first published novel was for adults, but he began writing for children when he was a teacher. Some of his novels were based on plays he wrote for his school pupils, such as THE RUBY IN THE SMOKE.

Philip still lives in Oxford, and he writes in a shed at the bottom of his garden. The shed contains two comfortable chairs (one for writing in, one for sitting at the computer in), several hundred books, a six-foot-long stuffed rat which took a part in his play Sherlock Holmes and the Limehouse Horror, a guitar, a saxophone, as well as the computer, decorated with dozens of brightly coloured artificial flowers attached to it by Blu-Tack.

Blu-Tack plays a big part in Philip Pullman's writing process. With it he sticks to the wall pictures, notes, posters, reminders, postcards, book jackets, anything that will stay there.

Another product of technology that Philip can't do without is Post-it Notes, the smallest yellow ones in particular. They are very useful for planning the shape of a story: he writes a brief sentence summarising a scene on one of them, and then puts them on a very big piece of paper which he can fill with up to sixty or more different scenes, moving them around to get the best order.

Philip Pullman believes firmly in the virtues of healthy exercise and a moderate diet - for other people. It makes them feel virtuous, and makes them feel good if not happy. The most exercise he normally takes is unscrewing the top of the whisky bottle. If he liked the taste of tobacco, he would smoke vigorously. He is fond of sport, and plays it by watching television. He is a big fan of Neighbours, but that is the only soap he watches, as Neighbours gives him quite enough to think about.

He is married to Jude. Their son Jamie is a viola player, and their younger son Tom studies music at university.

As far as he can tell, Philip Pullman is moderately harmless and useful. He would like to carry on doing what he's doing now, and there seems no reason why he shouldn't, but if it suddenly became against the law to write stories, he would break the law without a second's hesitation.

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INTERVIEW

December 11, 2001

A master of many genres, Philip Pullman is at the forefront of young adult fiction. His latest book is THE AMBER SPYGLASS, the third and most thrilling part of the HIS DARK MATERIALS trilogy.

For those who are uninitiated, in the first book, THE GOLDEN COMPASS, Lyra, a little girl in a world a lot like our own, journeys to the far North to save her best friend Roger. She also must aid other kidnapped children --- evil scientists are conducting terrible experiments on them. The second book, THE SUBTLE KNIFE, takes Lyra to Cittągazze, where she meets Will Parry, a fugitive boy from our own universe. Lyra and Will become good friends --- and uncover a deadly secret! And finally, in THE AMBER SPYGLASS, Lyra and Will travel between many worlds, in the end setting out to make their most haunting discovery yet.

Teenreads.com writer Jennifer Abbots recently had her ultimate dreams come true when she got a chance to talk with Philip Pullman about the big themes that run through his works.

TRC: Right, wrong, good, and evil. These four words are the foundation of most fantasy and adventure stories. But the concepts seem to be absent/muddied in the HIS DARK MATERIALS series. Is this intentional? What do you want the reader to come away with after finishing the trilogy in regard to good guys vs. bad guys?

PP: The concepts aren't muddied --- they're depicted realistically. What I was trying to do was very much get away from the "He's called the Dark Lord so he must be evil" idea. What I would like sensible readers to come away with is something that reminds them of real life, where no-one is purely good or purely evil, and where thinking of people like that is unhelpful anyway. I would much rather we thought in terms of good actions, bad actions. Firstly, it's truer to life, and secondly, it's just more interesting when someone we think is trustworthy turns out to have feet of clay, or when someone who has been cruel turns out to be moved by love and self-sacrifice. A moral story is not one where the good guys do good things and the bad ones do bad things; it's one in which people like ourselves do things, or are tempted, and then have to deal with the consequences.

TRC: Where did the character of Lyra come from? Do you have a Lyra in your life? Why did you make your hero a female --- and a little girl at that? Sally Lockhart, the hero of your popular THE RUBY IN THE SMOKE series is also a girl. Are you more drawn to female characters?

PP: I have written about a number of female characters, it's true. But never for some particular purpose; it just happened that the stories came to me with female protagonists. I think (to be fanciful for a moment) that any unwritten-about-yet female characters floating about in the air might be attracted to my pen because they know I'm not going to impersonate them, so to say; I always write in the third person, as if seeing them from the outside; they trust me not to try and get inside their skin. Maybe.

TRC: Let's talk some more about gender issues. Why are all witches female? Why are daemons usually the opposite gender of their human counterparts? Is the fact that Lyra is a girl-child relevant to the themes HIS DARK MATERIALS?    

PP: Daemons are usually the opposite sex (not gender --- that's a grammatical term) because we each have a bit of the opposite in our make-up, and it was one way of making that visible. Witches are female because they are --- that's the way it is. Some of their powers can be acquired by men, though, as Will inadvertently discovers, but only at the cost of suffering as witches themselves have to. As for Lyra, as soon as I thought of her I knew she had to meet Will. The two of them go through it all together, and it's vital that they come to realise their love together. The theme of the whole thing, after all, is the ending of innocence and the beginning of wisdom; and that is summed up in the third chapter of the Book of Genesis, which is the origin of this and PARADISE LOST and many other stories, in the story of Adam and Eve. Lyra is Eve; Mary Malone is the serpent, who teaches her how to fall in love, and Will is Adam.

TRC: HIS DARK MATERIALS mixes religion, magic, and science all together --- though different worlds rely more heavily on one or the other. Our world --- the world Will lives in --- seems to be most influenced by science. Do you think we are missing out on the magic?

PP: Perhaps. I'm pretty skeptical, though. I think we're far too superstitious on the whole. As for disgraceful betrayals of wisdom such as the pretense that there is something called "creation science" and we ought to give it equal time in schools with proper science --- I'm ashamed to belong to a human race that is so sunk in abject ignorance and willful stupidity.

TRC: There are many millions of different worlds in HIS DARK MATERIALS. How did you think them all up? Do you think your interest in differing but related worlds has anything to do with your childhood travels?

PP: The travels of my childhood taught me how large our world is, rather than that there are lots of different ones somewhere else! Thinking up new worlds is actually the easiest part of the whole thing. The hardest thing is to stick to recognisable human truth --- and that's the most important.

TRC: I am a big fan of Serafina Pekkala and the witches as well as the Gallivespians. Will you write any more about these characters and the different worlds you touched on in HIS DARK MATERIALS?

PP: I'm sure I will. I want to find out a lot more about the witches in particular.

TRC: Did you have a particular favorite author when you were a young adult? Did any teacher encourage and inspire you to write?

PP: I liked pretty well every story I read --- I was very uncritical. I did really enjoy Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories in particular. As for teachers, Miss Enid Jones encouraged me a great deal. She was my teacher when I was 13 till when I left secondary school (high school) at about the age of 17. I am still in touch with her --- I send her all my books.

TRC: If we were to look at your nightstand, what books would we find there?

PP: At the moment, I'm reading a book about town planning by James Howard Kunstler --- it's called HOME FROM NOWHERE, and it's fascinating. I met him recently when I was in Saratoga Springs, because he happens to be married to Jennifer Armstrong, an author whom I much admire. I'm also reading the third novel in the sequence A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME, by the English author Anthony Powell. Also nearby is a history book called RELIGION AND THE DECLINE OF MAGIC by Keith Thomas and a delightful novel called THE SUMMER BOOK by Tove Jansson, the Finnish author of the Moomin books, which I love.

TRC: What do you find more demanding/rewarding --- writing or teaching?

PP: Well, I haven't taught for several years. I half enjoyed it and half resented the time it took up but I had to earn a living. Writing is very demanding, but as someone said very truthfully, the only thing worse than writing is not writing.

TRC: What is the current project on which you are working? What would be your ideal project?

PP: Currently I'm making revisions to the final draft of a film script based on a trilogy by the English writer Peter Dickinson called THE CHANGES. My ideal project would be the next book of my own, which I shall do next.

For more information on the author and his many works check here: http://www.randomhouse.com/features/pullman/

   --- Jennifer Abbots


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