#tom duxbury

[argentvive]

"The Collectors"

While we're impatiently waiting for Book 3 of The Book of Dust, Philip Pullman is releasing minibooks in the HDM universe. I just got the latest one, "The Collectors." So of course I was curious to see if there's any literary alchemy in it.

The book is set in Oxford but seemingly not in either Lyra's world or ours (Will's). It features two unfamiliar characters, Oxford don Horley and his friend Grinstead. The HDM universe gets tied in when Grinstead tells about his encounter with Mrs. Coulter, who seems to have travelled to his world as a young woman. (More on this below.) Actually present in "The Collectors" is not Marisa herself but a painting of her.

This is a real 1932 painting by the artist Balthus, "Portrait de la jeune fille en costume d'amazone". Balthus was influenced by Chirico and other surrealists, and as @ssmhhh has pointed out, surrealism drew heavily on alchemical symbolism. You can see the basic colors of alchemy in the painting: black, white, red, and gold. But there's an even more intriguing connection between Balthus and alchemy: his son, Stanislaus Klossowski de Rola, is the author of two important collections of alchemical images and a frequent contributor to Adam McLean's alchemywebsite.com.

So my question is did Pullman have this painting in mind when he created Mrs. Coulter in the first book? Blond hair is often a marker for the White character, so Nicole Kidman was a better choice, lookswise, than Ruth Wilson. Or did Pullman just come across the painting recently and say hey--that looks like my idea of a young Marisa?

The book is profusely illustrated with line drawings by Tom Duxbury. Here you see Horley and Grinstead looking at the painting--and the statue of a monkey that strangely always ends up coming into the possession of whoever owns the painting. (This is an obvious reference to Mrs. Coulter's nameless golden monkey daemon.)

Grinstead immediately recognizes the woman in the painting as his long ago lover, whom he knew as Marisa van Zee. "Van Zee" is basically the Dutch translation of her French maiden name, "Delamare," so even as Marisa traveled to this other world, she kept her marking as water. Her role in HDM is Argentvive/mercury, white, water and earth, and her destiny is to join with Asriel (sulphur, red, fire and air) in a Chemical Wedding that produces the Philosophical Child, Lyra.

Grinstead's other revelation is that Marisa was able to manipulate time, or at least that time in her world progressed at a different pace than in his and Horsley's. "Time passes differently in different worlds," Grimstead explains (p. 42). This may be a stretch but consider: What alchemists do is speed up time. They believed metals were living things, growing inexorably to perfection, to becoming gold. The alchemist creates the Philosopher's Stone to vastly accelerate that process, to turn base metals into gold.

The fact that time passes differently in different worlds may have important ramifications in the final book.

So yes, Pullman is still writing literary alchemy.

[sumpix]

‘The Thrilled Fire’ by Tom Duxbury

[justunsoliciteddeckpics]

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#SeptemberSlowDown23

Word Prompt Challenge

Hosted by GlitterbyInk & LivingJivaWell

Day 2: Reflection 🪞

The Mystical Dream Tarot

By Janet Piedilato

Illustrated by Tom Duxbury

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[top4top]

Meredith Duxbury Wearing

ALEX PERRY Cove crystal-embellished stretch-jersey and mesh turtleneck jumpsuit & TOM FORD T-detail 105mm pumps

[ninja-muse]

Another reading month that wasn’t my strongest ever, numbers-wise. My excuses this month?

Weather and latitude, since I get a good bit of my reading in while waiting for or travelling on public transit and it’s really difficult to do that when it’s dark, raining, or the bus is full of people because—did I mention the rain?

Me going “to heck with reading goals” mid-month and signing out 800 pages of history which I knew was going to take me weeks.

But eh, whatever. It’s been a very enjoyable reading month apart from that! I finally read my sixth/last Austen novel and I think it might be my favourite now? I absolutely see why booklr had a collected meltdown over the Netflix movie. No way could that set-up do the story justice. And I got my hands on A Restless Truth at last, and rediscovered my love of Alan Smale, and read my last of the Oseman novels also.

Watch for The Great Believers near the top of my December wrap-up, by the way. I’m nearly done and it’s good.

Persuasion - Jane Austen Anne Eliot dutifully turned down Frederick Wentworth but eight years later, he’s back in town—and courting a neighbour. - warning: misogynist society, agism, some fatphobia Hot Moon - Alan Smale Vivian Carter just wants her quiet Apollo mission. Unfortunately, the Soviets attack almost as soon as she hits orbit, and it goes downhill from there. - Chinese-American, Black, and Latino secondary characters - warning: blood, battle injuries Now You See Us - Balli Kaur Jaswal Three Filipina maids in Singapore find their daily injustices brought to the fore when a fourth maid is falsely accused of murder. Out in March. - Asian cast, 🏳️‍🌈 POV character, minor 🏳️‍🌈 character, Indo-Singaporean author  - warning: abuse, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia A Restless Truth - Freya Marske Maud has until her boat docks to catch a killer and retrieve an artifact, but she’ll need a team and a whole lot of creativity. - 🏳️‍🌈 protagonists, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters, Black secondary character, 🏳️‍🌈 author

Solitaire - Alice Oseman Tori’s life is boring and pointless and she doesn’t get why her friends care—or why everyone think Solitaire’s pranks are funny, not dangerous. - 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character, 🏳️‍🌈 author - warning: accurate depiction of depression; suicidal thoughts, homophobic characters

Be the Serpent - Seanan McGuire Toby’s happily married and due for a break. Unfortunately, an old friend might just be the worst enemy she’s ever faced. - 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters, 🏳️‍🌈 author - warning: blood, violence, death of a child

The Collectors - Philip Pullman with Tom Duxbury (Illustrator) Two art collectors discuss some recent acquisitions with otherworldly provenance.

She-Hulk, Vol. 1 - Rainbow Rowell Jen Walters is rebuilding her life again when an old friend mysteriously returns—from the dead?

Currently reading:

Beneath Another Sky - Norman Davies A world tour of countries subsumed by the colonial West and the ways they’re rebuilding after. - warning: colonial mindsets

The Great Believers - Rebecca Makkai Yale is trying for a massive bequest to his gallery while navigating a relationship and watching his friends die of AIDS. Thirty years later, Fiona is searching for her daughter and reckoning with how Yale’s friend-group has affected her life. - largely 🏳️‍🌈 cast, Jewish protagonist, Jewish secondary character, Black secondary character - warning: deaths from AIDS, period-typical homophobia, including apathy and hate crimes

The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle Victorian detective stories - major disabled character
 - warning: colonialism, racism


Stats


Monthly total: 8
 Yearly total: 136 + 1 
Queer books: 4 
Authors of colour: 1
 Books by women: 6
 Canadian authors: 0
 Off the TBR shelves: 1
 DNFs: 0

January February March April May June July August September October

[bookymcbookface]

The Collectors, by Philip Pullman

[teabooksandsweets]

Tom Duxbury’s beautiful cover illustrations for Elizabeth Goudge’s Cathedral books. These three novels are, in fact, not actually a trilogy, as publishers like to claim, but nonetheless interrelated, as they capture the cities of the author’s youth: Wells, Ely and Oxford.

[lyraspan]

When it comes to human affairs, a billion invisible filaments connect us to our own pasts, as well as to the most remote things we can imagine; and I hope that, above all, these books are about being alive and being human.

Serpentine🐍, Philip Pullman

[hitku]

'The Thrilled Fire' by Tom Duxbury

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The Mystical Dream Tarot

By Janet Piedilato

Illustrated by Tom Duxbury

[james-master]

Review of Serpentine

Such a short book, but such big content material. For those that enjoyed the series His Dark Materials comes a much shorter tale of Lyra Silvertongue. Written by Philip Pullman and illustrated by Tom Duxbury, this very short story takes place sometime after the events of The Amber Spyglass.   It was a short read. I started and finished it while waiting in a doctor’s office. Which, in…

[spooky1980]

Totally looks like Tom Hiddleston was the inspiration here 😉🥵

Robert Duxbury - A Lover's Kiss Beneath The Bushes

[nofatclips]

Livyatan by Hundred Year Old Man (featuring E-L-R) from the album Sleep in Light - Video filmed and edited by Jakub Moth

[winningthesweepstakes]

The Collectors (His Dark Materials) by Philip Pullman, illustrated by Tom Duxbury

The Collectors (His Dark Materials) by Philip Pullman, illustrated by Tom Duxbury

The Collectors (His Dark Materials) by Philip Pullman, illustrated by Tom Duxbury. Alfred A. Knopf, c2014, 2022. 9780593378342 Rating: 1-5 (5 is an excellent or a Starred review) 4 Format: Hardcover Genre:  Fantasy What did you like about the book? Two art collectors view a mysterious portrait and a bronze sculpture that one of them, Horley, has recently acquired. The pieces’ provenance is…

[justfilms]

The Loved Ones - Sean Byrne 2009