Posted by Helen on: 08.14.2007 /
I ran across this quote by Philip Pullman (an agnostic/atheist author of novels for children and adolescents) the other day
We don’t need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do’s and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.
Comment by: Benjamin ady
1indeed. another area where the postmodernists and the emergent church crowd definitely get it right. Story is more important and inherently better that … “curriculum” or systematic theology.
Loved Tony Campolo’s “Let me tell you a story”, which touches on this.
Comment by: seekingsomething
2Pullman said:
That sent shivers down my spine as I read it. Yes, exactly!
Conversation with fellow readers is always good too…. ;)
Comment by: Helen
3Benjamin - right; I thought it was interesting that this quote came from the ‘dark side’ :-), not the emerging church.
I suppose that’s not surprising if postmodernism, with its focus on story and metanarratives, is the ’spirit of the age’ rather than the exclusive province of some contemporary branches of Christianity. Since this a quote from a contemporary author.
Comment by: Helen
4ss, yes, I like conversation with fellow readers too :)
Comment by: benjamin ady
5Helen
did you see the emergent church posters which were kind of mocking the emergent church which made the rounds while you were in Italy?
I really liked the one that had a photo of a crowd of people among whom was a guy holding a sign that said “down with metanarratives”. the title of the photo was “Postmodern”
they reminded me of the despair.com’s demotivational posters, which I also find very funny
Comment by: Helen
6Benjamin, yes, I saw those when I was catching up on blog feeds after I got back and I do remember that one.
I agree about the demotivational posters - my husband pointed them out to me because he thought they were funny.
My daughter’s middle school has motivational posters here and there on the walls. I wonder if they actually motivate the students?
Anyway, back to story - what I like about it is, it doesn’t beat me over the head with conclusions. It walks alongside me and I’m free to have my own thoughts about it.
There are some horrible subversions of stories, pretending to be stories but actually written with the sole purpose of ‘preaching’ something or other. There was an unfortunate abundance of these when I was looking for childrens books in the library when my children were tiny. I had to sift through all the ‘I have a new baby brother!’ and ‘My first day at school’ books to find books that were simply stories, not “how to cope with life” (kids therapy) books. I was always pleased when I found another great childrens’ author.
I suppose Pullman has somewhat of an agenda in His Dark Materials, which I’ve written about before on the discussion board. But it’s so well-written and such an awesome story (imo) I didn’t mind.
Comment by: seekingsomething
7I tend to think that all story tellers have an agenda of some sort…. but not all people with an agenda have a talent for storytelling!
Comment by: Karen
8Exactly! and there’s the rub, sadly. I remember this being a big problem when I went looking for Christian novels way back when. Most of the titles at that time were seriously unreadable. I hope there are better choices nowadays.
In terms of Pullman, when I went to see the Simpsons movie, we got a trailer for The Golden Compass (the first book in the trilogy) and it looked really wonderful.
My older son and I read all three, so after the movie I asked what he thought of the trailer and we were talking about whether they would make all three books into movies. He said, “Uh, mom, I don’t think so. There’s too much - controversial - stuff in the other two books!”
It’ll be interesting to see if something as blatant as that trilogy gets judged to be commercially successful, I think.