I had two very pleasant surprises yesterday; the first was that we were called by Steph to say that she had been contacted by Newcastle University to say they had some returned tickets for that nights lecture by Philip Pullman. The second surprise was just how much I enjoyed the lecture and how much it got the old grey matter working. Not that I had expected the lecture to be a poor one but, as the inaugural Fickling Lecture on Developments in Children’s Literature, I was worried that perhaps it would be little too child friendly. I need not have worried as it took Pullman mere minutes to lose most of the audience aged below thirteen whilst enthralling the rest of us.
His title of ‘Strangeness and Charm’ was taken from his, as he admitted, somewhat limited knowledge of Quantum Physics and expounded his belief that without due care taken of the minutiae of a story there can be no story. He illustrated this with the use of three short passages from a couple of his books to “tease apart the fundamental forces that hold stories together”. He described the use of schema and metaphor to develop a story in which the characters can “live” rather than rattling around in lists of descriptive prose. At least that’s what I think he was getting at.
After the lecture there was a book sale courtesy of Blackwell’s so Gill and I invested in a copy of his latest work ‘The Scarecrow and His Servant’ which the man duly signed for us. Following this a beer was needed so a trip to the Hotspur was undertaken as it was just around the corner. Billy and I helped ourselves to a pint of Warlock Stout from the Houston Brewery whilst Gill had a half of cider and Steph, nursing something of a ‘day after the night before’ problem, had lemonade. The beer was so good that a second round was called for and all thoughts of cooking tea put firmly to the back of my mind. In the end I had a couple of peanuts and a handful of crisps to accompany my very large gin and tonic kindly poured for me by Gill once we made it back home. The rest of the night was spent agreeing with Pullman that once severed from your Daemon the world can seem a cold, empty, lifeless place.
His title of ‘Strangeness and Charm’ was taken from his, as he admitted, somewhat limited knowledge of Quantum Physics and expounded his belief that without due care taken of the minutiae of a story there can be no story. He illustrated this with the use of three short passages from a couple of his books to “tease apart the fundamental forces that hold stories together”. He described the use of schema and metaphor to develop a story in which the characters can “live” rather than rattling around in lists of descriptive prose. At least that’s what I think he was getting at.
After the lecture there was a book sale courtesy of Blackwell’s so Gill and I invested in a copy of his latest work ‘The Scarecrow and His Servant’ which the man duly signed for us. Following this a beer was needed so a trip to the Hotspur was undertaken as it was just around the corner. Billy and I helped ourselves to a pint of Warlock Stout from the Houston Brewery whilst Gill had a half of cider and Steph, nursing something of a ‘day after the night before’ problem, had lemonade. The beer was so good that a second round was called for and all thoughts of cooking tea put firmly to the back of my mind. In the end I had a couple of peanuts and a handful of crisps to accompany my very large gin and tonic kindly poured for me by Gill once we made it back home. The rest of the night was spent agreeing with Pullman that once severed from your Daemon the world can seem a cold, empty, lifeless place.
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