J.R.R. Tolkien can’t catch a break these days.
The Lord of the Rings author was the subject of some pointed criticism from fantasy author George R.R. Martin last month, and now Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials) is getting in on the action.
In an interview with the New Yorker, the cranky fantasy author said that he read Tolkien’s work in the 1960s and was “temporarily impressed.” Why “temporarily”?
“Because it didn’t take me very long to see through it. The world of J.R.R. Tolkien is a world without sexuality in it,” Pullman said, thereby forcing all of us to imagine, if only for a moment, orc sex scenes.
“It’s as if they had their children by a courier or something: please send a boy child by Federal Express to Mrs. Blah blah blah,” Pullman continued. “And once you’re aware that that’s missing, you can then see the other gaps in it. He doesn’t do any sort of speculative thinking about what’s good and what’s evil.”
Pullman said his problem with Tolkien was the lack of real humans in his work.
“Orcs and hobbits, they don’t tell you anything at all,” he said. “It’s very, very thin stuff. No nourishment in it.”
Pullman’s newest book, The Secret Commonwealth, is slated for publication on Thursday by Knopf.
Tolkien, who does not have a telephone number or email address and who has been dead for 46 years, could not be reached for comment.
Michael Schaub is an Austin, Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
