Philip Pullman’s Talk at the Oxford Literary Festival 2010

Deck Shoes shares her experience at The 2010 Oxford Literary Festival, where she attended author Philip Pullman's talk about his latest book, "The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ". An excerpt from her blog entry:

Attended author Philip Pullman’s talk at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford on Sunday where he was interviewed by Peter Kemp (fiction editor of Sunday Times and who also interviewed Ian McEwan last year). He talked about his new book “The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ,” his retelling of the life of Jesus who appears in the book as twin brothers Jesus and Christ. The interview lasted 45 minutes, afterwards the audience was invited to ask questions during the last 15. When I looked up news and blog posts about this interview, I wasn’t surprised that the gist was mostly on Mr. Pullman’s last words, in answer to the question regarding the title of the book. His response, in sum, was about choices and rights. To quote one of his lines, “And if you read it and dislike it, you don’t have to remain silent about it.”