Doing a bit of housework behind the scenes here on the scribbles and I idly clicked 'draft posts'. This is a helpful little feature that allows me to sift 'draft' from 'published' and it sometimes holds nice surprises.
Surely I had already shared my thoughts on Dæmon Voices - Essays on Storytelling by Philip Pullman early last year?
Perhaps this was a duplicate..
I hunted high and low, up and down the side bar and could find no record.
I read the post through again, written in the early months of 2018 and have decided to publish it now, warts and all, given my re-immersion in all things Philip. So please cast your mind back to February 2018...
Among my Christmas gifts this year (2017) Dæmon Voices - Essays on Storytelling by Philip Pullman, and may I say how overly thrilled I am to have discovered that æ symbol on my iPad keyboard; by mistake of course, having pressed that little world symbol and ended up typing in Norwegian for an age before I realised what I had done. I am very partial to a collection of essays. Zadie Smith’s Changing My Mind has held my attention many times over and I am more than excited about a new collection Feel Free to be published very soon. Notting Hill Editions also publish some fascinating collections .
I have been eyeing up Dæmon Voices since finishing The Book of Dust - La Belle Sauvage. I will admit to a bit of a love-hate thing with Philip Pullman. Rare glimpses on TV and social media in recent times have conveyed the impression of a brusque, outspoken and dare I say it slightly arrogant persona. There was an impassioned letter from an Independent Bookseller bemoaning Philip Pullman’s allegiance to Waterstones regarding signed and discounted copies of La Belle Sauvage whilst the smaller bookshops couldn’t possibly compete. It was all adding up to a sub-conscious stance of ‘Well I won’t bother reading him,’ in my mind until of course the post-New Zealand jet-lag did its worst and I ran out to buy a book that would be worth being awake for. It was chunky and I liked the cover and needs must and I was enchanted, entranced, engaged and converted. Oh yes and thankful, because the month after I have said goodbye to Offspringette is always hard.
Philip can now do no wrong...mostly, but I’m hoping some of you might understand this feeling (rightly or wrongly acquired and narrow-minded as it might seem) that us mere mortals can sub-consciously find ourselves adopting without quite realising it or analysing why. Now I discover it’s nigh on impossible not to warm to a writer who feels this when talking about the responsibilities of being a writer...
’....and there is a joy too in responsibility itself - in the knowledge that what we’re doing on earth, while we live, is being done to the best of our ability , and in the light of everything we know about what is good and true.’
I’m already sold.
’Art, whatever kind of art it is, like the mysterious music described in the words of the greatest writer of all ‘the sounds and sent airs, that give delight and hurt not’. To bear the responsibility of giving delight and hurting not is one of the greatest privileges a human being can have, and I ask nothing more than the chance to go on being responsible for it till the end of my days.’
Stirring stuff.
Anyway, with stupid prejudices cast to the winds of let’s-move-on and I am reading an essay every few days from a book that I have a feeling will become something of a constant companion, a reminder of why we read and what it gives us. I’ve made a terrible mess with my pencil on some of the pages but can’t stop myself, it’s the sort of book that makes you want to join in the conversation, add your own thoughts to those on the page, cite your own examples, agree, disagree and generally engage.
A fond example of mine and Philip’s synchronicity would be on the subject of fiction written in the present tense. I can’t quite describe the disappointment I feel when a book I have been really looking forward to is in the present tense but Philip comes close...
’Reading a novel written entirely in the first person and the present tense seems to me like being in a room where they have those Venetian blinds that go up instead of across - you can only see out in vertical stripes and everything else is closed off to you.’
We agreed on plenty more too,
...what I call Emperor’s New clothes fiction..
...that the way to tell a story ‘is to say what happened and then shut up...’ because ‘meanings are for the reader to find, not for the storyteller to impose.’
...how cheated a reader feels when they reach the end of a supposedly truthful memoir only to find it is fiction, an invention. Philip Pullman suggests its linked with ‘the desire not to be made a fool of: the wish not to be shown up as ignorant of a truth that everyone else knows.’ And I understood that.
...about authors ‘being courteous to their readers and their listeners.
...about how so many of us stop drawing when we hit adolescence, lose confidence and feel self-conscious.
...about the perils of interrogating poetry until it confesses and this with reference to and some advice on how to read John Milton’s Paradise Lost (which is on my radar for later this year with the help of Professor John Carey’s book....
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And that's as far as I wrote in February 2018. Suffice to say Dæmon Voices has been off the shelf ever thereafter, and even more so now as I reach the final chapters of The Secret Commonwealth.
If you too have discovered Dæmon Voices please do share your thoughts, especially on those points above...present tense, feeling duped, courteous authors, stopping drawing...
And is anyone else happily trapped in the world of Pullman? I set The Secret Commonwealth aside for a week or so because I was galloping through too fast and, for reasons various, we are now two episodes behind on the TV series and waiting for a rainy, cold, wet afternoon to catch up.
Pullmanitis continues unabated.
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