Il évoque notamment son admiration pour des auteurs comme Dickens ou Joseph Conrad davantage que pour J.R.R. Tolkien ou C.S. Lewis qui ont pourtant fait des récits jeunesse dans la même veine avec
Bilbo le Hobbit ou
Narnia (
Le Neveu du magicien, L’Armoire magique) :
Slate : You’ve said you’re not a huge admirer of C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien, both of whom have written fantasies that in some ways resemble The Golden Compass. Is it fair to say those books have a somewhat didactic relationship to readers?
P.P : They’re often bracketed together, Tolkien and Lewis, which I suppose is fair because they were great friends—both Oxford writers and scholars, both Christians. Tolkien’s work has very little of interest in it to a reader of literature, in my opinion. When I think of literature—Dickens, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad—the great novelists found their subject matter in human nature, emotion, in the ways we relate to each other. If that’s what Tolkien’s up to, he’s left out half of it. The books are wholly male-oriented. The entire question of sexual relationships is omitted.