https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/dec/23/philip-pullman-i-had-to-grow-up-before-i-could-cope-with-middlemarch [p] Skip to main contentSkip to navigation Print subscriptions Sign in Search jobs Search US edition[ ] * US edition * UK edition * Australia edition * International edition The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian [ ] * News * Opinion * Sport * Culture * Lifestyle ShowMoreShow More * [ ]News + View all News + US news + World news + Environment + Soccer + US politics + Business + Tech + Science + Newsletters + Fight to vote * [ ]Opinion + View all Opinion + The Guardian view + Columnists + Letters + Opinion videos + Cartoons * [ ]Sport + View all Sport + Soccer + NFL + Tennis + MLB + MLS + NBA + NHL + F1 * [ ]Culture + View all Culture + Film + Books + Music + Art & design + TV & radio + Stage + Classical + Games * [ ]Lifestyle + View all Lifestyle + Fashion + Food + Recipes + Love & sex + Home & garden + Health & fitness + Family + Travel + Money * Search input [ ] google-search Search + Support us + Print subscriptions * [ ]US edition + UK edition + Australia edition + International edition + Europe edition * + Search jobs + Digital Archive + Guardian Puzzles app + Guardian content licensing site + The Guardian app + Video + Podcasts + Pictures + Inside the Guardian + Guardian Weekly + Crosswords + Corrections * + Facebook + Twitter * + Search jobs + Digital Archive + Guardian Puzzles app + Guardian content licensing site * Film * Books * Music * Art & design * TV & radio * Stage * Classical * Games The books of my lifePhilip Pullman Philip Pullman: 'I had to grow up before I could cope with Middlemarch' The author of His Dark Materials on the life lessons in George Eliot's masterpiece, ditching Lawrence Durrell and being wowed by Ginsberg Philip Pullman. [ ] Philip Pullman. Photograph: Massimiliano Donati/Awakening/Getty Images Philip Pullman. Photograph: Massimiliano Donati/Awakening/Getty Images Philip Pullman Fri 23 Dec 2022 05.00 ESTLast modified on Fri 23 Dec 2022 07.15 EST * * * My earliest reading memory I must have been read, probably by my mother, Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, and Kipling's rhythms must have got into my memory, because I remember looking at the story How the Camel Got His Hump and experiencing the words gradually matching the sounds in my mind. I was six, and on board ship to join my father, an RAF officer stationed in what was then Southern Rhodesia. My favourite book growing up Erich Kastner's Emil and the Three Twins, which was the sequel to his great Emil and the Detectives. It was only much later that I realised why that book had such a deep effect on me: like mine, Emil's mother had been widowed, and he didn't want her to marry again. I had no idea of the parallel then. The book that changed me as a teenager The Outsider by Colin Wilson, of course, which made me stop wanting to be a pop star and start wanting to be an intellectual instead. It must have had that effect on hundreds of thousands of us. The majority recovered. The writer who changed my mind Frances Yates, whose Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition I read after my finals at Oxford, made me realise I'd got everything wrong, and should have studied occult Renaissance philosophy. But it was too late. The book that made me want to be a writer An anthology called The New American Poetry, 1945-1960, edited by Donald Allen. I found it in the school library, and it included Allen Ginsberg's Howl. The whole book blazed into my life like a comet. The book I came back to George Eliot's Middlemarch. I couldn't cope with it as a student; it wasn't until I was grown up, and married, and a parent, and trying to teach it myself, that I realised its majestic scope and depth. The book I reread Not so much a single book as all the poetry I know by heart, and all the poetry I don't know by heart and want to. Poetry is everything. The books I could never read again Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet: exactly the thing for an overheated teenager - exotic locations, grown-up sex, fancy stuff with words and images, a narrative framework involving Einstein's theory of relativity, everything I was impressed by. I tried it later and found the mixture altogether too rich, but I shall never disparage anything I once loved, because the love was real. The book I discovered later in life The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist, published in 2009. In this and his later book, The Matter With Things, McGilchrist investigates the extraordinary difference between the characteristic modes of perception, cognition and response of the two hemispheres of the brain. It's like coming across an entirely new colour. The books I am currently reading Chips Channon's diaries; Mick Herron's Slow Horses series; Thomas Mann's Dr Faustus; Dick Davis's translation of the Shahnameh; Don Paterson's new collection, The Arctic; Bob Dylan's The Philosophy of Modern Song; Mary Midgley's The Owl of Minerva, etc, etc. Sign up to Bookmarks Free weekly newsletter Discover new books with our expert reviews, author interviews and top 10s. Literary delights delivered direct you Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. My comfort reads Thrillers. Whodunits. Philip Pullman's The Collectors is published by Penguin. 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