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Archive Number 3616 | ||
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Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 18:15:41 EST
X-cc: storyflute@hotmail.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bobby Avstreih asked me to post this for him: Though I prefer to spend my time and money away from any media except poetry anthologies, I always enjoy reading about the stories that are popular in our culture. Obviously being out of the desert and back caring for mom, I have too much free time and issues of NYTimes, plus computer access. Since the List has been involved in discussing the lack of "happy endings" in certain types of stories, I want to share this with you. The front page of the Jan.25 "Arts and Leisure" section features an article about Phillip[ Pullman and his children's fantasy trilogy "His Dark Materials" (a title taken from Milton's "Paradise Lost"). Apparently it is on its way to becoming the next "Harry Potter"/"Lord of the Rings" blockbuster. I was never impressed with either of those series, and agree with the London reviewer who found J.K.Rowland's books "increasingly derivative, formulaic, flatly written ...". Without the characters of Sam and Gollum, "The Rings" would be the same stale rehash, for me. So, I am not a fan of this insipid style of heroic fantasy (though I loved these pictureless comic books, the Sword and Sorcery genre, as a teen and in college). With this as a caveat, I find myself very excited in reading about the "Dark Materials" series, now being produced in a stage version by Nicholas Hytner for London's National Theater. Particularly exciting to story-tellers involved in trying to join creativity with healing (instead of just repeating church or new age or whatever propaganda) is Pullman's ability "to offer both spellbound wonder and sudden moments of deep emotion that cut at the heart like the subtlest of knives". Here is the end of the article, which is about the place and image of Death in this children's trilogy: "even critics who didn't like the theater production have loved the scenes that take place in the prison-like World of the Dead, where the downtrodden, suffering deceased are gently released into the outside world, where they feel a moment of unspeakable ecstasy before dissolving gratefully into the earth and the air. 'It's astonishing how uncompromising it is in introducing kids to an alternative mythology of death,' Mr Hytner said, 'how it finds a harsh consolation in the notion that death is death, and that the worst possible thing, the most desperate thing, is that there is some kind of afterlife. It's thrilling to see kids as young as 9 and 10 sitting, riveted, by that and feeling perhaps relieved by the notion of oblivion." I know of a few ancient Greek and Hebrew references to "the afterlife" as a land of dismal shades. What thrills me most is not Pullman's religious view, but his daring creativity in being so simple and direct and unafraid of Death as an appropriate theme in children's stories, without the need for "happy endings". Its NOT about the heroic survival of the survivors or other "life must go on" homilies, but plain old Death itself. Hope this stimulates some creative curiosity and daring in others, too. Bobby ------------------------------- To Unsubscribe from Healingstory send the message: unsubscribe healingstory to: listserv@maelstrom.stjohns.edu ------------------------------- | ||