It is remarkable how an author like Philip Pullman, who often writes at considerable length, can make so much out of so little. But then he is a very great writer.
How wrong can you be?
I have recently seen a leading bookseller describe this title as possibly ‘just for His Dark Materials completists.’ This is, I think, misleading. However, it could perhaps be said that this is a book for His Dark Materials enthusiasts. It is, almost certainly, for those who have already read the full works, those who know them well and reflect on them.
I have also seen the book described, in some reader reviews on the internet, as a ‘rip off’ or ‘scam’, often with the cynical implication that it is a publisher’s catch-penny to lure fans into a in-fill purchase whilst waiting for the next volume in the actual sequence. But this is to miss the point of this little book completely, to fail to see it for what it is.
Cerainly anyone looking for a new story from Lyra’s world, even a short one, will be disappointed. Of this handsome little volume’s 85 pages (not including the brief author introduction), each left-hand leaf is blank, whilst the right contains just a small amount of print, sometimes as little as a sentence, only occasionally a near pageful. However, the richness and intensity of what is there is remarkable. Were this book a collection of poetry, then I think buyers would not be so inclined to moan about the amount of actual text it contains. And although this is not poetry, it is closely akin.
Less is more
The Imagination Chamber is not giving us more of the same in terms of the Dark Materials/Book of Dust universe. Superficially it is, in fact, giving us less of the same. But here Philip Pullman really does demonstrate that less is more.
Although we may well have already met some of this matter in context, being presented with these ‘lantern slides’, these individual pictures, in isolation from the ongoing story, and juxtaposed to other miniatures, throws them into much higher relief, makes them glow and their resonances refract and reflect brightly. They become the glass shards in a kaleidoscope, patterns that fall together, then slide apart again in the reader’s mind, only to tumble back into new formations. You could think of them as symbols on an alethiometer. They can hint at answers if you ask the right questions; give responses that may seem illusive but hide ever-deepening layers Who exactly is Lyra? What kind of creatures are dæmons? Where is Cittàgazze? What is Dust? The more questions asked, the more clues are revealed. These cuttings from a much larger story do not quite tell you things. They make you think them, imagine them, for yourself. In enigma, revelation; intuitive understanding.
Philip Pullman talks in his brief introduction, itself rather enigmatic, of these sparks of ideas generating stories in the imagination. And yes, they clearly do this. They subtly cut open doorways, showing the way the author himself has built, is building, a world and its story around such glowing particles. Equally remarkable is what these snippets reveal about this great writer’s skill with language, his ability to select the telling word, to construct sentences of breathtakingly simple elegance.
This is not a book for those wanting a new story. But anyone seeking imaginative insight into Lyra’s world and their own, into a great writer’s mind and his skill with language, need not, indeed should not, hesitate.
Here is Kendal Mint Cake for the spirit; to be nibbled, not chomped through.