Happy birthday to JRR Tolkien; jeers to Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman is another notable fantasy author who, alongside the likes of Michael Moorcock and Richard Morgan, has grossly missed the mark in his appraisal of The Lord of the Rings. Listening to this recent Geeks Guide to the Galaxy podcast I was dumbfounded not only by Pullman’s ignorance of The Lord of the Rings, but the gall he exhibits throwing around opinions on a work he admittedly read only once—and as a teenager. “I’ve tried to read it since, but I was unsuccessful,” Pullman says in the interview (note: the Tolkien portion starts around the 17:10 mark; its only a two minute segment or so of the interview). Admitting this fact should automatically invalidate any opinions you have on The Lord of the Rings. I was forced to read Moby Dick in high school. Had that been the only time I read it, and 40 years passed, how much would my opinions on the book matter? None, right?

But since Pullman is a big-time successful author, in the eyes of some we must take him seriously. So I’m taking this opportunity on what would be Tolkien’s 121^st birthday to show just much how much he gets wrong.

Pullman’s primary criticism of The Lord of the Rings is that it does not sufficiently deal with our world, unlike the most “successful” fantasies which deal with “some aspect of real life”. While somewhat a matter of opinion and interpretation, Pullman’s assessment is as close to flat-out wrong you can be in the subjective world of literary criticism (very high schoolish, you might say). To wit: The problem of power and possessiveness (as symbolized in the One Ring) is not an element of real life? In what universe is this the case? How about death and the pursuit of deathlessness? How about wars, and their destructiveness? How about the lessons of The Scouring of the Shire? How about the destruction of the environment, and the equivocal nature of progress? How about the fact that its author was a traumatized veteran of World War I, and that his experiences on the Somme inform its battles, its soldiers manning the walls of Minas Tirith, and the landscapes of the Dead Marshes? Are these issues not real enough for you, Mr. Pullman? This is what happens when you read a book once in high school and think you’ve got it all figured out.

Pullman also reveals a very narrow view of the purpose of fantasy novels and the characters they contain, which (he thinks) must serve a modern version of reality. The implication of his argument is that characters must be written in a certain way, conflicted with self-doubt and petty day to day preoccupations; older forms of literature that feature larger than life heroes, or modern novels which derive their inspiration from these older sources (such as LOTR) are therefore lesser in some regard. For example, Pullman claims that the only interesting character in the entirety of Tolkien’s universe is Gollum, and the rest are “cardboard” and “not sufficiently like him to be interesting.” But again he shows his lack of familiarity with the novel: Any half-perceptive reader will find several fallible, in many respects very modern human characters, including Boromir, Denethor, and Saruman. Also, as I have argued before, the vast cast of characters of The Lord of the Rings, summed together, represent all the facets of humanity.

But I also don’t find any of the non-conflicted characters “cardboard”; far from it. You don’t forget cardboard characters, and it’s hard to forget the dogged loyalty of Sam, or the cutting but good natured wit of Gandalf. Sure, Aragorn might not be Leopold Bloom, an angst-ridden, tortured soul whose inner journey we follow over hundreds of pages, but we love him nonetheless.

Petty aside: If Tolkien has cardboard characters, Pullman has committed the far more egregious sin of having a cardboard agenda. His last book in his “celebrated” His Dark Materials trilogy quickly devolves into a naked polemic against religion, to the detriment of any story he was trying to tell.

Pullman also complains that The Lord of the Rings doesn’t include romance or sex, so that too makes it a lesser work. To leave out that aspect “in a book of that length seems like cheating,” Pullman complains. What a load of horse shit! So all novels need to have this element, then, or else they “cheat.” It’s not enough to be inundated with the sex lives of celebrities 24 hours a day, our heroic fantasy must embrace this noble aspect of humanity as well, apparently. I wish one of the hosts on the Geeks Guide to the Galaxy followed up with this question: But Mr. Pullman, where is the sex in Huckleberry Finn or Moby Dick? Surely Melville was also “cheating” not to include a romantic relationship on the Pequod, right Philip?

Anyway, happy birthday to JRRT, and may he not have to endure the orcish criticism of the Philip Pullmans of the world in the Blessed Realm.