Philip Pullman parle

[Oz]

Voici un résumé, en anglais et en deux parties, d'un entretien avec l'auteur d'A la croisée des mondes. Interessant :)

Première partie :

Went to a talk entitled Children's Fiction: Dreamworlds and
Nightmares on Thursday night. This was the description in the
brochure:

"Children's fiction has never been so successful and influential.
Film versions of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are likely to
become the highest-grossing films ever. Philip Pullman's The Amber
Spyglass was the 2002 Whitbread book of the year, the first book for
children ever to achieve this feat. What cultural needs are these
books meeting? A need to return to narrative and symbol? A deep
rooter nostalgia for childhood? What is their connection to the
crisis of childhood that has haunted the last decade? Speakers
include Philip Pullman, Jenny Turner former arts editor of the
Independent on Sunday and Marina Warner, prize-winning novelist. In
the chair is Antonia Quirke, writer, broadcaster and film critic."

Turner talked about Lord of the Rings and her interpretation of it
as "A symbol of a depressive state" and that its extensive and
extreme removal from the real world is a sign of not just escapism
but a real fear and loathing of the real world. (More on this on
request.ask me off list and I will also try to find a link to the v.
long article she wrote on this.)

Warner gave a potted history of children's literature and how it went
through 3 distinct stages from the Victorians to today: 1) Darwinist
belief that the child is a primitive savage who lives off the raw
material of stories - myths and legends and magic and slowly matures
to civilisation wherein the taste for this kind of thing is lost 2)
the child as an idyllic innocent who requires the fluffy happy stuff
of cleaned up fairy tales with happy endings, simple good/bad,
reward/punishment, stories that protect kids from the world as it is,
prolonging and emphasising their innocence and tell of the world as
it should be, not as it is and 3) the children's literature of today
that tells of the world as it is even if it uses magic and myth to
describe it.

Then. Pullman spoke.
He started writing when he was a teacher and he was required to write
a play for the kids. He was anxious to write something that the
parents coming to see the play could appreciate too as well providing
something for the kids to perform - and wrote Spring-Heeled Jack, now
one of his books. His ability to write for both children and adults
comes from this initial experience and it was as much a practical
decision as an artistic one.

Of using myths and magic in his stories, he said he didn't invent
them himself: "If I see a good story, I'll steal it. That's my
motto."

Of the importance of providing stories for kids, he said they were a
of processing information and understanding causality.

Of the telling of stories, he said that the arrangement of words and
the arrangement of events were equally important. The language
characters in the story spoke in were also important.

Of evil, he said that children who commit crime, who Do Bad Things
are called evil and turned into monsters, vilified beyond redemption
and treated as aliens and out-of-this world because children are
considered incapable of evil; once they do something that is beyond
the sweetness and innocence that we credit them with, they are no
longer even human.

[Oz]

Deuxième partie :

Of reading, he said that reading was a democratic process of
assimilating meaning between reader and writer. In visual arts,
information and the image is given and immutable but in print, the
reader is free to supply the images him/herself.

Of the film of HDM, he said he won't be writing the screenplay and
sold the rights to it because he needed the money -"it's my job!" He
also said he wasn't too worried about the film turning out badly
because people watch the film adaptations of their favourite books
with expectations to see them fail to do the books justice, and will
watch the films to reassure themselves that the books are, indeed
better. If they like the film adaptation, then they will be
pleasantly surprised.

Of Harry Potter, he said it was a story of a boy Cinderella, and was
escapism on a less extreme level and was about the empowerment of a
helpless child - the discovery of incredible magical powers, the
discovery of a world where he is famous and with a rich and noted
heritage instead of being an abused orphaned child, etc. HDM is more
about the resourcefulness of children, their ability to make sense of
things that are much larger than themselves through the gift of
imagination unique to kids. HDM is more about the relocating of
children in reality rather than the escape of it, putting them firmly
back into harsh reality with responsibility, "cunning and high
spirit" of the magical child in a non-magical real world.

Of C. S Lewis, he said he thought the man was possessed when he wrote
the Narnia books - "I find them unbearable. They seem to be pushing
out a world that is intolerable, a religion that is full of hatred.
and he kills them all off in the end because they'd be better off
dead." He went on to question, in the light of Turner's reading of
Tolkien, Lewis' treatment of the world we know and the world he
created. Outside of Narnia, Pullman conceded that Lewis had a lot of
sensible things to say but in Narnia it all turns out to be
disturbing, frightening, intolerant stuff, full of hatred and
violence, conformity etc. "Not that I hate C. S Lewis, I just hate
what he tried to say."

Of children's writers, he said he liked the Alice books, E. Nesbit,
not all Kenneth Graham (Wind in the Willows), A. A Milne - "I find
very difficult to like," Jan Mark, Alan Garner, Leon Garfield.

And he said his daemon would be a raven.

The audience weren't allowed to ask why and neither were we allowed
to ask what he would ask the aleithiometer. Or whether Lyra and Will
would ever meet again - half of the (huge) audience sighed
disappointedly when the chair put forward these restrictions on the
Q&A.

[Innuendo]

entretien avec l'auteur d'A la croisée des mondes.

ça faisait longtemps...

[Oz]

On fait ce qu'on peut

Je vous le dis, c'est un chef-d'oeuvre de la littérature. Un futur classique, lisez-le ! :)

[gib's]

Je pense aussi que la trilogie "à la croisée des mondes" est un chef d'oeuvre (une trilogie supérieure à la "trilogie" le seigneur des anneaux même, héhéhé :)

[Oz]

Empire Online : http://www.empiremagazine.co.uk/

Potter Has A Rival
17/05/2002

British playwright Tom Stoppard is currently the writer of choice for Hollywood, where he's being chased for two big projects. A week or so ago, Empire Online reported that Stoppard was being courted as scriptwriter for the fourth outing in the Indiana Jones series. Then came the news that he was going to be too busy to take up the Indiana position. This morning, the reason for that became clear as New Line Cinema revealed it was in negotiations with Stoppard to take the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy by Philip Pullman to the big screen.

Fans of Pullman, whose children's books have struck a chord with ankle-biters and adults alike, will be delighted at the news, which puts the trilogy as the next big thing for New Line following their fabulously successful adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Initial reports suggest that the trilogy will be slimmed down to form two movies – although that won't be confirmed until Stoppard begins work this summer on his adaptation of the three books; The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

Bible belters who've been protesting against the rise of Harry Potter and his ungodly study of magic will have their work cut out when the Pullman series hits the big screen. The trilogy features a universe in which multiple versions of Earth exist, daemons are the embodiment of the human spirit and in which angels aren't always on the side of all that is good and right.

Mais ils ont interet à nous en faire trois films. C'est nécessaire pour apprécier le découpage de l'action des bouquins !