Interviews

The Man Behind the Magic: An Interview with Philip Pullman

Barnes & Noble.com: Who is your favorite character to write and why?

Philip Pullman: I like them all, of course. People are surprised when I say that I like Mrs. Coulter, but what I mean, of course, is that I like writing about her, because she’s so completely free of any moral constraint. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do, and that’s a great delight for a storyteller, because it means your story can be unconstrained, too. I’m not sure I’d like to know her in real life (well, of course I would; she’d be fascinating). Writers have always enjoyed the villains, and so do readers, if they’re honest.

B&N.com: Can you give us some insight into what daemons are? Why don’t non-humans have them? They're a fascinating idea -- I wish I had one.

PP: I was discovering more about daemons all the way through -- right up to the very end of The Amber Spyglass. And I’m sure there are other aspects of them that I haven’t discovered yet. I don’t want to say anything about them which will give away some of the plot of the final book, but I will say that the daemon is that part of you that helps you grow towards wisdom. I don’t know where the idea of them came from -- it just emerged as I was trying to begin the story. I suddenly realized that Lyra had a daemon, and it all grew out of that. Of course, the daemons had to represent something important in the meaning of the story, and not be merely picturesque; otherwise they’d just get in the way. So there is a big difference between the daemons of children and adults, because the story as a whole is about growing up, or innocence and experience.

Underlying the whole story is a myth of origin and creation, which I discovered as I wrote. I don’t make it explicit anywhere, but I relied on it all the way through. It explains where daemons come from and why we have them. I’m thinking of doing a sort of companion volume, which would be a natural place for that myth to be written down, so watch this space!

B&N.com: "It was so beautiful it was almost holy" -- this how Lyra's first impression of the Northern Lights is described in The Golden Compass. Have you ever seen the Northern Lights?

PP: No, I haven’t. But I’ve been to Edmonton in Alberta on three separate occasions, and each time it was a beautiful, clear night and the people said we were bound to see them, they turned up every night, it was just the right time of year, there was no question of it, they were here last night, you should have seen them, you could bet your life they’ll give a good show tonight, and so on and so on. And did they show up? Not a flicker. I’m beginning to think they’re just one of these travelers’s tales.

B&N.com: Why did you decide to set the story in a world that is similar to our own, but not quite the same?

PP: There are many answers.... Laziness, perhaps. I couldn’t be bothered to do enough research to set a story in the real world and get it all right, so I just used the stuff I already knew and made up the rest. That might be one answer. Or else: I was too idle to make up a complete new world, so I just made up some of it and when I ran out of energy I used some other stuff I knew about the real world. That might be another.

Another answer might be that I thought it would be more intriguing for the reader -- except that I don’t think about my readers very much, so that wouldn’t be altogether true.

Another might be that I like reading that sort of book myself, so I just did the sort of thing I liked reading. But in fact I don’t know many other books that have this sort of background, so that wouldn’t be completely true either.

Another might be that I didn’t actually choose it at all. The story came to me in this form and with this setting, and I had no say in the matter. I just had to do what it said. And that would be the truest answer, perhaps. But there’s a bit of truth in all of them.

B&N.com: Why do you think fantasy literature is so appealing to adults as well as to children?

PP: I haven’t the faintest idea. Oddly enough, it doesn’t appeal to me very much; I read very little fantasy. I prefer straightforward realism, and I like that because I can connect with it, because I feel it tells me about important things, because it’s real, because it’s true. So it’s no use asking me why fantasy appeals to other people. You’d have to ask them!

B&N.com: Did you write His Dark Materials with a specific age group in mind?

PP: No. I don’t think about the readers at all. If I think about the audience I’d like to have, I don’t think about a particular age group, or a particular gender, or a particular class or ethnic group or anything specific at all. I’d like the largest audience possible, please. When you say, “This book is for children”, what you’re understood as saying is “This book is NOT for adults.” I don’t want that. I’d like to think that I’m telling the sort of story that holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner, in the old phrase of Sir Philip Sidney. Everyone is welcome, and no one is shut out, and I hope each reader will find a tale worth spending time with.

B&N.com: The main hero of your trilogy is Lyra -- a loveable, extremely impressive girl/young woman who has a large task on her hands. It's said by the people who have insight into Lyra's importance that she must fulfill her destiny without knowing what her destiny is. Can you explain why?

PP: Because it’s her nature that has to make a choice, not her conscience. If she knows that she’s about to do something fateful, her awareness, her self-consciousness will get in the way and spoil everything. So it’s a very delicate balance that has to be kept.

B&N.com: How much will you miss the characters now that you’ve finished the story?

PP: A huge amount. I’ve lived with them for seven years; in another sense I’ve lived with them all my life because everything I’ve ever learned has gone into this book. It was very hard letting it go. I kept wanting to call it back and adjust this bit or that, but you have to let go in the end. Lyra and Will and the others are on their own now. I hope they find old friends, and make new ones.