At 8:19 PM +0100 25/4/02, domfox wrote:
>It
>isn't so much that the themes and strands of the work become too dissipated,
>as that Urizen starts to take over from - I suppose - Los, with the result
>that at the very point where that "something about the body" becomes most
>urgent we are at our most physically and emotionally distanced from the
>narrative - which is also why the continuity errors, to put it in trekkie
>terms, start to stand out more. In the first book you're too involved in the
>white heat of Lyra and the author's "visionary intensity" to notice such
>things...
The continuity problems in The Amber Spyglass were certainly
something I thought about afterwards (but not while reading it). My
experience of reading the final chapters wasn't that of being
distanced, physically or emotionally - I really enjoyed the sensual
recreation of Eden there, though perhaps I didn't need it signalled
so much. It could be that Pullman isn't a brilliant enough writer to
pull it off, although he has the imagination to envision it. I
might feel more critical on a second reading; in my first I was quite
enchanted by the story. I didn't find it sentimental, though it
sailed close to the wind maybe; it's probably a question there of
personal taste. The first book has the satisfaction of a single and
singular narrative, whereas it's splintered through the other two,
and this is maybe a problem, since parts of the story simply
disappeared -- I wanted to know what happened to the severed daemons
in The Northern Lights, for instance.
Best
Alison
--
"The only real revolt is the revolt against war."
Albert Camus
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
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