Harry Potter vs AS Byatt

[coalescent]

From the New York Times:

But does this mean Harry is growing up? Not really. The perspective is still child's-eye. There are no insights that reflect someone on the verge of adulthood. Harry's first date with a female wizard is unbelievably limp, filled with an 8-year-old's conversational maneuvers.
[...]
Ms. Rowling's magic world has no place for the numinous. It is written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip.

I think that speaks for itself, really. :-)

Comments

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Tell me, Niall. HAve you ever watched Star Wars? As an adult? If so, shut up about Harry Potter.

[pikelet.livejournal.com]

It is the substitution of celebrity for heroism that has fed this phenomenon.

So Harry Potter is famous and popular because he is... famous and popular? My, what a stunning revelation.

I can't help but feel that the article relies far too heavily on using big, impressive words. The kind of words that mean that you can't help but mentally skip the entire sentence, because it's just so bland in its attempts to be portentous.

Anyway, as I understand it, the author is complaining about two things - firstly, the fact that the 'magical world' of HP is not somehow as 'authentic' as those created by Cooper, Le Guin, Garner and Tolkein simply because of the implementation of the 'rules' of its magic. I'm amazed that you feel in any way inclined to go along with this argument, to be honest.

Think about it - she compares HP to other authors' works and suggests that these other works create a far more valid 'regression' than HP does, because their magic is the basis of their world. In HP's universe, the magic just happens to be there - it's part of the backdrop, onto which more human drama is superimposed. In the other works the author cites, in their opinion, the magical world is that much better because it is pretty much the focus of the story.

So far, so Margaret Atwood's perception of speculative/science fiction. The idea that a particular genre must fit to certain criteria, and anything that falls short of it automatically isn't part of that genre. With Atwood, it's the belief that something has to have ray guns and aliens - because her work doesn't have those things, it's not science fiction but - if anything, in her view - the inherently superior 'speculative fiction'.

Anyway, criticising something on the basis that you think you can excuse it from the genre which you think it should be in is - frankly - really, really silly. And something that you get hacked off with Atwood for doing a lot. I'd be more cogent/coherent, but I'm going out now and I'm running late.

[hawleygriffen.livejournal.com]

It is written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip.

I think that speaks for itself, really. :-)

It really does.

It's refreshing to see someone who can respect other people's opinions, even if the opinions differ, and not take the weak route of belittling the person so as to belittle their views. Ah, well, never mind. Another time.

[ex-toastie256.livejournal.com]

It is written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip.

To me, this suggests that a person should only read a book written with a superior intellect or imagination to the reader. Perhaps the story has an 8-year-old's perspective because that is the age the author had in mind when writing? If an older reader gains pleasure from reading it too, that doesn't mean they have a simple mind, it simply means they find something in reading beyond mere intellectual sparring with the author. Personally, my purpose in reading isn't to determine if I'm superior to the author or not.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

Harry's first date with a female wizard is unbelievably limp, filled with an 8-year-old's conversational maneuvers.

Yes, he is pretty wet. But then his first romantic encounter is with the ex-girlfriend of a boy who died because of him, so you need to give him a bit of slack for that. And it fits with the whole world of HP - Hogwarts is your traditional, Enid-Blyton-esque boarding school, with trunks and gowns and prefects and common rooms, where Harry is insulated from the modern world in favour of a more old fashioned outlook.. It's just that it sits next to the modern world full of teens who hang about at the park and pick on little kids, as personified by Dudley and his muggle friends.

Besides, he's already kicked evil wizard ass twice, dealt with an escaped murderer and won the Triwizard Tournament. Women really ahven't come into things much.


Magic, in myth and fairy tales, is about contacts with the inhuman — trees and creatures, unseen forces. Most fairy story writers hate and fear machines. Ms. Rowling's wizards shun them and use magic instead, but their world is a caricature of the real world and has trains, hospitals, newspapers and competitive sport.

This is one of the reasons why I love the books. It just seems to fit that there is a hidden world of magic lurking behind everyday things, that all the old women with thousands of cats who live next door might be witches in disguise.

Much of the real evil in the later books is caused by newspaper gossip columnists who make Harry into a dubious celebrity, which is the modern word for the chosen hero. Most of the rest of the evil (apart from Voldemort) is caused by bureaucratic interference in educational affairs.

That is the evil in the modern world, at least to Harry at age 14 the embarrassment caused is one of the worst things that he can imagine happening. I generally took the point of the ending of GoF to be that next to the death of Cedric and the return of Voldemort, the petty problems of gossip columnists seem insignificant. A main theme of OotP is bureacratic interference in education, yes. But the underlying theme of that is the refusal of the Ministry of Magic (and by extension, most of the grownups outside Hogwarts, the "establishment") to believe in Harry and believe that Voldemort is returned - a bit more serious than bureacratic nonsense.

They're also omitting to mention the Dementors, giant spiders, and Death Eaters who populate the books.

Susan Cooper's teenage wizard discovers his magic powers and discovers simultaneously that he is in a cosmic battle between good and evil forces. Every bush and cloud glitters with secret significance. Alan Garner peoples real landscapes with malign, inhuman elvish beings that hunt humans.

Harry's not in a cosmic battle with evil, no. He's in a battle with evil people doing evil things, and just because the evil depicted by JKR is human rather than a cosmic inhuman evil makes it no less frightening or real.

Yes, I've spent too long on a point-by-point rebuttal of the article. To me it just seems to be an elitist attitude that because JKR's fantasy world is more grounded in modern life and modern evils, instead of in myth and legend, that they are somehow less worthy. There's a good article in there on why HP has such a crossover appeal to adults, but I don't think this is it.

people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you very much! Cartoons of course contain NOTHING OF VALUE! (grumble mutter growl stupid frelling ...)

Ah, AS Byatt. Masturbatory prose-gasms for the quite-educated who want nevertheless to read nothing too challenging, dangerous, or clogged with ideas, frothy, romantic blithering with a thick crust of richly poetical language.

After the rich people have been on their summer holidays, Oxfam drowns in a deluge of her books.

That said, "Ms. Rowling's magic world has no place for the numinous" is quotably sweet.