by Travis
Ugh…I’ve made several attempts to record pubcast #40 – a discussion on the relationship between an author and her characters – and there’s something wrong with my sound. I tried to fix a problem with sound on my Audio Hijack program by deleting a few files from the “Library.” Apparently, I deleted one too many, or there’s some other problem I don’t know about.
This will probably mean I need to schedule a trip to the Apple store to get it taken care of, which means pubcasts will be even more delayed. I’m planning two for December if I can get things working – the one I just mentioned, and one analyzing the plot of Deathly Hallows around Christmastime.
In the meantime, keep an eye on Harry Potter Prognostications: They’ve asked me to appear on their upcoming show, in which we’ll be discussing The Golden Compass, including a compare/contrast of the way Pullman and Rowling have talked about the role of religion in their books. This means that over the next five days, I’ll be giving myself a crash course in Pullman, including the reading of the entire first book of the trilogy.
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I’m the co-author od PIED PIPER OF ATHEISM: PHILIP PULLMAN AND CHILDREN’S FANTASY (Ignatius Press). Our website http://www.atheismforchildren.com has a lot of links that you might find helpful.
Be aware the Pullman’s trilogy gets a lot darker and more strident in the second and third book. One thing that struck me as a significant difference between Pullman and Rowling is that at the end of his triloy, all the couples are dead or parted but HP ends with a round of happy, fruitful marriages.
Travis, please contact me via John Granger. I’d be happy tp share information.
Sandra, thanks for contacting me. I’ll check out your site later this week and send an email to John in the near future. I’ve got a few other projects to finish up first.
I’m just over 250 pages into The Golden Compass, and so far, I have to agree with those who say his prose is excellent. He really is a very calm, measured, mature writer, and I only have minimal complaints (every once in a while there’s such a blatant cliche that it seems way out of place…though Harold Bloom might think that criticism rather ironic coming from a Rowling fan).
The biggest problem I’m having with the book is predictability. His “set-ups” are not at subtle as Rowling’s, and thus far it’s been pretty easy to predict the “pay-offs.” Of course, there are still a lot of pages to go. He also may not have the same surprise-goal in mind that Rowling did, either. And even if I can guess pretty easily what’s coming, he’s set up a good enough plot that it doesn’t matter; there’s excitement to find out what’s coming anyway.
The atheistic stuff is under the surface, but I’m not quite convinced of the danger yet. There’s a lot of the series to go, of course. One of the clincher points will be, “What God is Pullman trying to kill?”
More updates as I keep reading.