Curious cardboard cut-outs in Philip Pullman's Grimm Tales

Philip Pullman, Grimm Tales for Young and Old, Penguin, 2012

Walking on stage at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, a shock of white hair emanating from his temples, a slight limp to his gait, Philip Pullman could be a character straight out of his own Grimm Tales for Young and Old. And he enthrals even more than they do – his readings held me spellbound, with perfectly-pitched accents creating unforgettable dialogue and the ability to conjure an aura of mystery in just a few suspenseful sentences.

Pullman’s Grimm Tales for Young and Old (out now in hardback) is undoubtedly a skilful example of scholarly and imaginative creative writing. And he is a consummate speaker - he enlightens the audience about his writing and answers questions with wit and sensitivity, while never quite shedding the cloak of affable inscrutability in which he shrouds himself. But there remains for me a question about whether this new collection truly inspires the imagination, whether it speaks to the contemporary reader in a stimulating and relevant way, in the manner of his own award-winning literature.

Pullman’s fascinating introduction to the collection proves his extensive research and his dedicated admiration of the tales and their tellers. And his own tellings are indeed inventive and exquisitely crafted. ‘The Juniper Tree’, which Pullman admits is his own favourite, is also one of mine. It is a story with unusual aesthetic delicacy and a moving, multi-layered narrative. Another, ‘The Three Snake Leaves’, from which he read at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, also has a dramatic intensity that makes it entirely compelling, and there are many tales with moments of memorable elation, horror, poignancy and provocation.

But the plainness of the writing, which Pullman consciously cultivates to harmonise with his concept of the tales’ characters as the ‘little cardboard cut-out figures that come with the toy theatre’, ultimately undermines the power of this book. The same fault can be found in his The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ (2010). In it, Pullman similarly remains faithful to his source and evokes The Bible’s austere prose, but thereby creates a rather unsubtle, dull and worthy book. By writing the Grimm stories in language that is concise and economic, he loses the profound, galvanising appeal to one's very sense of humanity that he so superlatively achieves in the His Dark Materials trilogy (1995-2000). For that series is, in essence, a retelling of the most well-known tale of them all, Genesis’s account of Adam and Eve and the Fall (or, in Pullman’s eyes, the Awakening) of Man.

So I accept the belief Pullman articulated in his talk, that the cut-out nature of the Grimm characters allows the tales to be ‘more gruesome and yet still palatable, rooting them in the reality of terrible social situations and making them into stories’. But as stories, there can still be no comparison between the perils undergone by the Grimm brothers’ human silhouettes and Lyra and Will’s humanising of what the author would see as another kind of fairytale. Which I suppose is a tribute to Pullman himself, to his ability to create the very best kind of story.

At the Queen Elizabeth Hall he said he wrote Grimm Tales for Young and Old because he fears ‘in the splintering of our world that fairytales will be lost’. And I do believe Pullman has continued valuably the enduring, treasured tradition of retelling and reshaping these tales. But it is his own contribution to our splintering world, not with fairytales but with his own stunning novels, that will remain the lasting testament to his brilliance as a storyteller.

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