From: Kathleen Horning <horning>
Date: Tue, 08 May 2001 16:04:44 -0500

David Fickling, Philip Pullman's U.K. editor, has sent us the text of an interview he did with Malcolm Jones of Newsweek magazine. He gave us permission to post this on CCBC-Net, and I think you will find his comments about working with Philip Pullman to be of great interest. There are four questions here posed by Malcolm Jones, each one followed by David's response.

1.You laughed when I asked if there was much to do when Philio Pullman turns in a manuscript. Could you amplify on that laugh? Because I would hate to infer that there was little to do when in fact your laugh might have been full of bitterness and gall inspired by the knowledge that no man cost you more labor and yet here you were, eating in his home, so of course this would not be the place to cast aspersions. Better to just laugh. After all, a laugh can mean many things, and soon this torment will be done.

"My laugh - well I'm sorry to disappoint you but neither of your inferences from my laugh are even close. The laugh was really a simple and quick response to a question that set off an explosion of complex thoughts in my head. The laugh meant, "Oh lord where and how on earth do I start to answer that one!". Forgive me, I settled for a laugh.

"Here in no particular order are some of the thoughts your question evoked: How unbelievably lucky I have been to edit and publish a writer like Philip, because I now know (after twenty years as an editor) that writers of such supreme talent are very, very rare . (and this neatly answers some of your other questions at the same time) I first received the typescript for Ruby in the Smoke from him in 1985. It was sent I think by his agent (then a less senior agent) Caradoc King to me as a junior children's editor at Oxford University Press. There I found it one morning lying unasked for on my desk along with the rest of the mail. In those days I read things the moment they came in and we managed to get most things we liked published, because dear old OUP gave us time and space and there weren't too many marketing men with machine guns. The childrens book department was like a late born child, a cherished but not particularly noticed department allowed to run wild provided it didn't draw too much attention to itself. Well I read Ruby in one sitting during the morning and whooped with delight when I finished it by lunchtime, rushed down the corridor and told a colleague I'd found something marvellous. As I remember it was published in pretty short order and I don't think I made a single editorial suggestion or alteration. It was a perfect rendition of a Victorian thriller told with immense verve, humour, knowledge and love and if it had been signed by Wilkie Collins I shouldn't have been at all surprised. Except this was if anything better and I knew at once from my response as a reader that the author had magic in his pen, and boy could he tell a good story and what's more tell it beautifully. I was a young editor of about five years experience and I had struck story gold. Hence the feeling of luck.

"Subsequent titles I think I may have had more to ask Philip about and made suggestions too , some of which he has acted on and some not. The process isn't painful for me (I can't speak for Philip) , it is a ferocious delight. Anyway, I'd have done almost anything to make myself useful! As a publisher and editor I knew I wanted to have more experiences of such marvellous typescripts. In the intervening years I have moved publishers and Philip, dear man, who didn't know any better, has moved with me."


2. I keep trying to come up with comparisons, authors he resembles, and without being coy, I can't. You can say he's like Ursula LeGuin or Madeleine L'Engle or even Ray Bradbury, at least in this trilogy, but he's as unlike those writers as he is like them. Am I missing someone obvious? or is he simply sui generis?

"Comparisons with other writers?

"No problem here. Search as you will, there just aren't any other writers like him. Originality, originality, originality was the word that kept hitting me when I first read Northern Lights with growing amazement. Of course there are trails of innumerable writers throughout the books - Milton, Blake, the dissenting tradition etc. etc. - but none of them any more than the real world we live in. This work is taken from reality not other books."


3. What attempts have there been to deliver him to a broader audience?

"Good question. Well, I have known from the word go that he should be delivered to the broadest possible audience but in a way it is a tragedy that he is not already much better known than he is. As his publisher I've got to take some blame here. Part of the problem is that children's book writers have been generally ignored by the grown ups of the books world. Philip has done more than most to push open the door with the sheer quality of his writing. Remember Northern Lights (Golden Compass) came well before and was a bestseller to adults as well as children before Harry Potter. I think the US publishers and the US book industry and culture were in a way more open to a so?lled children's book crossing the boundary than is the case back here in the UK. Knopf and Random house did a fantastic confident job publishing the Golden Compass to adults as well and that success has reflected back here to Britain and helped us push through. Now the door is wide open in the UK too and we are going through big time."


4. How has he developed as a writer since you've known him?

"Well, he was a wonderful writer from the word go. Right down at the word level his sentences are beautiful and so astonishingly clear. They were in The Ruby in the Smoke and they are in The Amber Spyglass and all the books in between. I think he finds it very hard to write an ugly sentence. And he cares deeply that the words are the right ones and in the right place. You can't say the same for most of us who just throw words about willy nilly. Philip is a craftsman with words. But this is not a vapid empty beauty for the sake of an exercise or showing off, with Philip the words are the meaning, and they paint pictures or whatever he intends. Hence the power, and that amazing clarity. After a while you forget you are reading, you are just there! I have not read a writer writing in English today who writes as beautifully, clearly and powerfully as Philip Pullman. This is not an idle claim. It is one of the reasons he can be read by the young as well as the old and is loved by both. It is his gift and his genius. You'd have to ask Philip, but I get the impression from his writing that more than other writers he is like a painter, he sees scenes in his head and paints them with words. (Sometimes the editor's job is to ask if a particular scene is in the right place for maximum dramatic effect. I would say Philip is very open to this sort of editorial comment but very decisive in deciding whether the suggestion improves or does not improve the work.) This might be why his descriptive passages are quite as vivid and arresting as his dialogue. Most modern writers seem to better at dialogue than description which is a shame. I feel sorry for anyone trying to make a film from His Dark Materials for Philip seems able to project his film on a screen right inside your very own head.

"But he has developed too. The development has occurred in what he brings his gift to. The Sally Lockhart novels are in one sense pastiche Victorian thrillers, told with immense charm and affectionate accuracy and are about real people but they don't venture far outside their own milieu. Shorter works like Clockwork and I was a Rat display an uncanny knowledge of story structure and are perfect pieces in their own right, to be loved and enjoyed as stories. I envy anyone who hasn't read these and Philip's other works. And so he has developed over the years as a writer.

"With His Dark Materials he has taken another enormous leap. Now, still telling a marvellous story, he is out there with the great writers telling us about life, the universe and everything. But he hasn't lost us. It's still about people, about us. A poetic theme has entered the mix. And a visionary one too. Visionaries don't come two a penny. The scope of this story is unimaginably vast and in it there are wonders . My god, what more can we want of writer than to be shown wonders and to be told that they are there for us. And that love is important. (And I am probably taking this all far more seriously than Philip ever would, and that's good too.)"








Kathleen T. Horning (horning at education.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center University of Wisconsin-School of Education 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park St. Madison, WI 53706 608&3930 FAX: 608&2I33
Received on Tue 08 May 2001 04:04:44 PM CDT