“among other things”

“The most impressive thing about meeting Philip Pullman is how unimposing he is. Renowned as a master of mythologies, casting a cultural shadow that stretches from Hollywood films to intellectual debates about atheism and faith, you’d expect his Oxfordshire house to be some kind of remote, brooding mansion. Instead, I ring on the door of a roomy but low-key suburban household, feet away from the main road in a commuter-belt village. Tall, diffident, if a little wary at first, Pullman shows me to the comfiest sofa by the fire, and makes a pot of his trademark tea (three spoons of Assam to one of Lapsang Souchong). Rather than a magus or self-absorbed thinker, the author of the world-famous fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials reminds me more of a circumspect but kindly English teacher — which, of course, he was for many years.

     Any residual wariness falls away as Pullman takes me out to his small woodworking shed. He apologises that it is a bit of a mess, but it looks like a cherished — almost fairytale — workshop to me, with its racks of shiny chisels and rounded mallets. When we return to the fire, Pullman tells me that he made the table-cum-stool in front of it himself, his first bit of upholstering. More impressive still is the rocking horse in the centre of his study, surrounded by stacks of books. The wood and gesso creation took him years to make, but it’s now ready for Christmas and the arrival of his grandchildren. Almost immediately, he’s remembering his own childhood, with Christmases at his grandfather’s rectory in Norfolk, and talking about the early death of his father, a Spitfire pilot. […]
     ‘Among other things’ would be a great motto for Pullman’s ambivalence (or should that be multivalence?) about matters of belief, fiction and science. He is of the old school of secularism which holds that faith should be kept out of the public sphere, but still refuses the kind of inquisition that seeks to root out mistaken beliefs: ‘What you feel and believe are private to you and belong to nobody else,’ he counters. ‘What you do in the public sphere is what’s important.’”
— Peter Jukes, aeon
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KIDDY LIT DISSED — PULLMAN DISTRESSED

From: YaleBooks

“‘We love great literature,’ it said. ‘We are excited by writing that changes the reader, and ultimately – even if it is in a very small way – the world. We love writing that is full of ideas, but that is also playful, funny and affecting. You won't write mass-market thrillers or children's fiction on our programmes. You'll be encouraged to look deep inside yourself for your own truth and your own experiences, and also outside yourself at the contemporary world around you. Then you'll work out how to turn what you find into writing that has depth, risk and originality but is always compelling and readable.’
     By the time I saw this, a number of children's writers including Philip Reeve had already protested. At first, the University couldn't see the problem. I tweeted the screenshot so everyone could see it and judge for themselves. It was picked up by the Guardian Children's Books feed, then by writers such as Patrick Ness and Michael Rosen, and is still being retweeted every few minutes, often accompanied by expressions of outrage and dismay.”

Earthsea, by Ursula LeGuin, is
considered one of the best books ever
written for young adults.

— Philip Pullman, The Guardian (Books Blog)
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"… habit is a wonderful friend."

From: John Atkinson Fine & Rare Books

"…'I soon realised that English at Oxford was a different sort of thing, and I wasn’t very good at it, and furthermore that it would be of little or no help if I wanted to write myself.'

     In retrospect, Pullman would have 'stopped doing an intellectual subject altogether and taken up cabinet-making. I think I’d have been quite good at that. I would still have written, of course, but I’d have been able to earn a living doing something physical and craftsman-like, which, much later in life, I discovered I liked a lot.'
     'If such a thing as a creative writing course had existed in those days, anywhere, I would no doubt have applied for that. But,' he continues, 'I don’t think that would have done me much good either. We teach ourselves the most important things, or we don’t learn them at all.' I ask him what he thinks would constitute a good creative writing course. After a few moments he comes up with a suggestion. There is an old superstition, he says, that if you sleep on top of a specific mountain in Wales you wake up either mad or a poet. Why don’t we pack aspiring writers off to Cader Idris with a sleeping bag and see what happens?
     Despite a successful career, Philip Pullman is remarkably humble about writing as a profession. He doesn’t believe in inspiration, claiming it hits him only two or three days a year. 'The only thing that makes you a writer is the habit of writing every day.' He laughs at writer’s block – 'I write three pages a day, by hand, as I have done for forty-five years. Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s hard, but habit is a wonderful friend.' For him, 'the major edit comes later.' What is important is the discipline."
— April Peake, Molly Brown, Cherwell.org
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Bodleian Magic

"The new display, ‘Magical Books: from the Middle Ages to Middle-earth’, focuses on five celebrated children’s fantasy authors. As well as Tolkien, it will include work by CS Lewis, Susan Cooper, Alan Garner and Philip Pullman.
     Delving into its collection of authors’ papers, the Bodleian display includes some of the original artwork for The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, as well as the manuscript of The Fall of Arthur, a little known Tolkien poem that was unfinished when he died. It is published for the first time today [May 23, 2013] to coincide with the opening of the exhibition.
     Other 'magical' objects on show include Philip Pullman’s alethiometer (the golden compass from His Dark Materials trilogy), and one of Alan Garner’s original 'owl service' plates from the book of the same name."
— Jolyon Attwooll, The Telegraph
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"A new JRR Tolkien epic is being published today. The Oxford University professor wrote The Fall of Arthur in the 1930s, before he started work on The Hobbit.
     The story starts with the legendary King Arthur going to war in ‘Saxon lands’ before returning home.
     Its existence was revealed in the 1970s but its publication was then overtaken by other posthumous releases.
     Shaun Gunner, chairman of the Tolkien Society, said: 'We’re all used to seeing Tolkien’s stories set in Middle Earth, but this is the first time we’ve ever seen Tolkien write about legendary Britain.'"
— Oxford Mail
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Mid-list Crisis

"Sometimes it seems as if the only writer more miserable than an unpublished author is a published one. 

     When two authors speak, it is customary -- almost expected -- for them eventually to work their way around to the shocking incompetence of their publisher. The publisher screwed up the cover. It didn't get the books to the signing venue. It won't share sales information in real time. It expected the author to do all her own marketing. It overpriced the ebook. It's not interested in building the author's career. […]
     It's not really every author who feels this way. It's only every author on the mid-list. If those big-selling brand-name authors are crying about publishing, they're crying all the way to the bank. Big publishing serves them well.
     Mid-list authors, on the other hand, are the perennial orphans of Big Pub. When they fail commercially -- which is most of the time -- they are denigrated, pitied or, worst of all, ignored. On rare occasions when they find themselves elevated to commercial success, suddenly every publisher who ever gave them a nickel shows up claiming paternity for their achievement."
— J.E. Fishman, Huffington Post
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"The squeeze on mid-list authors has been a big story in publishing for years now. It's impossible even to keep track of which authors have dropped off the radar. Publishers don't announce it, and the last thing most writers want to do is broadcast the fact they can no longer get published. Yet, it seems reasonable to estimate that dozens (maybe hundreds) are disappearing every year – judging by persistent industry chatter, not to mention occasional unsettling revelations, such as the fact that many writers have been moved to take legal action against publishers trying to escape their contract commitments.
     My instinctive reaction to this annihilation of the mid-list is to blame the publishers. Quick profits are being put in front of the long-term gains that come from nurturing and developing talent. To give the most frequently cited example, Ian Rankin and Philip Pullman both published many books before hitting the bestseller lists. Would they survive today? It seems unlikely."
— Sam Jordison, The Guardian
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Fantastical Realist

"A new book from the - hugely prolific - Godmother of British fantasy fiction [Diana Wynne Jones] is always a cause for celebration in Verbal HQ. Long before Philip Pullman’s Lyra first blundered her way into a parallel world, Wynne Jones’s characters had them explored, mapped and settled. Before Harry Potter and Hogwarts were a twinkle in J K Rowling’s eye, this underappreciated author was penning captivating stories about boy (and girl) wizards that enchanted any child lucky enough to stumble across her novels in the local library or bookshop."
— Verbal
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"Like many good writers, Diana Wynne Jones, who [...] died [March 26, 2011] aged 76 of cancer, worked for long years in relative obscurity, in her case sustained as a children's fantasy author by a modestly sized but devoted young readership. That obscurity provided the freedom to develop her own voice without the distractions of having to build on perceived success. By the time real success found her, in Jones's case almost by chance, she was a mature writer with a solid and varied body of work that was ready to be appreciated by a much bigger new audience. Her intelligent and beautifully written fantasies are of seminal importance for their bridging of the gap between 'traditional' children's fantasy, as written by CS Lewis or E Nesbit, and the more politically and socially aware children's literature of the modern period, where authors such as Jacqueline Wilson or Melvyn Burgess explicitly confront problems of divorce, drugs and delinquency.
     [...] Both [her] parents were intellectuals and progressive educators, but were stingy not only with money but also with warmth and attention. The skinflint father bought the children a complete set of Arthur Ransome books as Christmas presents, but doled them out at a rate of one a year. In self-defence Jones began to write stories for her sisters and herself. When the second world war broke out Jones and her family were evacuated to the Lake District, eventually living in the house once inhabited by the Altounyan children, on whom Ransome had based his Swallows and Amazons series. The great children's author was still around, one day complaining angrily that the children were making too much noise.
     On another occasion, Diana's younger sister and a friend had their faces slapped by a second Lakeland author who hated children but who was rich and famous because of them: Beatrix Potter. Jones's distinctive scepticism about conventional children's fiction must have started to set in early."
— Christopher Priest, The Guardian
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Books Be Gone

British Library gate (photo: Wikimedia Commons)

“[...] 'Closing libraries is the behaviour of a debased culture,' [Philip Pullman] adds. 'Libraries are not just a source of books. Many of us feel that they symbolise something more, that Britain is a civilised place. And when part of our civilisation is being destroyed, we have to stand up against the barbarians.'
Scathing talk from 64-year-old Pullman – a teacher who only took up writing full-time when his Dark Materials trilogy began to attract millions of children and adults – who admits he is 'apoplectic with rage' at the treatment of libraries in the current round of [UK] public-spending cuts. He is angered, above all, by the way more than 400 libraries around the country have been earmarked for closure." — Peter Stanford, The Telegraph
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Library of Alexandria by Ania Gilmore

"At its peak, the Library of Alexandria may have had over a half a million items in its collection. The downfall of the library is unclear. Most say that part of it was destroyed by fire when Caesar invaded in 48 BC, and declared war. But in the end the library also deteriorated over time, at the same time the Greek Empire was beginning to fall during the third century A.D."— Celsus: A Library Architecture Resource
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"As a passionate believer in the democracy of reading, I don't think it's the task of the author of a book to tell the reader what it means. [...] I'm not in the message business; I'm in the 'Once upon a time' business." — Philip Pullman
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