And now his monstrous “His Dark Materials” trilogy (whose dark materials? Satan’s?) — The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass — is going to be a movie starring Nicole Kidman. Now admittedly, when I read his books a number of years ago, I was more impressionable than I am today. But I still despise the author with a passion. The trilogy is an anti-C.S. Lewis’s Narnia atheistic various sin-glorifying, including pride and hatred, fantasy. In it God would be evil if He existed, and humans must rebel against Him if they want to be free. The “God” that does exist, and with whom the “good” humans war turns out to be some senile angel. The (obviously Catholic) Church is a profoundly evil and life-draining organization designed to suppress humans’ natural happiness. The immortality of the soul is a sham, the after-death realm is a miserable place, and dead souls are glad to dissolve in the air. Similar to the way in which in Shogun the alleged filth and stench of the Christendom was compared to the equally unsubstantiated cleanliness of the Japanese, so, in Pullman’s books the armored bear who wanted somehow to get a soul (in the form of an animal companion) leads his fellow bears into a stinking and, to the author, unnatural mode of living: he “betrayed” his nature and was promptly killed by the protagonist girl’s “normal” bear.
In short, the Church and religion in Pullman’s books, instead of perfecting nature and elevating men above their nature, as they do in real life, crush the natural human instincts by a network of meaningless rules and taboos. The Church seeks power through fear. Human nature, untouched by virtue and grace, is “good” for our author; the ruthless Church only suppresses what is naturally good in humans. Therefore, it must be revolted against and destroyed.
The characters are annoying, perfectly unsympathetic, and malicious. These are evil, revolting, even demonic books. Yuck.
Update. Just as love is divided into desire (concupiscence) and friendship (willing good to another), so hatred is divided into aversion and willing evil to another. I am certainly averse to Pullman, the evil son of a bitch that he is (who enjoys his perversity), but I do not will evil to him, except insofar as punishment to him is due according to justice, especially for targeting children with his books. I would be happy if Pullman converted to Christianity and renounced his work.
Update 2. Holopupenko wisely chastises me for using an incorrect technique of fraternal correction by entitling this post “I Hate …”