Philip Pullman Quotes About Modernism

Quotes about: Modernism

• Literary modernism kind of grew out of a sense that, “Oh my god! I’m telling a story! Oh, that can’t be the case, because I’m a clever person. I’m a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself? I know! I’ll write Ulysses.”

  Philip Pullman

  Clever, Writing, Stories

  "His Grimm Materials: A Conversation With Philip Pullman". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. November 2012.

• A lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller. So they tell it backwards and they tell it in the present tense and they cut loose the pages and shuffle them around - all that kind of stuff.

  Philip Pullman

  Cutting, Ordinary, Doe

  "His Grimm Materials: A Conversation With Philip Pullman". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. November/December 2012.

• After modernism, things changed. Indeed, modernism sometimes seems to me like an equivalent of the Fall. Remember, the first thing Adam and Eve did when they ate the fruit was to discover that they had no clothes on. They were embarrassed. Embarrassment was the first consequence of the Fall. And embarrassment was the first literary consequence of this modernist discovery of the surface. "Am I telling a story? Oh my God, this is terrible. I must stop telling a story and focus on the minute gradations of consciousness as they filter through somebody's.

  Philip Pullman

  Fall, Discovery, Clothes

• The moment in the account of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis is when they realize they're naked and try and cover themselves with fig leaves. That seemed to me a perfect allegory of what happened in the 20th century with regard to literary modernism. Literary modernism grew out of a sense that, “Oh my god! I'm telling a story! Oh, that can't be the case, because I'm a clever person. I'm a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself?...a lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller.

  Philip Pullman

  Clever, Book, Perfect

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