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His Dark Materials: Pullman's Style
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From: Megan Schliesman <Schliesman>
Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 12:48:42 -0500
One final message from CCBC-Net technical administrator Chris Dowling, in response to a question about the risk of the virus if you get CCBC-Net in digest format:
"No, the attachment is not sent as a separate file with digests. It is "flattened" into text and appears as a block of nonsense text in between messages. So it is harmless. I removed the nonsense text this morning from the archive. You will not be in danger of getting a virus
(this or any other) as a digest subscirber, because the CCBC-Net digest is always a text file and does not have the file name or structure to be "run" like a script virus."
Let's get back to the Pullman trilogy.
I very much appreciated reading the interview with David Fickling, Pullman's UK editor, that Katy Horning provided yesterday. I especially liked reading Fickling's description of Pullman's style:
"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."
In the amazon.com interview with Pullman already referenced and in other places Pullman does say he thinks of himself as a
"storyteller" not a "writer." TFrom reading what he says about writing he brings the sensibility of an oral storyteller or poet to the way he crafts his works. Yet they don't feel overwritten--I don't get tired of reading something too artful or that tries too hard--the story itself is held aloft by the careful underpinning of his style, which is also, as Fickling notes, very visual. Interesting to consider in a book where so much is left in other ways for the reader to ponder, each child (or adult) arriving at conclusions that are meaningful to her or himself.
Megan
Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education UW-Madison 608&2?03 schliesman at education.wisc.edu
Received on Thu 10 May 2001 12:48:42 PM CDT
Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 12:48:42 -0500
One final message from CCBC-Net technical administrator Chris Dowling, in response to a question about the risk of the virus if you get CCBC-Net in digest format:
"No, the attachment is not sent as a separate file with digests. It is "flattened" into text and appears as a block of nonsense text in between messages. So it is harmless. I removed the nonsense text this morning from the archive. You will not be in danger of getting a virus
(this or any other) as a digest subscirber, because the CCBC-Net digest is always a text file and does not have the file name or structure to be "run" like a script virus."
Let's get back to the Pullman trilogy.
I very much appreciated reading the interview with David Fickling, Pullman's UK editor, that Katy Horning provided yesterday. I especially liked reading Fickling's description of Pullman's style:
"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."
In the amazon.com interview with Pullman already referenced and in other places Pullman does say he thinks of himself as a
"storyteller" not a "writer." TFrom reading what he says about writing he brings the sensibility of an oral storyteller or poet to the way he crafts his works. Yet they don't feel overwritten--I don't get tired of reading something too artful or that tries too hard--the story itself is held aloft by the careful underpinning of his style, which is also, as Fickling notes, very visual. Interesting to consider in a book where so much is left in other ways for the reader to ponder, each child (or adult) arriving at conclusions that are meaningful to her or himself.
Megan
Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education UW-Madison 608&2?03 schliesman at education.wisc.edu
Received on Thu 10 May 2001 12:48:42 PM CDT
