Alarming Female

It’s been years since I’ve read Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass–ten or eleven years, as it came out in the US in 1996. I’m re-reading it now as it’s due to be released toward the end of the year as a film. It’s the first of three books that comprise the group known collectively as His Dark Materials.

(The Golden Compass was first published in Britain as The Northern Lights–why do they do that? Change the titles, I mean. A bookseller once jokingly suggested to me that it wasn’t called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in the US because we wouldn’t know what a philosopher was. Ouch!)

As I re-read, I notice the oddities that perplexed me the first time I read. Perhaps perplexed is the wrong word; more intrigued, I’d say. For instance, in a description of the setting, Pullman writes–

In every part of the kingdom there were dye works and brick kilns, forests and atomcrafts works that paid rent to Jordan. . . (page 33) (emphasis mine)

Atomcrafts works? That surely doesn’t fit the Dickensian London I’ve pictured so far. Throughout this book are sprinkled such anachronisms that do their part to keep the reader on uneven footing, wondering exactly when and where this story is set.

The Master was silent for a while before saying, “Yes, perhaps I should have done. The alethiometer warns of appalling consequences if Lord Asriel pursues this research. . .” (page 29) (emphasis mine)

My background in modern Greek language enlightens me, as I know alethos translates as “truly,” and so the “alethiometer” must be a device that divines the truth—but this isn’t really explained for another forty pages.

Don’t get me wrong—I love that this novel uses such esoteric terms and complicated concepts. I’m all over children’s books that I must read with a dictionary at hand. I abhor books (and people) that talk down to children. Which is why it’s frustrating that the book title became The Golden Compass–a less imaginative name for the aforementioned alethiometer.

In the spirit of the books and upcoming film, you can receive your own daemon companion from the film’s website; in the world of this novel, one’s soul resides outside one’s body, in the form of an animal daemon. My daemon, Alexius, is a gibbon, and therefore apparently representative of my personality. Hmmm.

Of particular interest, at least to me, is the reality that Pullman’s trilogy is a clear attack on organized religion soon to be wrapped up in a mainstream film. Pullman himself says as much. I do feel the pendulum swinging. . .