Bridge to the Stars

His Dark Materials fans who visit Oxford’s Botanic Garden can now enjoy an audio guide from author Phillip Pullman. The Garden has special importance to fans of the series due its role in the heartbreaking conclusion of The Amber Spyglass. As a result, Pullman has been asked to record part of a voice guide for the garden, in which he talks about its significance to Will and Lyra, in particular a bench which plays a key role in the young couple’s story. Pullman told the Oxford Mail that he thought the audio guide was a great idea, and that he was particularly keen to contribute due to ‘the bench’, as it is known to fans: “It’s a nice bench in a very nice place – the Botanic Garden is such a lovely thing to have in Oxford.” Pullman also offered a brief update on the much-anticipated His Dark Materials companion work The Book of Dust, insisting that it was proceeding well and would be finished just as soon as: “I write the words: ‘the end’”.

http://www.bridgetothestars.net/news/pullman-adds-voice-to-botanic-gardens-guide/

Last month, we gave YOU a chance to put your questions to Philip Pullman! We got so many questions in, and below are the few that we liked the best, along with Pullman’s answers. Congratulations if your question was asked!

When you were writing His Dark Materials, did you randomly take objects from your environment and make them meaningful, or did you take places that meant something and make them stand out? I have tried to write a novel myself and it just sounded incredibly stilted. - Craig

PP: I don’t think there was anything random about it. Either I chose things because they were meaningful already (such as Iorek Byrnison’s name – it had to be Nordic, of course) or things that just appeared to me turned out to be full of meaningful connections later one (such as the idea of dæmons).

As for finding your writing stilted, don’t worry about that. Just keep going. Your own style will develop the more you write.

Do you have extensive experience in dealing with adolescents/ teens? The ability to connect with that age group is singular and really only found in the best authors. Do you use your own children/ grandchildren as a model or do you actually drop back into that feeling yourself? - Craig

PP: I did teach children of Lyra’s age for twelve years, so I suppose I was familiar with the sort of thing they were interested in. it’s not so easy using your own children for that sort of research, because they grow up so quickly. Teaching is better, because every year there’s a new lot of twelve-year-olds or whatever. And there’s my own memory, which as I grow older becomes more and more important to me.

Why is the name of Lyra’s dæmon “Pantalaimon”? I know, that “Pan” means “all” in greek and “Eleimon” means “merciful”. So is it correct, that the name should be “Allways merciful” – if so, why? It doesn’t seem to me, that Pan is more merciful than the others. Or is it just because you liked the name of St. Panteleimon? – Alex

PP: I didn’t know anything about St Pantaleimon. I just knew that that would be his name. I suppose I just liked the sound of it. Perhaps that’s one of those things that turn out to be meaningful later on (like the answer to the question above).

Clearly parents name a child, but who names the child’s daemon? – Lincoln

PP: The parents’ dæmons, of course.

Exeter College in Oxford is the basis for Jordan College, in Lyra’s Oxford. Exeter has its own logo, does Jordan College have its own logo/coat of arms? If not, what would you consider its logo should represent? – nanaki

PP: Well, firstly, it wouldn’t be called a logo. It would be a coat of arms. If I had to design a coat of arms for Jordan College, I suppose one element of it might be a representation of a river (for the river Jordan). Then I’d have to think about who founded the college, and when, and in what circumstances, and work out how to represent those things, if they were important.

Do you watch Doctor Who, and if so how would you go about writing an episode for it? – Peter

PP: I do sometimes, but I don’t know enough about it to write an episode. Anyway I prefer to work with my own characters than with someone else’s.

Are there any plans for an adaptation of The Tiger in the Well? – Ronni

PP: Not at the moment. There was a script that someone wrote to follow the BBC productions of The Ruby in the Smoke and The Shadow in the North, but I wasn’t happy with it. Nor did I like the first two enough to be very keen to see them do a third. All in all, I was disappointed. But there we are.

Stay tuned for our October contest, coming soon!

http://www.bridgetothestars.net/news/september-contest-qa-with-philip-pullman/

Smart Pop Books is running a series of essays, 'Navigating the Golden Compass', on all aspects of Philip Pullman's trilogy. The latest, 'Dismembered Starlings and Neutered Minds' by Naomi Wood, looks at Pullman's treatment of notions of innocence and experience, especially as these concepts relate to our understanding of childhood.

In The Golden Compass, Pullman subverts our notions of innocence by first showing children’s innocence not as guiltless, but rather as uncouth, even feral—as the absence of knowledge and of culture rather than the presence of purity, love, or virtue. Lyra, the spirited heroine, is described initially as “a coarse and greedy little savage,” a “half-wild cat.” [...] And although adults may see children’s play as “pleasant,” “innocent and charming,” children are actually just as political as their elders: Lyra is part of a “rich seething stew of alliances and enmities and feuds and treaties”; as leader of her own gang of children affiliated with Jordan College, she leads the others in “deadly warfare,” delighting in physical combat and tactical victories. In her leadership ability, her physical courage, and her rhetorical power, Lyra possesses the same qualities as her parents, Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter, and has similar power to influence the people around her for good and ill. Being a child makes her no more inherently moral or immoral than any of the other individuals in the series.

http://www.bridgetothestars.net/news/essay-about-his-dark-materials-on-smart-pop-books/

Philip Pullman will be speaking at an event to raise funds for the Libraries of Brent, North London, on Wednesday the 20th of July. He will be reading from The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, talking to novelist Maggie McGee and answering questions from the audience.

The event will be at 7pm at the Queen’s Park Community School hall and tickets are £10 and can be found at the following:

* The Lexi Cinema, Chamberlayne Road, NW10
* Queens Park Books, 87 Salusbury Road, NW6 (tel. 0207 625 1008)
* L’Angolos deli, College Rd, NW10


For more information, go here.

Philip Pullman will be launching the London Literature Festival this year, on Thursday the 30th of June. The festival, which will be running for two weeks until the 14th of July, will feature other famous faces such as Alan Hollinghurst, Iain Sinclair, Liz Lochhead, Alexander McCall Smith, Michael Morpurgo, Zaha Hadid and many others.

At his event at the festival, Pullman will be reading from and discussing some of his novels, including his newest work, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Ticket prices range from £10 to £14 and are available to purchase here.

Source.

http://www.bridgetothestars.net/news/pullman-to-open-london-literature-festival/

Philip Pullman has contributed to this week’s issue of The New Statesman, a British political and cultural magazine. It is guest-edited this week by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Pullman will, in this issue, be explaining why he is a ‘Church of England atheist’.

Other contributors this week include, Terry Eagleton on secularism, Richard Curtis on the scourge of malaria; and Victoria Coren on the question of faith versus poker.

The issue, cover-dated 13 June, will go on sale in London on Thursday 9 June and in the rest of the country from Friday 10 June. International buyers can obtain copies through their website.

http://www.bridgetothestars.net/news/pullman-in-new-statesman/

Philip Pullman will be appearing at HowTheLightGetsIn, the world’s largest philosophy and music festival, in Hay-on-Wye on Sunday the 5th of June. The festival brings together over 200 philosophers, writers, musicians, politicians, artists and commentators for ten days of rigorous debate, incisive solo talks, film screenings, live performance, and late-night parties.

The Great Escape – Sunday 5th June 2011 – 4pm

From Narnia to Ankh-Morpork to Hogwarts, our exposure to the fantastical is soaring to new heights. Is fantasy simply an escape from a hostile world or a triumphant way of dealing with the realities of every day? Award-winning novelists Gwyneth Jones and Philip Pullman, stage and screen actress Emilia Fox and film director Mike Figgis join Andrew Copson for a journey beyond reality. In association with the British Humanist Association.

Advance price tickets cost £6.00, Full Price tickets are £10.00. To find out more about the festival, go here. If you’re planning on attending, let us know! We’d love to hear from you.

http://www.bridgetothestars.net/news/philip-pullman-at-hay-festival/

Philip Pullman has made it onto the finalist list of the Man Booker International Prize. The list was presented at a press conference at the University of Sydney on the 30th of March.

The judges of this year’s Man Booker International are, writer, academic and rare-book dealer Dr. Rick Gekoski, publisher, writer and critic Carmen Callil, and award-winning novelist Justin Cartwright.

When he announced the list, the judges’ chair Dr. Gekoski said, “The 2011 List of Finalists honours thirteen great writers from around the world. It is, we think, diverse, fresh and thought-provoking, and serves to remind us anew of the importance of fiction in defining both ourselves and the world in which we live. Each of these writers is a delight, and any of them would make a worthy winner.”

http://www.bridgetothestars.net/news/pullman-finalist-for-man-booker-international-prize/

Philip Pullman has revealed to BridgeToTheStars his new project: a retelling of some of the tales of the Brothers Grimm. “This isn’t a book for children only,” he shared with us. “I’m telling the best of the tales in my own voice, and I’m finding it a great purifier of narrative thinking, rather as a pianist relishes playing Bach’s preludes and fugues as a sort of palate-cleansing discipline.”

In the past Pullman has mentioned the Grimm’s Fairy Tales as one of the books that have made the most difference to his life.

http://www.bridgetothestars.net/news/pullmans-fairy-tales/

To celebrate the Guardian’s new children’s books website, Philip Pullman answered some questions asked by his fans. He spoke about his atheism, his books, his influences, and he gave some advice to aspiring writers. To read the full interview, click here.

http://www.bridgetothestars.net/news/955/