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> The books I could never read again: Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet ... found the mixture altogether too rich That's pretty rich in itself, coming from

> The books I could never read again: Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet ... found the mixture altogether too rich That's pretty rich in itself, coming from the author of "His Dark Materials," which whether you like it or not, is so metaphorically and allegorically over-rich with respect to the author's obvious angst and disdain for Catholicism specifically, and organized Christianity generally, as to be ... well, almost un-rereadable by any thoughtful person.

samsari 4y ago
I also found His Dark Materials a lot harder to read the second time, when I was in my 20s, compared to the first time I read it in my teens. That said, I have to admit he's grown up a lot further since then; his new series, The Book of Dust, which is set 12 years earlier is a lot more mature in its themes.
- CatWChainsaw 4y ago
  I don't think the entire Book of Dust trilogy will be in the past. La Belle Sauvage is, but The Secret Commonwealth followed an older Lyra to the steppes.
moomin 4y ago
I’m more concerned about the fact the three books barely hang together into a single narrative than that he’s determined to ape CSLewis in the opposite direction. (For the record, I consider Lewis the better writer, but grief the “Simple Christianity” can get a bit much at times.)
stevenwoo 4y ago
You cut out the rest of the sentence which I think is important "but I shall never disparage anything I once loved, because the love was real." I actually had trouble reading the His Dark Materials trilogy because I was so unfamiliar with some of the details of Roman Catholicism until some people helped me with it but it's no different to me than almost any other fantasy/science fiction where the religious stuff comes to the fore ala A Canticle for Leibowitz or the Dune series. I had more issues where there are several points in the His Dark Material trilogy where in lieu of showing or plot actions illustrating something there are long exposition dumps that are disguised as overheard conversation which felt like a crutch.
- indigochill 4y ago
  > other fantasy/science fiction where the religious stuff comes to the fore ala A Canticle for Leibowitz or the Dune series My feeling is HDM is to Dune what Eragon is to Lord of the Rings. The former in these comparisons don't apply much imagination to their real-world influences. The latter in these comparisons are still clearly inspired by real-world themes and tropes, but they're more imaginative in how they combine and diverge from their inspirations, probably owing to a richer depth of experiences and influences that the respective authors had been exposed to.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > My feeling is HDM is to Dune what Eragon is to Lord of the Rings. This is an interesting comparison. I have not read Eragon, but I have read reviews that say it's a transparent reskinning of Star Wars. Assuming that's true, the form of an analogy between Eragon and Lord of the Rings would be Eragon : Lord of the Rings :: Star Wars : The Sword of Shannara But that's one of those somewhat-malformed analogies where the relationships cross the :: instead of mirroring each other to either side of it. Like "Shakespeare : Tolstoy :: Romeo and Juliet : War and Peace"; there isn't actually a relationship between Shakespeare and Tolstoy, but if you have three of the elements, you can force the fourth.
joe__f 4y ago
I have read HDM a number of times, as a child and as an adult. As an adult I noticed the points you're making and had to read around them a little. I still love the books and have learnt many things from reading them.
setgree 4y ago
I consider myself a thoughtful person and I enjoyed reading HDM as recently as 2020 ;) There is no need to broadly insult everyone who likes a book. Each to her own. Having said that, I felt ‘the golden compass’ holds up much better than the sequels — better character development, less didactic, amazing word building. (Edited to avoid potential spoilers)
- jgrahamc 4y ago
  I didn’t feel that she was devoted to him. She was someone experiencing a first love, she’d been through a lot, she was losing the ability to read the alethiometer, and Will had the knife.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > amazing word building There are some misfires. And though I assume you meant to say "world building", the word building is a particular weak point. He decided that, in an alternate history where the word for electricity derived from the Arabic word for amber rather than the Greek one, it was perfectly plausible for the modern form of an original "anbar" to be "anbar". That can't happen. If you want to see a series of novels with strong word building, check out Katharine Kerr's Deverry series. ;D
antiterra 4y ago
I mean, have you read Durrell’s Alexandra Quartet? It definitely has a sort of melodramatic angst to it akin to the tone of Twilight. I like it regardless, but I definitely can understand the his opinion.
VerminOctopus1 4y ago
[flagged]
- walnutclosefarm 4y ago
  Thanks. I like my ego too. Seriously, though, I agree, the phrasing I used was a little over-wrought itself. My apologies. My point really was that if Pullman believes that Durrell's book was "too rich" to be re-read by him, he should understand that the limitations in Durrell's work that lead him to that conclusion are over-present in his own His Dark Materials.
- dang 4y ago
  Please don't take threads further into flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
simonh 4y ago
I’m genuinely troubled by the implied suggestion that thoughtful people should avoid, or be put off by works they either disagree with or find uncomfortable, or might dislike for any reason. Anything can be read and analysed by a thoughtful person. I visited a relative in hospital recently and found myself listening to the audio of a super-trashy TV show a patient in the next bed was watching. It was fascinating. The acting was wooden and stilted as though being read out from the page, the dialogue was so direct and explicit it was painful “You know why I hate him so much, because he cheated me out of my inheritance!”. It was almost Mexican soap opera level. And yet it was captivating, because I found myself wondering about the business model that produces such material, who the audience is, what it’s like to be an actor on a drama like that. Even if something is terrible, there’s so much to analyse to discover why it’s terrible, and why some people might like it anyway.
- taylorius 4y ago
  That was a bit of a switcheroo. Starting off exhorting us to not dismiss creative works just because they might seem lowbrow, and then revealing that the "entertainment value" you got from a soap opera was to try to imagine how anyone could profitably produce such rubbish! :-D
  - simonh 4y ago
    I’m not in any way struggling to imagine it, and I’m not at all dismissing it, that’s not what I mean at all. There is no switch. Clearly people do produce content like that and it has a ready audience. I have no problem with that, it gave me a newfound appreciation for the dynamics that make such material successful and its economics.
    - taylorius 4y ago
      The switch I was trying to describe was from an appreciation of the content as a consumer of it - to appreciating its existence as an external observer of the process that created it. There is an implicit dismissal of the content itself in the second one, that I found funny. I was trying to be lighthearted, anyway... :-)
dang 4y ago
Ok, but please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. It just ruins threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- walnutclosefarm 4y ago
  Fair enough, but I wasn't commenting in any way on religion, but on the over-wrought quality of Pullman's allegory. At least, that was my intent. Apologies to all if I missed fire.
  - gjm11 4y ago
    For what it's worth, I'm a curmudgeonly atheist who found that HDM steadily decreased in quality over the course of the three books as it ramped up the anti-religious emphasis. It's definitely not the case that the only people who find it annoying are those who feel that their own religion is being attacked.
    - walnutclosefarm 4y ago
      Me too!
  - dang 4y ago
    Ok, sorry for misreading you!
- barneygale 4y ago
  Did you reply to the wrong comment? walnutclosefarm wasn't commenting on religion and nothing in their comment approached flaming.
- oska 4y ago
  Also chiming in to say that while I can appreciate your concern that walnutclosefarm's comment may have had the potential to kick off a 'religious flamewar', I don't see their comment as being in that vein. I saw it as a criticism on the quality of Pullman's writing only.
imajoredinecon 4y ago
Dunno what I’d think if I reread them now, but when I was 8 I (1) devoured the whole trilogy for the characters/worldbuilding and (2) didn’t notice the religious metaphor. Seems like this might be the way to evaluate a kids’ book?
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > (2) didn’t notice the religious metaphor. There are processions of angels bearing the corpse of a dead god. The alethiometer is specifically stated to function through divine grace. It's not so much a religious metaphor as an out-and-out religious story. What's not to notice?

samsari 4y ago

I also found His Dark Materials a lot harder to read the second time, when I was in my 20s, compared to the first time I read it in my teens. That said, I have to admit he's grown up a lot further since then; his new series, The Book of Dust, which is set 12 years earlier is a lot more mature in its themes.

CatWChainsaw 4y ago
I don't think the entire Book of Dust trilogy will be in the past. La Belle Sauvage is, but The Secret Commonwealth followed an older Lyra to the steppes.

moomin 4y ago

I’m more concerned about the fact the three books barely hang together into a single narrative than that he’s determined to ape CSLewis in the opposite direction. (For the record, I consider Lewis the better writer, but grief the “Simple Christianity” can get a bit much at times.)

stevenwoo 4y ago

You cut out the rest of the sentence which I think is important "but I shall never disparage anything I once loved, because the love was real." I actually had trouble reading the His Dark Materials trilogy because I was so unfamiliar with some of the details of Roman Catholicism until some people helped me with it but it's no different to me than almost any other fantasy/science fiction where the religious stuff comes to the fore ala A Canticle for Leibowitz or the Dune series. I had more issues where there are several points in the His Dark Material trilogy where in lieu of showing or plot actions illustrating something there are long exposition dumps that are disguised as overheard conversation which felt like a crutch.

indigochill 4y ago
> other fantasy/science fiction where the religious stuff comes to the fore ala A Canticle for Leibowitz or the Dune series My feeling is HDM is to Dune what Eragon is to Lord of the Rings. The former in these comparisons don't apply much imagination to their real-world influences. The latter in these comparisons are still clearly inspired by real-world themes and tropes, but they're more imaginative in how they combine and diverge from their inspirations, probably owing to a richer depth of experiences and influences that the respective authors had been exposed to.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > My feeling is HDM is to Dune what Eragon is to Lord of the Rings. This is an interesting comparison. I have not read Eragon, but I have read reviews that say it's a transparent reskinning of Star Wars. Assuming that's true, the form of an analogy between Eragon and Lord of the Rings would be Eragon : Lord of the Rings :: Star Wars : The Sword of Shannara But that's one of those somewhat-malformed analogies where the relationships cross the :: instead of mirroring each other to either side of it. Like "Shakespeare : Tolstoy :: Romeo and Juliet : War and Peace"; there isn't actually a relationship between Shakespeare and Tolstoy, but if you have three of the elements, you can force the fourth.

joe__f 4y ago

I have read HDM a number of times, as a child and as an adult. As an adult I noticed the points you're making and had to read around them a little. I still love the books and have learnt many things from reading them.

setgree 4y ago

I consider myself a thoughtful person and I enjoyed reading HDM as recently as 2020 ;) There is no need to broadly insult everyone who likes a book. Each to her own. Having said that, I felt ‘the golden compass’ holds up much better than the sequels — better character development, less didactic, amazing word building. (Edited to avoid potential spoilers)

jgrahamc 4y ago
I didn’t feel that she was devoted to him. She was someone experiencing a first love, she’d been through a lot, she was losing the ability to read the alethiometer, and Will had the knife.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
thaumasiotes 4y ago
> amazing word building There are some misfires. And though I assume you meant to say "world building", the word building is a particular weak point. He decided that, in an alternate history where the word for electricity derived from the Arabic word for amber rather than the Greek one, it was perfectly plausible for the modern form of an original "anbar" to be "anbar". That can't happen. If you want to see a series of novels with strong word building, check out Katharine Kerr's Deverry series. ;D

antiterra 4y ago

I mean, have you read Durrell’s Alexandra Quartet? It definitely has a sort of melodramatic angst to it akin to the tone of Twilight. I like it regardless, but I definitely can understand the his opinion.

VerminOctopus1 4y ago

[flagged]

walnutclosefarm 4y ago
Thanks. I like my ego too. Seriously, though, I agree, the phrasing I used was a little over-wrought itself. My apologies. My point really was that if Pullman believes that Durrell's book was "too rich" to be re-read by him, he should understand that the limitations in Durrell's work that lead him to that conclusion are over-present in his own His Dark Materials.
dang 4y ago
Please don't take threads further into flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

simonh 4y ago

I’m genuinely troubled by the implied suggestion that thoughtful people should avoid, or be put off by works they either disagree with or find uncomfortable, or might dislike for any reason. Anything can be read and analysed by a thoughtful person. I visited a relative in hospital recently and found myself listening to the audio of a super-trashy TV show a patient in the next bed was watching. It was fascinating. The acting was wooden and stilted as though being read out from the page, the dialogue was so direct and explicit it was painful “You know why I hate him so much, because he cheated me out of my inheritance!”. It was almost Mexican soap opera level. And yet it was captivating, because I found myself wondering about the business model that produces such material, who the audience is, what it’s like to be an actor on a drama like that. Even if something is terrible, there’s so much to analyse to discover why it’s terrible, and why some people might like it anyway.

taylorius 4y ago
That was a bit of a switcheroo. Starting off exhorting us to not dismiss creative works just because they might seem lowbrow, and then revealing that the "entertainment value" you got from a soap opera was to try to imagine how anyone could profitably produce such rubbish! :-D
- simonh 4y ago
  I’m not in any way struggling to imagine it, and I’m not at all dismissing it, that’s not what I mean at all. There is no switch. Clearly people do produce content like that and it has a ready audience. I have no problem with that, it gave me a newfound appreciation for the dynamics that make such material successful and its economics.
  - taylorius 4y ago
    The switch I was trying to describe was from an appreciation of the content as a consumer of it - to appreciating its existence as an external observer of the process that created it. There is an implicit dismissal of the content itself in the second one, that I found funny. I was trying to be lighthearted, anyway... :-)

dang 4y ago

Ok, but please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. It just ruins threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

walnutclosefarm 4y ago
Fair enough, but I wasn't commenting in any way on religion, but on the over-wrought quality of Pullman's allegory. At least, that was my intent. Apologies to all if I missed fire.
- gjm11 4y ago
  For what it's worth, I'm a curmudgeonly atheist who found that HDM steadily decreased in quality over the course of the three books as it ramped up the anti-religious emphasis. It's definitely not the case that the only people who find it annoying are those who feel that their own religion is being attacked.
  - walnutclosefarm 4y ago
    Me too!
- dang 4y ago
  Ok, sorry for misreading you!
barneygale 4y ago
Did you reply to the wrong comment? walnutclosefarm wasn't commenting on religion and nothing in their comment approached flaming.
oska 4y ago
Also chiming in to say that while I can appreciate your concern that walnutclosefarm's comment may have had the potential to kick off a 'religious flamewar', I don't see their comment as being in that vein. I saw it as a criticism on the quality of Pullman's writing only.

imajoredinecon 4y ago

Dunno what I’d think if I reread them now, but when I was 8 I (1) devoured the whole trilogy for the characters/worldbuilding and (2) didn’t notice the religious metaphor. Seems like this might be the way to evaluate a kids’ book?

thaumasiotes 4y ago
> (2) didn’t notice the religious metaphor. There are processions of angels bearing the corpse of a dead god. The alethiometer is specifically stated to function through divine grace. It's not so much a religious metaphor as an out-and-out religious story. What's not to notice?