From: "Tony Ellis" <LittleSense@necronomicon.co.uk>
Subject: (urth) Re: scattered shots
Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2001 16:45:03 +0100

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

> > I would hope that a child reading Pullman's book might be very
> > interested to learn that a word used by Christianity to mean an
> > incarnation of evil originally meant something as harmless as
> > "spirit",
>
> I'm inclined to agree. Unfortunately, no child will learn that fact by
> reading THE GOLDEN COMPASS. The word is just used with no particular
> explanation. (I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it were explained
> when Lyra shows up in our world in the later books, but that doesn't
> help this book.) So I can't really accept that Pullman had such a
> paedogogical goal.

Hey, -my- hypothetical child occasionally looks words up when it finds them
being used in an unexpected manner, or asks a grown-up. I can't help it if
your hypothetical child is too lazy. :-)

As for Pullman's alleged "childishness"... We're getting down to personal
taste here, and it seems pointless to argue about that. You say "childish",
I say "pleasingly irreverent".

The main thing is that you're still enjoying the story. I hope you enjoy the
other two books as well.




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