“These essays cast a spell. . . . To read them is to be invigorated by the company of a joyfully wide-ranging, endlessly curious and imaginative mind.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Inspiration can be hard to come by, but on the pages of this essay collection, you can find it in long, deep, refreshing draughts. . . . The essays brim with joy and curiosity—about literature, storytelling, music, science, the universe, and humanity itself.” —Laura Miller, Slate
“A splendid collection . . . literary insights that will enrich and inspire.” —The Wall Street Journal
“[Daemon Voices] reads as if you’re having a highly illuminating conversation with a genius about how the storytelling sausage is made. It’s a portrait of a writer turned inside out, and anyone involved in the same endeavor will feel slightly less insane for having read it.” —Santa Fe New Mexican
“Remarkably astute. . . . A wonderful distillation of decades of writing and thinking about what goes into storytelling. Like his best books, it has a richness of ideas in its wide breadth of topics and illuminating conclusions.”—The A. V. Club
“Pullman offers meaty but always lucidly argued ruminations on the nature of story. . . . Infused with abundant wisdom, provocative notions, and illuminating insights.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“Pullman addresses ‘the business of the storyteller’ with the quiet confidence of a master craftsman sharing the tricks of his trade. . . . The essays delineate and defend the real work of fiction to nourish imagination, shape moral understanding, and, above all, delight. . . . The book is a toolbox stacked with generous, sensible advice.” —Publishers Weekly
Topic Finder
Introduction by Simon Mason
Magic Carpets
The Writer’s Responsibilities
The Writing of Stories
Making It Up and Writing It Down
Heinrich von Kleist: “On the Marionette Theatre”
Grace Lost and Regained
Paradise Lost
An Introduction
The Origin of the Universe
The Storytelling of Science and Religion: A Response to a Lecture by Stephen Hawking
The Path Through the Wood
How Stories Work
Dreaming of Spires
Oxfords, Real and Imaginary
Intention
What Do You Mean?
Children’s Literature Without Borders
Stories Shouldn’t Need Passports
Let’s Write It in Red
The Practice of Writing
Epics
Big Stories About Big Things
Folk Tales of Britain
Streams of Stories Down Through the Years
As Clear as Water
Making a New Version of the Brothers Grimm
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère
Modernism and Storytelling
Poco a Poco
The Fundamental Particles of Narrative
The Classical Tone
Narrative Tact and Other Classical Virtues
Reading in the Borderland
Reading, Books and Pictures
Oliver Twist
An Introduction
Let’s Pretend
Novels, Films and the Theatre
The Firework-Maker’s Daughter on Stage
The Story of a Story
Imaginary Friends
Are Stories Anti-Scientific?
Maus
Behind the Masks
Balloon Debate
Why Fiction Is Valuable
The Anatomy of Melancholy
An Introduction to an Indispensable Book
Soft Beulah’s Night
William Blake and Vision
Writing Fantasy Realistically
Fantasy, Realism and Faith
The Story of The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
A Response to Puzzled Readers
The Cat, the Chisel and the Grave
Do We Need a Theory of Human Nature to Tell Us How to Write Stories?
“I Must Create a System . . .”
A Moth’s-eye View of William Blake
Talents and Virtues
Another Visit to Miss Goddard’s Grave
God and Dust
Notes for a Study Day with the Bishop of Oxford
The Republic of Heaven
God Is Dead, Long Live the Republic!
Acknowledgements
Index
