My son loves it when we pretend my hand is a frog. He has no trouble understanding that my hand is two things at once: a talking frog and his mother’s hand. In fact, the dual identity makes the interaction more fun. Why can’t we give kids more credit? Their innate understanding of the imagination and the role it plays in fiction is a perfectly rational state of mind.
Perhaps the problem is that Dawkins lacks imagination himself. It is interesting that he doesn't seem to have a similar animus against Philip Pullman's work. Is that because Pullman is an avowed atheist and anti-Christian, I wonder.
You know, Pullman is an atheist himself, but I've always thought his books really weren't the atheist anti-C.S. Lewis diatribes some cheer or jeer. They're much more Gnostic than atheistic, IMHO. But I'm hardly an expert; I'm just about the only person in the history of forever who found them tedious and boring and not at all the breath-stealing opus they're lauded as.
ReplyDeleteFrank (W) - maybe the answer to your question is that Richard Dawkins has read Philip Pullman but he has not read J K Rowling. I hope he does before he writes his book about her work (and other works), then I don't mind what he says, but much ignorant comment is made about books and other things without the person having read the source material about which they are commenting.
ReplyDeleteFrank (in comments) - I found the second two books in the Northern Lights (AKA Golden Compass) triology disappointing. But the first I thought superb, not least for its bravery in having both parents as evil and in not faltering from that path into the sentiment that so often mars books in which children feature. But the second two books are too unfocused, contain too many characters and strive for effect. (The start of the second, when Will is still in his normal environment, is excellent I think, and there are certainly moments in both books which are good.)
As a whole, the Philip Pullman series is nothing on the seamless logical and emotional construcution of J K Rowling's seven HP books (whatever one might say about her writing style).
I had thought of that, Maxine. Though one wonders why Dawkins would say what he has prior to reading the books. He doesn't exactly seem to be approaching the Potter books with an open mind.
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