So I recently read The Amber Spyglass, ending a literary relationship that’s been going on for 15 years. I have loved the first two books all that time and simply didn’t want it to finish. But at some point you’ve got to remember you won’t be able to converse with confidence on the subject until you do finish and just get it over with.

And as one often finds when they’ve waited so long, reality can’t match expectation. The finale didn’t live up to what I believe were the promises – there was a conclusion but Pullman left much unanswered, too much, I and others believe, if the thousand-odd forum posts I found just on one subject are considered, for a series that the author’s stopped writing, non-sequel spin-offs aside. There are ambiguous endings and then there are questions for which answers are out of reach and Pullman’s series is one of the latter.

I suppose it means there’s something to talk about.

So I wasn’t keen on the ending. Crucially, I was under the impression, from what the first two books implied, that the last would be about Will and Lyra’s restoration of the Creator to power. That the ending was merely a case of letting the usurper out of his life-giving tomb, and that happening without comment and done by the children by accident, was a nonentity. What happened to the Creator? Where is he or she or it? We’ll likely never know and yet Pullman went to great lengths to make you interested in it all.

Perhaps it’s his Atheist self talking, perhaps he himself saw the Creator an unimportant subject, not important enough to discuss. The Creator’s gone – no big deal. We have to work our lives out ourselves. But I think he almost owed it to us to explain, indeed I think the fact his series is about rewriting religious history and questioning religion, that it’s a response in part to the problems with The Chronicles Of Narnia, demands it. (There are spoilers in this post for the last book in that series.) There is nothing for us to work with, nothing we can use to form an idea or opinion, we can only idly guess. And that’s a great pity.

We’ve also Pantalaimon’s reference to Lyra, when he says he and Will’s daemon, Kirjava, were discussing something when the humans were separated from them and he’ll tell her about it when she’s older. At least in this case we can make informed guesses, for example the ambiguity regarding travel between the worlds and Lyra’s parting line about creating the Republic Of Heaven could relate to Pan and Kirjava working out a way for the children to see each other again. Other possibilities include a period of intimacy between the daemons, which seems most likely if we assume that Will and Lyra had intercourse under the willow tree. However the possibility of sexual intimacy between the daemons rests on that fact, of Pan saying he’ll tell Lyra what happened/was discussed when she’s older, and also the fact that, earlier in the series, adult characters discussed the relationship between two people (I believe Farder Coram and Serafina Pekkala, I believe) and Pullman says, to paraphrase, that the talk went over the children’s heads because they were too young to understand the sexual references – which conflicts with the possibility of the willow tree.

This is where we get to the sex – did they or didn’t they? It’s a difficult subject to discuss, not so much because it’s ambiguous but because of the ages involved. Pullman makes mention of ages early in the introductions to each character and provides a rough idea – a possible idea? it’s difficult to say – as to how much time passes over the course of the series. As far as my own thoughts and those of fans I’ve read about are concerned, the length of time between Lyra’s sitting in the wardrobe and the ending of the series is any when between 3 weeks and a couple of years. I personally think 3 weeks unlikely given all that happens but it’s not completely out of the question. My understanding was that it was about a year – all that travelling must have taken time and unless Mary’s a language whiz she would’ve needed time to learn the mulefas’ mode of communication. Whatever the time, we’re talking 9-13 years old for Lyra and 11-14 for Will – and that’s with added slack.

So that’s the main difficulty, which obviously leads to the second pre-question issue – whatever we assume about the possibility of sex will reflect on Pullman’s creation, and assuming two children slept together is highly uncomfortable. This is surely why Pullman has never given a straight answer to the question.

I’m of the opinion, however uncomfortable, that Will and Lyra did sleep together and I’ve thought it from the first. Pullman makes reference to the long branches of the willow tree, how they obscure the resting children from view and to me that clearly signifies something going on. It’s a literal fade-to-black, behind-the-curtain moment. This conflicts with the way Pullman spoke of their lack of knowledge during that Farder Coram/Serafina Pekkala conversation but I consider he may have forgotten – errors happen – or that the mature-of-mind children figured it out in the meantime as there’s a lot to be said for emotions and physical feelings. And now I feel the need to wash the whole idea away with a gallon of soap we’re going to move on.

To me that the children consummated their love is key to what Pullman was doing. The series is about growing up, about Adam and Eve in the Garden and also about C S Lewis’s treatment of Susan Pevensie’s growing maturity. Where Lewis didn’t allow Susan into Heaven because she had begun puberty – begun to explore life as an independent, begun to look at religion in a new way, questioning her belief as people often do as they become adults – Pullman says that Susan ought to have been allowed to explore and grow up and that to do both is natural and shouldn’t be hampered. He lets Lyra’s growth be accepted where Susan’s wasn’t. It’s a direct response, a commentary and a criticism of a literary issue we’ve been struggling with for decades.

Mary Malone, as openly acknowledged in The Amber Spyglass, is the serpent in the Garden and again Pullman alters things so they aren’t as damning. Mary ‘tempts’ Lyra through her tale of falling in love with a man, a nice, innocent enough history, no malice or goal behind it as far as Mary is concerned, she’s simply doing as Dust tells her, telling stories. Lyra feels the pull to choose a life with Will instead of a life without him: choose love and in doing so cause everyone to die and live in hell forever, or forfeit love for the greater good of allowing the dead their freedom to dwell in the atmosphere of the living. And whilst Eve took the apple, lost her innocence and fell, so Lyra takes the apple but doesn’t fall, she pushes past that. Lyra’s loss of innocence isn’t the end of perfection as Adam and Eve’s was.

By keeping the window of the after-world open, we can spy potential hope for the pair even if it’s bitter-sweet, an eternal resting of separated atoms blending together in the sky. Lyra and Will choose selflessness, showing that a loss of sexual purity isn’t the same as sinning, and put humanity and creatures before themselves. They’ll spend their days teaching people about love, bringing peace to worlds in conflict.

Will I ever be at peace with the ending, the lack of the Creator, the convenient and unsatisfying end of Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter? No, but if nothing else Pullman has ensured that I needn’t have worried about finishing the series because he’s left a legacy of thoughts that’ll last me at least twice as long as my waiting period.

What did you think of the final book and the trilogy as a whole?

Update on 18th August 2016: I’m pondering a possible connection between the land on the dead and the Catholic idea of Purgatory – did the window there have to be left open so that people could leave Purgatory easily, Pullman’s answer to the thought that a person must spend time there before deliverance, making it that there’s no damnation, just a quick journey through?

“No, I can’t think about it now; later when I’m more calm.”

So says Scarlett O’Hara, most notably at the end of the book; only this line isn’t from Gone With The Wind, this is Anna Karenina as per Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translation.

The rather striking line which, though undoubtedly older, is so like Mitchell’s, comes from the second section of Tolstoy’s epic, roughly one fifth of the way through; it finishes off the chapter in which Anna and Vronsky sleep together for the first time.

Both heroines, if indeed we can call them that, especially in Scarlett’s case, end their stories in downfall. Scarlett sees her life fall to pieces when her up-until-then-unrealised love of her life leaves her, presumably kicking her out of their garishly decorated home at a later date. Anna commits suicide.

Both heroines live their lives in ways their respective societies do not appreciate. Anna’s is more straight-forward; society condones her affair but not the way she displays it fairly openly and leaves the family home. It can be discussed but not seen. Scarlett has done a lot more to offend. She steals her sister’s husband, tries to take her friend’s husband, is too attractive and social, and she’s independent. She likes the glamour, doesn’t share the values of her community, and flaunts her wealth in ways that are not approved. Both characters end up losing their men – Scarlett her Rhett and Anna her Vronsky.

The characters are quite different. Scarlett’s often referred to as an anti-heroine. Hard to love, the reader gets to see both her actions and the resulting pain of the victims. Scarlett’s out for herself. Anna’s a lot more thoughtful. Still selfish enough to go ahead with her affair and put her family in bad standing, she nevertheless cares somewhat for her children and cares about her husband. Hers is a tale of a person falling in love outside a marriage of convenience and is thus for both the other characters and the reader, more understandable. And, unlike Scarlett, there is a lot more to like about her.

What Anna and Scarlett have in common is their independence. Whilst neither had anything close to the independence more women experience today, a lot of their freedom is due to their mindset. It’s easier to see in Scarlett who goes off on her own, has her own business and employees, and Rhett supports her. (Scarlett’s other husbands also let her do her own thing but that was down to her manipulation of them rather than the relative equality of Scarlett and Rhett’s relationship.) Scarlett doesn’t care what people think and of course she has her money to back her up.

Anna shares Scarlett’s mindset to a degree and has the support of her husband, Karenin, to an extent. Anna, loved, adored, moves freely away from her husband when other women might be called to obey – Karenin is a forgiving character whenever society is not involved. Anna has the power in a marriage wherein she’s the stronger of mind though she does hold the advantage of having a husband who states he does not like the idea of jealousy.

Anna and Scarlett are independent by nature but also by society, as it were. Society looks up to them – Anna adored, Scarlett tolerated by women, loved by men. Each could only go so far but neither are at the whim of others. Even when Anna is telling Vronsky they can’t continue it comes from a place of morals and worry over reputation of her family rather than herself.

The whole concept of leaving the thinking until later – something that Anna eventually does, to a point, but something the jury is still out on in regards to Scarlett – is a coping method. For Anna it’s more straight-forward: at the time she was stressed, she’d just consummated her affair, she needs to calm down and think straight. For Scarlett it’s coping with reality and with the difference between what she does and what’s expected – it’s better to be happy, perhaps to live in ignorance, than face up to what she’s done. It shows a certain lack of care for the husband she’s just realised she loves, but it suits the way she is. If she let reality in it would force her to change and by putting the thinking off she delays the inevitable. Perhaps she delays thinking about Rhett’s departure enough that she never deals with it at all and just stays at Tara whilst he dismantles their home. We’ll never know, but out of sight is out of mind.

Leaving things until later gives Anna and Scarlett a permission, if only self-sanctioned, to keep on doing what they’re doing. If they thought about it at once their stories would likely be very different. One thing’s for certain, though – Karenin will always give a damn.

Excuse the lack of images this week – things should be back to normal next month.

I believe I said in another post that I first read Northern Lights in my single digit years. That’s not quite right – on thinking about it I must have been in my early teens, but regardless my reading then was very different, as you might expect.

This is now my third read of the book, my second was a few years ago, and I know they say you learn more the more you re-read, the same way you notice the hints as to who the killer is that the film maker provided that you didn’t notice the first time, but in this first part of the trilogy, in my case at least, I’ve found it even more true.

I have always loved the book – it shocked and thrilled me as a teen and it continues to do so now – I think it’s going to be one of the books that will be our era’s contribution to the canon; but I find I appreciate it in a different way now. I understand it; in many ways, as much as this book was written for children – and you can see that in the writing, the character of Lyra who seems to have been created to appeal to both genders, and the odd words that push you to get out a dictionary and learn – this book is also for adults. There is so much more to this book than what’s on the surface and whilst a child would realise that, the depth itself, and the meanings, are surely most apparent and enjoyable as an adult. (I’m not sure how much re-reading has to play in this regard – I rather think a person who first reads this book as an adult will find it as fantastical as they would have as a child.)

Have I waxed lyrical enough? Yes; I think it’s time I moved on. I’m not sure if I’d be able to review this book in my usual way, hence this post. Perhaps I could but at this stage in my relationship with it, I just want to study it.

What struck me first this re-read was the name of the Pope of Lyra’s parallel Oxford – Pope John Calvin. I’m not sure if Pullman was looking to say much in particular as he does about later elements, I think in this case he’s simply setting the scene, showing as much as he can without relying on description that this is Oxford but it’s not the Oxford we know. And I think the similar-but-not-quite factor is what he’s going for, that it’s not just a parallel universe but is also a demonstration to the reader of what could happen if different choices are made, different histories written. My thought is that perhaps in Lyra’s universe Calvinism was the Catholicism (if we match ‘pope’ to ‘Roman Catholic church’ rather than the Reformation and Protestantism that our own Calvin was a part of). It’s the ruling class. Is Pullman saying something about Calvinism in particular? Perhaps, but it’s less certain. Is pre-destination a theme of sorts in the book? Not really – if anything the book’s about tricking nature, de-constructing what it means to be human – in this case what it means to be a human in this parallel soul-as-separate-to-the-body universe.

Most poignant, I find, is the daemon element. More than the severing, which is remarkably terrifying because whilst we do not have daemons we can consider a people trying to wrench our very selves away from our bodies, it’s the question of what the daemon’s actions mean that I find so literarily stimulating. (I’m going to have to officially coin that word at some point.) For me the discussion, well, allright, it’s more a device, between Lyra and the gyptian seaman pre-journey has more relevance as a comparison to our own world as it is important to the book. The way a daemon will stop changing, will assume one shape for the rest of the person’s life post-puberty. I think J M Barrie would say that Peter Pan’s daemon never changed – as much as a daemon is fun it represents the inevitable growth and maturity of a person. In many ways it’s a humbling reminder that as we mature we become who we were made to be, we grow into ourselves and our purposes in life. A daemon’s shape is the outward expression of its human’s mind, their person. But it’s also an almost regrettable reminder of reality – a daemon has fun changing and being many different things but then well, it’s time to grow up after a while, take up some responsibilities, be a steady and consistent person. And Pullman’s idea is to let this whole mode of thinking sink in slowly – a daemon is a ‘them’ or a ‘he’ or ‘she’ long before Pullman fully refers to a person and their daemon as an ‘us’.

Tony Makarios is the character I’ve just reached, and as horrific as the situation is, Pullman shows life without… ourselves. Without our emotions, without our passions, without ambitions and fears and hopes, Tony is who we would be. (A millennial book comparison would be Lauren Oliver’s Delirium, in which a person’s ability to love is medically removed, reportedly so that they can feel no pain.) On the surface the villagers who are frightened are frightened because they do not know life without daemons – they would view Will Parry, the character from the next book who is a human of our own kind in our own universe – as inhuman. But they also surely represent a worry about what we would be if we weren’t who we were. There’s nothing to be afraid of – Tony’s simply a boy in need – but they react in the way we do to difference, to a lack of self-awareness in others. And Pantaliamon’s desire to lick the boy – Lyra’s compassion – shows a basic empathy. In a book wherein we could brush it off with thoughts that people are afraid of a person who doesn’t have a pet, Lyra brings us back down to earth and reminds us of compassion.

In many ways I think it’s more important to discuss these themes rather than the obvious conflict between church and state, the church’s extreme power, just because religion has been discussed so much. That the Oblation Board is from a group from the church is a big statement from Pullman, alluding to that idea of the soul and God that of course here is being exploited, person-hood taken for church gain. It also speaks of a desire to keep children pure and innocent – the necessity for Lyra to go about her quest without knowing what she’s doing, pulling children and daemon apart in a misguided attempt to make things better, to take away their ability to do wrong. It’s Pullman looking at the Susan Pevensie problem. Keep Dust away, keep sin away and children pure, says the Oblation Board – don’t do that, says Pullman, let them be themselves.

I’ve never read The Amber Spyglass; I stopped after chapter two because I didn’t want it to end. I still don’t want it to end but after so many years it’s probably time I finished it. Perhaps there are no answers. Perhaps that’s part of the point – to explore the possibilities by yourself. I guess I’ll see.

What are your thoughts and, a specific question that we have been discussing together here, what do you think is the meaning of the gyptians? Is the inspiration the Middle East, gypsy travellers, both, or something else entirely?

As you know, I didn’t rate Boy, Snow, Bird that highly, but as you also know, I absolutely loved Oyeyemi’s study of race. Her handling of it, the way she put into words what she wanted to say, thrilled me in that most literary way. I noted more quotes than I used and would like to use them here.

What I like about the study, something I didn’t discuss, is the way Oyeyemi speaks of worry after the fact. The way, for example, Arturo asks Boy:

[I]f I’d have married him if I’d seem him as coloured.

A kind of hindsight, the way the marriage has already happened so asking this question could just lead to an argument if she’d said ‘no’, but also the worry Arturo obviously had but didn’t talk about before, showing that he at least – if not his family – does actually ‘feel’ his race more than he might say. He’s bothered enough by it although he’s been successful ‘passing’ as a white man. Perhaps it’s the very not-acknowledging that causes his worry, keeping up appearances for his family.

But it also speaks of another issue – regardless of the passing, does colour still matter – in other words, in general terms rather than specific to Boy, does it matter that Arturo is coloured? What should colour mean – should it make a difference? Oyeyemi’s point is that it should be acknowledged, that passing is no way to live, but that colour is literally skin deep.

I liked this:

“Nice try, but I’m not going to stand here while a coloured woman tries to tell me that maybe I’m the one who’s coloured.”

The context is Boy’s seemingly not-bothered thoughts on race but we can delve into it and see something else – pointing out, in this regard, that Boy’s the ‘other’ here, that in terms of minorities and difference, Boy’s the anomaly. There’s also the factor that everyone’s skin is coloured in some way , that is to say again, skin deep, that a person’s skin should have no baring on their treatment.

This comes later in the book, from Bird I believe, but it follows on:

I’m slowly coming around to the view that you can’t feel nauseated by the Whitmans and the Millers without feeling nauseated by the kind of world that’s rewarded them for adapting to it like this.

Quite a sentence. It’s good for them, living-wise, that they can pass, but bad that they should have to. You can peel back the layers and see that whilst the relatives may not want to say a word about their colour, their race, they’ve conditioned themselves to it. They’ll not speak of that either – maybe they don’t even realise it’s a bit like the hierarchy of the ‘house negros’ and field workers of yore that Oyeyemi mentions, that they’re rewarded whilst being patronised and pushed back from society – but in this one sentence Oyeyemi exposes everything.

If ever I’ve asked myself a rhetorical question on the blog, that question is it. While I was writing my review of Anna Karenina and specifying names I couldn’t help but follow it up with this question. I’m always like this as you’ve probably realised by now: if there’s something in something that might be worthy of exploration, I’m on it. I’m a strange scholar.

My question came after I’d discussed the way Tolstoy doesn’t condemn his characters (that is to say yes, I know what happens to Anna, but Tolstoy doesn’t ram it down your throat). Vronsky has his moment wherein he could’ve been the precedent that Anna followed instead of the other way around, and Karenin is strong-willed over the question of divorce, but Tolstoy doesn’t offer either to the vultures. Vronsky’s just a bit immature, perhaps, and Karenin thinks of things society says he shouldn’t which ends up endearing him to us rather than seeing him in a bad light.

I noticed, whilst reading – and forgive me, I can’t recall the quotation itself this time – that Anna does make note of their both being called Alexei. If we needed any evidence Tolstoy thought about it, there it is.

So yes, of course there must be something in the fact – most books steer clear of repeating names, the vast majority not even giving the same name to characters on different social scales – but what is it exactly? Is it something in the region of ‘Alexei’ perhaps being a common name, or is it something more fundamental to the text? I think it’s the latter, very much.

The most compelling thought is that it’s as simple as a comparison; this Alexei is doing this, that Alexei is doing that. There are possibilities for an ‘Alexei’, and these are two of them.

Perhaps it’s more abstract, more philosophical: ‘Alexei’ is a ‘person’ who is in Anna’s life and there are two ways it can, or she can, go. Alexei as a name, a ‘thing’, is the factor that alters Anna’s mindset. Anna is the core around which Alexei spins. And I’ll stop there on this thread or we could be going on forever.

What I think is interesting, when viewing the two characters only by their shared name, is that we see the way Anna moves from one Alexei to another, literally, and figuratively. She moves from one station that was comfortable and content but no longer enough to another station that is comfortable (enough) and happy in its way but soon goes full circle and becomes limiting. Her first relationship became limiting and no longer enough and her second relationship comes to emulate it.

Both relationships stifle Anna; she is wrong in her thinking that joining Vronsky will change anything other than being with someone she, for the time being at least, loves. (Not that love isn’t important, of course.) By joining Vronsky she casts off the limitations placed on her from her relationship to Karenin, which could be said to be imagined limits as well as social limits – Karenin is quite easygoing after all. But in joining Vronsky, she gains limits – she loses the respect of society for leaving her husband. She looses her son even as she gains a daughter. And it’s interesting that the child she bares Vronsky is a baby she doesn’t particularly care for. It shows just how much the change has affected her because it isn’t as simple as saying ‘oh, she should love Annie because the child is Vronsky’s’; Annie is a reminder of what Anna has lost. If having a baby changes a person’s life and lifestyle then Annie represents that to extreme and almost damning effect.

And of course Annie’s age and status mean that Anna, neglectful, will naturally have less empathy afforded to her by society and, likely, the reader also. Who would have thought a tiny baby who is seen so few times and doesn’t grow up within the novel could be so important a character?

To me it seems plausible that Tolstoy uses the same name for both men as a way of showing that Anna isn’t really moving as far or as much as she assumes. Tolstoy knows a lot more than her and planned for it – he lets her swan about and then watches as what she’s done dawns on her, becoming more the neutral reporter (because if his rather swift tidy-up and focus on Levin at the end isn’t a suggestion of what’s more important I don’t know what is). For all the freedom she seems to gain, Anna is stuck. And her world revolves around her relationship with Alexei, both of them.

What are your thoughts?