{"id":204,"date":"2003-11-04T21:36:47","date_gmt":"2003-11-05T01:36:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/?p=204"},"modified":"2003-11-04T21:36:47","modified_gmt":"2003-11-05T01:36:47","slug":"lyras-oxford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/?p=204","title":{"rendered":"Lyra’s Oxford"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philip Pullman<\/a>‘s slender new volume, Lyra’s Oxford<\/em><\/a>, is best thought of as a little present for those of us who love the His Dark Materials<\/em><\/a> trilogy. It’s a short story, “Lyra and the Birds,” which picks up the life of the trilogy’s heroine two years after the events of the final volume; together with a number of other artifacts (including a map) from the Oxford of Lyra’s world, and in one case (perhaps) from that of our own. The book has some nice illustrations, and a fine red binding. The story – which you can read in twenty minutes – is about the vagaries and uncertainty of interpretation; “everything means something,” Lyra says, “We just have to find out how to read it.” And again: “everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.” The difficulties of reading are not just a matter for those who deal with arcane texts; they are very much the fabric of our lives. Pullman is one of those rare authors I love utterly unreservedly – even though (in contrast to my other favorites) his preoccupations are in many ways quite distant from my own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philip Pullman<\/a>‘s slender new volume, Lyra’s Oxford<\/em><\/a>, is best thought of as a little present for those of us who love the His Dark Materials<\/em><\/a> trilogy. It’s a short story, “Lyra and the Birds,” which picks up the life of the trilogy’s heroine two years after the events of the final volume; together with a number of other artifacts (including a map) from the Oxford of Lyra’s world, and in one case (perhaps) from that of our own. The book has some nice illustrations, and a fine red binding. The story – which you can read in twenty minutes – is about the vagaries and uncertainty of interpretation; “everything means something,” Lyra says, “We just have to find out how to read it.” And again: “everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.” The difficulties of reading are not just a matter for those who deal with arcane texts; they are very much the fabric of our lives. Pullman is one of those rare authors I love utterly unreservedly – even though (in contrast to my other favorites) his preoccupations are in many ways quite distant from my own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}