Lyra, who is a terrific storyteller and whose quick-thinking and skillful lies get her out of trouble throughout the series, begins to spin one of her best tales, when “Without a cry of warning, the harpy launched herself at Lyra, claws outstretched. . . . ‘Liar! Liar!’ the harpy was screaming. ‘Liar!’” Later, though, when Lyra recounts to the dead spirit of a little girl true stories of her childhood and travels to help the girl remember what the world of the living is like, Lyra looks up to see the harpies listening in, “solemn and spellbound.” Why?
“Because it was true,” said No-Name. “Because she spoke the truth. Because it was nourishing. Because it was feeding us. Because we couldn’t help it. Because it was true. Because we had no idea there was anything but wickedness. Because it brought us news of the world and the sun and the wind and the rain. Because it was true.”Though it is heavy-handed, I found this a powerful image, the putrid harpies enthralled by simple truths well told. Even the monsters in Pullman’s world are attracted by innocence and truth. Even they are not beyond redemption, are in need of true stories. This passage reveals Pullman’s philosophy of literature to be identical with the “true myth” philosophy of Lewis and Tolkien. And if the Christian myth actually is true, you would expect a gifted storyteller trying to tell a true story to arrive at many Christian conclusions about the nature of the world we see.
The author thinks Pullman's not as dangerous as Pullman would like to think:
The Christian myth has such a powerful hold over our narrative imagination that it is probably impossible to write a believable epic, especially one about the Last Things, without relying on it extensively. Pullman challenges the most fantastic and yet most persuasive parts of the Christian myth—Creation, the Fall, Sin, Death, Heaven, Hell—and one credits him for gumption. If his alternative were more compelling, I would recommend parents keep their children away. (Pullman has just signed to do a “reference work” called The Book of Dust which will lay out the creation myth in full, and thus probably won’t be appropriate—or interesting—for children.)
As is, I can fairly characterize His Dark Materials in this fashion: imagine if at the beginning of the world Satan’s rebellion had been successful, that he had reigned for two thousand years, and that a messiah was necessary to conquer lust and the spirit of domination with innocence, humility, and generous love at great personal cost. Such a story is not subversive of Christianity, it is almost Christian, even if only implicitly and imperfectly. But implicit and imperfect Christianity is often our lot in life, and Pullman has unintentionally created a marvelous depiction of many of the human ideals Christians hold dear.
I have no opinion; just throwing out an alternative view. Did Christ not promise Christians they could drink poison and handle vipers and not be harmed? Curtsy: Happy Catholic
Update: Turns out the article posted above was part of a discussion First Things ran at the time. The other two entries are here (Sarah Hinlicky) and here (Alan Jacobs), the latter of which, combined with our ninme's live-blogging reaction as she reads so we don't have to, pretty much puts me (and therefore my children) off the books. They sound tedious and pretentious.
