Just run away if you hate spoilers and haven’t read the book.
I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows much sooner than I anticipated, but it moved along at such a rapid pace, I couldn’t put it down. Which made the blogging over last weekend lean, but since so many readers were probably reading the book, too, it wasn’t really a loss. To make the literary snobs happy, I will say that Rowling’s dialogue can grate, she gets stuck in heavy exposition, and she relies way too heavily on deus ex machinas. But those are my biggest problems with the books, and she does so many other things so well—amazingly so for such popular books—that I don’t mind some of the cheap devices she uses.
My first thought on it was, naturally, about how much I loved the meta plot. At first I was suspicious of the Deathly Hallows plot, since it seemed like a lot to introduce in the very last book, but I loved the way she established it from the get-go. The answer to their problems was to be found in a story that was routinely dismissed as “just” a children’s story, a plot I took to be a giant fuck-you to everyone who dismisses the Harry Potter series as just children’s books. My second thought was I so called it. I rate my speculation at 80%, though, because I didn’t guess that Snape would actually learn to be a better person from loving Lily. Which ended up working well, I think, especially since his better side was definitely imperfect.
The detail work in the book was remarkably good for how fast the plot moved. Rowling made Voldemort truly terrifying; the scene where they feed the teacher to the snake actually freaked me out a little. The scene where Ron kills the locket Horcrux worked much better than it should have. It could have been completely corny, but I think it ended up making Voldemort all the scarier, because Ron’s fears were so ordinary—so human.
The Deathly Hallows plotline ended up working extremely well. I was glad that Rowling ended up creating a threesome of magical objects to complement the seven-some of Horcruxes. I’m extremely glad that she set it up for each Horcrux to be destroyed by a different character, lending a sense that Voldemort really had to be defeated by teamwork. (And that Draco kind of sort of destroyed one was interesting.) The twist at the end over who owned the Elder Wand worked especially well, particularly since the secret of how to pass the wand only made sense after Harry managed to accept that Snape was not only a good guy, but in some ways a better man than he was. Harry realizing he could only proceed after learning to be more like Snape paralleled how Snape could only grow after learning that if he loved Lily, he should be more like Lily. Snape’s plot was easily the most interesting part of the series, and I regretted but understood that Rowling couldn’t show more Snape in the last book without making it all about him. But still, the most arresting image of the entire book remains, for me at least, the last bit of Snape’s Pensieve memory, where he was sitting alone in the headmaster’s office talking to Dumbledore’s portrait, surrounded by a school that was rejecting him and the only person who really understands him is dead. I loved that Snape and Dumbledore made roughly the same choices in life (adolescent flirtation with fascism that leads to a tragic death of a loved one), but for what amounted to basically chance, it ended up ruining Snape’s life while Dumbledore became a hero.
What I really loved about the book was that Rowling fleshed out and finished her themes on government corruption and the nature of prejudice very nicely. Since the 5th book on, Rowling has been using the books to comment on the particular flaw in human nature that’s really been on display since 9/11, which is the tendency of people to react to threats by becoming the very thing they fear. In the real world, Bush and Osama bin Laden are two sides of the same coin and while they are officially enemies, they work in conjunction to keep people fearful and violent and divided against each other. Rowling has her magical world reflect ours, with the Ministry of Magic turning people against each other. What I really liked, though, was the overall sympathy exhibited towards the people who cower in fear before the government. It’s incredibly important to show that fascism can only creep up if people are given a good reason to think that they might be okay if they keep their heads down and their mouths shut. The scenes in the Ministry of Magic were particularly strong in this regard; you really got the strong impression that the Death Eaters were slowly bleeding out the internal resistance instead of just firing everyone and taking over. I don’t know enough about the British government to speak to the resemblance, but the Ministry takeover resembled the bleedout of our courts and the Justice Department here by the right wing. Same with Hogwarts; taking out the pro-Order professors out one at a time is a much better strategy at taking control than a mass firing.
The theme of prejudice was also resolved in a very interesting way. Reading the earlier books, I was afraid that Rowling would never give a satisfying explanation of why so many otherwise ordinary wizards decamped to the Death Eaters. But in the end, the allure of racism was established very well. She didn’t wag her finger at the audience about prejudice, but instead painted a compelling picture of the complexity of the issue. The various differences that created tensions were not nothing, as the goblin storyline showed. The very real differences in the value of ownership between goblins and humans created a real tension, and the difficulty of maintaining tolerance in light of this difference was not downplayed. Which ended up, I think, reinforcing the importance of tolerance all the same. Ever since the beginning of S.P.E.W., Rowling has been playing with the idea that the soft liberal approach to racism, where differences are denied in the name of tolerance, is, while not as bad as outright racism, problematic all the same. Hermione finally managed to overcome some of her own prejudices in the big Kreacher scene and realize that you’re not really reaching out to others if you don’t respect their different values and mindsets.
What I really like about the prejudice theme is that it played out on so many different levels. On the racism level, Rowling played a neat trick by having the reader feel strong disdain for Muggles from the beginning, only to reveal later that it’s just that disdain that motivates the Death Eaters, causing the reader to have to confront her own tendencies towards prejudice. But it’s also the prejudice between the houses (finally Harry sees that Slytherins are not hopelessly horrible people) and between “types” of people (the cheery jock James Potter both is on the same side as nerdy Snape and loves the same woman) that are held up as flawed. And then there’s the prejudice of not respecting differences; in the end, Voldemort’s fatal flaw is just such a prejudice. Voldemort’s ongoing assumption that all people were as shallow, loveless, and vain as he ended up blinding him to the double agent in his midst.
The theme of love was the one I dreaded the most, but it worked out. If the mother-love theme established from the get-go hadn’t played out thoroughly, the notion that love is the greatest power would have been too corny to bear. As it was, Mrs. Weasley and more importantly, Cissy Malfoy’s willingness to risk everything they believed they had for their children completed the theme. That Snape and Lily were good friends from childhood ended up selling the Snape-loves-Lily storyline, too. That Snape died no doubt thinking of Lily also bolstered it; by the time Harry dies for his friends and gives them protection, you really do believe that would work. It would have been cool if Snape’s ghost had joined the others in walking Harry to his death, though. I would have liked to believe that the antagonism between Snape, James, and Lily faded after death.
The epilogue was almost too brief; I guess Rowling saw the end of the last Lord of the Rings movie and decided not to make that mistake herself. Also, I’m so amused/grateful she finally got rid of that useless owl Hedwig. Did that character ever do anything?
So, Pandagonians, what did you think?
524 Responses to “The Life and Loves of Severus Snape”
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I would have liked to believe that the antagonism between Snape, James, and Lily faded after death.
On the authority of the Mahabharata, I assure you that it does.
Liked it!
I just wanted to be the first post.
Curse you, Arun, for beating me!
Well, Snape didn’t get to speak enough, and the epilogue should have mentioned everybody’s careers (and Luna!!). Also, Albus Severus is SO getting teased for his name.
Regardless, Molly Weasley has the best line of the whole book.
I was just glad that Snape didn’t turn out to be entirely nice. I was dreading the “he’s really entirely noble inside” arc I thought it would take; characters aren’t real if they’re entirely good or bad, and it would have been much too pat for him to have simply been the best good guy ever. I liked that he was doing all the right things, but for selfish reasons, and that it also had an air of tragic futility about it. No matter how much he did to protect Harry, that still didn’t remove the pain he caused Lily. He died still looking for absolution.
I think you should smallify your images. Sheesh!
I had much the same response as you - though the dialogue was simply horrendous the book was exciting and well worth the read.
My main objection lies in the fact that Rowling seems to have taken a pile of the most popular internet theories, thrown them together in one book, and called it a day. You and many other predicted the entire Snape scenario (although to her credit even knowing those theories I didn’t realize until the end that they were true), Dumbledore wanting Snape to commit the murder to protect Draco’s innocence, Harry’s being a Horcrux, one of the Weasley twins dying, the castle comes to life to defend itself, house-Elves and other “minor” creatures play a role in the final battle, and on and on and on…..All of these theories had been posed in multiple places repeatedly already. Other than the Deathly Hallows meta-plot, I’m trying to think of one point that wasn’t repeatedly proposed.
Also, that picture is HUGE. I’ve never had a picture stretch a browser window at 1920x1200 before.
This was an element I had to explain to my son, who thought the whole scene of Narcissa whispering to Harry was completely off the mark. I had to explain to him that her love for her son was more powerful than her fear of Voldemort. That Lucius and Cissy’s love for Draco redeemed them in the end because instead of fighting with Voldemort, they went off looking for their son.
I was relieved with how she did the Snape/Lily storyline–I figured the reason Dumbledead trusted Snape was because of Snape’s love & regret that he got her killed, but I thought it would come off as very creepy and Niceguyish. It still did, but I agree with Amanda that making them friends as children helped the relationship become believable, especially if you think of poor abused little Severus growing up in a Muggle area, with no friends and then one day he discovers a little witch his age!
I also like how Snape died triumphant in a way. I figured he was going to die in this book, but I didn’t think in any way other than throwing himself in front of a curse for Harry, or being discovered as an agent. I liked that Voldemort never uncovered his true loyalties.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I suppose if I was picky, I could find a lot of things wrong with it. Similarly, if I had read the internet predictions and postulations I may have felt somewhat disappointed. I think the attitude one takes going into something usually has as much to do with their opinions afterward as the thing itself. I expected to enjoy the book, willfully suspended my disbelief and critical judgment (I’m not a lit professor or a reviewer, so why not?) and had a lot of fun reading it. Just like I enjoyed “Live Free or Die Hard”. Can someone actually jump a car into a helicopter and blow it up? Probably not, but it was exciting to watch. But, I digress…
I think my favorite part was the way Rowling handled Harry going to sacrafice himself. I think the mixture of resignation and regret and all those other words that start with “r” was very deft. It wasn’t all noble, it wasn’t all fear… And when the final moment came, there wasn’t a lot of exposition, it just happened. I cried.
Dude, wtf is up with random words in the post being links to ads? That’s just a little dishonest. It causes people to click on them, thinking they’re relevant to the post.
Sorry, don’t want to derail your lovely HP thread here. Please carry on.
One of my problems with Rowlings writings is the need for a thesaurus. She used the word plinth abut 4 times in 8 paragraphs. And though so small for most everyone else, it grates on my nerves like ginfernails on a chalk board.
She could have just broken it up once by using the word pedestal or base… she’s done this in other books too.
Anyway:
I was saddened with Hedwig died.
I was stunned when Mad Eye and Fred died.
I cried when Dobby, Remus, Tonks and Snape died.
I cried the most and had to put down the book when reading the chapter “In the Forest.”
I lost it when Lilly said to Harry, “You’ve been so brave.” It took me a few minutes to get myself back together again enough to continue. I found out last night while watch Olbermann that Rowling cried the most in this chapter too.
PS. Is anyone else having problems with everything timing out before they they can get their thoughts typed, do the anti spam numbers and then hit the blaspheme button? I’ve taken to copy and pasting my comments to notepad so I don’t loose them in the process)
I can’t read the other comments; they’ve been replaced with smiley faces. Hopefully I’m not being too repetitive.
As I was reading it, I loved it. It’s a pretty superb action sotry, and I loved all the same parts that you mentioned.
I would have liked to see a little more about Snape’s motivations for joining the death eaters. Since his childhood apparently consisted of being repeatedly victimized by two opposing camps of purebloods, it seems odd that he would ever have joined them willingly.
Anyway, the day after I finished, I found myself a little disappointed. There were just too many loose ends. First, plot issues (how does the sword end up back in the hat? What was the poiint of Harry’s wand’s auto-pilot?)
More importantly, her story was much *smaller* in scope than I had been lead to expect. There are many, many crucial questions left over from previous books she never gets around to answering. I expected the fate of the wizarding world to be decided, but we don’t get a clue about what the new society looks like.
Similarly, we never learn what are the dark arts and what’s so dark about them? That, and in what sense love is *harry’s* power are two sides of the same issue, never really resolved.
Finally, the book, while good, is oddly disconnected from the previous volumes. I was *certain* that the Veil and the Door from book five would play a role; since they don’t, I’m not sure why they needed to be in the books at all.
Similarly, owing to the total reversal of fortunes, six and seven don’t join cleanly. Virtually *none* of the ongoing themes and questions from six crop up in seven at all, and nothing of the plot carries over execpt Snape and Horcruxes. It would have been better to go straight from 5 to 7.
Still, I’m not as grumpy as I sound– it’s still a superior book, all told.
My “lost it” part was during that same scene, but when Harry asked “Does it hurt?”
I had to put the book down and cry for a few minutes before I could go on.
Well, Snape didn’t get to speak enough, and the epilogue should have mentioned everybody’s careers (Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes!! Luna!!). Also, Albus Severus is SO getting teased for his name.
I’m quite surprised about Hagrid not dying. I thought he was going to kick the bucket for sure. I’m saddened by the deaths of Lupin and Tonks - they were rather casually thrown away. Seeing the twins get torn from one collective happy entity, to two seperately recognisable entities, to one rather lonely George wasn’t exactly fun either.
Regardless, Molly Weasley has the best line of the whole book.
Well, Snape didn’t get to speak enough, and the epilogue should have mentioned everybody’s careers (Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes!! Luna!!). Also, Albus Severus is SO getting teased for his name.
I’m quite surprised about Hagrid not dying. I thought he was going to kick the bucket for sure. I’m saddened by the deaths of Lupin and Tonks - they were rather casually thrown away. Seeing the twins get torn from one collective happy entity, to two seperately recognisable entities, to one rather lonely George wasn’t exactly fun either.
Regardless, Molly Weasley has the best line of the whole book.
A couple of responses: yes, comments are playing up for me, too; and the sorting hat can produce Gryffindor’s Sword for any ‘true Gryffindor’, according to a Wikipedia article that was hopefully edited by someone in the know.
I wasn’t buying the Snape Hearts Lily stuff in any of the books until Rowling threw in one particular moment in the Snape’s Tale section that really sold it for me.
It’s the bit where they’re on the Hogwarts Express, inadvertantly in the same car as James and Sirius. Snape and Lily have been friends for a while, in the absense of any wizard-friend competition. But then James and Sirius (the popular kids) open their goddamn mouths, and you can practically SEE them trying to steal Snape’s one friend away.
This very scene played out at least 5 or 6 times in my own childhood — I, the nerdy weirdo, would befriend someone (usually the new kid on my block, or some outsider who would have no way of knowing my outcast status), only to have them snatched away by the dominant social order once anyone found out.
This finally sold Snape to me as anything other than a creepy villain who aspired to things he had no right to. And it finally sold Lily as especially good for not immediately listening to James and Sirius.
Er.. Jake? I dunno if it’s my browser or yours or what, but the only words linked are a prediction thread on HP and an amazon link to the book…
Anyway, I enjoyed the book immensely, best in the series IMO. I love how things turned out with Snape, though I did get a little squicked by the whole “NiceGuy” Snape vs “Asshole” Potter.
Mind you, James Potter really WAS an asshole. I’ve never liked him.
My big beef with the whole series thus far was how Lily was basically neglected, and I’m glad that its worked out that, despite everyone telling Harry he was so much like James, what really mattered ended up being how much like Lily he was.
I also ended up a little squicked with the whole thing where we realise Lily got married and knocked up at 19, but I think Mrs. Weasley explained it pretty well in HBP when she was objecting to Bill & Fleur’s wedding… that back when Voldie was around the first time, everyone thought they were going to die tomorrow, so they were getting married and having kids left right and center.
The epilogue, however, was extremely lame.
I read it in less than 24 hours, and cried for the last two chapters.
I loved the way as these books have progressed, the characters have gone from black and white, good and evil to more fully rounded and believable people. watching these characters make their difficult choices under great threat in the last book was heartbreaking. (mr.lovegood turning in harry because of his fears for luna, and after he turned the quibbler with luna into the only real source for news, nevilles gradual transformation from bully magnet to sword weilding hero) made this one ring so true.
My biggest problem with the text was Rowling’s insistence on keeping the narrative with Potter the entire novel. It forced lots of exposition to be handled in dialogue which is far from her strong point. It also, unlike the last few texts which seemed overly long, seemed cut too short. You had very little of the Rowling flourish for small detail in the work. You had the great piece in Luna’s home, but outside of that it seemed sparse.
That said, this book is much different from the previous 6 in that it abandoned the school calendar to a great degree. Rowling wanted an adult Potter with adult problems and the way to do that, which I thought was handled well, was to contrast what was happening to the mischief that Potter had at Hogwarts through the first 5 books.
This is where a familiarization with the rise of fascism comes in handy (as it has for me many times during the reading of the books). If you want to be a part of the dominant group you become like them, but even more so, no matter how badly they treat you. Their rejection of you is seen by you as a validation of the beliefs that you share, and you believe that they are wrong in rejecting you because you are (you believe) just like them, and if you are just More So and Demonstrate It and They Understand then you will be welcomed into the magic circle. this is especially so if you have (or believe that you have) something to hide which would make you an outsider if they knew.
On the fascism theme: One of the things that I realized early on was that Rowling has a superb grasp of the mechanics and realities of 1930s British political history. She brilliantly recreates in the magic world all the denial, all the wishful thinking, all the secret, dirty little hopes in many hearts for the dark things to triumph.
All right, how did my “all the secret” become a hyperlink to an advertising site? I didn’t put that there!
Well, Snape didn’t get to speak enough, and the epilogue should have mentioned everybody’s careers (Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes!! Luna!!). Also, Albus Severus is SO getting teased for his name.
I’m quite surprised about Hagrid not dying. I thought he was going to kick the bucket for sure. I’m saddened by the deaths of Lupin and Tonks - they were rather casually thrown away. Seeing the twins get torn from one collective happy entity, to two seperately recognisable entities, to one rather lonely George wasn’t exactly fun either.
Regardless, Molly Weasley has the best line of the whole book.
A couple of responses: yes, comments are playing up for me, too; and the sorting hat can produce Gryffindor’s Sword for any ‘true Gryffindor’, according to a Wikipedia article that was hopefully edited by someone in the know.
A few days ago I read an interview with Rowling where she elaborated upon the lives of the characters in the 19YA scene. Unfortunately for her, she was completely wrong by most accounts. I think the epilogue was made so incredibly annoying and vague is so everyone can ignore it and make up their own versions.
(See, what happens is Luna becomes the Minister of Magic, after Kingsly decides to open up a small gift shop in Godric’s Hollow.
Hermione becomes the Secretary-General of the UN, and permanent secretary to Minister Luna, due to her position between the wizarding and muggle worlds. All major diseases are cured.
Ginny becomes the Madame of a very exclusive brothel.
Ron becomes an Quiddich umpire, and marries Hermione.
Teddy, by way of his parantage, can change into a werewolf at will, so he joins the X-Men and becomes a surrogate son to Woverine.
Lupin was gay gay gay all along.
Something horrible happens to Rita Skeeter.
And Harry becomes an author by the name of J.K.Rowling, and coaches Quiddich on weekends.)
Well, Snape didn’t get to speak enough, and the epilogue should have mentioned everybody’s careers (Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes!! Luna!!). Also, Albus Severus is SO getting teased for his name.
I’m quite surprised about Hagrid not dying. I thought he was going to kick the bucket for sure. I’m saddened by the deaths of Lupin and Tonks - they were rather casually thrown away. Seeing the twins get torn from one collective happy entity, to two seperately recognisable entities, to one rather lonely George wasn’t exactly fun either.
Regardless, Molly Weasley has the best line of the whole book.
A couple of responses: yes, comments are playing up for me, too; and the sorting hat can produce Gryffindor’s Sword for any ‘true Gryffindor’, according to a Wikipedia article that was hopefully edited by someone in the know.
or 21st century Amerika
Well, Snape didn’t get to speak enough, and the epilogue should have mentioned everybody’s careers (Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes!! Luna!!). Also, Albus Severus is SO getting teased for his name.
I’m quite surprised about Hagrid not dying. I thought he was going to kick the bucket for sure. I’m saddened by the deaths of Lupin and Tonks - they were rather casually thrown away. Seeing the twins get torn from one collective happy entity, to two seperately recognisable entities, to one rather lonely George wasn’t exactly fun either.
Regardless, Molly Weasley has the best line of the whole book.
A couple of responses: yes, comments are playing up for me, too (this is about the 3rd time I’ve had to copy-paste this); and the sorting hat can produce Gryffindor’s Sword for any ‘true Gryffindor’, according to a Wikipedia article that was hopefully edited by someone in the know.
Of all the people there, he asked the guy who fell through a curtain…
we never learn what are the dark arts and what’s so dark about them
my understanding is that the dark arts are about equivalent to “black magic” — stuff like killing people, torture, starting fires that can only be put out by a certain counterspell, etc.
as for what’s so bad about them, well, uh, duh. killing people mercilessly with a single spell is wrong. torture is wrong. etc. the dark arts seems to me to be concerned with coming up with magical ways to do evil things to people. and since, as Bellatrix said, “you really have to mean it!”, the dark arts must therefore be elevated to a more evil level than the equivalent in the Muggle world (guns, bombs, the guillotine, etc). I can shoot you accidentally, I can shoot you because I think I have to — I have to really want to lay the cruciatus curse on you.
Though this leads us to one of the bigger thematic holes in Deathly Hallows — “For The Greater Good” is shown as being a terrible evil, in the sense of Grindelwald, Voldemort, and the Death Eaters’ desire to control Muggles, “Mudbloods”, lesser magical creatures, etc. and do evil things to them “for the greater good”. But Harry et al do evil things “for the greater good” all the time. There’s a difference in scope (throwing the Imperius curse on a goblin to break into Gringotts to save the world is obvs less evil than systematically persecuting Mudbloods), but then, couldn’t one justify the latter by saying that it’s less evil in scope than something else?
Hedwig was Harry’s companion when he was away from Hogwarts. She gave him hope when he was away from the world where he felt the most comfort. Her death not only showed that Rowling was willing to kill any character in the narrative, but that once Hedwig was gone, it’s open season on any of the people Harry loves from a writing standpoint.
She was Harry’s pet and friend. For that, I see her as an important character and an important part of Harry’s life. She sent a lot of notes to people and did what owls do in the Wizarding world.
Hedwig was Harry’s companion when he was away from Hogwarts. She gave him hope when he was away from the world where he felt the most comfort. Her death not only showed that Rowling was willing to kill any character in the narrative, but that once Hedwig was gone, it’s open season on any of the people Harry loves from a writing standpoint.
She was Harry’s pet and friend. For that, I see her as an important character and an important part of Harry’s life. She sent a lot of notes to people and did what owls do in the Wizarding world.
insistence on keeping the narrative with Potter the entire novel. It forced lots of exposition to be handled in dialogue which is far from her strong point.
The main reason she does this, as far as I can tell, is that it’s one of the primary rules of mainstream fiction writing. She put herself in this situation when she had the narrative stay with Harry for the first 6 books. It might have been fascinating for her to violate this rule, but it’s very, very rarely done in mainstream bestseller type fiction, and there would be both a lot of pressure on her not to — i’m also not sure her writing skills are up to breaking a rule like that successfully.
And, of course, I don’t think the Potter series would work at all if it had been written in third person omniscient.
Not to mention that the need to stick with Potter as narrator doesn’t necessarily force her to use expository dialogue to the level she did. She could have made greater use of the pensieve and Harry’s scar (both of which work perfectly well as “cheats” to the narrator rules), or had them find out what they needed to know via research (as she does when Hermione steals the Dumbledore Unauthorized Biography). or she could have structured the plot differently so that they weren’t constantly chasing exposition. She could have used the book of fairy tales more, for instance (surely there must be more than one story in there).
And, also, of course, you have to face the fact that, well, books need to have dialogue in them. Rowling’s dialogue is her weakness (though I sometimes have a soft spot for Ron’s ‘Cor Blimey!” Britishisms), but you can’t exactly tell her “OK, so just try and avoid dialogue as much as possible in this next book, since you clearly suck at it.”
I’m convinced that “Pius Thicknesse”=”George W. Bush,” with Cheney as Voldemort, the real power behind the throne.
Sorry about the image, everyone. I’m still working out the bugs on the new site, too.
My main objection lies in the fact that Rowling seems to have taken a pile of the most popular internet theories, thrown them together in one book, and called it a day.
My take is the complete opposite. The idea of throwing punches that are implausible or defy the narrative just to surprise people makes my stomach churn. She had a story outlined that made sense, and some people out there are just really good at piecing together themes, narrative, and character and figured out where she was going with everything. That certain predictions came to pass shows that some readers are really good at understanding narrative and that she is a consistent writer.
Jake: I agree it’s dishonest. But don’t blame me. I deliberately asked the advertisers not to put that feature in there, and they put it in anyway. I was lied to, and I’m removing the code right now.
Also, I’m going to be the first to point this out, if anyone else noticed it.
In line with Clytemnestra’s realization that Ms. Rowling is in serious need of a thesaurus, did anyone else ever notice that anytime she’s describing some low-grade villain or otherwise “untrustworthy” character, she mentions that they have a hooked nose? wtf is with that? antisemitic much?
That, and the realization that anytime she wants to paint an extremely minor character as untrustworthy, wrong, pointless, silly, etc. she throws their dialogue into the stereotypical working-class cockney style speech? Of course I guess this is countered by the fact that all the really important evil characters use stereotypical upper crust language. But it’s still vaguely annoying. And I do wish that if she was going to do that consciously, she should have had fun playing with the silly British upper class tendency to use the “one” construction all the time (for instance having Lucius Malfoy say something like, “One ought to go back into Hogwarts and retrieve Potter, sir,” rather than just straight up offering to do it).
Appy polly loggies for the triple post! I won’t repost this one.
I was really upset when Hedwig died! I loved Hedwig. And I HATED the epilogue. I wish I hadn’t read it. I didn’t want the image in my head…of them all grown up and cheesy and…stale.
I’m with you about everything else, though.
I recognized that she needed a thesaurus several books ago - it was one of the things I was willing to read over though.
sextuple post, I mean. I say. Septuple now. Octuple after this. Might leave the point now.
Rowling seems to have taken a pile of the most popular internet theories, thrown them together in one book, and called it a day
Except that there are plenty of theories she ignored. A lot of people were saying that Draco would redeem himself. He never does, really. His parents are somewhat redeemed in that there is something they care more about than being Voldie’s Minions. But that doesn’t really vindicate them very much. And Draco fights on the wrong side till the bitter end, and even in the epilogue Ron and Harry are still extremely distrustful of him and warn their kids away from little Scorpius Malfoy.
No in the end Draco, instead of fighting on either side, shows the weasel he truly is by pleading with the unknown Death Eater that he is really Draco Malfoy, one of them.
He’s not fighting in the end .. he’s hiding.
Rowling had the ending of the book imagined from day one, and had been writing the book so that it would all make sense in the end. Intelligent people picked up on the Snape/Lilly issue, the division of the twins, the death of Dumbledore, and the possibility that Harry would have to sacrifice himself in order to defeat Dumbledore. I loved the ending. I cried a little during “The Prince’s Tale” and when Fred died. I got a little misty when they went into Luna’s room and she’d painted pictures of all of them together with the word “Friends” written in gold around everyone and she wasn’t there because she was in prison for it.
I too was a little disappointed that Luna wasn’t mentioned in the epilogue, and I was disappointed that Harry stayed with Ginny (I was definitely a supporter of Harry/Luna). I was big happy about Neville making the full circuit from bumbling oaf to hero who helps to save the day.
I would have picked Hagrid to die over Hedwig because Harry always saw Hagrid as a sign of invincibility (along with Dumbledore). That said, I’m glad he survived, the poor shmoe deserves a little happiness in his life.
I was also surprised at how Rowling under-used the Malfoys in the end. I knew that Narcissa would play a role (and I was pretty happy with the role she played), but I really would have expected Draco to actually turn and fight with Harry after being rescued from the fire.
I think that what Rowling did, though, was really pretty savvy. Just because stuff is leading up to something doesn’t necessarily mean that’s how it will be, which kept her from being too trite in the end.
Do you think that parents are still going to buy the series for their kids now that the ending is revealed to be so dark? I knew Harry was going to survive because she would have been committing long-term-sales-suicide by killing him off, but still, the death of Hedwig, Fred, Tonks, and Lupin (not to mention Snape for those of us who liked him) might cause parents to decide that it’s “too much” for their little kids?
But he had a receding hairline in his 30s! Surely that is punishment enough!
Also now everyone’s going to be talking about his big AS/S.
Though this leads us to one of the bigger thematic holes in Deathly Hallows — “For The Greater Good” is shown as being a terrible evil, in the sense of Grindelwald, Voldemort, and the Death Eaters’ desire to control Muggles, “Mudbloods”, lesser magical creatures, etc. and do evil things to them “for the greater good”. But Harry et al do evil things “for the greater good” all the time.
See, I strongly disagree that was a hole. I think that’s the difference between the “Dumbledore was a rat bastard” and “Dumbledore a flawed but ultimately great man” theories. I’m in the latter camp. I think Rowling’s point was that the greater good is the prevailing principle, but humans, being flawed, often mix up the greater good with their own personal desires for power. The “greater good” when it comes to dominating Muggles is a comforting lie to the oppressors. But it is the truth when it comes to Harry or Dumbledore dying for the cause.
That it’s difficult to tell the difference between the right “greater good” and wrong “greater good” just makes the theme more interesting, to my mind.
Also, I’d like to point out that “The Prince’s Tale” totally vindicated Snape from the “Nice Guy” accusations.
I liked this book, more than I thought I would. There was just so much hype, it being the last book and all.
I definitely second (or whatever number) the desire to know the characters later careers. The epilogue was interesting, mostly because you have to think about how hard it must be, to go from having your entire life (and death) defined by your relation to this Dark Wizard. But I would have liked to know precisely how ordinary (I really wanted to know who ended up Minister of Magic!)
Lupin and Tonks’ deaths were just to… glossed over. I wanted to know more. That and the explosion-death of Fred was too fast. I would have cried, but there just wasn’t enough time.
Though, the amount of fan fiction that’s going to result from this book, particularly cousin/cousin, is going to be amazing.
Clytemnestra, it seems to be a problem in most of popular fiction coming out these days. Almost every bestseller type book I read, especially anything over about 300 pages, is rife with examples. I don’t know whether it has to do with changes in the editing process, the over-reliance on computerized copyediting, the pressure to write ever-longer books (especially true in Rowling’s case, where I fear there’s this editorial need to stroke preteen egos by inflating the page count), or what, but it freakin’ drives me crazy.
I tend toward Amanda’s view of the Greater Good slogan, although I’m not sure about the use of Cruciatus.
But Voldemort doesn’t use that slogan. He uses “Magic is Might.” What he does is good in his mind (see Social Dominance Orientation Scale). This in fact seems like the main difference between the old Ministry statue and the new one. The old statue implicitly tries to justify wizard rule in dishonest ways. The Dark Lord’s version just glories in it.
early in the week I had said that there was a tab from which Rowling could start a new set of books (BTW she is doing an 8th book that will tell us how everyone ends up, more about Snape, and other characters, stuff she couldn’t put in the series and the writing dead ends.)
I think that “tab” is Scorpius and Theodore Remus.
My last comment for a few hours - and I really am frightened at the amount of reading I’ll have to do on this thread when I get back
Rowling had the ending of the book imagined from day one, and had been writing the book so that it would all make sense in the end.
You know, I’m almost certain this isn’t true. It’s almost never true with any writer of big blockbuster serials. Mainly because when they sit down to write the first installment, nobody ever knows whether it will be successful enough to turn into a 7-part serial, or what kind of thing it will evolve into, etc.
It’s pretty clear to m that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was written to stand mostly on its own, and that Chamber of Secrets was meant as a simple sequel. It’s not until Prisoner of Azkaban that it becomes clear that this is a 7-book story arc, that it’s meant as much for adults as for children, what the stakes really are, etc. And the overall arc doesn’t really gel into place until book 5 — between the interlude feel of Goblet of Fire and the amount of time that elapsed between the release of books 4 and 5, I’m pretty sure that’s where she really set down the remainder of the plot, not back in 1990 when she started writing Philosopher’s Stone on a lark.
I loved the blatant penis joke (yes yes, I can be very immature in my humor) on page 113:
“‘This isn’t your average book,’ said Ron. ‘It’s pure gold: Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches. Explains everything you need to know about girls. If only I’d had this last year I’d have known exactly how to get rid of Lavender and I would’ve know how to get going with… Well, Fred and George gave me a copy, and I’ve learned a lot. You’d be surprised, it’s not all about wandwork, either.’” [emphasis mine]
Awesome
J.K. Rowling is a dirty, dirty woman.
Also, @ Clytemnestra — I’d put money on Hogwarts: The Next Generation as a series of ghost-written junky kiddie serials.
Well, even if the first couple of books were throwaways in a lot senses, the next 4 books established characters and themes to the point that a lot of the plot twists were inevitable, if you were reading closely.
I’ve been looking forward to this thread all week!
And there is so much to say - I wasn’t planning to stay up to read the book, but that ended up happening nonetheless. Also, while I sobbed my eyes out when Sirius died in Ootp and Dumbledore in HBp (and actually, Cedric too in GoF), my eyes only got a little teary during “The Prince’s Tale” chapter, because I never liked Snape event hough I suspected he was good, and his story just broke my heart.
Other thoughts: I loved the book, I love that Dumbledore became a much more complex figure, the fascism themes as already noted in this thread, the importance of family and motherhood (Go Molly Weasley! And Cissy Malfoy, for that matter), Hermione basically being the smartest and most clever person ever, etc etc.
I didn’t really notice when Hedwig died - I suppose it was because I was shocked that there was so much violence at the start, and I was positive that Hagrid was about to die. I was also caught offguard by Lupin and Tonks’ deaths - it wasn’t until I reread the last third of the book (hmmm the best part!) that it really sank in.
I also really enjoyed the Horcruxes/Hallows bit (though, what do people thing - was Harry really Master of Death? How did Voldemort “kill” the Harrycrux with the Elder Wand? so many questions…). And even though “The Prince’s Tale” is one of the best chapters in the whole book (seriously, read Snape’s Death scene with the black eyes/green eyes bit, and then look at the picture at the beginning of the chapter in the US edition, I found it incredibly moving), my favorite was King’s Cross. I’m still working out the reasoning behind it.
Agreed that the Epilogue kinda sucked… though I also read the JKR interview and I guess I didn’t really want to know the names of all of the 19 Weasley grandchildren… though JKR also said she was planning on writing an HP encyclopedia at some point that expands on all the little details in the series…
well that is quite enough for me to have written to start with, I’m looking forward to everyone else’s comments!
Moi,
Kingsley becomes Minister.
I don’t have the original link for the interview, but I c&p’d it here on the 4th page of this thread
She expands on the epilogue. Luna is a Naturalist. LOL
I wish there would have been more Snape in this book. But I must say for the few pages he was there his character was used exceedingly well. And I can’t wait to see Alan Rickman play the death scene
Except it is, as a cursory look at the last decade of Jo Rowling interviews will reveal. Apparently she took an editing pass at the final chapter, but to my eyes that epilogue felt disconnected from the rest of the book, alluding almost not at all to the specifics of Harry’s story, calling back instead to the feeling of the first volume.
Your cynicism is charming and in this case (thankfully) unwarranted. I’ve no doubt that the first book was written with a certain standalone vibe on purpose - getting it published was an outside shot at best - but Rowling was assembling the story for several years before it was published; tying the third volume (and not the first two) more tightly into the long backstory and overarching plot was just a sensible move given precisely the half-assed serial storytelling we’re used to.
I loved the humaness of the characters. I loved how Rowling continually blurred the lines regarding the natures of the characters, and how that Harry came to see that as he got older. In book 5 he sees that his father wasn’t the epitome of goodness. In the final book he gets to see that Dumbledore could be weak and selfish and that Snape could be noble. So much kid lit divides characters into good and evil. Even Voldemort comes off as more of a damaged person than an evil one.
I caught R’s interview on the Today Show and was disappointed that she said Ron and Hermione become aurors. I really did see Hermione becoming a wizard lawyer and in the ministry,
Moi,
Rowling talks about the characters’ careers: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19959323/
I still haven’t seen anything about this “Someone will perform magic very late in life for the first time” bit; seems it was just left out?
The epilogue annoyed me a bit. I get what Rowling is saying about not wanting to make it look like she crammed too many things in, but it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to talk about how that whole inter-species equality thing is coming, not to mention the careers of the main characters. It just felt like “No don’t worry, they got married and had kids, it’s okay”. I wonder if George had the strength to continue on with the joke shop.
I can’t wait for the promised encylopedia; I have the two little mini-books (Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them); I’m just a sucker for little extra details like that.
The epilogue was the only part where I started getting teary-eyed. When he addresses his son by his full name, “Albus Severus,” I lost it.
Also, I was a bit pissed that Moody’s gone. I loved his character.
I tried posting this about 20 minutes ago, my apologies if this becomes a repeat.
I’ve been looking forward to this thread all week!
And there is so much to say - I wasn’t planning to stay up to read the book, but that ended up happening nonetheless. Also, while I sobbed my eyes out when Sirius died in Ootp and Dumbledore in HBp (and actually, Cedric too in GoF), my eyes only got a little teary during “The Prince’s Tale” chapter, because I never liked Snape event hough I suspected he was good, and his story just broke my heart.
Other thoughts: I loved the book, I love that Dumbledore became a much more complex figure, the fascism themes as already noted in this thread, the importance of family and motherhood (Go Molly Weasley! And Cissy Malfoy, for that matter), Hermione basically being the smartest and most clever person ever, etc etc.
I didn’t really notice when Hedwig died - I suppose it was because I was shocked that there was so much violence at the start, and I was positive that Hagrid was about to die. I was also caught offguard by Lupin and Tonks’ deaths - it wasn’t until I reread the last third of the book (hmmm the best part!) that it really sank in.
I also really enjoyed the Horcruxes/Hallows bit (though, what do people thing - was Harry really Master of Death? How did Voldemort “kill” the Harrycrux with the Elder Wand? so many questions…). And even though “The Prince’s Tale” is one of the best chapters in the whole book (seriously, read Snape’s Death scene with the black eyes/green eyes bit, and then look at the picture at the beginning of the chapter in the US edition, I found it incredibly moving), my favorite was King’s Cross. I’m still working out the reasoning behind it.
Agreed that the Epilogue kinda sucked… though I also read the JKR interview and I guess I didn’t really want to know the names of all of the 19 Weasley grandchildren… though JKR also said she was planning on writing an HP encyclopedia at some point that expands on all the little details in the series…
well that is quite enough for me to have written to start with, I’m looking forward to everyone else’s comments!
For those of you with random links showing up — it’s an adware. I don’t remember which one, but try running lavasoft’s ad-aware and/or spybot.
Back on topic — I skimmed the comments to get that up, but I wanted to comment on the ‘internet theories’ thing — I think that JKR is just that predictable. There’s a lot of clever & unique stuff in the books, but the basic plot outline isn’t among them. I’m not at all surprised that lots of people who read lots of fantasy figured out where she was going with lots of stuff.
And I believe that she’s had the basic storyline in her head for all these years. Details changed as the story got fleshed out, but I think the basic motivators — Snape, ‘love conquers all,” etc. were there from the start. I don’t see how she could have started writing the boy hero/supervillain story in book 1 without having some idea of what the eventual conclusion would be.
And the death that most affected me was Hedwig. Poor Hedwig, just wanted to fly and hunt and get some attention every now & then — and Harry had to keep him in his cage the last few weeks of his life. Aww. (And where’s Crookshanks?)
We’re heading out to breakfast, but I just had a sudden thought:
I know a lot of people are disappointed in the sketchiness of the ending, but I think JKR knew perfectly well that a LOT of people were going to pick up the book and flip to the end to see who lived and who died, and so she was very careful not to tip her hand. If you read the end first and don’t see Luna in there, you’re going to be a lot more nervous during the battle of Hogwart’s. Same reason, I think, why Snape’s portrait didn’t show up when Harry goes into the headmaster’s office at the end.
as a cursory look at the last decade of Jo Rowling interviews will reveal
Yeah, the author always says they had it all planned from day 1. It’s almost never true, or true in any literal sense (it is true, of course, that any writer worth their salt will have no problem imagining the further adventures of the characters). This is what bugs me especially about George Lucas — he practically had to flee the country at the release of Star Wars, because it was expected to be such a dismal failure. There’s almost no way a sequel was in the cards during production of the first film, let alone a double decker trilogy arc. But there he goes, over and over, insisting that, really, he had the whole storyline laid out from day 1. No, actually, he didn’t. And no, actually, pretty much no previously-unknown writer of a major series does, either.
Though I will admit to Amanda that it’s obvious, by either book 3 or book 4, that it’s growing into a large-scale story arc, and at least Rowling is honest enough to stick to ideas laid out in the first few books — she doesn’t do what so many other authors of big series do and pretend things that happened in the first installment never existed so as to change the rules and get the outcome she wants. Rowling does the smart thing and lets her characters go where they need to go, lets the story play out they way it needs to play out. It doesn’t feel artificial, or forced, or like a cash-in on the success of books 1-3. That’s the major strength of the Potter series, in my opinion, and the only reason I’ve stuck with them through the years.
But it doesn’t mean that Rowling laid the whole thing out from day 1. Because she so totally obviously didn’t, and couldn’t possibly have.
An excellent review.
One of my favorite things was the way JKR left the Malfoys. They aren’t totally redeemed; in the future, they’re still sort of miserable people who are natural sparring partners with our heroes. But it’s touching that at the end of the battle, the Malfoys aren’t gathered up and lynched by the Order (as Order collaborators would be if the Death Eaters had won). They’re not magically made into perfect people; the magical world is just returned to a normal, non-existential-crisis mode.
I hated that Harry used Unforgivable Curses. It may have been my only serious problem with the book. The epilogue was not totally necessary/a little corny/utterly predictable but not jarring.
And I agree with you on being satisfied that she didn’t throw in weird curveballs just for the sake of surprise. There’s something about resolving a story in the foreshadowed way that’s satisfying.
I could go on for many paragraphs, but overall I was much more sympathetic than most commentators online to DH as an end to the series, and I think your review is apt.
??”…(adolescent flirtation with fascism that leads to a tragic ..”
An inquiry on this very small point.
Is this sort of political infatuation commonly experienced or encountered?
Who knows about this as a phenomenon?
Other than —
[Full disclosure; ‘I WAS a teen-aged fascist…’.
(And haven’t read a lick of Harry Potter but have ALL the films)],
I have never seen it referenced.
I’ll be back. Anyway.
-If anybody knows? -
It seemed to me, with the Horcruxes, that Rowling was doing quite a bit of nearly-defensive explaining about Tom Riddle’s diary (from Chamber of Secrets) and how it was related to the other Horcruxes. That made me think that the Horcruxes were not part of the original outline.
This from the hated WSJ..
“Essay -Generation Hex
A first-time reader of the ‘Potter’ books searches for meaning in the final volume
By TUNKU VARADARAJAN
July 28, 2007
There is conceit — often a conceit — at the heart of any decision to pick up and read a new book. Mine, in the case of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” is that I had not read a single one of J.K. Rowling’s books until earlier this week, and so fancied myself — indeed, reveled in the status of — a Harry Potter virgin.” …
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118557388707180774.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
….Some have asked whether we should fear, or cheer, for a world whose kids have derived some elements of their childhood morality from Harry Potter’s Manichaean world. I think the question is overblown. For one thing, the movies have ensured — as movies often do — that the stories have acquired the shape of pure fun, detached from the darkness and light that can reside within private readings of text.”
Glenn Greenwald would observe that we’ve enough of GWB/Manichaeian…already
Ah and another thought about the commenter who said that Draco wasn’t redeemed - he did “save” harry and company when they were trapped at the Malfoy mansion, he refused to positively identify them… now, that doesn’t mean that he didn’t do other bad and creepy things, but to me that moment continued the way he was portrayed at the end of HBP, and also foreshadows his mother’s role in decieving Voldemort and in the process saving Harry.
@ Catrala — but he didn’t “save” them in any active way. He just didn’t send them directly to their deaths. If that was meant to be Draco’s redemption, he would have actually lent a hand to get them out of there, or said, “no, this is OBVIOUSLY not Ron Weasley, you know not every redheaded wizard is related to them. And Hermione is way uglier than this girl, c’mon, get with the program, people!”
First of all, I want to say something:
J.K. Rowling is a brilliant writer.
Yes, yes, clunky dialogue this, occasional need for a thesaurus that — no writer is perfect. And yes, she steals liberally, but so does every fantasy writer, and indeed, every writer alive.
But Rowling’s ability to structure narrative and is one of her great strengths, and narrative is the heart of a story. After Harry’s escape occurs, the story almost has the feel of a coiling spring, with the escape of Hermione, Harry, and Ron into the wilderness and their long, uncertain wandering, where they don’t know what they’re really supposed to do. This takes up a tremendous amount of time in book terms, longer than it needed to, and it felt intentional. When the spring is finally wound tightest, Ron returns from his exile, destroys the horcrux, and from that point on we’re moving quite rapidly toward the end of the story, with essentially nonstop movement of plot until the very end.
There were little things that were note-perfect, too. The way that Harry’s march to his death is stretched out, but the moment of death is simply a moment — not drawn out, not even really explained, just a blip, and he’s gone. The circling final battle between Voldemort and Harry, with the two orbiting the space between them, and Harry warning Voldemort to repent — that was a truly great scene. And the last lesson of Dumbledore, at King’s Cross Station, was in the finest tradition of the God-Teacher.
Rowling’s other great strength as a writer is her characterization. None of her characters were all-good or all-bad in the end, not even Harry. Harry is arrogant at times, too dependent on and possessive of his connection to Voldemort, an imperfect, flawed, human character. Not even Voldemort is completely evil — he’s just broken inside, a man who has taken his hatred of self and turned it outward at the world.
People care about the Potter series because Rowling fleshed out her characters and put them into interesting situations. If there were elements of the plot that had to happen (Dumbledore’s death, because the God-Teacher always dies; the mano a mano confrontation between Harry and Voldemort; Harry rejecting a relationship with Ginny because the hero can’t be tied down with worldly connections until the battle is won), they happened as much because of the conventions of literature and the Hero Quest structure as anything.
The Potter series is ultimately a monomyth — the same essential plot and structure as Star Wars and Gilgamesh and Le Morte d’Arthur. But she executed the series with with and charm, creating a world that rang true. No author aspires to more than that, and she deserves praise for that.
And incidentally, I loved the “wandwork” double entendre as well.
There may be some parents who will decide to steer their children away from the books because of the more dark traits at the end, but I think that number will be relatively small. I also think that the people who do take that tack will be making a grave error. One of the most unfortunate mistakes we have made as a culture over the last fifty years is the extent to which we attempt to wrap our children in layer after layer of cotton batting until they couldn’t so much as skin a knee if they tried.
No matter how uncomfortable it makes us, death is an integral part of life. Over the last fifty years, we have pushed death away, shielded ourselves from it so that we needn’t deal with the essential reality of its omnipresence, and we have even more carefully shielded our children to the point where pain and death are completely unreal to them. This is as unhealthy a state of affairs for a child as it is to be surrounded by nothing but death and pain. Death without life is damaging. Life without death is similarly damaging.
At the end of the day, I think this is what lies at the heart of Rowling’s genius. She does not flinch in the face of death; she does not try to protect her readers from their own mortality or from the mortality of those they love; and she does not attempt to hide exactly how painful it is to lose someone. More importantly, she clearly and straightforwardly shows that this pain can be dealt with and overcome.
There are parents who would skitter away from the mere notion of their children having such knowledge. I am not one of them. My daughter is almost ten now, and she has read all of the HP books. I am very comfortable with this fact, and am grateful that Rowling has, in her way, given her another tool with which she can face the day when someone she loves shuffles off this mortal coil.
It’s worth noting for the fundies who hate Harry Potter that Harry’s march to his death is basically a quote from Narnia, with Aslan’s sacrifice.
J.K. Rowling is a brilliant writer.
Yes, yes, clunky dialogue this, occasional need for a thesaurus that — no writer is perfect. And yes, she steals liberally, but so does every fantasy writer, and indeed, every writer alive.
But Rowling’s ability to structure narrative and is one of her great strengths
errrr, no.
Rowling is one of the better writers of popular fiction out there nowadays, or maybe just one of the few with an actual soul, doing it for more than just the paycheck.
But no, “brilliant” she’s not. Firstly, a “brilliant” writer needs to be a better master of dialogue (or at least a moderate non-failure at dialogue). A “brilliant” writer doesn’t paint herself into a 746 page expository corner. A “brilliant” writer doesn’t constantly resort to deus ex machina (OK, maybe Sophocles and Aeschylus get a pass, but that’s because they did it literally).
Not to mention of course that if Rowling is brilliant, where does that leave the real grownup writers of great literary fiction? If Rowling is “brilliant” in anything but an inflated sense, that makes all the living masters of fiction demigods? Where does it leave the great writers of fantasy and sci fi, people like Lewis, Tolkein, Le Guin, Bradbury, etc?
Rowling is very good at the task she’s been given (turn your cute children’s story about a fantasy version of the British prep school system into a 7-part allegory that can be enjoyed at almost any level, by anyone in the world). And she has a great deal of integrity. And she actually cares. All of which is incredibly important, and doesn’t diminish her at all. But among the great writers of the Western Canon? er, no.
First of all, did Xenophilus die? I’m not sure, but I do hope Hermione’s brave and thoughtful escape did him some good.
I enjoyed this book, but feel like I did at the age of twelve or whatever when Return of the Jedi was over: a stunning realization that the anticipation for the next chapters was not going to be necessary. I just hope that when Rowling is in her sixties, she won’t make Jar Jar Kreacher a major character in the prequels.
I’m looking forward to the next two movies, the loads of books, the theme park (though that they decided to put in in Florida makes me want to scream,) and all the thinking about magic, family, life, love, friendship, choices, and all the other stuff found in this richly-imagined world. And I’m glad it’s gotten my son to read long books.
I think that Rowling deserves praise for leaving Draco as an in-betweenish sort of figure. The fact is Draco is neither redeemed, nor cursed. He’s essentially a little shit who doesn’t have the wit or the backbone to be truly and effectively evil. Like Bart recoiling from young Miss Lovejoy, “you’re trying to turn me into a master criminal when all I really wanted to be was a petty thug!”.
To extend the examination of prejudice- Rowling also used Ron in an interesting way. In terms of dealing with the other races, Ron is the privileged individual, even growing up in a “liberal” house with a dad obsessed with Muggles and his best friends being Muggle related, he has no clue about House Elves and Goblins as actual individuals. It simply never occurred to him, even though he is a “good” guy at heart, he looked pretty bad in planning negotiations with Griphook. In addition, Ron’s understanding of the other magical creatures, etc.- he never really paid attention and he always looked down on Hagrid. Rowling was quite sly with her treatment of Hagrid. Hagrid’s constant incompetence really stopped working as comic relief and led the reader to continuously question why anyone would keep him around. This was Rowling’s genius again. Dumbledore and Rowling knew that Hagrid’s persona could eventually contribute to a war where all creatures would end up taking sides, even creatures marginalized by the mainstream community.
So many things in the book examine privilege and Rowling doesn’t take the easy way out. We so want to sort characters into types, just like the reality of the sorting hat, which in our world is based on privilege, privilege, privilege. How was Snape supposed to be a good guy when he was constantly marginalized/shunned. I loved this reality. I also loved the unstated aspects of Snape/Lily’s friendship. They were either both great at Potions or perhaps Snape really helped Lily (just like Hermione would have to help Harry with everything, and Harry was just like his mom, getting help from Snape). Snape really was the flipside of Dumbledore, not Harry (as another commenter mentioned as well).
I hated the fact that it was implied that Neville used the sword of Grif. to kill Nagini- that was just too much.
Anyway, Amanda I think was right on.
6079, I think that’s spot on.
I, for one, cannot imagine a redeeemed Draco Malfoy. Though I’m curious to see how the family’ll take it when he inevitably marries a Mudblood.
I’d also love to see some sort of AS/S storyline where Scorpius is an absolute rebel, Sirius to Albus’ James.
Just to add- I think the “Nice-guyish” aspects of Snape were pretty realistic. That’s how people feel. Many of the characters in the book are defined by traumas they go through in the formative years- this is how people actually are- they get damaged, and they aren’t perfect.
as for Hagrid, I always liked him as a reminder that an individual doesn’t have to have every possible superlative in order to be a good person, or worthy of heroic status. Hagrid may not be the wisest, or the craftiest, or always possessed of the best motivations. But his heart is in the right place, and he has his own contributions to make.
BTW, was anybody worried that Hagrid had “turned” to the dark side? Early in the book when it’s revealed that Ginny, Luna, and Neville had been sent to Hagrid for punishment, I was really worried that he’d end up the Carrows’ enforcer.
Ok- I’m not able to see comments, and the RSS is only showing the first 10, so I apologize in advance if any of this is redundant. I should probably wait to post until I get the glitch figured out, but I’ve been bursting at the seams all week on this…
First- things I liked about DH- the big action scene in the beginning with the polyjuice Harrys was well-executed. It set the expectation that anything was possible, and I liked that. I was sad to see Hedwig go (I liked her- very cat-like owl), but her death was the real wake-up jolt. I also liked that Rowling set the main action for most of the book outside Hogwarts. It would have rung untrue to have them still sitting around worrying about quidditch and detention. The Hallows themselves were an interesting subplot, and I agree with Amanda that the parallel between the significance of the “children’s story” in the book and HP itself was a clever bit of commentary. Most of all, I liked the treatment of facism, authoritarianism, and racism the book undertakes. All of these themes had been building, and I’m glad that Rowling doesn’t wuss out and skate over this in favor of action! in this book. And I love the redemption of Severus, and agree that more Snape would have been nice, but as the book is called “Harry Potter”, and all… Giving Neville the task of killing Nagini was pretty sweet, too. In a way, he fulfilled the prophecy as much as Harry did.
What I didn’t like about DH- the very first scene at Malfoy Mannor. We all ready know Voldie is a badd-ass- we don’t need the sacrifice of a “red shirt” teacher to get that point. Move along. The wedding and Ms. Weasly’s nagging didn’t do much for me, either. Ok– your hiding “enemy #1″ at your home, one of your Order has been killed by an apparent double-cross, the Ministry is teetering on the brink of destruction– and your going to spend time rounding up the Wellingtons to make a good impression on the Delacours? And on top of that, you are going to invite everyone in the wizzarding world to your home for the wedding, with “enemy #1″ thinly disguised as a cousin? I also didn’t like the listlessness of the the middle of the story when the trio is hiding out. I know this is supposed to be Harry’s “midnight of the soul”, but it is over-long. And, I must say, it reinforces the unfortunate impression I’ve had for a while- Harry is a dunce. On that note, I don’t like the whole Ron/Harry/Hermione dynamic here, either. Hermione has ALWAYS proven herself to be the more reliable (and useful) friend, but the whole prodigal son welcoming of Ron back into the fold just doesn’t give Herm her dues. “King’s Cross” was an important bit of exposition to clear up Harry’s real destiny and to clear Dumbledore’s name, but it was awfully Obi Wan for me. And the Epilogue! Oh, the hatefulness of the thing…
I was not an original Potterite- I only started reading the books this summer, so I probably don’t have the same emotional investment some people have. I liked the series overall, and I feel DH was a satisfactory end, but I am troubled by the lost opportunities in this series (especially that dreadful epilogue). All along, I’ve been waiting for HP to do something revolutionary, but it seems to be pretty well entrenched in the Status Quo. I particularly dislike the handling of sex roles in the series. While we see parity in women and men in their magical ability, there is no parity in their positions. The statue in the ministry fountain with the wizzard standing taller than all other magical beings (including the witch) is a telling image. As I said before, Hermoine was clearly the “better” friend, by any measure, but Ron is obviously Harry’s “best mate” throughout. Even the use of the words “wizzard” and “witch” feed this. And of course we’ve got the nagging mother/wife stereotype (Molly Weasly), various mention of “hags”, the dismissal of Hermione’s moods by Harry and Ron as “girl’s stuff”, Harry’s Nice Guy ™ blundering with Cho, James Potter being an insufferable ass but still “getting” the girl in the end… I could go on. And the epilogue, with its blatent trumpeting of the old heteronormative, family values crap really did nothing for me. I know it is kid lit, but I think it could have been written so that a lot of the patriarchal crap would have gone bye-bye, and it still would have been an entertaining read.
But among the great writers of the Western Canon? er, no.
I think this is setting the standard for “brilliance” well above what I would set it as. Sure, there are literary imperfections and there has been a lot of heavy borrowing thematically from other authors, but I think she did what she set out to do in a way that is inclusive and brilliantly uses characters and allows them to become actual characters as opposed to monolithic clunkers. Among the great writers of Western Canon are people whose books I wouldn’t read if I had a gun to my head, and that doesn’t make them less brilliant, but I have a feeling that the actual test of “brilliance” is whether people are still enamored with the Potter series in a hundred years or so, and I, for one, think they will be.
my only real problem with the epilogue is that, oh, c’mon, Harry is so not going to marry Ginny. This is the same problem I had with Six Feet Under’s counterpart sequence. I know all the teenagers who grew up reading these books want to believe that you grow up to marry your high school sweetheart. But you don’t. I’m willing to give Ron and Hermione a pass, because they are sorta perfect for each other. But Ginny is quite obviously a “first love I always carried a torch for” character, not Harry’s future wife. I can see Harry and Ginny running into each other 10 years later at Ron & Hermione’s wedding and wondering what might have been, having a drunken final one night stand. But that’s about it.
Which leads me to my other beef with the epilogue and something Rowling constantly implies — why does her universe marry people off so young? James and Lily Potter would have to have been married before they were 20. Fleur Delacour can only be 19 or 20. In the epilogue, there’s an allusion to Ted (who’d be just barely 19) marrying one of Fleur and Bill’s daughters (who’s not even thought of in the book’s finale). And, no, sorry, Ginny Weasley is not going to be married with a kid by 23, which she’d have to be if James is 12 in the epilogue. In fact, not only does this grate on me, but I find it really, really troublesome.
moderation — still a factor?
or is it the gremlins eating my posts?
i don’t want to be a brat and post a zillion times, but i had something i really wanted to say, and the new format is confusing me.
ill try to keep these comments brief:
1) harry totally went frodo in this book.
2) it makes complete sense that the epilogue was written before almost anything else. on its own what does it tell you: harry, hermione, ginny, ron, and draco all live. voldemort loses and snape/dumbledore are ultimately ‘good’ in the eyes of harry. thats about it.
the next two are just a couple points to speculate about:
3) grindelwald never actually disarms gregorovitch, he just steals the elder wand. the line of succession seems to be broken unless the two dueled later on?
4) at the end of the book harry says that as long as hes never beaten the power of the elder wand’s power will die with him. seems like auror would be a questionable choice for a person looking to avoid dueling.
and lastly:
5) i enjoyed harry using the cruciatus curse. he was afraid of his anger getting the better of him and there it peaked out.
JackGoff — when someone calls a writer “brilliant”, as opposed to “pretty damn good” or “successful” or “enjoyable to read” or “creative” or whatnot, yeah, I tend to think that they think that the person in question is, at the very least, up there with current writers who’ve established themselves as somewhat canonical.
Marquez is brilliant.
Pynchon is brilliant.
Pamuk is brilliant.
Murakami is brilliant.
Coetzee is brilliant.
Kenzaburo is brilliant.
Achebe is brilliant.
Grass is brilliant.
Morrisson is brilliant.
Iris Murdoch, George Orwell, and Graham Greene were brilliant.
J.K. Rowling is rather good, at best.
Wait, why is everyone branding Snape a “Nice Guy”? Sure he was obsessive and clingy, but there’s nothing suggesting he felt entitled to Lily’s affections. I thought the “Nice Guy” was defined by thinking that because he was so Nice he deserved the cookie of women’s attention. That’s not Snape - and just because he carried a torch for her long past when it was reasonable, there’s no evidence he ever harassed or guilt-tripped her about it. I call foul on the “Nice Guy” slur.
What I liked: Neville kicking ass and standing up to Voldy, of all people, the action/storyline, including the Hallows and finding the Horcruxes, the redemption of Snape and finding out Dumbledore is human after all.
What I hated:
- JKR’s continual attempts to make kids out to be little duplicate versions of their parents, cf the epilogue scene. What the hell is with that? That creeps me out more than anything else.
- No Luna in the epilogue. How the hell do you make an amazing character like that and then oops, forgot to mention her still existing 19 years later.
- What Neko-Onna said re: sexism
- Harry and Ginny do not have a relationship to speak of. Major oversight to not have your main character at least somewhat interact with his One-True-Love™.
- The sword from the hat trick was a good reference back to CoS, but it’s the, what, fourth deus ex machina in this book? Just have Neville send a Reducto curse or something at Nagini in the midst of the duel and that would suffice.
It does rather beg the question of why did Lily choose James? Frankly, I’m not entirely clear on that. It seems to be a bit of a validation of a Nice Guytm rant: that the wooden-headed muscleboy gets the girl. I got the impression that if Snape hadn’t been so fascinated with the deatheaters-to-be and dark magic, Lily might have gone with him. But not choosing Snape does not answer why she went with Potter, does it?
I tend to think that they think that the person in question is, at the very least, up there with current writers who’ve established themselves as somewhat canonical.
And that’s fine. I just don’t agree that that standard is universal, and that the term “brilliant” is not something as set in stone as the term “canonical”, so making one the criteria for the other is dubious.
I recalled how at the end of each of the previous books, Dumbledore would call Harry into his office, and he’d tell him that, well, Harry, you’ve survived another year of derring-do and adventure; it’s time for some exposition! And he’d explain everything that had happened. I was wondering what would happen in this book, as Dumbledore clearly wouldn’t be around to deliver the exposition… but silly me, I thought being dead would stop him. Like clockwork, we get, in the midst of all the action and death death death, Dumbledore explaining everything that’s gone on. Not that I can think of a better way of doing it, but it was a heck of a cliche by the end of the series.
I wasn’t worried that Hagrid had turned when Ginny, Luna, and Neville were sent to him. After all, it was Snape who sent them to him. It was the perfect way for Snape to keep his cover; he seemed like he was punishing them when he wasn’t at all.
or, hey, maybe Neville uses some of his actual brilliantly gifted skillz to defeat Nagini, like maybe by poisoning her via some obscure herbology thing?
I’d have thought it a stroke of genius had Neville tossed some totally mundane hunk of weed down her gullet, she withers and dies, and when asked wtf that was, Neville goes, “oh, c’mon, everyone knows delphinium is poisonous to most reptiles…”
i couldn’t stand hermione in this book. she was completely useless and was written much more femininely than she had been before. her one time destroying a horcrux wasn’t even important enough to include as a major plot point. kinda bugged me. tons of things could have been hermione’s doing. like jumping on the back of the dragon or something.
i think defining good authorship as some kind of unattainable standard that not that many people (read: women) can live up to is painfully ridiculous. rowling wrote a magnificent 7-part book series that is popular all over the entire world. charles dickens, james joyce, et al have never done that. does it matter if your book is genius if it’s painful and boring to read? maybe it’s me, i dunno. the second i find out someone’s part of classic literature that’s usually a code for me to avoid ever reading it because the book is most likely lame and uninteresting.
Horcruxes can’t be destroyed by something that cheesy; the Gryffindor sword had absorbed basilisk venom, and so could destroy Horcruxes. Unless Neville was casting Avada Kedavra or Fiendfyre, he wasn’t going to be knocking off that snake without some kind of tools.I just don’t agree that that standard is universal, and that the term “brilliant” is not something as set in stone as the term “canonical”, so making one the criteria for the other is dubious.
Poorly worded. What I meant was:
I just don’t agree that that standard is universal, and I think that the term “brilliant” is not something as set in stone as the term “canonical”, so making one the criteria for the other is dubious.
What I mean is that it’s in the eye of the reader what they feel is “brilliant writing”, where as accepted canon in literature is a whole different animal.
Unless Neville was casting Avada Kedavra or Fiendfyre, he wasn’t going to be knocking off that snake without some kind of tools.
Meh, I know that, but I wanted Neville to do something genius with it, like in the way the opoponax suggests.
And I guess a Reducto curse isn’t all that genius, but c’mon, something other than riffing off of Harry!
JackGoff, the problem here isn’t what each of us individually think about Rowling and her ouevre compared to other writers. the problem is the original commenter basically came in and said, “yeah, sure she’s got flaws, but J.K. Rowling Is Brilliant.”
As much as I like Rowling as a literary figure and have enjoyed HP immensely, her many, many, many extremely glaringly awful flaws* make it impossible to declare her “brilliant” in any meaningful sense, unless maybe you mean “brilliant” in the way brits tend to use it, i.e. “pretty damn cool”.
The only way someone can really and truly think Rowling is a giant of the English language literary scene is if they’ve basically never read anything besides her, Dan Brown, Anne Rice, and John Grisham.
*not so much the constant borrowings, or her occasional word-choice problems, but more like the fact that she couldn’t dialogue her way out of a wet paper bag, and had to basically make the whole last book one gigantic hunk of exposition punctuated with the occasional highly improbably deus ex machina (even though there are countless other smarter ways to finish out the series), etc. yes, she has quite a few high points, her narrative integrity, sense of humor, talent for characterization, etc. But in my book “quite good at a few things” and “successful at what she ultimately set out to do” do not make a writer “brilliant”.
also @ rachel — there are MANY MANY great women writers.
It’s just that Rowling isn’t one, really. I think it would be really silly if all passably good female writers had to be considered Brilliant in order for feminism to PWN, or whatever.
two people I mentioned as practically canonical in my above post are female (Toni Morrisson and Iris Murdoch). A woman wins the Booker, Pulitzer, Whitbread, etc. about half the time, at this point. And probably a quarter of all Nobel Laureates for literature are women.
Again, I’m not dissing Rowling, here. I just think it’s unfair to the written word to decide that because she doesn’t absolutely categorically suck ass, therefore she is Brilliant. unless, again, you mean it more like “pretty cool”.
Either way, I never meant to completely derail and go back to canon vs. popular literature, or whatever. Let’s carry on with dissecting Deathly Hallows, please.
Where does it leave the great writers of fantasy and sci fi, people like Lewis, Tolkein, Le Guin, Bradbury, etc?
Well, Lewis only had one good series (the Perelandra series sucks ass) and not every book in the Narnia series was great. As far as a series-ender, I think that “Deathly Hallows” is superior to “The Last Battle.” Not to mention that Bradbury has never written a great novel. He’s one of the best short story writers of all time, but he’s not a novelist.
And before we judge Rowling’s dialogue, we should probably read the British originals since Scholastic has said that they “cleaned up” her dialogue for the American audience, beyond just changing the spelling.
Re: Lily and James-
I know Remus says something about James getting mature in his last year–maybe realizing what is coming up and that is time to stop being an entitled ass, but 1)that’s coming from Lupin, who has a bit of a blind spot for James and 2)not good enough for someone who picked on my friend for years! And like Dumbledead was quoted as some point, it’s easier to forgive someone being wrong than right.
What I can’t figure out is why everyone (’cept Snape) is always going on about how wonderful James is. I guess you don’t tell the orphan kid that his father was an ass almost his entire life, and I’m guessing that James’ courage and fighting ability against Voldypants, plus his early death, made all the jerkiness less relevant, but I keep thinking that Sirius and James would have been just the types to mock Hagrid unmercifully.
OK, this is a completely random thing to notice, but did anyone wonder why she decided to set the book so definitively in 1997/1998?
It didn’t appear to have any bearing on anything, but when I saw the specific birth and death dates for James and Lily, and figured Harry was born in 1980…I dunno, it made me wonder if there was something specific about the timing that was supposed to mean something.
It was actually kind of distracting, and I personally prefer it if authors don’t date things that precisely unless it’s key to the story. Maybe it’s just me.
Overall, though, I found the book very satisfying, and a worthy conclusion to an enjoyable series.
Not to mention that Bradbury has never written a great novel.
Granted, you might call it a novella, but I’m pretty sure a large amount of people think Fahrenheit 451 is a “great novel”.
And I think Lewis is a stinker, but I wouldn’t say he wasn’t brilliant.
why are my posts disappearing?
Roov, we’re looking at their graves. What else is supposed to be on them but birth and death years?
I guess she could have gone with them dying in 1985-86, to coincide with Harry being 11 in 1995-ish when the first book was ready for publication. Except of course that the books weren’t written in real time, so that would still make him older than 17 in 2007. Which means it ultimately doesn’t matter.
Their dying in 1981 does, however, coincide with Harry being 11 in 1990-91, which is when she started writing the first book.
I loved it all, with one exception: it’s beneath Molly Weasley to say “bitch” and it’s beneath Rowling to write that. That word in that scene at that instance was pure Hollywood bullshit and totally unnecessary.
Did anyone else notice the inconsistancy of there being no mention of a newly hung portrait of Headmaster Snape?
Overall, I’d give the book an A-, for many of the same reasons others have listed. The epilogue, had it been stand alone, would have been a C at best.
That put me off too, but then I was surprised that they weren’t killing the Death Eaters they subdued. I mean, what’s the long-term plan there? Run off and wait for the Ministry to arrest them? These aren’t criminals any more; they’re organs of a corrupt state, and our heroes are partisan revolutionaries. Just as killing is not okay in time of peace but okay in time of war, I can see how Unforgivable Curses suddenly become Forgivable in that context.Also, JackGoff, I agree that if wed had some kind of incredibly powerful plant introduced in previous books, it would have been perfect for Neville to toss it at Nagini. But, on the other hand, pulling the sword from the hat is something that confirms his status as really belonging to the heroes’ club, so there’s certainly that.
@ Amy, remember of course that the popular kid is of course going to be liked by a great many people. One of my younger brothers ended up being a total jock asshole, most popular kid in his high school, homecoming king, etc. I know he’s an asshole (though of course he’s my brother and I love him to death), but people who went to our school and know him as Mr. Homecoming King Football Player Dude love him to death and always will.
I think, in James’s case, this is exacerbated by the fact that he did grow up to be one of “the good guys”, and father of The Boy Who Lived, etc. which turns him completely legendary in many eyes besides Harry’s. In the way that everyone remembers Princess Diana as being the epitome of “goodness” even though for all we know she could have been an absolute bitch to deal with every day, etc. Harry’s father has become a symbol, a saint. Which is just fine for everybody else who doesn’t have to live with him as their father — Harry has to know the truth.
@ 6079, in terms of “Why does Lily choose James?”
well, if you do the math, there’s always one good possibility. Their birth and death years imply that Harry must have been conceived when they were both 19. Very, very few people, even in the world of Harry Potter where everyone gets married insanely young, get married at 18 or younger.
the opoponax,
Yeah, that’s a good point. You forget the day to day bitchiness and humilation and remember the one time they compliment you!
I still think all the Sorting is bullshit! I’m the first to not think that G is all that, but there is nothing about Lupin that made him a G! I love the character, but he was a coward throughout the series–most especially in Azkaban, when he never told Dumbledore that Sirius could turn into a dog, because he didn’t want to disappoint Dumbledore. And how did Peter P. get into G?
It is interesting that in interviews, JKR says that Houses aren’t important to the adults (and in fact, we don’t know the Houses of some of the adult heroes), and she keeps insisting that S. isn’t all bad, but I do wish we had gotten more of the other houses throughout. And I wish that any Slytherin students had stayed and fought.
I think James must not have been a complete ass, but we’re only revealed his assitude because his not-assitude is kind of assumed at the beginning. Rowling has a constant trend of either slowly or abruptly turning characters on their heads or showing that they are not one-dimensional as much of the Potter-world leads us to believe. The fact that a lot of the stuff she does NOT explicitly hit over the head with I think makes the work more complex that it seems on the surface. That being said I would have loved for this book to have been better edited in terms of some of the repetitive clunkiness and the bad cinematic cheapness, i.e. the Molly Weasly “bitch” comment and the Ron/Hermione cliched inappropriate kiss moment. Finally, I agree with the everyone pairs off and marries their high school sweethearts being trite, but many aspects of the book solidly remain in the realm of children’s fiction, and I actually appreciated that. There is a certain childlike optimisms that needn’t be completely destroyed. The fact that a realm exists where reality doesn’t completely hold is fine by me.
I can buy James being an ass in his 5th year(it is prime Capslocky hormone time), but I was a little horrified at how horrible he was from the get-go. Of course, Draco was that assy that young, so I think Pinko is right that my dismay was maginified by my assumption that James wasn’t ever an ass. Good point.
I dunno, the Molly Weasley “bitch” comment totally cracked me up.
Maybe it could have been done just as well without the actual word “bitch” used, but sorry, I love that demure “Mrs. Weasley” gets to turn Pissed Off Mother Lion, for once, thank the goddess. Rather than having her entire role in all of the books being the annoying, ugly sweater knitting, scheme ruining nag. Love her to death, and have always relished the Weasley House scenes, but I have to say I always pictured her in the wizarding version of a cat sweatshirt. So it was nice to see her take her place as a warrior.
And Bellatrix is characterized as the classic textbook-case Bitch, isn’t she? I mean, the description is apt, is it not? it’s not like Cho calling Ginny a bitch for stealing her man, or anything like that.
what’s with my use of “love x to death” like 5 times in the last 2 posts?
i think i’m the one who needs a thesaurus…
Not to mention that we see most of James’ assitude through the eyes of his mortal enemy, Snape. Hopefully no one is under any illusion that Snape never retaliated towards James and Sirius for being assholes just because we didn’t see it.
Roov, that dating comes from CoS when the trio attend Nick’s 500th death day party. That date is on the cake (or something like that) as (I think) 10/31/1492, so that places CoS in 1992. All dates have been reckoned from that, and JKR apparently accepted that bit of nerdy fandom.
For me, though, all it means is that I’m Percy & Oliver Wood’s age.
Another pair of comments about the book - Voldemort, Dumbledore, Snape are all driven by the demons of their childhood and youth - it is as if they never grew up. Also a Dumbledore who puts on Marvolo Gaunt’s ring - “I quite forgot that that it was now a Horcrux, that the ring was sure to carry a curse. I picked it up, and I put it on and for a second I imagined I was about to see Ariana, and my mother and my father, and to tell them how very, very sorry I was….” is not very credible to me.
And I’m Ginny and Colin Creevy’s age!
Granted, you might call it a novella, but I’m pretty sure a large amount of people think “Fahrenheit 451″ is a “great novel”.
It’s a good novel, and a classic, but when people are talking about Marquez and Pynchon as great novelists, I don’t think that Bradbury makes the list. As I said — best short story writer ever, not a great novelist.
And I think Lewis is a stinker, but I wouldn’t say he wasn’t brilliant.
Oh, I think Lewis was brilliant, but I think Rowling is brilliant as well. That she was able to bring deep themes and complex characters to children’s literature is an amazing feat. I think people aren’t appreciating what a feat it is because she’s the only children’s lit writer they’ve read since they were children themselves, so they’re comparing her to Marquez instead of Frances Hodgson Burnett or L.M. Montgomery.
Another pair of comments about the book - Voldemort, Dumbledore, Snape are all driven by the demons of their childhood and youth - it is as if they never grew up.
So you never, ever, cringe suddenly at that cruel thing that someone said to you back in 5th grade?
Most people are driven by the demons of their childhood and youth, unless they undergo massive amounts of therapy … and even then, it doesn’t always work.
Trust me, at 38, I’m only now starting to realize how much the demons of my childhood and youth have pursued me even when I thought I was over them. And I haven’t even held an object in my hand that would allow me to talk to my mother who died when I was 7 years old.
In other words, I found all of that to be the most credible and realistic stuff in the book.
Am I the only one who spent almost the entire book thinking Molly Weasley was being held captive at Malfoy Manor? Something about in the first chapter when a prisoner cries out in agony when they talk of killing Harry (which I guess must have been Ollivander, just upset that the chosen one may bite it and never rescue him) and the way she was keeping Harry, Hermione, and Ron separated, and the way she was fussing over a god-damned wedding when the world was falling apart…I guess I got too paranoid. Constant Vigilance!
@ Arun — but don’t we all carry around the baggage of our youth, to at least a certain extent? I’ll probably always be the person I am because of a few things that happened to me in childhood and young adulthood. Getting older can help distance me from those things, but it doesn’t change who I am. Of course, I can’t possibly know how I’ll feel when I’m 45, or 70. I can perfectly well understand how Lily meant everything to Snape (especially if Voldemort Phase I was happening in the direct aftermath of their year’s finishing Hogwarts, and Lily and James pairing off). And, sorry, if due to my own greed and ambition, the sister I was supposed to be protecting died, possibly by my hand and definitely while I was in the room, I’d still be pretty broken up about it 50 years later.
Regarding the ring, I’m with you there. It took weeks for the locket to mess with Ron enough to get him to storm out of a room. And he turned out just fine, totally normal, etc. So how could the fact that Gaunt’s ring was a horcrux and Dumbledore put it on for like 3 seconds sentence Dumbledore to death?
On a totally different note, I find it hilarious that I’m a year younger than Harry Potter and a year older than Lisa Simpson.
Also, by working at Hogwarts, Snape was in an environment full of reminders of his time as a student there. Like others have said, every now and then I realize another way that events in my childhood have shaped how I am today, and I haven’t lived in my home state for ten years. I’m pretty sure that some of the ways I’ve grown are at least partly due to simply that I had some distance from the influences of my younger days.
“they’re comparing her to Marquez instead of Frances Hodgson Burnett or L.M. Montgomery.”
I’m not so much comparing her to Marquez, I’m just saying that if one is going to declare a writer Brilliant beyond question, you have to realize the competition. Had the OP said “a briliant children’s writer”, I’d probably have agreed wholeheartedly.
I’m not sure I’d consider either Burnett or L.M. Montgomery brilliant in the grand scheme. I think Rowling is much better than Montgomery, who turned Anne into such an insufferable bore after the second book or so, and who finished out the series basically writing WWI propaganda. And Burnett always did way too much final act wish fulfilment for my taste (except for Secret Garden, which is pitch perfect). And it turns out your father is secretly alive! And it turns out you are a princess! And also fabulously wealthy! And also, here, have a pony! Though there’s a bit of that in Hagrid’s reveal in Book 1. I always kind of hated the way Potter had to be not only a wizard with a place he could finally come into his own, but also wealthy and famous beyond his wildest dreams, though I am happy with the direction Rowling took the fame stuff later on.
But Rowling isn’t quite as good as Madeleine L’Engle, Judy Blume, Beverly Clearly, or Roald Dahl, or Kipling’s children’s books, or Lewis or Tolkein in their capacity as crossover children’s writers.
The different horcruxes had their different protections- remember the locket was surrounded by a deadly potion and a lake of zombies. The fact that it messed with Ron was probably its innate horcruxness and not a function of its protection. I’m fine with the ring being totally cursed and the locket being perniciously evil, like the diary. I love the fact that Dumbledore put on the ring- flashes of irrationality even amongst his brilliance- I think that was very touching. He thought he could have his cake and eat it too, but this was very much part of the lesson he had to learn to subsequently put Harry in position to not make the same mistake.
Louise, I also noticed that there was no mention of a headmaster’s portrait of Snape. While I was reading the book I was wondering if the painting had to be done while the subject was still alive for the picture to be imbued with the subject’s spirit, or whatever. The portraits were very different from photographs, in which the subjects couldn’t do much else other than wave, and I don’t remember if it was ever explained why. I was concerned that this was yet another time Snape was not getting his due.
yeah, I too am generally confused by wizard images (whether photographic, painted, etc.) and what they can do.
I mean, if they could get information out of Phineas Nigellus, why couldn’t Harry have had chats with photos of James and Lily? for that matter, why not simply repair to the wizarding equivalent of the National Gallery and chat up a portrait of Rowena Ravenclaw?
I was really pleased with the way the whole Snape/Lily storyline went. I was worried it would be focused on Snape’s longing for her from afar, which would have been creepy. The friendship between them was instead something very touching.
I didn’t like the epilogue for the reasons most people have stated, but when Harry called his son “Albus Severus”, I totally lost it and had to put down the book to cry for a few minutes.
There was a curse guarding the ring, just as there were various defenses for the other horcruxes. Dumbledore screwed up and touched it before disarming the curse. In the case of the locket, the main defense was that it couldn’t be moved, if I remember that scene correctly.
I think the reason Rowling had Neville’s slaying of Nagini happen the way it did was she wanted to sorta-kinda fulfill the prophecy for Neville. Neville’s missing property was that Voldemort had never “marked him as his own.” The scene where Voldemort offers him a position at his side, then forcibly inducts him into Slytherin House, fulfills that. Then he has to be in a situation where “neither can live while the other survives”: Mortal combat with Nagini, who bears Voldemort’s soul. And of course, he kills that part of Voldemort’s soul. Harry has considerably less agency in the death of Voldemort, so Neville ends up fulfilling the prophecy as much or more.
I hadn’t thought of Neville using herbology, but that would have been awesome. He grows a plant in a basilisk venom solution, for example, using charms to make it immune to the venom and to grow to maturity in a few minutes. Then he stuffs it down Nagini’s throat, or fashions it into a weapon, or he’s picked the plant as something that’s irresistable to snakes.
The way it plays out, though, really calls back to the first book, where Neville proves himself as a true Griffindor through his courage, but where he’s unable to break free of the Body-Bind.
Ah, Nearly Headless Nick’s death date! Thanks Keir, I do vaguely remember that. OK, I’ll accept that having included a date once, she went with it, and that there’s no grander meaning to the 1997-ness of it.
Also, it means that since I’m six years older than Harry, I could have been in my last year when he showed up at Hogwarts. You know, assuming I were a wizard.
I do second or third the wishes that at least ONE person from Slytherin had stayed to fight at the end. The head of the house did, so surely there was a student or two who wasn’t totally gung ho about the Death Eaters. On the other hand, Slytherins are known for ambition and slyness, so maybe even the ones who weren’t totally behind Voldemort were weighing the odds and deciding that they’d be better off withdrawing to the sidelines and coming back to cast their lot with whoever won, than actually picking a side.
The total nerd in me would like to know more secrets about the HP universe. I know WHY it couldn’t be included in the book (boring, for one thing) but it would be interesting to know some more of the minatia of magic: where it comes from, what does what, if wizards from other places have the same words for the same spell, stuff like that.
also, Rowling never says that Basilisk venom is the only thing that can finish a horcrux. And one other way of doing it (the fire) has already been revealed. Wouldn’t Neville, being a herbology genius, and living through Hogwarts as it becomes more and more complacent about the study of the Dark Arts, be extremely likely to be aware of some plant that has horcrux killing capabilities similar to the basilisk venom and fiendfyre?
One thing I was hoping for in this book was that the chewing gum wrapper Neville had been handed by his tortured-into-insanity mother (in OotP, I think) had meant something, perhaps having something written on it. In the interview Rowling gave MSNBC, though, she said she never planned for Neville’s parents to recover, because some harms are just irreversible, and that makes sense.
Did Alecto and her brother (sorry, I lent my copy of the book to someone else as soon as I finished it, and I don’t remember his A-name) know about the horcruxes? I don’t think any of the Death Eaters (aside from phony-Death Eater Snape, and I don’t think Voldemort knew he knew) knew about them, but if they did I can imagine they wouldn’t be included in the curriculum.
Now that I think of it, I don’t think that the existence of horcruxes, much less how to destroy them, was known by many people — the secret shame of (crap, I’m blanking on his name, but the guy who liked crystallized pineapple and feeling like he was influential) in HBP was that he told Tom Riddle about them.
or for that matter, if Crabbe or Goyle or whoever cast the fiendfyre knew how to do it (but forgot or never bothered to learn how to put it out), perhaps Neville knows, too, and also knows how to control it?
basically, alls I’m saying is that there are like a zillion better ways for Neville to kill Nagini than to have the sword of Gryffindor materialize out of nowhere.
that’s true, Karla, she’d have to come up with some kind of herbology thing that Neville would be likely to use anyway, whether he knew about horcruxes or not.
But again, a good writer can do that without having to resort to completely unexplainable deux ex machina like the sword randomly dropping out of the sky like that.
Maybe it could be something as simple as Neville happening to choose just the right snake-killing herb which is ALSO coincidentally horcrux-shattering.
weird, how did that happen?
oh, wait, they are definitely 2 different posts… i thought it was some kind of weird double post thing…
every time you talk to yourself in an empty comment thread, a kitten dies.
But the sword DOES have a history of appearing out of the sorting hat. Isn’t that what Fawkes dropped on Harry in CoS? and he pulled the sword out of it to slay the Basilisk
Do we know the origins of the sorting hat? Did it belong to Godric Gryffindor?
But if the sword came out of the hat- that is fine with me, I had forgotten about that. Neville took his heroic action, but it was somewhat in vain as in he might have not been able to kill the snake. But he was rewarded by the hat, as well as adding to the irony of device used to sort people into boxes, whcih V. would like to do being the agent of his downfall. This fit nicely with the epilogue and Harry telling his kid about being able to pick what group you want to be in. What does the hat REALLY do- does it go along with pre-concieved notions of the sortee? This would be another way Rowling idicts her world as not being perfect, and matching ours a little more than we would like.
I guess I don’t have a problem with the sword coming up for Neville because it was a previously established property of the sword that it showed up when needed for a Griffindor. (Yes, the event that established that could be called a deux ex machina.) Hey, I accepted that thestrals are only visible to people who had seen death and that anything could be made into a portkey.
Ooh, not only am I slow with my posts, I can’t keep my tenses straight.
Speaking of the sorting hat and choosing what group you wanted to be in, I found it interesting that Dumbledore told Snape that perhaps sorting was done too early. I wonder how delaying sorting would work, considering housing arrangements depended on it. Would people be put in tentative groups (I imagine those might become self-perpetuating)? Would there be separate housing for first year, which could deprive them of guidance by older students?
I get the impression that James was a generally nice, earnest guy with occasional bouts of Teh Asshole. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a lot like Fred Weasley.
well the real question, with the sorting hat, is whether all kids get to pick what house they’re in, or whether it only happens in special cases, or whether anyone could really pick, but most people don’t know they can, or whether some people think they have the agency to choose, but really they don’t, or what?
basically, you’d have to know the thought processes of hundreds of kids to be able to analyze what, exactly, the role of human agency in house sorting is.
not to mention, of course, that i’d imagine it matters about as much as which dorm you were assigned to in college, in terms of one’s adult life — either absolutely nothing, or only what you make of it. i’m not sure how Rowling intends it to play out in her universe, but i know that at the sorts of english schools that have houses nowadays, it’s basically just a way of designating the sleeping arrangements and creating a bit of competitive motivation among students.
a bit more, @Karla —
i suppose they could do it the way most colleges do housing — you’re arbitrarily assigned your first year, and then in your second year you get to pick. With probably one dorm that mainly has first-years, and other dorms for “sorted” students. i’m not sure to what extent the first years really get a whole lot of guidance from the older kids in a ‘house’ sense, anyway.
not to mention, of course, they could just do away with sorting entirely and let everyone pick whatever house they want to be in, or think they ought to be in.
basically, alls I’m saying is that there are like a zillion better ways for Neville to kill Nagini than to have the sword of Gryffindor materialize out of nowhere.
Actually, I loved that detail for two reasons. The Sword of Gryffindor can only be retrieved by Gryffindors, and Neville is totes the most badass character in the series. Furthermore, Neville was almost the Boy who Lived instead of Harry, and I loved that JK had them mirror each other — while everyone thinks Harry is finally dead, Neville steps up to the plate.
(And also because I’m hideously biased and would have loved seven books about Neville. Giant sword! Snake! Neville! o/ Besides, he goes after Death Eaters with plants during the battle in Hogwarts, I figured the poor boy deserves a moment of traditional hero-posturage.)
Good points, opoponax.
I really liked the way Neville killed Nagini, because I would bet that’s the kind of thing he would have daydreams about. Being good at herbology, ok, but I always had the feeling that he felt a little too shy, a little too awkward, not quite good enough to be a hero like everyone else around him showed themselves to be. He got his chance to be the big badass visible good guy, and the fact that the sword comes only to a true Griffyndor with a courageous heart mirrors the one other time he got some guts and stood up for what he thought was right. Of course, that time he ended up paralyzed by his best friends, so this was a much more satisfying outcome.
Honestly, I think that if he had killed Nagini with his mental skillz he wouldn’t have been proud of himself; he would have simply expected to be able to do that as a matter of course, nothing to be excited about. This was a sign to him that yes, he really is strong of heart. It was a signal as much to him as to everyone else.
[Wouldn’t Neville, being a herbology genius, and living through Hogwarts as it becomes more and more complacent about the study of the Dark Arts, be extremely likely to be aware of some plant that has horcrux killing capabilities…]
Except that as Hermione found out, all of the info at Hogwarts regarding horcruxes was taken out of the library and in with Dumbledore’s personal collection. Unless his gran had info, Neville wouldn’t have known what a Horcrux was, let alone how to recognize or defeat one.
Lupin leaving Tonks and their baby was an interesting parallel to Ron leaving Harry and Hermione- both Griffyndors who eventually returned.
And hey! No slamming Drop Dead Fred Weasley, Amanda! He and George were my fave characters throughout the series… I would have loved to have seen Luna and George go into business together; his Wheezes and her, um, one of a kind merchandise for the enlightened wizard or witch.
I loved the Sword coming out of the hat for Neville. Deus ex machinas are the point of fantasy literature to no small degree, for one thing. But more to the point, it was a perfect symbol of his relationship to Voldemort—from the beginning, Voldemort has discounted Neville, for whatever reason. Everyone has. But Neville was just as smart, brave, and true as Harry and had as much right to the sword. Plus, the element of surprise because he’s so routinely kicked around.
omg, George and Luna! that’s way better than Neville and Luna.
It would have been cool for neville’s herbology to work out to kill nagini but how do you accomplish that in the middle of the “oh my god the boy who lived just died” scene? It could only have been an awkward break, or another deus-ex-machina (”why, i just happened to have some cursed substance in my pocket!”). Really what i liked most about that scene was how Neville became ActionStar!Neville and kills Nagini before anyone can react.
2. I didn’t like Harry’s cruciatus curse. Harry learns to “mean it” for a death eater he has had roughly no interactions with who spits on a favorite teacher? I feel like that scene would have better ended with Harry being disarmed for being hot-headed, or cursing Carrow creatively, but the use of Crucio seemed really cold and death-eater-y. Especially for a series that spends so much time warning against turning into what you fear.
3. Snape’s look into my eyes moment was one of my favorite scenes in the book.
4. Speaking of snape, did anyone else flash on the disney version of Sword in the Stone during snape’s too-short but cool duel with McGonigall?
5. Like many here, I wish we could have seen some reasonable interactions between Lily and James. We get Asshole Potter and Lupin’s tale of James maturing, but it would have been nice to see some reason that Lily would like him, other than his not being evil and his apparent persistence in fancying her. maybe it really was just that he was hot and she got pregnant at 19. That said, i have forgiven the marrying young/one true love tendencies in this series because, after all, it is a hero quest/fairy tale. One that incorporates modern themes/situations rather well, but still.
6. Finally, arguing whether Rowling is brilliant is rather like arguing whether adults “should” be able to like kids books. Silly.
I have no problems with the whole “The Eagles are coming!” type deus ex machina, but to have multiple throughout the book kind of strains my ability to suspend disbelief. Though I have no clue how I would have done it, so this is just a nitpick
And yes, I completely agree wrt Neille’s story arc. He’s definitely my personal favorite character out of the series.
I’ve always been a day late and a dollar short. But I mean well.
I’m about 120 pages into the first book. I read it on the bus, and some people give me funny looks. Fuck ‘em.
Don’t spoil the ending for me or I will get Hagrid to kick your sorry ass.
Don’t read the comments, then, Graham.
Wonderful comment thread, all.
Loved the book. Sobbed like an idiot through most of it; I’m so glad the family was busy last Saturday, since they already think I’m a couple of balloon animals short of a birthday party.
One of the things that struck me about this book was that Voldemort turned out to be not just a petty tyrant and terrorist thug, but also really stupid. He was that kind of breathtaking stupid combined with an ego so vast that he couldn’t even imagine anyone figuring out what he was up to (in that way, he kept reminding me of Dick Cheney). But the thing that bothered me the most was his decision to hide the diadem of Ravenclaw in the Room of Requirement. He was convinced that he and he alone had ever known about the place.
Excuse me? It’s described as being the size of several cathedrals, with paths the size of streets, and every inch filled to bursting. Am I supposed to believe that it was completely empty when he found it? Or did he just not notice all the other stuff?
I thought this was a plot hole big enough to drive a truck through, and I’d love to hear what everyone has to say.
The best reason for why they don’t do that is found, oddly enough, in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Back. Roughly paraphrased: we don’t kill them because they’re not the enemy. They are the enemy’s slaves and we do not murder slaves.
I’m not sure that where the Death Eaters would probably be sent, to Azkaban with the dementors, would be better than being killed. It’s possible that rethinking the way things will be done in the new-and-improved, post-Voldemort world, Azkaban will just be a prison, without the torture. Would the dementors just die out then, if they had no one to feed upon?
A sword is just an oversized, straightened-out sickle, so why shouldn’t Neville use it? I’ve chopped up many a snakelike vine in my garden, and why shouldn’t he?
ME TOO! I sobbed for like six pages straight (weirdly, only stopping when he actually “dies.”)
What about Hagrid who, whatever his faults, is definitely one of Harry’s favorite people (and, I get the sense, one of Rowling’s favorite characters)?
Indeed. I remember around the time OotP was coming out, she said that as she was writing the death of a character (Sirius we later found out) she cried, and her husband told her she didn’t have to do it, and she said “Of course I have to do it. It’s a children’s book, you have to kill people.”
I read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and, god help me, the fucking Silmarillion, and I will swear on my mother’s grave that Rowling is a better writer than Tolkein. Either brilliance agrees with personal taste, in which Hemingway should never have been published (gag) and Neil Gaiman should make it into the canon, or brilliance is somehow objectively defined, in which case I don’t care about brilliance, because, seriously, I read four pages of The Old Man and the Sea and I wanted to drown myself. I think Rowling is brilliant, though this is of course partly my own bias in huge admiration for anything involving crazily intricate plots; also I think I’m alone in that I actually love her dialogue. Also, people criticize her dialogue, her slowness, her flatness of character, and then they go and praise fucking Tolkein? His characters are one-dimensional, his dialogue is faux-olde tyme, and really, the Battle of Helm’s Gate didn’t have to be 32 fucking pages long. And dude, I love LOTR with all my heart but if I have to pick damn right I’m going to pick Potter, because I think heart is a lot more important to books than brains. As for other contemporary masters of fiction… as I said, I judge a book mostly by its ability to engage me emotionally (if I want o be engaged intellectually, that’s what nonfiction is for) and if they fail at that, I don’t care how beautiful their prose is, or how marvelously expressed are there themes.
Anyway. I loved the book, I cried a lot, the epilogue was cheesy but also, I think, the way to end the book, honestly. I liked that Hermione finally kissed Ron because he showed concern for House-Elves, I liked that Ginny gave Harry a kiss as a going-away present, I liked that both Luna and Neville kicked huge amounts of ass, The Prince’s Tale broke my heart and stomped it to eensy beensy tiny pieces, and I should be more articulate but I’m not. Probably be back later to say more though.
I read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and, god help me, the fucking Silmarillion, and I will swear on my mother’s grave that Rowling is a better writer than Tolkein.
I personally like both, but Tolkien was brilliant for his play on the interconnectedness of language and mythos. Rowling is brilliant for other reasons, but I wouldn’t agree that one is a better writer than the other. I’m just sort of sick with the whole “the literature I like or that I deem worthy makes the literature you like or deem worthy a load of crap” type BS that gets thrown about every single time literature gets discussed. I think, just say why you like someone and not someone else, but don’t go all “50 greatest writers, mine’s 20th and yours is only 49th!” type crap. That gets tired really quickly.
The Old Man and the Sea is crap, you should start with either The Sun Also Rises or A Moveable Feast. I’m not saying Hemingway is the best ever, but yeah, you’re definitely barking up the wrong tree trying to read TOMATS — that book is one of my top examples of Literature Put On High School Syllabi In Order To Turn People Off Reading Real Books. If I were a bit more of a conspiracy theorist, I’d swear it was written directly for the Making High School Freshman Cut Class market.
Also, I by no means meant to imply that Rowling is a bad writer, just that if you call her brilliant, seriously, you really must not read much, because while really entertaining, her work just doesn’t reach the heights of, well, anyone who doesn’t totally suck. This is much more in the vein of “what good writing is all about” and less in the vein of “books I really enjoy reading”. And if you think that “what writing is all about” and “books I enjoy” are one and the same, omigod, you NEVER paid attention in English class.
Another hint: if you can find a plot hole in someone’s book, they’re not a “brilliant” writer.
Also, I by no means meant to imply that Rowling is a bad writer, just that if you call her brilliant, seriously, you really must not read much
Well, we’ll agree to disagree here. I think she’s a brilliant writer with imperfections, but I think your definition of “brilliant” contains criteria that I do not. And FTR, I’m not a slouch in the reading department. I just think i have a wider definition of the word you object to.
because while really entertaining, her work just doesn’t reach the heights of, well, anyone who doesn’t totally suck.
Wow, backhanded compliment much?
This is much more in the vein of “what good writing is all about” and less in the vein of “books I really enjoy reading”. And if you think that “what writing is all about” and “books I enjoy” are one and the same, omigod, you NEVER paid attention in English class.
Sorry, got sidetracked on something else. Sure, superlatives and hyperbole enter into discussions like these, but that’s hardly because someone “NEVER paid attention in English class”. It’s something all people do. But “what good writing is all about”, no matter who your English teacher was, is going to be different for every person, and to act like the term “brilliant” has a set definition here makes as much sense to me as saying that “all people must like to read Hemingway, else they have no taste in literature, and they’ve got an ASS FACE!”
And sure, plot holes are a sign of poor editing skills, and her publisher should have been more in tune with that (I think I counted four typos in HBP), but JKR gets my little cousin excited about reading, and seriously, if a book can do that, whomever the author is has a gift. Seriously. You’d have to meet her to understand, but making the kid sit down and actually like the fact that she’s zipping along in a 700 page book is a marvel.
Except that there are 8 members of my high school class that did just that and now 26 years later they are still married…
(there were more couples but they didn’t make it - and this was not a small town school. This was one of 9 high schools in Denver)
Also, I by no means meant to imply that Rowling is a bad writer, just that if you call her brilliant, seriously, you really must not read much, because while really entertaining, her work just doesn’t reach the heights of, well, anyone who doesn’t totally suck.
I read kind of obsessively, and am a big fan of Dickens, Kazuo Ishiguro, Toni Morrison, Edith Wharton, Charles Baxter, Fitzgerald, Andrea Barrett, Michael Chabon, Erica Jong (is she accepted as a serious writer yet?), and Louise Gluck among others.
I did pay attention in English class most of the time, but I hated almost every godforsaken second and spent a lot of the time wanting to cry (to be fair to my teachers: I do have some fond memories of English class, but the discipline as a whole… egh. not for me). It’s not exactly that I think good writing and books I enjoy are exactly the same, it’s just that I can’t see why I should care about figuring out what makes writing good when I don’t enjoy reading it, because seriously life is way too short.
In other words: what JackGoff said
ON TOPIC: Something I meant to add earlier and forgot about was the way Hermione’s Muggleborn status is used in the books. While she is misguided in her initial attempts in house-elf liberation, the fact that she doesn’t take house-elves for granted the way other wizards like Sirius and Ron (and… Harry, but to be fair he has other, Voldemort-related things on his mind) winds up being important. I think JKR’s mentions, repeated throughout the book (from book one, even) that without marrying Muggles wizards would have died out are about more than just the end of a genetic line; wizards, as we have seen, are somewhat resistant to change (because hey, if you could do magic all the time, you wouldn’t have much incentive to change either). I think that change in the wizarding world will ultimately come from brave, smart Muggleborns (or halfbloods, I guess) who are more forwardthinking than their pureblood counterparts.
I also liked that JKR pointed out at the beginning of the book that Harry had never learned how to heal cuts–a quick way to point out that Harry isn’t exactly the greatest wizard evah. I’ve heard from some people who are bothered by the fact that Harry doesn’t really have anything to recommend him besides being marked by the prophecy and showing a lot of courage, but I like the notion that Harry, who while a talented wizard isn’t exactly at the level of someone like Dumbledore (or even Hermione, or for that matter Snape), can save the day anyway–he’s really just an ordinary kid with the fate of the wizarding world (and the Muggle world too, ultimately) resting upon him, and his courage is enough to see him through, a point nicely underscored by the way Neville kills Nagini. Courage, love, loyalty, friendship, goodness–these are more important in the end than sheer magical power. It isn’t your talents, but what you do with them.
hemingway sucks ass. reading him is like listening to william shatner read the phone book, i swear to god. and don’t even start me on pynchon. pynchon is damn near impenetrable. i can’t get more than a fourth of the way through Gravity’s Rainbow without throwing the fucking book at the wall. and ordinarily, i *like* that sort of shit.
re: riddle and the Room of Requirement —
the whole trick of the Room is that it becomes precisely what you need, precisely when you need it. given that young riddle’s ego was bogglingly huge, would it not make sense that the Room would appear, to him, to be something amazingly secret that no one else ever could find? he didn’t just need a place to hide a horcrux. he needed a place both obscure and secure, and above all he needed to believe himself to be the most astoundingly powerful and brilliant wizard of all time. so the room, to him, at the time he entered it, would appear to have been lost to the ages, unfindable by anyone.
just as neville is able to make the Room death-eater-proof for as long as he (or one of his number) is occupying it, the Room looks, to voldie’s eyes, utterly undiscoverable. (plus, again, you are dealing with planet-dwarfing egotism). when the DA isn’t occupying the room, it goes right back to being the jumbled magical bag of holding it’s always been. if anything, when Team Horcrux Go enters to find the diadem, they’re seeing the Room in its true form — the closest thing to a true form it has, anyway.
i am STILL ANGRY about what happened to lupin and tonks. rowling goes and fulfills my OTP, and then she fucking offs them? allowing tonks all of one bit of dialog in the whole book? without even a fight scene? i am angry. and i do not forgive.
did anyone else start thinking lupin had betrayed the Order? when he showed up and asked to go along with harry, despite having just married tonks, i thought for sure something was off. like some death eater had offed tonks and was keeping lupin in a closet somewhere for polyjuice-potion-brewing purposes, or perhaps someone had used an Imperius on him. but no, it turned out he was just sort of being a jerk, and then he vanished, and then he and tonks get killed off. not cool.
Except that Stephan King praises her work and says the characterof Harry Potter ranks right up there with other immortal characters in literature.
But I agree, she’s a good writer.
(also, is there anyway of dropping the anti-spam box, or at least making it easier to read? it just took me six tries to post the above comment.)
Merciless, I also wondered about that. Where did Voldemort think all that stuff came from, if he was the only person who’d ever found that hidey-room?
The only way I work around it is to assume that maybe he figured it was a dump…maybe he thought people threw these things in the Magic Portkey Garbage Disposal and they just showed up there, rather than people actually going into the room on purpose to leave things.
But I agree that’s a little feeble.
yeah, I, too, really enjoyed the way that Rowling hit on the ideas of different kinds of experience, and different ways of knowing, enabling certain characters to have different kinds of privelege, or resist in different ways. The thing about Hermione, as a Muggle-born, being able to question things that someone like Ron can’t is set off insterestingly by the fact that Ron has all this insider Pure-blood knowledge that Harry and Hermione don’t, and they keep having to point his privilege out to him.
This is also echoed in the deal with Griphook and the fact that they keep finding out that while it might be pretty easy to use polyjuice potion to disguise yourself as someone else physically, you’re still up shit creek if you don’t know what that person knows.
I was really hoping for that to be a bigger plot point further down the line, especially after Ron stormed off — I thought Ron would return and redeem himself via priveleged knowledge of the Wizarding world which Harry and Hermione desperately need. Or that the solution to various exposition delimmas would be Ron realizing this is something that every wizard born into the magical community would know from childhood.
Or, what kidlacan said about V.’s planet-dwarfing egotism (good line!).
About Lupin and Tonks: given Lupin’s ambivalence about his relationship with Tonks, I wonder if there is such a thing as contraception in the wizarding world, and if so, why they weren’t using it.
but still, you’d have to be pretty damn egotistical to assume that, despite the towering piles of centuries of student junk stashed in there, you were somehow the first person ever to find the place. i personally thought the room of requirement was a bit of a copout, either that or Voldie’s rationale for choosing that hiding spot was silly. i think it would be brilliant if Voldemort had hidden it there preciesly because it’s so full of so much worthless crap nobody would ever notice it. though i forget if maybe in a previous book (or somewhere in the gaping maw of Book 7 Exposition) there was a reason he had to think it was a super-secret spot nobody had ever found before.
At some point when Harry’s reading Voldemort’s mind, we get V thinking about “the secret room that only he had ever found,” so it was pretty much laid out that he thought it was totally secret. I agree, it would make perfect sense if he just figured no one would ever find it amid all the other junk, but no such luck.
i’m pretty sure at some point in HBP dumbledore drops some tidbit about riddle and the room of requirement, but i can’t recall it precisely. even so, the towering piles of junk don’t appear in the Room unless you’re thinking of towering piles of junk. fred and george see it as a broom closet, when they’re looking for a spot to hide. for harry, it’s a room perfectly equipped for practicing charms and hexes in OotP. it becomes precisely what the discoverer is needing — or expecting it to be.
Too harsh. Lupin was faced with differing visions about what he needed to do to be a good person. Stay with his wife and child? Yup, that’s a good thing, a necessity. Ensuring their safety and going to protect the one hope of mankind because almost every other adult close and important to him has been slain and he hasn’t got anybody else (and who is also the child and godchild of your two best friends, both of whom died in his defence)? Also a good thing, a necessity. Lupin had two Goods to choose between, and doing either — and not doing either — could be seen as being a selfish shit and a coward. Not a great situation to be in.
Was there some weakness posing as strength? Undoubtedly. Part of not wanting to be around Tonks and Teddy was his own fear and loathing of his werewolf status, the “I’m no good for you, I’m really bad” weakness found in depressives or people who are chronically uncertain of themselves.
But a jerk? No.
I don’t think that he thought he needed it. Didn’t he say, in the midst of his freakout, that his kind aren’t supposed to be able to breed?
Just out of curiosity, what are you all finding in Rowling’s dialog that makes it so horrendous? May I please have an example of what is considered “good” dialog? I ask cause it was never one of my particular strong points and I want to learn it. Same with exposition too, I guess.
6079, I’d forgotten about that.
given Lupin’s ambivalence about his relationship with Tonks, I wonder if there is such a thing as contraception in the wizarding world, and if so, why they weren’t using it.
If I will say one thing about Rowling, it’s that she didn’t have the guts to put in dilemmas like contraception, etc. Society would have, I think, been okay with it, and the stickler fundy assholes who object would object anyway, so fuck them. It takes courage to teach, and I think it would have been the height of courage for her to just even mention some type of charm or potion that works as contraception, and maybe discuss the wizarding world’s view on such magical helpers. But, then again, it really would not have done anything plotwise, as the storyline sort of dropped Tonks and Lupin from any sort of meaningful contribution, other than lambs for the slaughter.
Didn’t he say, in the midst of his freakout, that his kind aren’t supposed to be able to breed?
I do remember that, but still. No discussion of contraception seems to be a great criticism. They’re magical, ffs! Surely there’s a charm that zaps sperm or transfigures them into waste particles or something.
ooh, so Harry only sees it as the grand high hidey hole of hidey hole when he needs to see everything that was ever stashed there. even though i do remember it from previous books, for some reason in this book it read to me like the huge warehouse was the room’s default state, or something.
also, i have to say something i’ve always thought about the whole series, at least since book 4 or so. does anyone else have the sneaking suspicion that they pad the font size, page layout, and stock thickness to get a higher page count to impress the kiddies? because, seriously, these are the only 700+ page novels I’ve ever been able to read in less than 12 hours. and it’s not just because they’re especially page turney, as that usually doesn’t impact my reading speed (i’m normally not even that quick a reader).
The use of the Crucio curse was imo because seeing a Carrow after seeing the results of punishments on his friends faces and bodies and the threat to a favoorite teacher was the straw that broke the camel’s back. His hot headed nature took over a bit.
But it’s also the closest we get to see Harry flirt with dark magic. . . he’s an imprefect hero just as Albus is, just as Snape is.
In OotP, witches/wizards with little experience in the muggle world thought stitches were hilarious and/or barbaric; I wonder what they’d think of condoms.
Talking about Lupin’s depressive, unassuming personality reminds me of how I had hoped Lupin and Snape might become friends — if they could get past their history they certainly could empathize with one another.
Well maybe it could be that if Remus and Tonks didn’t think Werewolves could breed. Maybe the thinking is that they are sterile like a mule. In that case they wouldn’t think they needed contraception.
It also makes what Greybeck’s (Grayback???) has done worse, because it’s not just attacking a child and changing that child into a Werewolf, it’s also ending the family line.
(Fucking A I hate this anti-spam shtuff, this is my 5th attempt to post this)
Keir, well you can start with the fact that almost every sentence out of the mouth of anyone who isn’t an authority figure or villain begins with some variation of “Blimey!”
also, the faux-formal/archaic constructions used by most of the Death Eaters bug the ever-living hell out of me. a good example, from page 7: “I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those wreckers of all but the best laid plans… I understand those things that I did not understand before…” (elipses mine) It’s like an especially bad meeting of the SCA.
though i do like the invention of “Merlin’s Pants!” as a swear word, i have to say.
seriously, these are the only 700+ page novels I’ve ever been able to read in less than 12 hours
Well, word-count-wise, they don’t match up to a 700 pager like Gravity’s Rainbow, of course. I think the font used there is around an 11 pt, whereas JKR uses around a 13 or 14 pt, with around 1.5 spacing. But seriously, “page-turner” just means that you don’t stop reading. Overall, I read Deathly Hallows in basically 10 hours. Seven the night that I got it, and the other 3 the next day after I had to go in to work a bit. But basically, the only times I stopped were when I absolutely had to.
did anyone else start thinking lupin had betrayed the Order? when he showed up and asked to go along with harry, despite having just married tonks, i thought for sure something was off.
I actually started thinking he thought Tonks had betrayed the Order (or, that he was gay, cuz I’m a big ole Lupin/Sirius shipper. don’t look at me like that). As for contraception, I think Lupin thought he wouldn’t need it.
My other, slightly more fanwanky explanation is that Tonks really wanted a baby cuz she was scared she was gonna die soon (like what Mrs. Weasley said about the first war) and Lupin agreed to try for it against his better judgment because he was in love with her, but when it actually worked he freaked out. This I actually find pretty convincing given that Tonks is generally thrilled about being married & with child, whereas Lupin is mostly freaked out.
Also, I like that with Tonks & Lupin’s marriage, we finally had a witch who kept her own surname after marriage
[Surely there’s a charm that zaps sperm or transfigures them into waste particles or something.]
C’mon, it IS supposedly a kids’ book… JKR kept things pretty PG right on through the entire series.
IMO re:padding the pages, she probably had a helluva time telling the stories as she envisioned them and had to chop stuff OUT. (Can’t wait to see if she really does publish the encyclopedia idea I’ve heard about, based on her character notes- be a cool read and flesh out some ideas!)
And Harry using the Crucio Curse made sense at that point in the story- after everything that he had gone through, as well as he accidentally revealed himself to the death Eaters in the beginning by using the Expelliarmus charm instead of real defense. Hagrid even gave him shit on that.
rotflmao
[…almost every sentence out of the mouth of anyone who isn’t an authority figure or villain begins with some variation of “Blimey!”]
Merlin’s Baggy Y-Fronts, YES!!!
the back page of my edition of DH says they use a 12 pt. Garamond. which is pretty big.
while i realize the “don’t wanna put it down” issue is a factor, the bottom line is that breaking down the segments in which i read the book (mainly a 5 hour flight and a stretch of about 3 hours after settling into my hotel room, with maybe 100 pages read outside those two big stretches), i’ve read for 5 hours straight before, but i’ve never read 400 pages in that amount of time unless it’s been a Potter book. The last book I read in any kind of a sustained way was The Dubliners, which I read in its entirety on a 10-hour train ride (my edition is 288 pages, though I might have taken a break here and there).
What i’m saying is that the layout attributes have to be massaged to get a thicker book. i’d love to believe i’m just that fast a reader, or that the HP books just inspire sustained reading at a level i can’t usually pull off, but i know that’s not true.
Speaking of surnames, and going off on a total tangent, Lupin was basically destined to be attacked by a werewolf from birth, with a name like that. You’d think in a magical world, one would know better to tempt the fates like that!
And speaking of marriages, one of the things I’ve wondered about was whether any of the teachers at Hogwarts are married. None of them seem to have any family or life outside the school (aside from Hagrid’s relationship with Madame Maxime)…but that could be just because to children in school, teachers don’t exist in any other context, so nothing personal is mentioned.
Thanks opoponax. I’ve been trying these little exercises to bolster my dialog-writing ability, and my only concern was to write how I thought a given character might actually speak, with all the “ums” and “okays” and other transition words that we all use. At least I think we all do.
That and writing in fragments instead of complete sentences, stuff like that. One of the things I tried was simply a phone conversation, full of fragments and interruptions and stuff- it might be nasty to read, sure, but it’s more fun to write. For me, anyway.
I had the terrible luck to arrive at university when the English dept. was dismantling its creative writing emphasis, so I was doomed to analyzation and criticism. Writing my own fiction is much harder than I thought it would be.
My best pal has been in SCA for 20 years; one memorable photo she showed me had her husband in a costume that I swear made him look like he was the world’s largest Hostess Cupcake- in the middle of the woods.
I still crack up when my husband asks me, “Where’s the cream filling?”
I’m just curious… how many Pandagonians write any fan fic? and how many write HP fan fic?
…and louise beat me to the Y-Fronts!
see, i just never read tonks as the settle-down-and-have-baby-IMMEDIATELY type. she was an auror, and a fighter, and why, in the midst of the Big V’s Return, would she decide it was Baby Time? and why does she have to go into confinement? we don’t even see her after the wedding dustup, or hear a thing about her. we don’t even get to hear that she’s thrilled, really, just that she’s “radiant”. pff. and with that, my daring and awesome female adventurer was snuffed out.
it makes more sense if it wasn’t planned, and i do recall lupin not thinking he could have kids, now that you remind me. and viewed in that light, lupin’s freakout does make sense. he just seemed so desperate to get away from tonks, though. that seemed like the motivating factor, with his love for harry as a rather flimsy pretext, and it felt out of character — to the point that i thought it wasn’t even lupin.
What i’m saying is that the layout attributes have to be massaged to get a thicker book.
Or they wanted to keep the layout standard in all seven of the books. The first three were not that large, if you recall.
C’mon, it IS supposedly a kids’ book… JKR kept things pretty PG right on through the entire series.
Well, true, but these are seventeen-year olds who are the main characters, and surely at least Hermione, in her genius, knows something about it. It could merely be an aside. And if there was one outside-of-PG thing I would want all children to learn about, it’s contraception.
though i do like the invention of “Merlin’s Pants!” as a swear word, i have to say.
I was fond of “Merlin’s saggy left…” myself. I assume the last word was “sock”?
Wow, spamulator rocks on again. WHAT’S THE POINT OF THE NUMBERS THEN?!?!?!?! I can’t even READ these pieces of shit!
The Dubliners
Love James Joyce, btw. “The Dead” is possibly the best short story I have ever read.
also, while i’m sure there was “stuff she had to cut out”, i’m not talking about content here. i’m talking about the format of the book, the page layouts, the weight of the stock, etc. looking on my bookshelves, most of the other books i have that are 700+ pages are A) thinner than Deathly Hallows, which makes me think Scholastic chose an especially heavy stock, and B) really complex stuff like Ulysses or Gravity’s Rainbow or anthologies/academic texts. Most normal novels just don’t run to that many pages.
not so much because of the amount of content in the book, or the plot structure, or what have you, but because most novels are formatted to look like something a person could digest without their head exploding. Harry Potter, however, is formatted so that 12 year olds can brag about what long books they’ve read. which isn’t a problem, per se, it’s just interesting. though i have to say i think publishers do this a lot these days as the price of hardcovers goes up higher and higher. a grand and substantial edition is more likely to seem worth $34 than a slim volume would.
Earlobe. Yeah. Merlin’s saggy left earlobe. But not to be said in front of His Holeyness George…
Actually, I always could see Ron getting fed up with Hermione, which would have left him and George squabbling over Luna! Hermione and Percy would have been better suited.
Molly-Wobbles would have shit kittens…
Percy’s ego would clash with Hermione’s. He would want someone who would follow.
i’m talking about the format of the book, the page layouts, the weight of the stock, etc.
I’m pretty sure this is all about making the books similar to earlier books in the series. The first three books were quite short compared to the last four. The layout, however, remained similar, at least it seemed to me.
yeah — personally i’m surprised they stuck Bill with Fleur, when she and Percy would have been a much better match. a perfectionist, but a docile and appropriately supportive one.
I was annoyed that Tonks’s pregnancy seemed to preclude *any* participation in the cause. Unless she had hellish morning sickness, there’s no reason that she couldn’t be out and about in the early-to-mid-pregnancy months. I mean, sure, she could be killed, but so could anybody.
i think publishers do this a lot these days as the price of hardcovers goes up higher and higher. a grand and substantial edition is more likely to seem worth $34 than a slim volume would.
Oh, no doubt, but where would you say the recent Harry Potters rank in terms of number of words when compared to similarly aimed books? That’s where I think the comparison matters. Trying to get my cousin to read Judy Blume? Doesn’t happen. Trying to get her to read JKR isn’t even trying. Sometimes, kids need to have fun (NOT that Judy Blume isn’t an amazing writer, because she is), and what makes them have fun sometimes is hard to understand. Authors that understand that are actually not the prevalent, in terms of mass appeal. Again, not that mass appeal actually matters, but it does take a specific type of brilliance to get people who aren’t readers to read.
And sorry if I’m pushing this, but I have the teacher’s mentality that a tool that works for the most people is a well-designed tool, and if Harry Potter gets kids to like reading enough that they start experimenting with othe books, that’s a tool indeed.
i never read the first 2 books in anything other than the paperback editions, and i don’t recall off the top of my head how bulky book 3 was.
though i’d see matching the last 3 books to #4, as i believe that’s the longest of the bunch, and the one where they really started trying to pull the “ZOMG, i just read a book that’s 1200 pages long!” bs. it’s just funny, because most fiction meant for everyday reading (as opposed to a monstrosity like Mason and Dixon) is designed to minimize the bulk so that grownups will be willing to buy them and haul them around. going through all my books just now, i can’t find a work of fiction that isn’t by Pynchon that weighs in at more than 500 pages or thicker than 2 inches across.
Except for the last 4 HP’s of course.
Can somebody explain how accepting death saved Harry’s life (why didn’t he die)? And what happened to the part of Voldemort that was inside him? I understand (I think - ?) that it was supposed to be like the resurrection–he died for our sins (?) but I didn’t get why he didn’t die.
I’d ask my kids who would be amazed at my stupidity but they haven’t finished the book yet.
JackGoff, i think you think i’m, like, dissing the books or Rowling or something for their being thicker than usual. i mainly just wanted to know if anybody else had noticed this, and what people thought about it.
if i’m dissing anyone, i’m dissing the publisher. of course, whatever works, and all that. i just think it’s odd, because it’s never been a factor for any other book before. and a part of me thinks it’s only a factor now due to some bizarre marketing ploy that i have to admit i don’t entirely trust. mainly because i feel crappy and distrustful whenever i see anybody, especially kids, falling for some stupid marketing ploy. not because Harry Potter Is Evil.
If i thought the latter, i can promise you i wouldn’t have spent my entire Saturday participating in this thread.
For whatever reason, I can’t read the comments. Is this just my computer or is there another problem? I have really been looking forward to this thread, too!!
Try “Fudge” on cd, that they can listen to in the car, right before bed, etc. . . . that’s how we got sons interested in Blume, Cleary, etc.
I like the larger print . . . cuz I’ve already had the experience of not being able to read the medicine bottle without a magnifying glass (which I now have a few)…
Damn getting old!
not to mention, of course, that if you’re seriously saying kids are only reading Potter because of the stratospheric page counts and bulk of the editions, and otherwise they wouldn’t want to read it, or wouldn’t want to read anything at all, yeah, actually, i think i’d rather people not read than be tricked into doing it due to some silly marketing ploy.
i mean, otherwise, why not just give them the phone book? i mean, hey, at least they’re reading, right?
i think you think i’m, like, dissing the books or Rowling or something for their being thicker than usual.
Well, maybe I did, a little. Again, I’m sorry for pushing it, I’ve just got a bit of an affection for the books because it’s helped me make readers out of people I’ve tried to get through to for a long time. Did I mention I’m going to be a teacher? I’m just kinda weird like that. Sorry.
if you’re seriously saying kids are only reading Potter because of the stratospheric page counts and bulk of the editions, and otherwise they wouldn’t want to read it, or wouldn’t want to read anything at all, yeah, actually, i think i’d rather people not read than be tricked into doing it due to some silly marketing ploy.
Oh no. Specifically, my cousin, upon reading OotP, had no idea she had read what she had in three days. She was engrossed in the storyline, which I have NEVER seen from her, even when I was trying to get her to read other stuff like From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler or Number the Stars (my two favorites growing up.) She read the first four books as voraciously.
JackGoff —
I like Harry Potter. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have forked over $30+ for a copy of the latest book. I wouldn’t have wasted my time reading it. I wouldn’t be discussing it here at Pandagon.
I have to say I distrust certain things about the way the book has been marketed to kids, and I worry that the strategies being used by Scholastic will be counterproductive in the long run. Especially if what you say is true, that kids who like HP seem completely unintersted in any other books. That’s weird, to me, and it makes me even more suspicious than I already was.
I think that the whole sex thing would have been a bit out of place in these books. That said, it’s fantasy and begs for fans to fill in the holes. My take is that Hogwarts is a good private school, and like most that I’ve heard of, probably has thorough sex education. I’m sure they have some sort of latex charm.
kidlacan, I like the nib of your jist. I hadn’t thought of Hemingway re: Shatner, but it made me laugh for a long time.
Also, your explanation of the room of requirement makes sense, though it’s strange still to think that the room would accommodate Voldemort and then throw the precious object in the same place it throws everything else. Maybe it gets that request a lot. I can just hear the room: “Oh, Merlin’s baggy y-fronts, another student wants to hide something! Something SECRET! Oh, well, that’s put me in my place!”
And I couldn’t make heads nor tails of Lupin’s relationship with Tonks. I could understand her love of him, her desire for a child, and even her hiding herself away (it was damned dangerous out there, and when you’re pregnant, you take care of yourself). But his feelings for her seemed to change like the wind, and it was baffling. I’ll read the book another six or seven times to see if I can pick up anything else.
Oh, and BTW, there just has to be a whole slew of magic devoted to the erotic arts, in all their intracacies. The twins gave Ron the most innocent of the books on girls. Other, more adult fare, must be chock-full of fun and useful spells to give you and your chosen partner hours of playtime fun!
uh “expecto latexum” maybe
(6 times now for the spamulator infuriator)
or maybe “ovarium noncycliosa!”
Especially if what you say is true, that kids who like HP seem completely unintersted in any other books.
That is a problem, but I don’t think it has to do with marketing. I like certain books because I can read them and enjoy them. I think kids, the more they experiment with reading and the more confident they are about reading, the more they grow into reading for pleasure and knowing what they like to read. Just because I love a large amount of literature does not mean that what I love is going to be of interest to other people. I may think it is good, but other people have to read and decide for themselves. And reading does, no matter what anybody says, take practice. I read a huge amount growing up, but children growing up now don’t seem to have the affinity that I had to books growing up. I hated TV, but TV and other entertainment now seems so pervasive that reading gets sidetracked to English class assignments that kids have to do. Anything that gives kids more practice reading is a wonderful thing, especially if they are excited to do it. Anyway, sorry for keeping this going. I’ll shut up now.
Also, about the typeface. You are all used to reading textbooks and serious books; those are all made with 10-point type. Blogs and online type generally can be even smaller. Children’s books are generally 12-point. The difference is huge if you’re used to looking at one over the other. And yes, the paper is thicker, but if you look on the CIP page, you’ll see that they made the paper out of some recycled material, and though they don’t say acid-free, we can assume that these books will last some years without damage.
I’m a production editor; I work with these things all the time. My favorite call is the one I get from the professor emeritus (definition: professor not yet dead). He (never she) will inevitably call me halfway though page proofs to tell me that the superscripts on the math are too small. I must tell him, in the nicest way I can, that they are the same size they’ve always been. It’s just that his eyes are bad.
opoponax-
lol
or “tubal ligatium” for a more permantent solution . . ,
I still like “expecto latexum” images of a guy with an erection pointing a wand to his penis, while his SO waits …. . . . .
opoponax-
lol
or “tubal ligatium” for a more permantent solution . . ,
I still like “expecto latexum” images of a guy with an erection pointing a wand to his penis, while his SO waits …. . . . .
I like Harry Potter. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have forked over $30+ for a copy of the latest book. I wouldn’t have wasted my time reading it. I wouldn’t be discussing it here at Pandagon.
That’s, um, not exactly how you’re coming across, since most of your comments have been about how JK Rowling sucks as a writer and there are far better books that people should be reading instead. Which made me start wondering why you’re posting if you hate her so much.
I’ll give you L’Engle, but Kipling doesn’t hold up as well as you think he does. Lewis is only great as a children’s writer — as I said above, his adult sci-fi books suck ass. Kids are not finishing the Narnia series and moving on to “Out of the Silent Planet.”
I never read Tolkien because he bored the crap out of me starting at the age of 10, so I have to mock the idea that he’s one of the best children’s book writers ever.
opoponax-
lol
or “tubal ligatium” for a more permanent solution . . ,
I still like “expecto latexum” images of a guy with an erection pointing a wand to his penis, while his SO waits …. . . . .
(okay this has either disappeared twice OR been subject to the spamulator infuriator 4 times .. here’s another time for luck)
Just because I love a large amount of literature does not mean that what I love is going to be of interest to other people.
Perhaps, but I think that when you start seeing this trend where kids absolutely adore Harry Potter, but spurn all other fiction no matter how seemingly enticing, there’s got to be something more to the story than “well I just haven’t happened upon anything else I’m interested in yet”. Rowling is good, but she’s not that good. Not “literature to end all literature” good.
This is just not something you see in other kinds of media. You don’t see very many people who say “Sure, I loved Star Wars. But other movies just leave me cold.” or “Well I have to say I did enjoy Seinfeld, but that’s really the only TV show I’ve ever seen, and that’s the way I’d like to keep it.”
This is partially why I see it as being a symptom of marketing. The reason almost everyone in Western society (and a good portion of people outside the West) love movies and TV is that movies and TV are used to sell them products, and are marketed to them as profitable cultural products in and of themselves. The written word, not so much. It’s similar for art, which is the only other example I can think of where you really do find people who will say “I like Monet, but all other art kinda leaves me cold.” This is because literature and the visual arts are not sold to people in the way that movies, TV, video games, etc. are. we’re not told all day, every day You Will Consume This, And You Will Like It, And You Will Pay For The Privilege! Lit and art are seen much more as something you only do to educate or improve yourself. not something you do because it’s fun, or because everybody does it.
What this means is that if Scholastic and other YA publishing companies (and publishers in general, as the Harry Potter market grows up) do not seize on books in general as profitable cultural products and reading as “something we just do”, if this is just limited to Potter (which it seems to be, so far), it’s all completely pointless. Not to mention, of course, that the whole idea of needing to intensely market an activity to people in order to get them to do it is extremely, extremely creepy. no matter how valid an activity it is.
I’m just curious… how many Pandagonians write any fan fic? and how many write HP fan fic?
*sheepishly raises hand* Back in middle school days I did some anime fanfic (ssh) and once during a particularly hellish summer (I took physics in summer school so I could take an acting class during the year. It was worth it, but it was also painful) I did crack and write a Harry Potter fic. Thankfully it was under a different internet name.
…contraceptive spells? Well now this feels like a Pandagon thread. You could maybe use a sheild charm: “Protego Semenum!” And if you were trying to conceive, “Accio Semen”? (that could get awkward if you lived in an apartment building. maybe you’d have to name your mate. but then what if you called out the wrong name! I wonder how many babies Gilderoy Lockheart, five-time winner of Witches’ Weekly best smile award, has accidentally fathered like this
)
JackGoff: I’m gonna be a teacher too! Number the Stars was a huge favorite of mine as a kid (…and still is. Fine, maybe I’m obsessed with children’s literature and reread Harriet the Spy on a yearly basis).
Especially if what you say is true, that kids who like HP seem completely unintersted in any other books. That’s weird, to me, and it makes me even more suspicious than I already was.
Opoponax, I don’t think it’s so much that kids who like HP are uninterested in other books; I think it’s more that kids who are uninterested in books like HP. Some kids just aren’t into reading (and for what it’s worth I am very supportive of expanding the concept of what’s acceptable kids’ reading; my younger brother picked up his once precociously large vocabulary in part from poring over volumes of Calvin & Hobbes, and I have a little cousin who’s mostly interested in civil war history and baseball). HP gets a shockingly huge number of normal nonreaders reading. However, lots of kids who do read other books (like me, a million years ago when the HP series started and I was, in fact, a kid–I think I was in 5th or 6th grade when I started reading them and I was a little late to the game) still read HP. Does that make sense?
opoponax-
lol
or “tubal ligatium” for a more permantent solution . . ,
I still like “expecto latexum” images of a guy with an erection pointing a wand to his penis, while his SO waits …. . . . .
(okay this has either disappeared twice OR been subject to the spamulator infuriator 5 times .. here’s another time for luck)
merciless: heh. i once nearly got beaten to death in an english class for saying that hemingway was called a famous american author only because he wrote in sentences short enough for americans to read. that went over well.
it does seem strange that the Room should toss the diadem in with everything else, when first you think of it, but remember, while looking for the diadem, we see, amongst all the other junk, that cabinet draco was hiding. it, too, had to be in a very special and secret and unfindable place. (i hope the room did mutter under its breath every time it got yet another OMG IT IS A SECRET TO EVERYBODY request…)
i hope, in future, something gets done with the lupin/tonks unresolved shit. the encyclopaedia doesn’t sound like it will be very satisfying. if she threw the two of them into a relationship just to have them spawn a kid for the sequel, i will be disappointed.
most of your comments have been about how JK Rowling sucks as a writer and there are far better books that people should be reading instead. Which made me start wondering why you’re posting if you hate her so much.
I hate to get all snarky, but nuh-uh.
Most of my comments, at least as far as I’m aware (I’m not actually counting) are talking about various aspects of the book I thought were interesting, or not, or whatever, or what might have been more interesting, or what plot developments I’d like to see based on my own personal opinion of the characters and stories. Which is what most others in this thread are talking about, too. I haven’t noticed that other commenters are all talking about how every single aspect of all the books is 100% the best thing ever set to paper.
I also repeatedly stressed, every. single. time. i said anything critical about Rowling’s writing, that I enjoy the Potter series very much. She’s just not really all that, in the grand scheme of great writers. Which, sorry, she’s just not, and you are either lying to yourself or really uneducated if you think she’s, like The Best Writer Ever. She might be your favorite writer ever, and obviously that’s perfectly OK (my favorite writer ever is probably Michele Tea, who is also far from perfect), but you can’t really know anything about what the craft of writing is about if you think she’s The Best in anything like an objective sense (in whatever way writing as a craft can be ‘objective’). Even in terms of children’s lit.
Other than suggesting alternatives to The Old Man and the Sea, I never said anything about other books people ought to be reading.
Just ‘cause I’m a big book-designing geek…
I have all seven 1st edition (US) hardbacks. The 1st book is actually about 1/2 inch shorter than the others and the font appears to be a half to one point smaller, although the leading looks the same.
12 point is a bit large for adult books, which tend to run between 9.5pt - 10.5pt, but it’s about right for YA titles.
All the other books are the same size and have the same font/leading layout (or awfully damn close). I didn’t break out the calipers, but the paper weight feels the same in all seven. I imagine that it’s Scholastic’s standard for 1st editions. Thicker paper is a mark of quality printing, and it probably is — in a way — a justification for higher-pricing. If some other publisher had printed these then my guess is they’d be printed much more cheaply. In my mind the fact that they were produced to a high standard (compared to most mass-market fiction) is a plus.
Book 4 in my set actually looks thickest, but it’s around 20-30 pages shorter.
George Orwell disagrees with you.
on marketing, i’d expect to see a similar phenomenon with golden compass, if it does take off. (i’m kind of hoping it doesn’t, given what i’ve heard about what they’ve done to the plot.)
there’s a lot of serial kidfic out there, if parents know where to look. i cut my teeth on the redwall series years ago, and it’s still going strong. if it were marketed better, i think nonreaders would go for it, too. in that sense, marketing is sort of a blessing, if a mixed one.
opoponax-
lol
or “tubal ligatium” for a more permanent solution . . ,
I still like “expecto latexum” images of a guy with an erection pointing a wand to his penis, while his SO waits …. . . . .
(okay this has either disappeared four times OR been subject to the spamulator infuriator 11 times )
Switching to firefox from ie hoping that this will be better, finds that it does not.
I’m so irritated with this that if and when this posts, I will just get off Pandagon for the night and try again tomorrow.
opoponax-
lol
or “tubal ligatium” for a more permanent solution . . ,
I still like “expecto latexum” images of a guy with an erection pointing a wand to his penis, while his SO waits …. . . . .
(okay this has either disappeared four times OR been subject to the spamulator infuriator 12 times )
Switching to firefox from ie hoping that this will be better, finds that it does not.
I’m so irritated with this that if and when this posts, I will just get off Pandagon for the night and try again tomorrow.
opoponax is doing fine by me, esp. the “best-ever” vs “favorite” bit. For example, my favorite in the HP series is #5. It’s probably not the best at all (I would guess that’s maybe #3?) but it’s my favorite.
It also happens to be Daniel Radcliffe’s favorite too, though.
I have to add another “lost it” moment to the list: Snape re-reading the second page of that letter from Lily. OMG. And I got to that part while reading on the bus.
I think she’s a brilliant writer. There’s more than one kind of brilliance, and writing for kids is a particular field - and not a lesser one, either. Kids are an extremely demanding audience, and balancing their interests with adult standards is no mean feat. Most books topple over on either side - either (a) they’re reduced to gibbering incoherence, a la Goosebumps, which abandon even forming complete sentences in order to generate cheap suspense, or (b) they’re too lofty to be very engaging. Ursula LeGuin, for instance, is an astonishingly brilliant writer of fantasy, but I have never understood why her Earthsea series is considered young adult literature. When I finally read the whole series recently (in my mid-20s) I was blown away, but when I belonged to the audience it’s typically marketed to, I could never get past the first couple chapters (and actually I still find the first book very stilted - it reads more like a technical exercise than a story; she seemed to be trying REALLY HARD to write A Piece Of Literature. It’s actually pretty cool to read the whole series and watch her prose develop over time towards the effortless, lithe economy of The Other Wind. But anyway…)
My point is simply that it’s an incredibly difficult line to walk, and it’s a rare book that manages it this well. A cracking good story full of clever wordplay, sly little jokes and references (apparently there’s a Moaning Myrtle Tree in Cervantes!), engaging characters and authentically touching moments, with overwhelming cross-generational appeal? Sorry, but that’s brilliant children’s literature.
The books don’t seem all that padded page-stock and font size wise to me. I’m looking at my bookshelf right now and my paperback copy of Wizard’s First Rule (don’t ask why I own this, I loathe Terry Goodkind) is 835 or so pages and it juuuuust thinner judging cover-to-cover than my copy of OOTP at 776 pages. Consider that is paperback vs hardcover, that seems about right.
Mind you, my 998 page copy of Pillars of the Earth is thinner, but it has that onionskin paper stuff…
Can somebody explain how accepting death saved Harry’s life (why didn’t he die)? And what happened to the part of Voldemort that was inside him? I understand (I think - ?) that it was supposed to be like the resurrection–he died for our sins (?) but I didn’t get why he didn’t die.
When Harry “died” after sacrificing himself to Voldemort, the only thing that was killed was the bit of soul Voldemort left in Harry when he tried to AK him the night James and Lily died. Harry was the vessel for a Horcrux, and Voldemort only succeeded in killing that Horcrux, not Harry, when Harry gave himself up to Voldy.
i thought Kipling hadn’t held up as well as I’d thought he had (whew, what a sentence!). Mainly because after Rikki Tikki Tavi and the Just So Stories and Kim, I went on to discover the absolute garbage that is his writing for adults. But then I said something about it to a friend of mine, who lent me his copy of Kim to reread. No, actually, sorry, it’s even better than I remembered. Even considering that I first read it without a political consciousness, and later read it with my full leftist, anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, and anti-racist adult self intact. No matter how you slice it, it’s just a brilliant fucking book.
As for Lupin and Tonks, (as in “why those two?”) might we not be looking past the obvious? In wartime, people become very close indeed to those that they are fighting with. In wartime, people form often baffling sexual / romantic / marital ties, ties which make no sense when viewed from the more steady and balanced platform of peacetime. Lupin-Tonks is both of those. The fact that there is a hurried wartime marriage between two people who, on the surface, don’t seem to fit each other — or even just a marriage between two people who don’t seem to fit each other, period — may indicate Rowling’s subtlety as a writer. Viewed from the outside many real-world marriages don’t make sense. Why should hers be any different?
I’m sure that if I hopped a plane to the UK and strolled through some of the London graveyards (or Hamburg graveyards, for that matter) I would find many wartime couples who didn’t live long enough to discover that they were incompatible. The bombs did for them while they still believed that they belonged together.
The paperback editions get much smaller, I might add.
JackGoff: I’m gonna be a teacher too! Number the Stars was a huge favorite of mine as a kid (…and still is. Fine, maybe I’m obsessed with children’s literature and reread Harriet the Spy on a yearly basis).
YAY! And yeah, that book makes me sad, happy, horrified, scared, and beyond. It’s such a beautiful book.
The lot of you can debate font and page weight all you want. You’ve all (in my wholly un-sarcastic highly respectful opinion) completely missed the point.
The books feel good in the hand. They are the right size to hold comfortably, the pages are strong and feel right as they turn, and you can read them endlessly without eye fatigue.
I think you all forget just how important a part “yeah, that feels right” is in good design.
What this means is that if Scholastic and other YA publishing companies (and publishers in general, as the Harry Potter market grows up) do not seize on books in general as profitable cultural products and reading as “something we just do”, if this is just limited to Potter (which it seems to be, so far), it’s all completely pointless.
opoponax, reading (except for the necessary stuff) is not something your average American does, or has ever done. Even bright young people don’t read nearly as much as they used to, because there are so many other options for them. Heck, when I was in college, I didn’t even own a typewriter (I had to use the ones in the library. Shut up). Now the kids are completely wired in to their ipods, their chatrooms, their cell phones. I don’t know if it’s a deathknell for literature. I think the book will remain a viable form of communication in my lifetime. But the books you’ve been talking about all day, even though most of us have read them (or most of them), most people haven’t, and won’t. Should we then look down on all those kids loving Harry Potter, because they haven’t read Earthsea?
I always saw my obsession with books as that, an obsession. Certainly I’m not any richer or better-lookiing because I’ve read a lot of books.
Books, other than bestsellers, really aren’t profitable.
OK, I’ll admit to writing a few HP fanfics in my past, but I refuse to anymore. I’m in recovery now. I don’t go to bars. I don’t go to crack dens. I don’t mess around with fanfic. It has a way of taking over your life. I blame JKR for taking so long between GoF and Phoenix. But I will say proudly that I was a Harry/Ginny shipper way back before it was cool or even looked remotely possible. Am I the only person seriously bummed that Ginny was completely removed from Hallows? One near-porn moment at the Burrow and they just shuffle her right off stage until she gets to throw a couple of “well-placed curses” at some Deatheaters at the end. I understand that JK probably thought she would complicate stuff too much and that she really wanted to emphasize the triumvirate, but come on — Ginny’s gone through a lot and she’s a kick ass witch in her own right. If she was Harry’s soulmate, she should have been along for the ride.
Yeah, what chryslin said about Ginny.
6079 is spot on with the eye fatigue, i think. which might be another contributing factor to the quick reading times. also, just so people know, i do think they’re laid out beautifully, look great, etc. and i’m all in favor of really lovely editions. i’ve just wondered because there’s no real objective “reason” for them to do that — most YA lit, in my memory of reading it as a kid and occasionally delving into it as an adult, was the absolute cheapest of the cheap in terms of publication quality. I’d like to believe it’s just because there’s sometimes some justice in this world. But we all know I’m too suspicious and cynical for that…
to be perfectly honest, i think the size of the print runs probably doesn’t hurt, either. it’s much cheaper per book to produce 100 million copies of a beautiful clothbound edition than it is to produce 100,000.
6079: That was kind of my point, I just said it in design-geek speak. Which I forget is unintelligible to anyone else.
Perhaps especially so to those of us not paying close enough attention. (bows)
No no tricia, I understand design-geek speak very well. It’s my job as well.
And I should say that Voldemort acted as a Horcrux by making the magic Lily invoked by dying for Harry permanant in the world as long as either he or Harry were living. This meant that Harry’s body could not die while Voldemort lived, because of the fact that Voldemort used Harry’s blood to reconstitute his body, thus making the magic another bond between the two. I think, though, that Horcrux was different because it took nothing of Harry’s soul, but just the magic and protection his mother gave to him, which also kept him from dying totally upon being AK’d.
I think you all forget just how important a part “yeah, that feels right” is in good design.
You’re right of coure, six-oh. Good book design is invisible, which is when people who are involved in book design get a chance to talk to others who know about it, they go a little nuts. It happens so seldom.
Three of us? In the same place? Out in “public,” unescorted? Yeah, that’s virtually unheard of.
heh
Now I feel bad for standing in the way of a rare treat.
i do have to say, though, that i’d wish they’d put out a nice, sleek smaller type and lighter stock edition for grownups who like to read on the go. a major hurdle to me reading the Potter books is that they’re gigantic, which means i’m unlikely to read them until i can devote proper time to doing it all in one or two multi-hour sittings. i’m sorta pissed that i ultimately had to sacrifice my favorite totebag to the new Potter, because it’s just too goddamn big to carry around.
though i guess if it were really that big a deal i could wait for the paperbacks.
i think the bottom line is that i’m a complete sucker for small editions. I blame it on The Modern Library and Everyman Editions…
a major hurdle to me reading the Potter books is that they’re gigantic
E-Book format works if you can stand to read from a computer screen, but I can’t do that, so I steer clear. I haven’t had a real problem with the book size, myself, though they should be considerate and print out a nice small paperback edition for adults. My immediate family all consists of voracious readers from 23 to 60, and we’ve bought four copies of the hardcover edition of Deathly Hallows. Surely we’re entitled to smaller editions, no? I would have definitely like a smaller print for myself, as I’m used to small text, but that isn’t feasible economically, most likely.
Okay Isabel fess up … what name did you use?
Because I couldn’t take it any more (like I have the time) and started writing HP fanfic this afternoon.
Now I feel bad for standing in the way of a rare treat.
Not only did you NOT stand in the way, you enabled a discussion of book design! And you gave the designer of these books the greatest compliment a designer could ever get.
Smooches for you, six-oh.
(blushes)
faith and begora! a comment actually showed up … not the one I tried for 13 times … but this is something at least.
One reason Harry didn’t die when he was “killed” was that he was the rightful possessor of all three Deathly Hallows, and as such, he mastered death.
but the thing with an e-book is that then you have to haul the computer around. at least Deathly Hallows is smaller and lighter than my laptop…
again, I’ll take the Everyman’s Library edition, kthxbye.
(beautifully cloth-bound, nicely laid out, paper feels good to the touch, and yet still easy to slip into my bag and read during the morning commute.)
oooh, snap, Amanda! I didn’t think of that!
but wait… he said he dropped the stone back in the woods… does that still count?
So am I reading it right when I guess that the flayed baby in Kings Cross is a representation of the horcrux within (or that has just been separated from) Harry?
i thought the flayed baby was the last remnant of the dying soul of Tom Riddle. but i guess they’re pretty much one and the same.
Mnemosyne, I went from Chronicles of Narnia to Out of the Silent Planet! I was about 12. But once there, I thought Out of the Silent Planet was very boring, and I never read the rest of that series (were there three?) so that more proves your point than not.
I did enjoy The Screwtape Letters, however.
Back to HP, I’ll add a lost-it moment of my own: Dobby’s death. He was a weird little character that I found rather annoying when he first showed up, but I got to kind of like him, and his death was sad.
Speaking of house elves, I was glad that they made friends with Kreacher, even though it seemed a little abrupt, and I liked the added details on elf/goblin/wizard relations in this book.
One reason Harry didn’t die when he was “killed” was that he was the rightful possessor of all three Deathly Hallows, and as such, he mastered death.
Well, I really didn’t understand this as a reason. Mastering death doesn’t, to me, mean that you cannot die, but I guess if that makes sense to others. I think the whole mastering death was just out of that fairy tale, and had less to do with possessing the Deathly Hallows. The Horcrux thing made more sense to me.
but wait… he said he dropped the stone back in the woods… does that still count?
Yeah, but it was still his. Wizard inheritance is mystical and Harry got each Hallow by the rights of magic: He was willed the stone by Dumbledore, inherited the cloak from his father, and got the wand from dualing.
Yes because it is like the cloak, It doesn’t need to always be on your person for it to be yours.
Harry was given the stone by Albus. Plus he didn’t use it for personal gain
We discussed some of this during the week at punkass blog
http://punkassblog.com/2007/07/23/because-i-cant-wait-five-damn-days-for-the-pandagon-comment-thread-and-im-not-joining-some-yahoo-discussion-group
It is a piece of or the reformed pieces of Riddle’s soul. There was a little discussion on this also on punkass while we were waiting for this thread here at pandagon
http://punkassblog.com/2007/07/23/because-i-cant-wait-five-damn-days-for-the-pandagon-comment-thread-and-im-not-joining-some-yahoo-discussion-group
Yes because it is like the cloak, It doesn’t need to always be on your person for it to be yours.
Harry was given the stone by Albus. Plus he didn’t use it for personal gain
We discussed some of this during the week at punkass blog
http://punkassblog.com/2007/07/23/because-i-cant-wait-five-damn-days-for-the-pandagon-comment-thread-and-im-not-joining-some-yahoo-discussion-group
It is a piece of or the reformed pieces of Riddle’s soul. There was a little discussion on this also on punkass while we were waiting for this thread here at pandagon
http://punkassblog.com/2007/07/23/because-i-cant-wait-five-damn-days-for-the-pandagon-comment-thread-and-im-not-joining-some-yahoo-discussion-group
fucking a — it’s doing it again….
http://punkassblog.com/2007/07/23/because-i-cant-wait-five-damn-days-for-the-pandagon-comment-thread-and-im-not-joining-some-yahoo-discussion-group
As did I. I actually was given two copies of Redwall before I finally read it, but man were those books good reading. The Bellmaker was the last one I really thought was good - after that I suppose I was old enough to recognize the formula and the spell was broken.
I slightly enjoyed one of the Redwall books when I was 13 or so, but somehow couldn’t be bothered to read any more. Then I came across one more recently, as an adult, and found it entirely too sugary. I wanted to eat lemons or something to counteract all the poetry that didn’t scan and the cute little terms for everything.
Not to diss anyone who enjoys them; I know they have a significant following and I’m not saying all those readers are wrong. They just have different tastes than I do.
But if we’re talking about fantasy books we adored, one I read more times than I could count was “Bridge of Birds” by Barry Hughart. I still quote it to my sisters–we’d read it to each other while some of us drew pictures or sewed or whatever. Good times. [Nostalgic sigh.]
You know, I’ve always wondered where Hogwarts bought its huge amounts of food from. There’s no mention of a Hogwarts farm, and Hogsmeade seems too small to supply the immense amount of food, and especially meat, that’s supplied at every breakfast, lunch and dinner. I know it’s mentioned that food is one of those things that can’t just be brought into existence… Seriously, they must go through a herd of cows a day.
Though Hagrid presumably keeps chickens and grows pumpkins.
Also, yes to the comment about the sexism, way up there. Read a comment a few days ago about how the Potterverse is actually feminist because it prizes traditionally female characteristics like nurturing, cooking, ect. Tonks was the only female who wasn’t a teacher who had a job. Not that there were many other female characters. But that’s another problem.
I thought though, that having female people praised for being feminine wasn’t the most progressive move. Also, would it kill to have a gay character in there somewhere?
it is mentioned, however, that you can magically replicate food, alter its qualities, etc. it’s also heavily implied that house elves have their own kinds of magic that might enable them to get more culinarily adventurous than your average witch or wizard. so they could have a few acres of soybeans or alfalfa growing back there, which the staff and house elves are transmogrifying into steak & kidney pies.
either that or their caf is run by Aramark, like my boarding school cafeteria was.
Yes. Yes. Yes. To what The Amazing Kim said. Why are the femlae characters in power killed or nonexistent? Amelia Bones was there for what, two books, and then DEAD. Great. Tonks is clumsy, marries, and then DEAD. WHERE ARE THE STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS WITH JOBS?!
And seriously, the biggest criticism of all: WHERE ARE THE GAY CHARACTERS?! I know this is for kids, but THAT’S THE POINT! Open them up to new avenues by making them empathize with people their culture vilifies.
Someone has questioned why Snape’s portrait was not among the former Hogwarts headmasters’ and headmistresses’. Could I dare hope that Severus Snape was not dead? Did anyone recover his body? No, he should have been given a place of honor among the slain warriors. But he was not, and JKR did not write one more word about him after his memories were shown to Harry. What gives?
Is it possible that Severus Snape anticipated his own death by Nagini and he had just the correct dose of magical snakebit antidote in his pocket. He feigned his death and upon Harry’s departure, he saved himself?
Perhaps he felt his success in role playing could earn him a new career and now he is reaping tons of money by playing himself in the Harry Potter movies in the guise of Alan Rickman.
Someone has questioned why Snape’s portrait was not among the former Hogwarts headmasters’ and headmistresses’. Could I dare hope that Severus Snape was not dead? Did anyone recover his body? No, he should have been given a place of honor among the slain warriors. But he was not, and JKR did not write one more word about him after his memories were shown to Harry. What gives?
Is it possible that Severus Snape anticipated his own death by Nagini and he had just the correct dose of magical snakebit antidote in his pocket. He feigned his death and upon Harry’s departure, he saved himself?
Perhaps he felt his success in role playing could earn him a new career and now he is reaping tons of money by playing himself in the Harry Potter movies in the guise of Alan Rickman.
For the record, I never got through the Narnia series, period. I read The Magician’s Nephew, The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, and like half of Horse & His Boy which sucked so hard I gave up on the rest of the series entirely. I hear it’s the worst of the lot, but everything else I hear about the city doesn’t make me think I missed much. (for the record, I also liked Magician’s Nephew waaay better than LWW and I think part of my lack of momentum was because I expected the whole series to be as cool and instead I got this crap about a spying faun and a lot of snow and a big lion and four whiny brats. wow I’m more bitter about that book than I remembered).
and clytemnestra… i used the name cassandra lupos, i wrote one short fic that was a really sappy little thing about sirius & lupin’s tortured love and also the beatles, and it was really sappy and poorly written because i was writing it because i somehow got it into my head there were not enough sappy fanfics about sirius & lupin and. really, you shouldn’t find it. you won’t be happy.
I do think writing HP fic is kind of better than some fic, because JKR has stated that she loves fanfic (K. A. Applegate, who wrote the Animorphs series–with a handdful of ghostwriters–did too). So JKR invites active participation in her universe.
JackGoff: I don’t care if he’s married with a kid and now dead, I still think Lupin was the gayest werewolf that ever did live. *clings stubbornly to her ship*
oh god look at what you’ve done. you’ve made me regress. i hate you all.
Wow, that punkassblog thread is great too! Thanks clytemnestra.
I apologize to everyone for the 109 posts of mine that are finally showing up
Someone has questioned why Snape’s portrait was not among the former Hogwarts headmasters’ and headmistresses’. Could I dare hope that Severus Snape was not dead? Did anyone recover his body? No, he should have been given a place of honor among the slain warriors. But he was not, and JKR did not write one more word about him after his memories were shown to Harry. What gives?
Is it possible that Severus Snape anticipated his own death by Nagini and he had just the correct dose of magical snakebit antidote in his pocket. He feigned his death and upon Harry’s departure, he saved himself?
Perhaps he felt his success in role playing could earn him a new career and now he is reaping tons of money by playing himself in the Harry Potter movies in the guise of Alan Rickman.
This one was my favorite, um, “fanfic”: a href=”http://home.earthlink.net/~ladyirony/hbpcondensed.htm”>Shorter Half-Blood Prince by Molly Winter.
that said, most of the books mostly depict the world of childhood and early adolescence, where most people aren’t yet fully aware of or open about sexual orientation. even in the later books, they’re still 16 and 17, which is before a lot of people feel comfortable being out. there’s no excuse not to include gay adults, though. but c’mon, Professor Hooch?
i feel about that the same way i felt about the race/ethnicity issue — why is everyone white except Dean Thomas, Cho Chang, and the Patil twins? i figured it was an unspoken thing, and that there were probably tons of hogwarts students of color who just aren’t specifically mentioned as not being white (I was almost positive before the first film came out that Hermione was black, for instance), more non-white hogwarts students than we ever actually meet, as well as other magic schools in the UK which might have a different racial balance. of course that turned out to be false. which is a major reason i hate the movies and thought Goblet of Fire was pretty weak.
Oops. Sorry about that link.
Someone has questioned why Snape’s portrait was not among the former Hogwarts headmasters’ and headmistresses’. Could I dare hope that Severus Snape was not dead? Did anyone recover his body? No, he should have been given a place of honor among the slain warriors. But he was not, and JKR did not write one more word about him after his memories were shown to Harry. What gives?
Is it possible that Severus Snape anticipated his own death by Nagini and he had just the correct dose of magical snakebit antidote in his pocket. He feigned his death and upon Harry’s departure, he saved himself?
Perhaps he felt his success in role playing could earn him a new career and now he is reaping tons of money by playing himself in the Harry Potter movies in the guise of Alan Rickman.
Someone has questioned why Snape’s portrait was not among the former Hogwarts headmasters’ and headmistresses’. Could I dare hope that Severus Snape was not dead? Did anyone recover his body? No, he should have been given a place of honor among the slain warriors. But he was not, and JKR did not write one more word about him after his memories were shown to Harry. What gives?
Is it possible that Severus Snape anticipated his own death by Nagini and he had just the correct dose of magical snakebit antidote in his pocket. He feigned his death and upon Harry’s departure, he saved himself?
Perhaps he felt his success in role playing could earn him a new career and now he is reaping tons of money by playing himself in the Harry Potter movies in the guise of Alan Rickman.
One of the big challenges Rowling has given the filmmakers is that she has set a fairly extended sequence in the ministry with our heroes disguised with polyjuice potion, which means that they have to hire three adult actors who (1) look entirely different from Harry, Hermione, and Ron, (2) can successfully act like the three H, H, and R acting like adults, and (3) who can “carry” the scenes as heroes. That’s harder than it sounds.
It takes a lot of effort to get an audience interested and caring about the fate of the character, and substituting another face is quite tricky. It’s the kind of storytelling that is much easier to describe in a book.
Blaise Zabini is a black Slytherin, remember? But yeah, there’s only one of him.
Angelina is also black.
But really, what is there some sort of checklist that every writer must have? Something like:
One black kid for every 3 white kids.
If you describe more then 10 romantic relationships, one must be gay.
Most of the students aren’t described enough to talk about what color they may be. And we really see very few romantic relationships. (Although I DID really like Lupin/Sirius
Misplaced Patriot, I’d assume that scene will either be cut shorter or radically altered for the film. Either that or they’ll introduce some visual device that enables the audience to be constantly reminded of what’s up and who’s who. Or the director and producers will decide that it works as-is. I’d guess that they’ll also end up casting adult actors that are vaguely reminiscent of Our Heroes (Mr. Chattermole will have red hair, etc.).
For the record, I never got through the Narnia series, period. I read The Magician’s Nephew, The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, and like half of Horse & His Boy which sucked so hard I gave up on the rest of the series entirely.
I still deeply resent that Lewis’ stepson took it upon himself to re-order the books in a way that makes NO sense given the full arc of the story.
FWIW, you’re supposed to read them in the following order, which is the order in which Lewis wrote them and the order they were in until about 10 years ago:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Horse and His Boy
The Magician’s Nephew
The Last Battle
When I give the books to my niece and nephew, I’m using Liquid Paper to put them back in the CORRECT order in which they should be read, because the current order makes them much more confusing than they should be.
Mnemosyne, that’s the order I read them in, too. I was totally WTFlummoxed when I saw recent editions with Magician’s Nephew as the first book.
Which, sorry, she’s just not, and you are either lying to yourself or really uneducated if you think she’s, like The Best Writer Ever.
Ah, yes, always interesting to have someone almost 20 years younger than me start lecturing me on how uneducated I am, what with my master’s degree and all.
No one said that the books are The Greatest Literature Of All Time, but when you’re saying things like, “Not to mention of course that if Rowling is brilliant, where does that leave the real grownup writers of great literary fiction?” you’ve set yourself up as a hopeless literary snob who’s slumming with those silly people who actuallylike fantasy and science fiction, which everyone knows isn’t real literature. It’s not real literature until it’s won a Booker or a Pulitzer.
In other words, you seem to think that if it’s popular, it automatically has no literary merit. That’s how you’re coming across.
(I hope this isn’t a double post …)
Which, sorry, she’s just not, and you are either lying to yourself or really uneducated if you think she’s, like The Best Writer Ever.
Ah, yes, always interesting to have someone almost 20 years younger than me start lecturing me on how uneducated I am, what with my master’s degree and all.
No one said that the books are The Greatest Literature Of All Time, but when you’re saying things like, “Not to mention of course that if Rowling is brilliant, where does that leave the real grownup writers of great literary fiction?” you’ve set yourself up as a hopeless literary snob who’s slumming with those silly people who actuallylike fantasy and science fiction, which everyone knows isn’t real literature. It’s not real literature until it’s won a Booker or a Pulitzer.
In other words, you seem to think that if it’s popular, it automatically has no literary merit. That’s how you’re coming across.
I read them in the original order, or at least tried to. I don’t even remembered where I stopped, though I remember Prince Caspian to be particularly awful. I just ended up liking the first book and forgetting the rest. Lewis…I don’t know. He grates.
I don’t even remembered where I stopped
Wow. Proofread. Hee.
Where do comments go when they vanish into the ether?
I just ended up liking the first book and forgetting the rest. Lewis…I don’t know. He grates.
But don’t you understand, you MUST like Lewis, because he is Great Literature, unlike JK Rowling, who is merely popular.
Nothing funnier than when someone who’s 20 years younger than me insists that I’m “uneducated.” Gosh, yes, I only have a master’s degree — I bow to your superior life experience and education!
Okay, this should bring you to tears re: book 7
I saw Hedwig and lost it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNpNkFZKssc
FWIW, you’re supposed to read them in the following order, which is the order in which Lewis wrote them and the order they were in until about 10 years ago
I still have my old box set somewhere that has them in the right order. And my parents found another rummaging through their stuff a year ago and I snagged it.
And dear, god, the number of times I had to explain to customers why the movie was based on the “second” book, not the “first”…..I really, really, wanted to have a pamphlet to hand out. Thankfully, near the time the movie actually came out, we got these in, so I just started handing them to people when I gave them the explanation.
Even bright young people don’t read nearly as much as they used to, because there are so many other options for them…..Books, other than bestsellers, really aren’t profitable.
Maybe this is just wishful thinking because of the work I do, but it should be noted that sales of children’s books has only grown in recent years - that includes YA. There’s now even a new release section in the kid’s novel area of B&N. And it’s very, very obvious that publishers spend a lot more money on the design of teen books especially, compared to adult books. And yes, I realize that could be read as simply having to try harder to get teens interested, but considering our sales of teen books and the fact that “better designed” tends to mean not just more eye catching, but also doing a better job of visually communicating what the book is about, I don’t think that’s all there is to it.
(Best example of this? Stephenie Meyer’s vampire series. The covers are all extremely symbolic and the first cover has even already generated an adult non-fiction copycat. The final book has been on Amazon’s top ten in books for months now - which, btw, is currently dominated by kid’s books, mostly HP. I don’t know if kids are reading more or not, but somebody sure is buying more kid’s books.)
Harry Potter has helped. So has the fact that kid’s books is a new market in comparison to adult books, relatively speaking.
The younger the kid, the more true that statement is.
It also helps that just about everyone has an emotional attachment to at least one picture book and often a kid’s novel as well, even if they say they hate books. People don’t come up asking for obscure adult books they barely remember reading decades ago the way they ask for the same in children’s when they finally have a kid. Bestsellers in children’s doesn’t just mean Harry Potter, it also means paperback copies of Where the Wild Things Are and Charlotte’s Web. Because the genre is newer (a century or so, rather than several) and because it only takes about twenty years to make a new kid’s “classic,” the steady sellers in kids are much, much younger than the average adult steady seller.
And when bookstores talk about bestsellers being where they make their money, what they really mean is that they make their money from classic bestsellers - steady sellers - and new bestsellers - HP and Da Vinci Code type books. While The Da Vinci code will probably no longer be a steady seller in another decade, HP will remain a steady seller for several decades to come.
I never got through Lion, Witch and Wardrobe … don’t much care for Lewis.
yeah, you’re totally right.
J.K. Rowling is The Best Writer Ever Known To Humanity.
The rest of you can go home now.
They can also obviously stop awarding all those silly meaningless literary prizes.
I’m going to say this again. If you don’t understand that writing is a craft, and said craft does in fact make a distinction between quality and a lack thereof, your Masters degree must be in Physics or something. If you do understand that writing is a craft and as such can certainly involve objective quality distinctions, then I’m not disparaging your education level at all so let’s please stop going around and around about it.
If you think J.K. Rowling is your personal favorite writer ever, to be perfectly honest I couldn’t care less. I don’t know you. We will probably never met. I don’t know your real name or what city you live in. As I don’t work in publishing or at your neighborhood independent bookstore, your taste in literature is really none of my concern. My own personal favorite writers have their flaws, and most of them would not be considered Classic Literature (and those who would are long dead - there are very few living writers whose work can be definitively set into anything like the canon). And as a matter of fact, I happen to really like J.K. Rowling, too. Shit, I own every book she’s ever written, making her one of the few writers for whom I’ve been consistently willing to put my money where my mouth is. Which is more than I can say for almost anyone, living or dead, I’d consider Great Literature.
But let’s not kid ourselves, here.
Ranking Rowling up there with the great masters of literature, whether contemporary or canonical, is an insult to the written word. And insisting that there are no standards, that Dan Brown is just as good as John Milton and Danielle Steele is practically the same as Jane Austen, because it’s all a matter of what people find entertaining, is a worse one. Good books matter. And the measure of a good book is more than whether it happens to entertain me.
C’mon, debating “50 Most Bestest Greatest Authors ZOMG!” is boring. Let’s discuss the actual point of this post. I’m sorry for my own contribution to the threadjack.
Angelina Johnson is also a black character.
I write fanfic. No apologies. I’m a good writer, in some ways better than Jo (I can catch problems like Nagini is not large enough to eat an adult human without killing herself).
Cutting my self-praise short, if you want to see what I’ve written, I’ve put my livejournal link above.
I hated it.
1. I’m surprised how little has been said about the sexist subtext, perhaps unintentional but still there, with the “Everyone gets married and has lots of babies and who cares what their jobs are? Despite all her ambitions, looks like Hermione is just a mom!” epilogue and Tonks getting married, knocked up and pushed offstage until she’s dead and one of the main villains bing sensual, childless single woman being defeated by the Mom who calls her a bitch.
Also, that line is a blatant steal from Aliens, and it really annoys me that soon it will be associated with the Potter movies instead of Ripley, who kicks ass all over the female characters in these books.
2. No Hogwarts. This was what held the books together, thematically and otherwise. The entire series is built around the concept of 7 years of school. Plus it’s the nexus of everything which made the Potter series interesting, unique and the point with which readers identified.
The most interesting part of Potter was NOT the standard fantasy fare young knight vs. older evil quest, it was the portrait of kids moving from preadolescence to adulthood within a school setting. It was through Hogwarts that we could project ourselves into Harry’s world, kids taking wondrous classes.
By book 6, Hogwarts and Hogsmede was a vivid space with rituals and atmosphere and places and people, a rich palate to work with. In a sense, the buildup to the confrontation between Harry and Voldermort was the backdrop, the secondary story, the dramatic arc for the main story of 7 years at Hogwart’s.
And Rowling just abandoned it and nearly everything associated save for what seems like a token appearance the final battle. By this point Hogwarts is just a shell, a series of references to previous books for the fans during an action movie climax rather than the fully rounded setting it was before.
It was interesting to have an epic hero being someone who still had to finish his homework. I was looking forward to seeing Rowling take on that challenge again, for Harry to face his destiny AND graduation at the same time.
It also gave a grounding to the scares and politics of the books - with real people still trying to function and keep their normal lives within an ever growing threat.
There were plenty of magical ways to make his presence at school plausible for at least part of the book, I think it’s a total copout how she didn’t.
Everyone can relate to a tale built around senior year, with the tension between having mastered the school enviroment and being forced out of it into a new world with less structure and certainty.
And while this theme was illustrated by how difficult it was for our trio to find a solution in the central section of the book, they could have easily been hapless and frustrated within the Hogwart’s setting. Having them sit in a tent for months griping at each other was as annoying and frustrating for me as it was for them.
As one parody pointed out, the story of Neville Longbottom and Ginny occuring offstage seemed far more worthy of a novel than our three heros, who really aren’t all that fun to be around when they don’t have school to play off.
Stripped of settings with depth, the plot contrivances were more grating, because there was little else to notice. The best bits of the book take place in oft repeated and thus richest locations - Ron’s home and the Ministry of Magic. Plus school and classes was a great device for both foiling and advancing Harry’s ability to resolve each books quest, usually not until near the end of the school year.
Without the school, the stalling and massive coincidences are more noticeable. Because Rowling can’t have Harry find the sword too soon, she has her characters be amazingly stupid in not realizing it’s probably hidden in the place which shares its namesake, even though they’ve spent months doing nothing but discuss it.
I can relate to Potter, adolescent and student. Not Harry Skywalker, fugitive on a standard fantasy quest which almost seems like a series of video game missions leading up to the final boss.
In a way, it’s like how Buffy seemed to lose structural focus once they had her drop out of college. But at least even Buffy got to have a climatic battle and graduation as well.
3. Harry beats Voldermort on a technicality which I’m still sure I don’t buy into. First, the power of the wand belongs to whoever disarms and defeats the current owner, then the power of the wand belongs to anyone who disarms the owner of any wand, period. So what was to stop Voldy from using the “Expelliamus” spell on Harry and being the true owner? Or both of them doing it and there being a mad struggle for the wand? Aside from the fact that Voldy became dumber with each volume, as did Harry, kind of.
Just came back from seeing OotP, and just thought of the race thing in relation to Tonks. Rowling never specifies what race she is (so obviously she’s default white), but presumably if she can change her hair pink and purple, she’s able to change her skin tone as well. So why does she choose the norm instead of blue or green, or even brown, if she’s such an outgoing person?
(as a side note, I was very disappointed with the ministry scene. Wanted to see flying octobrains and Neville doing something.)
Re race: Just because a name isn’t distinctly “ethnic” doesn’t mean that the character is white, though I admit that’s the default I fall to when reading (usually, unless the story is set in, say, and African-American community). When a local film critic writing about one of the HP movies said that the cast was more diverse (I think the critic used the term “mulit-culti”) than the book, it made me rethink the assumptions I made in the series thusfar.
When I used to tool around Rowling’s website, the first “prize” I won in one of the games was an illustration she made when writing a first draft of book one. It showed that she had originally included Dean with the main three characters, and she apparently has tons of backstory for him that I’d like to see in the encyclopedia. As far as why he was the one she reduced to lesser-character status when she thought she needed to cut down, I think it may have been because she identified with Hermione and she wanted one of the three to have grown up in the wizarding world (something that in her already-conceived idea of Dean was not true).
oops, crosspost — I couldn’t discern what what of the spam-prevention box numbers were and had to refresh for another one.
Actually, Voldemort was always kind of stupid. It was one of the weak points of the series. Lucius Malfoy was the best suited to be an evil mastermind of the sort that is really worrying. Voldemort was just immortal and homocidal, not really clever.
And Bellatrix was not a single woman. She was Mrs. LeStrange. Other than that, Softdog is right.
Whenever a woman in the HP series is not a cypher, a teacher or completely maternal(and sometimes if she is), she ends up dead. Tonks the Auror. Madame Bones the Judge.
The exception being the evil Umbridge.
It just bugs me that the patriarchy goes almost unchallenged. Hermione telling Ron to do his share of the cooking rather than expecting her to do it all because she’s the girl, seems to be the one openly feminist thing. There are a few jokes, too, like that the first thing Wizards do when they meet seems to be comparing the length and strength of their wands.
But those seem to me so very little. Couldn’t there be one girl character who isn’t pining for a specific boy, and looking to get married at the first opportunity? One career woman who was strong, working for good, and wasn’t doomed to death or children? (I’m putting that ironically. Kids are fine. I might like to be a teacher myself one day, though not a mother. But there are plenty of girls for whom none of those options are attractive.)
On the wizard sex thing, I can just imagine hoards of teenage boys sending off for mail order engorgio charms to use on their.. erm… muscles. Not to mention all the “erecto” spam…
Oh ffs.
On the wizard sex thing, I can just imagine hoards of teenage boys sending off for mail order engorgio charms to use on their.. erm… muscles. Not to mention all the “erecto” spam…
Karla: When a local film critic writing about one of the HP movies said that the cast was more diverse (I think the critic used the term “mulit-culti”) than the book
My recollection is that the cast of the film is tailored towards American assumptions of “multi-racial” - more black kids than would be usual in most British schools, and far fewer Asian kids.
I don’t recall that Rowling was ever specific about the ethnic identity of most of the kids at Hogwarts. It’s presumably the reviewers who assume that if the ethnic identity is not specified, the child must be white.
Things I wanted:
Xeno to ride in to the Battle of Hogwarts on something not thought to have existed. Have that thing take out a giant or two. And have Luna say, “Oh, it’s what a Whatchamacallit always does when facing something larger, haven’t you heard?”
Malfoy to actually and actively change sides. His parents would have been appalled, but isn’t that the point?
Other comments:
There is some underlying assumption that Harry Potter books being popular means children will read other books. And it’s JKRowling’s or Scholastic’s or Borders/BN’s fault somehow that many children won’t read other books. No one on this thread has said that, but it’s out there. I think Rowling did what the writer of Redwall did: wrote a children’s story she wanted to read. Too much children’s literature sucks because it is written about how children should be (The Giver is a particularily offensive piece of shit) or is just crap designed to get more money out of a franchise (how many Transformers “books” exist? if the answer is more than one, we’re screwed. We’re screwed.) The classics (into which Potter is well ensconced, placed after Beatrix Potter and before Mrs. Quimby) are good stuff. But go to a children’s book section and you see crap. Plus, most kids don’t read anyway. One book or book series isn’t going to change a nation (or a world.) If their parents don’t read, their children probably won’t either. Relying on children’s book authors and schools isn’t going to make lifelong readers of anyone.
Anyone who thinks the Potterverse is feminist is engaging is post hoc aesthetic Stalinism to justify their own enjoyment of the books. It’s not feminist, but it’s not really unfeminist, either. It’s clear to me that Rowling was trying to craft a society close enough to the one her target audience would understand as to make the fantasy more plausible. For better or for worse, single mothers, women who keep their names, women who do unfeminine things are still the province of gritty, realistic YA fiction.
But she did try to show, subtly, that the world was changing. The adult generation seemed less feminist than the upcoming one. There’s no doubt that Ginny and Hermione went on to have fabulous careers, in my mind.
It’s a tad unrealistic to demand that the older generation—the ones born in the 50s and 60s, as the Potters were—to have these fabulous feminist values that didn’t really start coming into widespread play until later. I think Rowling accurately captures the rough state of women’s place in society, which is far from a feminist ideal still. But feminists born in 50s and 60s are rebellious and rare compared to those of us born in the 70s and beyond, who had the benefit of growing up after the second wave. It’s unrealistic for a fairly average woman like Lily Potter who married in the late 70s to have kept her name, but much more realistic that Tonks did.
Wow, clytemnestra, that was good! It really reminded me how important Lupin was to Harry - Lupin was the last real link he had to his parents. Then to think he realized Snape was a solid link only after Snape died… I think that it brings out the idea that Harry was trying to live in the past a lot. He was so obsessed with finding out about his history he didn’t pay much attention to the present, but now those ties are all severed and he has to shoulder forward and live his own life now.
I suppose it’s odd, but since I picked up the first four books when I was in Tokyo, and they were the British editions, I’ve been mail ordering from Canada ever since. (This was proven to be the correct move when in the middle of the book the phrase “Harry stripped off” appeared and even though it was supposed to be a suspenseful scene, I nearly lost it laughing in a large crowd of people)
Other countries seem to think that their children will read smaller type. My copy of Deathly Hallows only has 607 pages (including the epilogue, which I kind of wish I hadn’t read)
As for women working, we have to remember what we see - the shops of Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, the schools of Hogwarts (and to a lesser extent Beaubaxtons and Durmstrang), and bit of the ministry.
So yes, I would expect to see shopkeepers, attendants, and barmaids in the shops - Harry is hardly going to be going to the law offices of “Madame P.L. Estlebottom, esq.”is he? (That may not have even made sense)
There are rughly equal numbers of male and female teachers. I can’t remember anything about their marital status.
As for the ministry, we do get Tonks (who does get married), and we get Umbridge, and Bones, and more I’ve probably forgotten. Perhaps married, but I was under the impression that if you were going to live to well past 100 most people didn’t want to do that alone. As for how well that worked out/divorce, I don’t know. Perhaps because Harry doesn’t know, or isn’t interested.
And then there are the housewives…
I’m not saying its feminist, but just that we see women in the roles Harry would see them in, not out living their own lives. And it sucks, but children are exposed to more females in more traditional roles. J.K. could have completely reversed that, but this was easier, and I can understand that.
Finally, I liked the dialog. But then, I could hear it in my head.
And I loved the “password” to Ravenclaw Tower! Well reasoned indeed!
And finally, a page count for those that are interested:
Philosophers Stone: 223 pages
Chamber of Secrets: 251 pages
Prisoner of Azkaban: 317 pages
Goblet of Fire:636 pages
Order of the Phoenix: 766 pages
Half Blood Prince: 607 pages
Deathly Hallows: 607 pages
They all appear to have the same font/size/spacing - although the paper thickness/color is varied between the last 4 (it could just be the age of the books, or the fact that the first was bloomsbury, and the next three were bloomsbury/raincoat)
Where do comments go when they vanish into the ether?
Moderation queue. I do try to clear it out frequently, but I can’t be on top of it every second of the day. So if you leave a comment that goes into moderation, please sit tight and don’t leave it 5 or 6 times. If you keep leaving the same comment over and over in rapid succession, WordPress will think you are spam and may end up blacklisting you automatically.
C’mon, debating “50 Most Bestest Greatest Authors ZOMG!” is boring.
Amen. And every comment that’s added, all I can think is that if Jeff had used the word “awesome” instead of “brilliant”, then this all could have been avoided. I would advise readjusting one’s standards for adjective connotation accuracy in blog comments to an appropriate level.
The other problem is the disdain for the popular, which I don’t really understand (although I have suffered from bouts of it myself). I think the realization that that attitude was stupidly elitist hit when Oprah picked Poisonwood Bible for her book club - I was devastated that it was now going to become simply a “popular” book. Then I stopped and thought well, why shouldn’t it? If I thought it was so moving, shouldn’t I want as many people as possible to read it? And therefore, if everyone read it, it would be popular? I couldn’t justify rejecting it on its popularity then, right? Even the great masses choose well sometimes - for every 50 or so American Idols there’s a M*A*S*H.
And with the Potter books, remember they didn’t start out with a huge media blitz and savvy PR campaign. The first two books went virtually unnoticed by the media until there were huge crowds of kids clamoring for the next release, all which happened by word of mouth, kid to kid and family to family, just based on how much they liked the books. Sure it steamrolled once the movies started, but it did begin as a grassroots effort.
Interesting that so many people assumed Hermione and Ginny were housewives, when there’s not a mention in the epilogue of anyone’s job except Percy’s.
I thought the most irritating bit in the book was the backstory on the Ravenclaw ghost (and the Slytherin one, too). And we never did learn the Fat Friar’s story, did we?
To the design-geek stuff: I read all 7 books in the British “adult” editions (which is why I didn’t get and finish DH until yesterday). Would a proper thumb margin have killed them? If I am going to read a 600pp book that requires a proper grip on either side of the spine, I want a damn thumb margin.
Anyone else notice that all of Harry and Ginny’s kids had names that were associated with him and not Ginny? James, Albus, and Lily? Not Fred? Couldn’t name a kid FRED???
I don’t recall that Rowling was ever specific about the ethnic identity of most of the kids at Hogwarts.
Parvati Patil is virtually certainly someone of Indian descent.
Even old British school stories had an Indian or two (remember Hurree Jamset Ram Singh, from the Greyfriars stories of Billy Bunter)?
PARODY
Someone above mentioned a Deathly Hallows parody based on how much more interesting the book would have been if we’d seen what Neville and Ginny (and perhaps Luna?) were doing all year.
Does anyone have a link? I would love to see that … because I really felt like I’d have prefered them to the All Year Camping Trip.
Interesting that so many people assumed Hermione and Ginny were housewives, when there’s not a mention in the epilogue of anyone’s job except Percy’s.
Rowling has later said that Hermione became a lawyer. I don’t doubt that Ginny the Quidditch player moved onto a professional life.
Yeah, here’s the story where she gives up the fates of the major characters.
Anyone else notice that all of Harry and Ginny’s kids had names that were associated with him and not Ginny? James, Albus, and Lily? Not Fred? Couldn’t name a kid FRED???
if the epilogue was written in 1990-91 it seems unlikely she had any idea that fred was going to die at all.
I was ready to drop it when Jeff, JackGoff, and I agreed that I’d been harsh and/or misunderstood about what was meant by “brilliant”. But then came the chorus of OMG NO ROWLING IS TEH BEST EVAR U 3L33TIST BITCH! sorry, no, not elitist, just honest. Rowling is good, the novels are entertaining and mainly successful at what they’re trying to do, but yeah, J.K. Rowling has her weaknesses and it’s just completely insulting to everything that is important in this world (including HP itself) to insist that Harry Potter Is The Best Thing Ever Set To Paper, or to demand that honesty about the books be stifled to spare people’s feelings, or something.
I felt exactly the same way about it before the books were such a media circus.
I was happy to see Pottermania set in back in the summer of 2000. I was happy to see my non-reading brother get excited about the series, and one of the coolest things about the recent release hoopla was seeing 16-17 year olds camped out at the front of the line dressed up like Gryffindors and realizing that they’ve all grown up with Harry the way I grew up with Ramona Quimby and Meg Murry. (even though I’d think it odd if I showed up in a serious grownup lit class to find Ramona the Pest on the syllabus).
I saw a girl with a hand-screened “My Guitar Is A Horcrux” t-shirt. I want one!
But I think it’s possible to hold all these different ideas about what Potter means in one’s mind at the same time, without being an elitist scold.
I, too, disliked the Mrs Weasley “Bitch!” comment. I thought it was cheap.
Lamer, though, was Ginny’s bizarre jealous fit in the middle of the Battle of Hogwarts when she insisted that Luna, rather than Cho, accompany Harry to the Ravenclaw common room.
Agreed. Too Hollywood by a mile. Not agreed. I can’t speak for modern teenagers but such inappropriately-placed, drama-queen moments were repellent common coin in my high school. (Of course, we were never heading out the door to a battle, so my personal experiences are arguably inapropos.)Yes, in theory, opop, it’s possible. But since people are constantly scolded for having fluffy tastes, it’s a dangerous path to walk. Plus, the word “brilliant” applies, if you look at the use of it generously. No, she’s not James Joyce, but neither was James Joyce the writer of a brand new myth. He even had to steal an old one for his most famous book.*
*JOKE. PLEASE DO NOT GET PEDANTIC ON ME.
Don’t forget, “brilliant” is also British slang for generally awesome, and is sprinkled throughout the Potter books as well. It doesn’t necessarily mean “the most intelligent, insightful, and meaningful author of all time.”
uh, yeah, we already talked about all that yesterday.
the only reason i’m still defending my opinion is that others have come in to chastise me for daring to say any negative thing about Rowling, or daring to admit, that, yes, in fact, some books really are better crafted than others.
and while i’m willing to admit that i was wrong to jump on Jeff about the “brilliant” thing for a variety of reasons, you will pry my insistence on literary discernment from my cold, dead fingers. so it’s best to just drop it, eh?
especially considering that i haven’t scolded ANYONE for liking Rowling or reading Potter when they could be reading something loftier. I’ve put off reading at least 2 or 3 much “better” things in order to participate in the Potterdammerung. It would be a tad hypocritical of me to criticize others for doing the same.
Well, people are defensive because it’s been drilled into their heads that appreciating the brilliance of anything that’s not Great Literature is stupid. I don’t think anyone was actually arguing that we should give Rowling the Nobel Prize or anything. So it’s a bunch of straw flying everywhere. And it took off because the word “brilliant” was perhaps not the most ideal adjective ever.
But yes, writing brilliantly is unbelievably difficult. Hell, writing competently is kicking my ass today.
6079: Agreed, to a certain extent. Far be it from me to underestimate the voluptuous narcisscism of the teenager, but at that point they were quite literally stepping over the bodies of their friends. Slowing down the quest so that the boy you like doesn’t run down a hallway with a girl he smooched once seems downright deranged.
it’s been drilled into their heads that appreciating the brilliance of anything that’s not Great Literature is stupid.
I don’t really get this. To clarify, I get what you are saying and agree that people often feel this way, what I don’t get is why people get so worked up and defensive about it. I mean, 99 out of 100 cultural cues say: Reading Is Stupid. Why Bother? Here, Have A Videogame. This is why most people don’t read, period, and why a great many people do in fact confuse “bestseller” with “Great Literature” and will say that since Stephen King thinks something is cool, therefore it is the best ever so there. As if he’s some Oxford don or something (or as if a real life Oxford don is in any way relevant to what I ought to be reading on my own time).
I know very few people who feel guilty for enjoying fluff or not reading Teh Classics. Most people I know either happily read fluff and don’t know anything else exists, or think there must be this indivisible wall between Entertaining and Serious and never the twain shall meet, Serious obviously not being worth the paper it’s printed on. F’rinstance someone’s comment above that clearly Dickens could never have written a bestselling serial that was widely popular all over the world. Girl, please. Dickens practicaly invented the concept. Or they just go along reading whatever catches their fancy, a little fluff here, a little from the canon there, and don’t worry too much about it one way or the other.
Which is why I don’t get why even though I’ve never met more than a handful of people who feel scolded by the fact that some books are better than others, the idea that this is so seems so persistent. I guess it’s just another aspect of the way we liberals get so caught up in doing exactly the most moral thing at all times. I bought a book at Borders, ohnoes! I didn’t recycle that can, clearly I am destined for liberal hell! It’s all part of the Politics Of Personal Purity, I guess…
To clarify, I get what you are saying and agree that people often feel this way, what I don’t get is why people get so worked up and defensive about it.
People generally want to be taken as interesting, intellectual, and sexy and therefore cultural messages that indicate that you aren’t these things if you do X (like read Harry Potter) cut deep. And there are plenty of people out there willing to say that you’re stupid if you like Harry Potter, generally as a way to puff themselves up. Your slam on video games, for instance, implies that the enjoyment of video games precludes reading great literature, which I know is not true, from days of being an English major/MarioKart champion.
Of course, some people overreact to this pressure by giving into cheap contrarian crap, like Matt Ygelsias saying he doesn’t get why people read literature anyway. As if the snobbery of some literature fans make the books any less good.
I wonder of James Potter’s asshattery versus goodness (based on who is remembering him) is a little bit of Rashomon effect thrown in. That truth itself has layers and that implications of that “truth” vary based on what is remembered by whom.
Rowling is a master of narrative?
Twenty years from now, DH will be considered one of the worst HP books, as will all of the more plot-centric books. Rowling relies very heavily on lazy devices like the Pensieve, deus ex machina and other crutches to move the exposition along.
What drew most people to the Harry Potter books was not the narrative but the imagination, that a world next to our own could exist that was similar in many ways but also wonderfully different.
Salon did a good review making this point. (Parts of the review were nonsense, but that part was spot on) As far as epic plot goes, HP is very ordinary. That’s not why HP became popular in the first place. Right now people are very jazzed to find out what happens next, who dies, etc, but as that wears off people are going to start realizing that the plot is swiss cheese, poorly laid and and lifted from a variety of other sources. The characters are simplistic from an adult perspective.
In the end people will remember HP for the imagination and the goings-on at Hogwarts, not the good vs. evil epic. The sense of place is the standout achievment of the HP series, the capturing of childlike imagination that enthralls both children and adults.
Stephen King is an interesting case. The guy is great at some things (capturing characters through dialog and characterization in general) and absolutely terrible at others (plotting and especially endings).
I’d love to have a discussion comparing say Stephen King to Clive Barker…any takers?
About James Potter’s asshattery: bad boys get the chicks. Rowling’s views of male-female relationships are pretty standard and traditional. Why did James Potter end up with Lily even though he was an ass?
Bad question. He ended up with Lily because he was an ass. She said basically as much in an interview, something to the effect of “well you know how women are [about bad boys]”.
Although Lily may have protested a bunch in the end she loved him and his asshole ways, cause women are crazy like that. I think any other interpretation is far too charitable.
Writes a fan fic too.
As for Ginny not naming a child Fred. I would assume that GEORGE would name his first son Fred and since we have to wait for the follow up book she’s working on for all 19 names of the clan of Weasley, we’ll have to put that one on the back burner.
As for the role of women, I think it fairly well reflected modern roles that children are exposed to. Honestly, Molly Weasley had 7 children, what else could she be BUT a stay at home mom? The cost of childcare would have been outrageous.
Minerva McGonagall was assistant head master at one of the most prestigious school in the wizarding world. Hermione (per JKR’s interview) became a lawyer, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Ginny became something other than a stay at home mother.
As for Molly Weasley’s turn of phrase - as a mother I know I hold my tongue in front of my children. HOWEVER I can easily see my self cursing like a sailor at ANYONE who dared harm my child. (after ward the police and ambulance would arrive and hopefully stop the flow of blood from the arse who tried to harm them). And given her character, I think JKR used that specific phrase to show exactly how upset and how determined Molly was to make sure that she never lost another child.
The phrase was better when Ripley said it in Aliens.
opoponax, i don’t know what you’re talking about with the politics of personal purity stuff, i think you’re really wrong about this idea that nobody feels “scolded” by the existence of great literature that they’re not reading. hell, probably most people in this thread have got one of those “lists” of books that they’re never going to get to — you know, “i haven’t, but it’s on my list…” — and maybe they DO feel guilty or silly when they pick up lighter reading that wasn’t even on the list. i think most of us have gone ahead and made an exception for harry potter, but do you really think that if i’m reading, say, the books that “sex and the city” was based on, or “t is for telephone stalking”, or whatever, that i’m not going to shrug and say “oh, just something i picked up..” when you ask me what it is? idunno, i kinda think that anybody who went through high school and cared about books has picked up on the idea that the books you ended up liking should be loftier than they are. does that make sense?
@BizarroSuperman 353: Yep. Pretty much. (I’m already cringing at how broadly it’s going to be played in the movie, too.)
arg, also, sorry to perpetuate the subthread, when i haven’t even contributed to the main thread, but i JUST got finished reading everyone’s comments (damn you, work!) and this was something near the bottom that i wanted to address and frankly between everyone’s awesome ideas for what should have happened in DH and having finished it a week ago i kinda forgot what i wanted to say about the book itself.
BUT. definitely, definitely, on the sexism and heterosexism going on. fine, i understand it’s supposed to sorta-match reality, but i think this is where the “children’s literature” category sort of fails the rest of us (as if children shouldn’t be exposed to the very idea of non-normative social existences, arg). wtf with the epilogue being all “and everyone married who you thought they would, had lots of kids all clearly named by their father, and all their kids will make out on the train for yet another heteronormative round of books!” maybe i’m exaggerating a little, but guh. also that damn episode where hermione says “you expect me to cook cause i’m the girl!” and ron says “no it’s because you’re better at magic!” and then they never address it again. wow, learned helplessness + patriarchy, anyone? i really don’t LIKE criticizing works of art on the basis that they don’t match my politics — even though that’s what we’re always doing with popular entertainment — but really, when i break out of the story because i’m pissed on behalf of a character whose presumable pissed-ness isn’t even mentioned, it’s also not an especially effective passage.
ok, i don’t know, i’ve just ranted myself into a corner here, and in the end i still liked the book.
Oh good, I’m glad I’m not the only English major/MarioKart champion here.
i think you’re really wrong about this idea that nobody feels “scolded” by the existence of great literature that they’re not reading.
Where did i say that “nobody” feels scolded by the existence of great lit they’re not reading?
I believe what I said was that I don’t know why this would be true, don’t know very many people it is actually true for, and am curious about what causes it in those who feel it.
The funny thing is that, honestly, I couldn’t care less about what people see me reading. And knowing there’s great literature out there waiting for me doesn’t really affect my enjoyment of fluff. My big summer reading project this year is to finally, really and truly, get a handle on Joyce (hence the 10 hour train ride with The Dubliners). Do I feel guilty that I dropped Portrait of the Artist in favor of Half Blood Prince? not really? I guess I’d regret it if I got hit by a bus tomorrow and thus wasted the last week of my literate life on Harry Potter rather than Stephen Dedalus, to be honest with you I feel no guilt whatsoever at tabling Teh Great Literature for a few more weeks.
What I do feel guilty about, generally, are things where quality is heavily marketed, where there really is a real divide between Quality and Fluff, and everyone really does know and care which way you go on that. I feel guilty when I inadvertantly waste an evening watching Dancing With The Stars, thus missing out on my legitimate favorite show, Simon Schama’s Power Of Art. I feel guilty that I really don’t know the first thing about Sonic Youth or Charlie Parker, but I can sing along with every Ani DiFranco lyric ever. I feel guilty when I’d rather order out chinese than learn to cook anything Alice Waters, Martha Stewart, or Julia Child ever talked about.
But books? Who cares? Everyone reads crap, and owns up to it, to the degree that we now have people who think Mark Twain must have been a pompous fool nobody ever bothered with.
Subtopic - does anyone else like Phillip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Material’s series? I am excited about the upcoming movie - but the I love the books. I believe Phillip Pullman deserves to be as popular as J K Rowling.
Oh..inappropriate apostrophe alert.
ank- yes, i loved “the golden compass” and the sequels, and was completely unprepared for that. “i’m not usually into fantasy,” i told my friend. but it was fucking amazing. i’m a little nervous about the movies — excited that they’re making one, and plus i think nicole kidman as mrs. coulter is a great choice, but really nervous because (a) at least 90% of the time the movies will fuck up the books and you’ll be really depressed afterward, and (b) although the first one is a great adventure novel in its own right, they’re probably going to have to drop the series’ themes on Dust/consciousness and i don’t see HOW they’re going to do justice to the 2nd and 3rd books that way, or to the idea that 13-year-olds can fall in love, serious major true world-ripping love, and have that be believable. arg.
but yeah, i thought the books were great. and also, i think you should pick up the comic book series “planetary”. i’m having a hard time explaining why but i felt a resonance between the two works. it’s kind of about the architecture of reality. haha. to be an ass about it.
about non-hetero characters
Did ANYONE think Gilderoy Lockhart was straight?
IIRC, in the CoS movie they had Crabbe!Harry and Goyle!Ron (…or whatever) all puffed up and CGIed so they didn’t look realistic at all, which I thought was kinda dumb but Chris Columbus was directing, so maybe whoever does book 7 will do something better (my money’s on a total revision of that plot).
I saw this objection a lot before the interview and I find it frankly bizarre. Do people also assume Harry & Ron are just dads?
…that’s what you quibble over? Really? Because that’s like the easiest thing to fanwank away (she has Special Evil Powers courtesy of being her master Voldemort’s Horcrux). How about the fact that Hermione told us about the memory charm she did on her parents, then claimed never to have done a memory charm? (my little brother managed to fanwank this one away too: she had done a memory MODIFICATION charm on her parents, with a great deal of preparation and slowness, but she had never done a memory OBLIVIATING charm on the spot, as she would have had to).
I want this on a t-shirt. Or else a lolcat.
Good to know the noble endeavor of seeing whether you can get all the gold cups before you get your BA is one steeped in tradition and history.
Don’t forget professor Sprout! And for that matter Charity Burbage whom we never heard about before but whatever (Charity is a girl’s name right?) And what about Mafalda Hopkirk? (I would like to add that after five books of Mafalda Hopkirk sending Harry automated owls threatening his expulsion, I was glad we finally saw her as more than a signature. Much better than making up yet another random character).
That’s what my mom said. She also says JKR’s experience as a mother seriously informs these books, which is one reason (she suspects) parents get hooked on them with their kids.
I believe Phillip Pullman deserves to be as popular as Jesus, personally, but I’m dreading the movie. Nicole Kidman? As Mrs. Coulter? REALLY? M And it just look way too CGIy and overfantasied and. and. IT DOESN’T LOOK EXACTLY LIKE IT LOOKS IN MY HEAD, HOW DARE THEY MESS IT UP. *cries*
[On the wizard sex thing, I can just imagine hoards of teenage boys sending off for mail order engorgio charms to use on their.. erm… muscles]
Actually, I would have thought they would have been more nervous about splinching themselves when first Apparating! Or as a practical joke, using the Reducto charm on each other.
And I figured George would name his son “Phreadde”.
What do we think the attack on Ariana Dumbledore was? Traumatic brain injury? The precise nature of the assault by the Muggle boys was minced around in an oddly delicate manner.
I think the attack was a physical beating which led her with a fear of ever performing magic again. (since that is was led to the three boys harming her).
I think it said she was 6 yo at the time so I’m going to rule out anything worse than a beating. Although considering their father thought it was bad enough to hunt these boys down and attack them in turn, it does leave me wondering.
I am going to delurk for the first time as the 4 billionth comment on this thread to express my dissapproval of Harry and Ginny’s romance. It’s just so heartbreakingly clear that Harry could never love Ginny, she’s merely the only safe outlet in the heteronorative wizarding world for Harry’s desire to be related to RON.
That being said I thinl Ginny is a great character and a fantastic girl as written. I just think she deserves better than to spend her entire life with her brother’ face juxtaposed over her own in her husband’s eyes.
@flame821: I agree with you, but it did seem half-dressed-up in the “woman in the attic,” ” . . . and she was never the same again” tropes, while never quite spitting out “they beat her up.” I don’t think she was raped or anything; I just found it odd that all of the language around it was so very vague.
I agree and I think it was left purposely vague, as so many of her ‘hints’ are.
From what I remember of Albeforthe’s conversation, the sister was normal and well until this specific incident. An incident that caused their father to hunt and hurt these boys, so it had to be worse than harsh words or a bit of shoving.
But I would think if there was something more, that St. Mungo’s would have been involved, thus giving the father something of along the lines of extenuating circumstances, which would have prevented him from being sent to Azkaban. (I think my geekiness is showing)
So I’m guessing that it was a typical bullyish smackdown that left her with emotional scars, the sort of thing that magic doesn’t seem to be able to heal. (Snape, DD, HP, Sirius, etc)
Hey, that’s quite nice. Thanks.
@opoponax
But this is exactly the way that people feel about HP and LITERATURE. It’s the same set of expectations, though I’m thinking you can’t see it in the books department because it’s your home turf.
imo, feeling guilty about anything you like is a waste of time and energy. It’s rare enough to actually like, prefer, or obsess about something than to passively consume what’s doled out to us that any liking (even for stuff I personally don’t like) should be cherished.
I also completely agree with the worthlessness of guilt. IMO, books in general should be enjoyed similar to wine- if you like it, it’s good; it’s you don’t, it’s garbage.
Admittedly a simplified and silly analogy, but some people tend to be snobs regarding both.
I totally agree that Harry and Ginny’s romance rings false. It might just be that it’s idealized to death, but every time she writes about his feelings for her it’s so stilted and forced. Plus they never seem to have a proper scene together.
I think it was pretty much implied that Ariana Dumbledore was raped by the boys. It was, like many other sex-related issues, implied for the adult audience but not spoken out loud for the child audience. I think it added an interesting layer of meaning to the Dumbledore story.
It’s worth noting that England apparently has a serious problem with gangs of young men raping girls and women they come across, and really low conviction rates. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rowling’s whole story about the gang rape that led to a murder where justice did not prevail was an oblique commentary on this issue.
Ariana’s rape certainly makes her dad’s going off on the Muggles make more sense.
All the romances and hookups in the book feel stilted. I don’t think that Rowling’s got a lot of skill with expressing some emotions. That said, what I like about Harry and Ginny’s relationship is that she’s the one with the experience (such as it is), not him.
I felt a little queasy initially when I realized that all the characters hook up very early in adulthood, but hey it’s a fantasy. If you can have Quidditch, you can have these stable, long-term relationships that start at age 16 - 17.
But this is exactly the way that people feel about HP and LITERATURE. It’s the same set of expectations, though I’m thinking you can’t see it in the books department because it’s your home turf.
The difference, to me is that the conventional wisdom these days is that “nobody reads” anymore, and when people do, the vast, vast, vast majority of them read fluff. Fluff is the vast majority of all publishing output, and pretty much the only book products which are advertised and marketed to the public in any real way. Most bookstores outside university towns and big east-coast cities don’t even carry contemporary literary fiction, and older “classic” fiction is often only available in connection with whatever is on high school and college syllabi in the area.
The fact that many people in this thread don’t know that “serious” literary authors like Dickens were once considered writers of very well crafted popular “fluff” is telling, as is the fact that people are all outraged and shit that I “dissed” video games because they are heavily marketed to the public while books are not, and as is the concept that I somehow must not believe that it’s possible to like both, or to play video games and be a college English major. The fact that even college English majors tend to associate “serious literature” with something one studies in school is telling, as well.
People are pressured to like serious literature to about the extent they are pressured to like opera, these days. Which is why it is weird to me that people in this thread feel so guilty about not devoting much time to the former, whereas I doubt many of us here would feel guilty about not being able to name all Verdi’s works. Again, I’m hardly suggesting that “nobody” feels this way. I’m just saying I don’t, and I don’t know many people who seem to, and I can think of lots of reasons why it would be unlikely for very many to feel this way.
opoponax
okay, and i was saying i DO feel that way, i DO know a fair number of people who feel similarly, and i can see ways in which it’s likely. people had a reaction to your statement, you basically said it was ludicrous to have that reaction and you can’t see why anyone would, and all i wanted to do was point out that it does happen and isn’t so hard to understand.
i think you’re really overselling the “we’re told that it’s uncool to read” thing. this isn’t DARE, this isn’t middle school, we’re probably not afraid to say we like reading. everybody on this thread is apparently down with reading, and i bet a lot of them did the i-like-books thing and later the go-to-college thing, and all of those are going to make your relationship to literature a little more complicated than “i always got teased for reading”, up to and including “i feel like i don’t read everything i should–but that doesn’t mean that what i read is crap–i like good books”, and then the defensiveness. and maybe it’s silly to react that way. but no point pretending it’s unimaginable.
for the record, i don’t really have that kind of reaction about reading harry potter. for me it’s the things i find on the table at the front of the chain bookstore that end up verging on “chick lit” (i hate that phrase), or verging on “westerner travels to exotic foreign land, is won over in the end”, or verging on steamy detective novel type stuff. it’s always “verging” because usually if it’s firmly ensconced in the genre i can tell before picking it up. but anyway, there’s stuff like that which i do totally get embarrassed about even to myself, and then there’s stuff which i know is “fluff” but i’m still totally into like say christopher s. buckley or harry potter. i wouldn’t say i get defensive usually, because i tend to stay away from discussions of “what literature is great literature”. i’d probably get like that if someone dissed, say, barbara kingsolver or toni morrison, but then again depending on whom you ask that’s not defensive but rather correctly indignant. but like i said, i don’t get into those discussions in general.
[Most bookstores outside university towns and big east-coast cities don’t even carry contemporary literary fiction, and older “classic” fiction is often only available in connection with whatever is on high school and college syllabi in the area.]
There’s also public libraries, second-hand stores, Amazon, Ebay, antique book dealers, etc… I decided while in high school never to limit my knowledge to a teacher or professor’s experiences or curriculum. And of course Dickens was “fluff”; it still is- but that makes it no less enjoyable.
To paraphrase Stephen King: sometimes a story is JUST a story. Not every book has great depth or layers of meaning. And I am 100% okay with that.
opo: Actually, Dickens’ selling point within academia these days is that he was absolutely popular, popularizing, serialized fiction. That is part of his current glamor.
Amanda: Huh. All of the mincing language about Ariana Dumbledore’s attack was certainly heavily “marked” (as was the response to her attack by her relatives). I guess I was unwilling to run all the way with it — and I didn’t know that about the gangs of British boys.
I don’t have access to the books at the moment (any of them) but I there was something I realized while reading this thread that seems strange. Every time we hear of a mixed magical/human relationship, it always involved a muggle man and a witch (or a veela, in the case of Fleur’s grandmother). Riddle’s mother, Dean’s?/Sean’s? (the Gyffindor boy in book one- mother was a witch, didn’t tell the father ’til after marriage) even Tonk’s mother fits the pattern. It seems to be part of a larger trend in the series that women either marry ‘at their own level’ or ‘beneath themselves’ if one goes by societal (or personal) standards.
We have the magical/human relationships described above, which are generally frowned upon (esp. by those who put stock in Pure BloodTM). Then we have the ‘equal’ relationships like Narcissa Malfoy and Molly Weasley-same class, compatible personalities. Then we have the women who marry beneath themselves on a personal level- Lily and James (asshole), Hermione and Ron (O_o).
This isn’t to say that these relationships are necessarily wrong or unfeasible, but where are the wizards marrying muggle women? Where are the wizards marrying witches less talented/intelligent/whatever than themselves, but still loving their wives with all their beings regardless? Why is it that if someone seems to get the short end of the stick in a pairing, it’s always the woman?
I don’t have access to the books at the moment (any of them) but I there was something I realized while reading this thread that seems strange. Every time we hear of a mixed magical/human relationship, it always involved a muggle man and a witch (or a veela, in the case of Fleur’s grandmother). Riddle’s mother, Dean’s?/Sean’s? (the Gyffindor boy in book one- mother was a witch, didn’t tell the father ’til after marriage) even Tonk’s mother fits the pattern. It seems to be part of a larger trend in the series that women either marry ‘at their own level’ or ‘beneath themselves’ if one goes by societal (or personal) standards.
We have the magical/human relationships described above, which are generally frowned upon (esp. by those who put stock in Pure BloodTM). Then we have the ‘equal’ relationships like Narcissa Malfoy and Molly Weasley-same class, compatible personalities. Then we have the women who marry beneath themselves on a personal level- Lily and James (asshole), Hermione and Ron (O_o).
This isn’t to say that these relationships are necessarily wrong or unfeasible, but where are the wizards marrying muggle women? Where are the wizards marrying witches less talented/intelligent/whatever than themselves, but still loving their wives with all their beings regardless? Why is it that if someone seems to get the short end of the stick in a pairing, it’s always the woman?
you have to stop putting words in my mouth RIGHT NOW.
I did not say it was “ludicrous to have that reaction.”
I said, to repeat myself for a third time, that I don’t feel that way about books, in particular, don’t know many people who do, and it doesn’t seem very obvious to me why people would since it’s a commonly accepted cultural view that the reading of anything heavier than Helen Fielding is the purview of academia.
It’s the same way I’d be really surprised if a lot of people confessed to me that they felt really guilty for not being able to hum along with the woodwind section in Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, or not being able to tell on sight whether a building was designed by Le Corbusier or Mies Van Der Rohe. I don’t think such a thing is “ludicrous”. I just haven’t met many people who feel guilty for not having that kind of understanding of artistic areas which are considered mainly academic or specialist at this point.
Also, I think you’re missing my point about the role of reading in most people’s lives. It’s not a matter of it being “uncool” to read, or whatnot. Just that it’s commonly accepted at this point that most people don’t read at all, and a few people enjoy light reading in their spare time, and then you have the serious pointy-headed folk who pretend enjoy William Faulkner or Gunter Grass (but we all know those people are boring, which is why Stephen King and J.K. Rowling are obviously much better). This is an attitude that’s actually been expressed by multiple people in this very thread! This is why it just doesn’t jibe with me that much in my own experience that people are very worried about what others think of their reading material.
I want to go back for a minute to the politics of personal purity, because I actually think that has a lot to do with it. And I think so more and more every time someone puts words in my mouth about how clearly I am anti-video game or whatever. People feel guilty for not pursuing morally useful activities at all times. I’ve thought for a long time that the obsession with things like individual choice to recycle, be a vegetarian, shop independent, buy a hybrid, etc. stems from more than just politics, and now I’m double sure that guilt over one’s media choices is just yet another side of that coin. Someone reminding you that the book you’re reading is not the most edifying book in the whole world is the same kind of blow that is dealt when someone mentions that recycling isn’t enough, you should also be composting. And refusing grocery bags. And keeping empty yogurt containers rather than buy those disposable gladware thingies. And shouldn’t you install a greywater toilet system? What about the fact that restaurants use such wasteful packaging for takeout items?
Another matter: I acknowledge that I am a big crybaby and cry very easily. But Minerva MacGonagall leading a charge of charmed Hogwarts desks had me wailing.
It was all very Battle for Helmsdeep, which also gets me sobbing.
Cripes. Go away for a day and the thread size doubles (okay, more than doubles). Apologies in advance for the length of this, and for the fact I might repeat things that have already been said. I’m just commenting on things as I hit them.
On first glance - and admittedly, my expertise in this area is extremely limited, having only worked in a print shop for a year, it doesn’t look like they were doing any purposeful padding. The books (the U.S. hardcover versions anyway) are in 12-point Adobe Garamond, which isn’t an unusually large typeface. It takes up more horizontal space per word than Times New Roman but substantially less horizontal space per word than do the various versions of Courier. (Garamond is really easy on the eyes, which is why - I would imagine - that it was chosen.) The margins the same as the margins in my copy of Ulysses (a mid-1940s era printing), and there’s nothing in the layout that I would consider particularly unusual. The stock doesn’t feel unusually heavy either. It’s sturdy paper, but not abnormally so. Of course, these are just my observations, and I’m not a professional, so I imagine someone with professional layout experience could give a substantially more useful opinion on the issue.
Ever listen to an upper class Brit talk? Rowling’s dialogue is a smidge archaic, which fits when you consider that the wizarding world is supposed to be rather traditionalist, but it really isn’t far off the mark when compared to contemporary modern day Brits. In fact, I would be interested in speaking to a British fan at some point, just to see how adeptly throughout the series she handles the manner in which class distinctions are reflected in the characters’ dialects.
As far as how the kids talk . . . well, they talk like kids.
When you get right down to it, the core measure of good dialogue is whether each character has his or her own distinct voice. Rowling’s dialogue isn’t as good as I might like, but it’s not bad. Different characters do have different voices, though they aren’t quite as distinct as I might like.
Yeah, because the fact that a children’s book can be read far more rapidly than something by Joyce means they must have massaged layouts to get a longer book and make the kiddies feel better about themselves. :::eyeroll:::
I’m not a quick reader, but I sped through the HP books pretty quickly. Then again, I also speed through the Little House books. Seriously, if you’re going to make a comparison, compare apples and apples, not apples and oranges.
Precisely. That’s why I think that the person who said that the better comparison would be with Frances Hodgson Burnett than with Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Frankly, I’ve always been more than a little suspicious of claims that particular works can accurately be classified as Objectively Universally Great, principally because my reading extends across a wide array of genres, and it has been my experience that what makes a book great or an author brilliant varies with genre and audience. The rules for writing a children’s book are considerably different from those one ought to follow when writing a murder mystery for adults. Similarly, the standards applied when producing an academic text for your peers within your specialty are substantially removed from those applied when writing something for an audience of laymen. Whether writing is good or bad is a product of how effectively it fulfills its function.
No, Rowling is not Steinbeck or Camus or Morrison or Chaucer, but she doesn’t have to be in order to be brilliant. What makes Rowling a brilliant writer is the manner in which she is able to convey complex themes to children while avoiding the pitfalls mentioned in the quoted passage.
People are pressured to like serious literature to about the extent they are pressured to like opera …
Please don’t slag opera. Opera houses serve a very useful purpose: they provide a central, easily identified-locale where we can find hundreds of rich people at any given time. It makes knowing where to take the tumbrils so much easier to plan.
Ever listen to an upper class Brit talk?
Have you? Cause they sure as hell don’t sound anything like anyone in these books. This is part of why I think Rowling is such a poor master of dialogue — if she’s trying to play with the stilted speech of upper class Brits, she’s not doing a very good job of it. Instead, she has them speak like a caricature of a villain in a melodrama talkie from the 30’s.
For a great example of uppercrust English speech, check out the “Up” series of documentaries — Michael Apted followed a group of English children from age 7 till now (they issued the latest film, 49 Up last year, I think). There are 4 or 5 very, very upper class people in the group (think actual landed nobility, ‘public’ schools, know their specific Oxbridge college from the age of 7, etc), and omg they do NOT talk like Draco Malfoy as children, and they sure as everliving fuck don’t talk like Lucius, Narcissa, Bellatrix, etc. as adults.
Ok, I see what you’re saying, but by your own example the conventional wisdom is that no one cooks anymore and that everyone eats preprocessed, inferior fodder. There’s some truth to both allegations. You feel guilty for not cooking; others feel guilty for not reading “good” books. My point is that the pressure for both the guilt and the distinctions between worthwhile and worthless are much the same.
I’m going to invoke Sturgeon’s Rule here as applying to any and everything. But that being said, there’s always this tension between high and low art, between valuable and worthless uses of time, the between good and evil (oops, I mean bad) art.
I’m not going to try to make it as though there are no differences between Picasso* and dogs playing cards painted on velvet. And I don’t think that anyone on this thread has (honestly) tried to make an equivalence between Rowling and Joyce. But they have been defending their pleasures in the books as something worthwhile, not less than pleasures taken (if you can) in Ulysses.
I think there are different pleasures in this world. I don’t think that the less complex pleasures of reality shows or fluff of any category need to be denied or frowned on because there are more complex pleasures in opera** or Gravity’s Rainbow. I don’t think the excellent is threatened by the good, the ok, the shoddy, or the rotten.
* plug in your own favorite visual artist here. I’m partial to PP because he was an amazing draftman, even if he didn’t bother much with it as he got older.
**Pah on Joe Green, give me Mozart!
Oh good, I’m glad I’m not the only English major/MarioKart champion here.
How can there be more than one MarioKart champion? ;-P
6079: Back off!!! Unabashed opera fan here — who is herself and is neither related to any of these rich folk, whom you want to behead. My parents were introduced by the head of their local (that would be union, not pub). And, having just seen a full Ring Cycle a week or so ago, we myth and quest students on this Potter thread should keep sweet.
Also, opera is another genre that was sneered at for being pitched toward the masses. The notion of opera being for the rich is not only strictly 20th century, it’s also strictly American (well, for all I know, British too — but it ain’t Italian).
Whoops — should read “is not herself.” Obvs.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Clemens, I missed what you just said.”
“I said that `Wagner’s music isn’t as bad as it sounds’.”
“Good one. I agree. Can you tell the lady at Post 387? Ta.”
oudemia, since you feel so strongly about it, I will admit to one fantastic thing about opera houses: their superb engineering. The fact that those large buildings don’t rip themselves from their foundations and float away due to the excess of Wagnerian hot air is a tribute to their splendid structural design.
Unabashed opera fan here
We tend to congregate.
Har dee har.
Plus “feh” for good measure. Wagner is considered, by upmarket musical snobs, to be a terrible panderer, what with his willingness to rely on cheap music hall tricks like cranking it up a half step.
Also, the opera house he designed at Bayreuth is famous for eschewing all of those social upper-class trappings like parterre boxes. An even, democratic flow of seats (he of course was a terrible asshole, but still).
I’m more a Verdi or Rossini gal, myself.
**Pah on Joe Grehen, give me Mozart!
Getting my Salieri on:
I will speak for you, Father. I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint!
And let us adjourn to the courtyard,
opoponax: “The fact that many people in this thread don’t know that “serious” literary authors like Dickens were once considered writers of very well crafted popular “fluff” is telling…”
From what I can see by scanning the entirety of the 891 comments so far, only one person stated they weren’t aware of that. That’s not “many.” This is a pretty good example of why people are reacting badly to your comments, opoponax. You’ve made a few assumptions about others in the thread, and some of pronouncements about what constitutes quality that seem to be based more on your personal opinions than on ideas that are universally accepted as true.
I’m 39, and in that time I’ve read every single author that you have mentioned in this thread so far, plus a lot of others that are considered “classic” or “canon” by various teachers and professors over the years. Like many people here, I do differ with you on many points about what constitutes great literature. There are quite a few authors (some of whom you mentioned) who are extraordinary examples of literary craft, that I’d say should be considered “canon” but frankly, only for people who are English majors interested in achieving a complete understanding of fine literature.
For others, there’s not really a point in reading them other than as a cure for insomnia, just as I’d recommend reading the Chilton, Haynes or Bentley manuals for your vehicle only if you’re interested in actually taking your car apart - otherwise the driver’s manual from your glovebox is probably all you need to really have a rewarding driving experience.
Of these, I’d say expecially Joyce, Proust and Thomas Mann are good examples, and for most people, Faulkner, although I like him a lot. On the other hand, no one can go wrong with Austen, Shakespeare (performed in addition to being read) and Fitzgerald, to name a few worthies that everyone should enjoy.
Hemingway… After reading The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, Death in the Afternoon, The Old Man and the Sea and A Moveable Feast (all against my will) #8 on my list of “Things To Do When I Finally Invent That Time Machine” is “find Ernest Hemingway in his crib as a child and strangle him before he discovers pen and paper.”
I think it’s interesting that Dickens and his serialization came up, for a couple of reasons. One of them is that he was serialized in chapter form, which is quite noticable when you read some of his novels, because they… lurch forward in places, and sometimes meander strangely, probably because of the format for which they were written. Also, a couple of Dicken’s books are really not that great, frankly, but he’s fun, so people are inclined to be forgiving.
Dickens is probably the closest author I’d compare Rowling to, actually, both because of the serialization, the mass popularity, and the rich and imaginative characters. He may have been “fluff”in his day, but many of his novels have stood the test of time, and I think Rowling will also, and not just because of the wild popularity, which is a factor that you’re discounting too heavily, I think, but because of the other reasons I mentioned.
You compared Rowling to some children’s authors - Lewis is charming for children but doesn’t stand up for adults the way Rowling has, and other people’s criticism of the crappier books in the series is dead on, I think. Tolkien was meant to be a movie all along. Like C.S. Lewis for Madeleine L’Engle, Judy Blume, Beverly Clearly, or Roald Dahl - any appeal they have to adults is nostalgia-fest for adults who read them as children. Hand them to any adult who didn’t read them as kids and they’d look at you strangely when finished.
Of course, all of my statements are subjective opinions, not pronouncements from On High, based on my beliefs about what I’ve read, and what I have gleaned about the reading habits of others, be they English majors or “unwashed masses.”
I’m rather partial to Puccini. I have a good recording of Callas singing Un bel di vedremo that I never tire of.
Okay, I can’t go back through all the comments to quote the relelvant ones so…
Regarding Harry’s and Ginny’s kids all being named for people important to Harry, I just figured that since Ginny was the youngest Weasley, her older brothers probably named kids after people important to the Weasleys– I imagine that George would have named his first son Fred, for instance. Having said that, however, I agree with whoever it was that commented that Ginny was way too sidelined in this book, reducing her role to simply that of “Harry’s Love Interest”– true, she wasn’t one of The Trio, but surely she could have destroyed a horcrux? After everything she went through in Book 2, surely she of all people deserved to stick it to a piece of Voldy’s soul. It also annoys me that only one female (Hermione) got to destroy a horcrux, and that happened off-stage. I did love Neville killing Nagini though– possibly my favourite moment in the book.
Overall though, I loved the book– it delivered exactly what I hoped for from a JK Rowling novel, and I love the way that she constructs the sense of Harry being hunted right from the beginning– he really doesn’t have anyone to protect him anymore (aside from his peers), and that really comes through. Unlike many people, I also liked the camping-in-the-woods bit, because it really gave you the sense that Harry was, to begin with, completely lost– he wasn’t some great hero who knew exactly what to do. A lot of people complain that it was too slow, but I think that we needed that section to feel slow. If you look at the timing of the book, the first 1/3 of it covers about one week, as does that last 1/3. If the middle part of the book hadn’t been slow, it would have felt too rushed.
Dobby definitely gets best, most poignant, death. The whole burial scene, with Harry digging the grave, was really moving, as was Harry’s sense that Dobby deserved accolades as much as Dumbledore did, but he would never get them.
Unlike most, I’m not upset at the way that Lupin and Tonks died– it was a war, and in war people do die suddenly, unexpectedly, without grand death scenes. I do agree with those who think Tonks was handled poorly overall though. I like the reading of Tonks and Lupin as a wartime couple who wouldn’t have worked out. I actually thought the whole Lupin-leaving-Tonks thing was really interesting in light of the whole lycanthropy-as-metaphor-for-homosexuality thing. Lupin cannot repress his lycanthropy (homosexuality), and he is frightened by the outcome of his attempts at heterosexuality (a potential child). Harry’s role in telling Lupin off was almost like pushing him back into the closet. Not that I’m down with men just leaving their pregnant wives/girlfriends either. If we want a more heteronormative reading of the scene, yes, we’d say it’s a good thing that Harry tells Lupin not to abandon Tonks– EXCEPT that Harry seems more concerned about the fetus than Tonks. Most of Harry’s rant is dedicated to telling Lupin off for leaving the fetus, rather than for leaving Tonks herself. Bleh.
I just want it to be known that the Patronuses (or is it Patroni?) of Harry’s son and godson will be chipmunks. How do I know this? Sing along with me:
“We’re the chipmunks
coming on stronger than ever before
We’re the Chipmunks
Albus Severus, Theodore!
Do! Do! Do do do do!
Do! Do! Do do do do!”
I’ve been known to love Wagner operas, I just have to forget the man who wrote them, I love Mozart, though.
I agree with whoever it was that commented that Ginny was way too sidelined in this book, reducing her role to simply that of “Harry’s Love Interest”– true, she wasn’t one of The Trio, but surely she could have destroyed a horcrux?
Excellent point. Why do we not get to see any characterization of Ginny? If you want to slip in a love interest, you need to build it up. Harry and Ginny come out of nowhere. I stilll can’t get my head around it.
And I couldn’t make heads nor tails of Lupin’s relationship with Tonks. I could understand her love of him, her desire for a child, and even her hiding herself away (it was damned dangerous out there, and when you’re pregnant, you take care of yourself). But his feelings for her seemed to change like the wind, and it was baffling. I’ll read the book another six or seven times to see if I can pick up anything else.
Lupin’s doubts about the relationship with Tonks, which all centre upon his feelings of self-loathing and thus being loathsome means he feels both unworthy of her and dangerous for her, make perfect sense to me coming from a family prone to episodes of clinical depression. This is the internal script that depressives live with in terms of their relationships - that they are bad, mad and dangerous to know and that others shouldn’t waste their time on them and would be better off without them.
I also agree with the various points about the war-marriage haste as an attempt at life-affirmation, and that as a couple they may well have not worked out if they had survived. Depression breaks up a lot of relationships.
Wagner was good enough for Chuck Jones, however.
“Kill Da Wabbit ?!?”
I don’t have access to the books at the moment (any of them) but I there was something I realized while reading this thread that seems strange. Every time we hear of a mixed magical/human relationship, it always involved a muggle man and a witch (or a veela, in the case of Fleur’s grandmother). Riddle’s mother, Dean’s?/Sean’s? (the Gyffindor boy in book one- mother was a witch, didn’t tell the father ’til after marriage) even Tonk’s mother fits the pattern. It seems to be part of a larger trend in the series that women either marry ‘at their own level’ or ‘beneath themselves’ if one goes by societal (or personal) standards.
We have the magical/human relationships described above, which are generally frowned upon (esp. by those who put stock in Pure BloodTM). Then we have the ‘equal’ relationships like Narcissa Malfoy and Molly Weasley-same class, compatible personalities. Then we have the women who marry beneath themselves on a personal level- Lily and James (asshole), Hermione and Ron (O_o).
This isn’t to say that these relationships are necessarily wrong or unfeasible, but where are the wizards marrying muggle women? Where are the wizards marrying witches less talented/intelligent/whatever than themselves, but still loving their wives with all their beings regardless? Why is it that if someone seems to get the short end of the stick in a pairing, it’s always the woman?
I don’t have access to the books at the moment (any of them) but I there was something I realized while reading this thread that seems strange. Every time we hear of a mixed magical/human relationship, it always involved a muggle man and a witch (or a veela, in the case of Fleur’s grandmother). Riddle’s mother, Dean’s?/Sean’s? (the Gyffindor boy in book one- mother was a witch, didn’t tell the father ’til after marriage) even Tonk’s mother fits the pattern. It seems to be part of a larger trend in the series that women either marry ‘at their own level’ or ‘beneath themselves’ if one goes by societal (or personal) standards.
We have the magical/human relationships described above, which are generally frowned upon (esp. by those who put stock in Pure BloodTM). Then we have the ‘equal’ relationships like Narcissa Malfoy and Molly Weasley-same class, compatible personalities. Then we have the women who marry beneath themselves on a personal level- Lily and James (asshole), Hermione and Ron (O_o).
This isn’t to say that these relationships are necessarily wrong or unfeasible, but where are the wizards marrying muggle women? Where are the wizards marrying witches less talented/intelligent/whatever than themselves, but still loving their wives with all their beings regardless? Why is it that if someone seems to get the short end of the stick in a pairing, it’s always the woman?
One of the big issues with HP that many critics have is that people say they read other books, yet HP sells at a hundred times the rate of other books and takes up all of the mindshare.
If you look at threads about books on this site, in the last 3 months 90% of them have been about HP, probably 8 separate threads.
I would love to be part of a real book club where everyone agrees to read a certain book and then discuss it, but I don’t see why it has to be either a progressive/liberal/feminist book or Harry Potter. It really does give the impression that HP is all people are reading and interested in.
I would love to be part of a real book club where everyone agrees to read a certain book and then discuss it, but I don’t see why it has to be either a progressive/liberal/feminist book or Harry Potter. It really does give the impression that HP is all people are reading and interested in.
You don’t see why the books discussed by the book club on the progressive/liberal/feminist blog Pandagon are progressive/liberal/feminist books?
HP7 is the first fiction book that’s been discussed, seeing as the Pandagon book club hasn’t been going for all that long, and that may just well be because the finale of this series is a major pop culture phenomenon. What a very strange book choice on a blog which regularly discusses pop culture phenomeons.
HP7 is very much what people are interested in discussing right now. Doesn’t mean that HP7 is the only fiction that the readers on Pandagon are ever going to be interested in discussing ever.
Harry and Ginny come out of nowhere. I stilll can’t get my head around it.
Well, they don’t come out of nowhere in the previous books (I actually like Harry and Ginny as a couple in the grand scheme of things)– I liked the way that Ginny needed to find herself as a person a bit before she and Harry got together (for instance, she becomes a skilled Quidditch player, she plays an important role in the DA as someone who has actually been possessed by Voldemort, she develops some cool defensive magic)– but all of that seems to disappear in Deathly Hallows. You have this sense that Harry admires her because she’s a really strong woman (rarely succumbing to tears, etc), but we don’t get to see any of that strength. There was also so much potential for Rowling to use the fact that both Harry and Ginny have a connection in that they both have had a strangely intimate relationship with pieces of Voldemort’s soul– it provides a really strong connection between them, but Rowling doesn’t play on it at all in terms of their relationship. Ginny totally deserved to destroy a horcrux.
Yeah, but remember Harry’s an orphan and identifying with the abandoned child. Also face it, Harry’s a 17 yo, without much in the way of introspection and hardly a feminist.
HP7 is the first fiction book that’s been discussed,
actually, even that isn’t true — there was a graphic novel series discussed two books ago, wasn’t there? about alice in wonderland and red riding hood and such? i didn’t get to do that one, i haven’t had money for new books in a long time, but i know it happened.
If I recall correctly, two different editions (one for children; one for adults) were released in the UK. I don’t know for a fact as I haven’t checked, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the adult editions are of the “sleek smaller” type that you would prefer. Granted, buying one would mean you would have to deal with less than desirable exchange rates.
Consider this statement for a moment in light of the fact that there are literary prizes specifically awarded for children’s literature. What ought that imply to any logical, rational person? It seems to imply to me that different sorts of writing are to be judged on the basis of different criteria.
While I understood why Rowling had to take the action out of Hogwarts, I have to admit that the absence of the rhythms of the school year was the biggest difficulty that I had with the work. It didn’t seem to bother my daughter in the slightest though, so my attachment to Hogwarts may just be a product of my adulthood.
And given the way that girls are so often punished in school for being bright, I can think of a far worse role model for my daughter to have than Hermione Granger.
The problem with that notion is that there are people, like myself, who do believe that she is brilliant . . . specifically, a brilliant author of children’s literature. Frankly, the complaint that we’re somehow denigrating Tolstoy, Steinbeck, and all of the rest by recognizing that leaves me more than a little baffled.
Yes, and I tend to think Pullman is a brilliant children’s author as well, though I have to confess that my daughter does not like them nearly as well, having never finished the first book, which is downright bizarre given her rampant bibliophilia. She’s giving them another try now, and it will be interesting to see if she enjoys them more now that she’s a bit older. Of course, I’m going to have to re-read them now so we can discuss them productively. (My daughter always wants to discuss; I’ve spent the last week being regaled with information about gemstones thanks to the fact that she’s been reading a non-fiction book on them.
I definitely think that’s part of it. As a parent, the Molly Weasley moment resonated with me extremely strongly. And that’s just one incident out of many. I don’t think, however, that this is the only reason that so many parents enjoy the books. One of the most pleasurable things about the books for me is the way that my daughter and I have been able to share the experience of them . . . it reminds me strongly of the way my Mom and I shared the original Star Wars movies and read Watership Down together.
As it happens, yes, I have. Back when I was still a Theatre brat I spent quite a bit of time trying to master a variety of British dialects (that and country Irish are the two I’ve actively tried to pick up that I was never really successful at pulling off), and while I never mastered the speech patterns of the upper reaches of society, I listened to enough to be able to recognize the speech patterns Rowling used as not all that far off. A bit archaic - as I noted before - but not completely outside of the realm of reason, especially if you account for the hidebound nature of Wizarding society.
Thank you for the suggestion on the documentaries. I will have to keep my eye out for them.
I don’t have access to the books at the moment (any of them) but I there was something I realized while reading this thread that seems strange. Every time we hear of a mixed magical/human relationship, it always involved a muggle man and a witch (or a veela, in the case of Fleur’s grandmother). Riddle’s mother, Dean’s?/Sean’s? (the Gyffindor boy in book one- mother was a witch, didn’t tell the father ’til after marriage) even Tonk’s mother fits the pattern. It seems to be part of a larger trend in the series that women either marry ‘at their own level’ or ‘beneath themselves’ if one goes by societal (or personal) standards.
We have the magical/human relationships described above, which are generally frowned upon (esp. by those who put stock in Pure BloodTM). Then we have the ‘equal’ relationships like Narcissa Malfoy and Molly Weasley-same class, compatible personalities. Then we have the women who marry beneath themselves on a personal level- Lily and James (asshole), Hermione and Ron (O_o).
This isn’t to say that these relationships are necessarily wrong or unfeasible, but where are the wizards marrying muggle women? Where are the wizards marrying witches less talented/intelligent/whatever than themselves, but still loving their wives with all their beings regardless? Why is it that if someone seems to get the short end of the stick in a pairing, it’s always the woman?
One of the book club selections was Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, which was not a political book but a memoir in comic form. So it’s not really the fairest portrayal of the book club.
I’m wary of picking fiction for the book club, because it’s so hard to really find something that will have the broad appeal necessary. That said, I picked up Mr. Norrell and Jonathan Strange or whatever it’s called, on pablo’s suggestion, and it looks like it’s got just such an appeal. It’s 800 pages but the reviewers all swear up and down it goes by really fast. Maybe that?
As for a portrait of Snape’s not appearing in the Headmaster’s study, possibly Snape would not put up a portrait of himself due to
(a) self-hatred (not wishing to confront his speaking image daily)
(b) self-mistrust; desire to not blow his cover (since the portraits act independently).
As for Voldemort’s declining intelligence, perhaps his mentality declines as the Horcruxes are destroyed one after another.
Thoughts on the relationship of C. S. Lewis and Ursula K. LeGuin to Rowling:
Has LeGuin responded to Rowling in Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind? LeGuin rejected Lewis / Tolkien in the Shire whimsy for Earthsea very early after her short story “The Rule of Names.” The original Earthsea trilogy is too mythic, all in the register of High Fantasy, and the particularities and pettinesses of ordinary people who just happen to be able to work magic are suppressed. But in LeGuin’s “Dragonfly” and The Other Wind, the Masters of Roke bicker like university professors. (LeGuin dropped a Ph.D. dissertation on Francois Villon to marry a history professor; she is highly familiar with academic personality types). The sorcerers and students are also particularized.
Furthermore, in Rowling, shouldn’t there be a magical university or universities, an Oxbridge or Heidelberg, for the smarter students? What’s the purpose of O.W.L.s otherwise? Rowling perhaps curtailed this to avoid having to write a second series about grown-ups. . . .but it makes the transition of wizards to grown-up status oddly abrupt, unless we assume learning on the job or lifelong learning. And what do they, including the teachers, do in their spare time? Of course, a kids’ series needn’t answer these questions, but the adult fandom is asking.
I’m not British, so I have no idea how Brits are receiving the Potter Phenomenon. For Americans, real-world England is almost a fantastic kingdom in itself, including English candy (the HP marketers in the USA quickly devised non-magical versions of the Hogwarts candy that Borders persists in selling).
However, LeGuin in some ways sets the bar too high for Rowling’s Hallows: it is very hard to top Ged’s and Arren’s journeys into the Dry Land, their confrontations with the Shadow and with Cob, in A Wizard of Earthsea and The Farthest Shore, and the freeing of the dead in The Other Wind. I was expecting something like this (having been set up by the archway with the veil at the end of Phoenix) in Hallows and was disappointed. Rowling avoids plagiarism but sheds emotional force.
On the other hand the name Voldemort recalls Le Guin’s “The Word of Unbinding,” in which an Earthsea wizard is trapped by the evil and somehow undead Voll the Fell. Dumbledore’s conflict over the Hallows and Harry’s infatuation with them also may reflect LeGuin’s The Farthest Shore, where the search for immortality is a world-destroying delusion.
There is a bit of C. S. Lewis’s cheering of Good Guy violence in Hallows; to be fair, less Prince Caspian (Narnians vs. Telmarines) and more Ransom’s battle with the Un-man, in which Ransom learns what rage is meant for. Harry, inflicting an Unforgivable Curse first on Bellatrix Lestrange and later on Amycus Carrow, one of the Death Eaters, learns that “you have to mean it” when you torture someone.
I thought that the real-world events of the last few years would have made a liberal author more cautious about the justice of torturing “bad guys,” even really bad guys. Hence Rowling is more like C. S. Lewis than the superficial politics of the novels indicate.
I believe that Le Guin has said that she gets annoyed at people talking about how original Rowling is, when Le Guin herself was exploring similar themes a whole generation ago. However, I don’t think Le Guin has anything against Rowling personally. It’s clear that both Rowling and Le Guin play on some similar archetypes, such as the “dark double”, though they resolve them in different ways– Harry must destroy his double, while Ged accepts his as part of himself.
I remember being totally blown away the first time I read A Wizard of Earthsea at the age of 13; that may have been the first book that I read that really affected the way that I saw the world. Then, when I read through the series and got up to Tehanu a few weeks later I was blown away again, in that Le Guin re-revolutionised the world that to me, was already revolutionary. (And indeed, Le Guin’s work continued to have so much sway over me that I’m now doing a PhD in YA fantasy literature).
I can’t know for certain how I would have felt about Harry Potter if I’d read it at the same age. I don’t think it would have had the “whoa, new way of seeing the world” effect, but I think I’d probably have felt more included in Rowling’s world– after all, while Rowling may not be Feminist of the Year, her world is certainly a lot more friendly to women that Earthsea– even in Tehanu, women still have shit-status, it’s just that Le Guin acknowledges that that’s a crappy way to be. Furthermore, while Ged’s quest is predicated by Great Philosophical Themes, Harry tends to stumble onto his during the course of his everyday school life– Rowling’s use of philosophical themes is much more secondary to begin with, she eases them in more gently (but also more conservatively– no revolution here).
I’m pretty sure too, that if I’d read these books at 13, I would have been one of those fangirls who was totally in love with Harry– I kid you not, but when I was 13, years before Harry Potter was ever published, my “ideal” fantasy guy (the one I always dreamed would turn up at my school as a new kid) was a boy with dark hair, green eyes and glasses. Given that Harry not only matches that description, but tends to make friends with the geeks and nerds of his school, rather than the popular kids… well, that would have just melted my lonely geeky nerdy heart (actually, that still does melt my heart, but not in the way it would have done when I was 13). Meanwhile, with Le Guin, I loved Ged as a character, but I never felt a really strong personal connection with him. Maybe the key difference here is that Le Guin approaches her quest-narrative from a cerebral perspective, while Rowling does so from a more social perspective.
As for connections with C. S. Lewis– I’m sure we can all see the similarities between Harry’s sacrifice and the crucifiction/ressurection. The key difference here seems to be this: with Aslan, Lewis uses the traditional Christian line that the sacrifice is significant because it’s an innocent person taking the punishment due to a guilty person– but Rowling suggests that a flawed individual can play the role of saviour. Harry’s not taking someone else’s punishment onto his own shoulders, he’s simply prepared to give up his life to protect others. I’m sure that many Christians would probably say that this lessens the significance of the sacrifice, but I think the inverse could also be true– that the sacrifice is MORE significant because the person undertaking it is a regular person who has been manipulated (by forces of both good and evil) into a pretty crap situation.
I’d like to second Jonathan Strange for a future bookclub selection. I’m really not into fantasy at all, but it’s been highly recommended to me by people who’s opinion I think pretty highly of (and who also are not particularly into fantasy), so I expect it’s good and has pretty broad appeal.
I’ve heard mediocre things for Jonathan Strange. I’d suggest His Dark Materials but you really have to read the whole thing–three volumes and a total of well over a thousand pages–to totally get it (though the themes are extremely Pandagon-friendly! abuses by the church! suppression of children’s maturity and sexuality exposed as harmful and evil! a plot to kill god! naked gay rebel angels!).
My personal favorite explicitly feminist novelist is probably Erica Jong but she may be a little dated?
KP, that’s an interesting observation. Off the top of my head, the only case I can think of of an HP man marrying “below his station” was Hagrid’s wizard father who married a giantess.
Sara, your thoughts re: no mention of Snape’s portrait make a lot of sense. It’s also occurred to me that I don’t remember any mention of Dumbledore’s portrait until after he’s died. Maybe it’’s painted in advance for later placement in the office, or maybe it’s painted after death from other sources.
KP, that’s an interesting observation. Off the top of my head, the only case I can think of of an HP man marrying “below his station” was Hagrid’s wizard father who married a giantess.
Well, James Potter married Lily, who was muggle-born, like Ted Tonks. Of course, James didn’t consider this “below his station”.
This isn’t mentioned in the books (although it’s hinted in DH), but Rowling tells us on her website that Dean Thomas’s father was a wizard who married a muggle woman. He never revealed himself as a wizard because of the war with Voldemort– he didn’t want to put his family in danger. He was killed by Death Eaters at some point, but Dean’s mother thought that she’d been abandoned. She married again (a muggle man), and they now have a happy family.
At the beginning of HBP, too, Fred and George are flirting with muggle girls in the village. Maybe George marries a muggle.
Just finished book; turned anxiously to thread.
Read original post, saw there were 421 comments.
What appeared/appears several times on my screen: floating smileys in a vast sea of white.
No words.
What gives?
dr ngo, I can see the comments fine but several other people have also had problems. The site seems to be playing up severely for some people. Do you have an alternate browser you could try and still if that makes any difference?
Every time we hear of a mixed magical/human relationship, it always involved a muggle man and a witch (or a veela, in the case of Fleur’s grandmother). Riddle’s mother, Dean’s?/Sean’s? (the Gyffindor boy in book one- mother was a witch, didn’t tell the father ’til after marriage) even Tonk’s mother fits the pattern. It seems to be part of a larger trend in the series that women either marry ‘at their own level’ or ‘beneath themselves’ if one goes by societal (or personal) standards.
I’m not sure this is true, actually. Dean Thomas’s dad was a wizard and his mom a muggle. Both of Tonks’s parents are wizards, iirc. I’ve always assumed Hagrid’s mother had to be the giant because I’m not sure a human female would survive either PIV sex with a giant or carrying a half-giant fetus to term. And of course you also have the case of Tonks and Lupin as a counterexample.
Furthermore, in Rowling, shouldn’t there be a magical university or universities, an Oxbridge or Heidelberg, for the smarter students? What’s the purpose of O.W.L.s otherwise? Rowling perhaps curtailed this to avoid having to write a second series about grown-ups. . . .but it makes the transition of wizards to grown-up status oddly abrupt
I’ve been wondering the same thing. On the one hand, from some things I know about English educational culture (or at least as it was back when Rowling was younger, not sure if this holds nowadays), I don’t think university is as ubiquitous in the UK as it is here in the states. It’s more for people who want to go into academia and “the professions”. At least that’s how it was back 20-25 years ago when one of my good friends was growing up in the UK — his parents didn’t plan for him or his brother to go on to college at all, but then they moved to the states and discovered that it’s practically compulsory here. Considering that there are only about 40 Hogwarts students in any particular year, this would make demand for a wizarding university slim.
It’s also implied that no particular university degree is required to teach at Hogwarts, or at least there’s never any mention of such a thing in the backgrounds of any of the teachers we know much about.
Though, yeah, it really really bugs me the way Rowling has her characters completely set for life, down to spouses and kids, before they’d be legal to drink in the US. This is one thing that marks the series as definitely for kids — I think most grownups reading the books know the world doesn’t really work that way. And it dissapoints me that Rowling is willing to let her younger readers expect it to.
Consider this statement for a moment in light of the fact that there are literary prizes specifically awarded for children’s literature.
Yes, especially considering that none of the HP books have ever been awarded any of those. Oh, except one from Nestle. Because I believe wholeheartedly that an evil multinational candy company that makes a lot of money from big media product tie-ins is the best arbiter of really great literature.
Not to mention that you ought to consider that the statement you’re responding to was sarcasm, and that I have already agreed about a zillion times that, considered only as YA, the Potter series does rank up there with the really important good stuff. My problem here, for seriously about the eleventy bazillionth time, is not that Harry Potter Is Awful And Nobody Should Ever Read It. It’s that people need to seriously grow up and pull their heads out of their asses about it being OK to admit that Rowling is not exactly the pinnacle of the contemporary written word. It really bothers me when literate adults who should know better decide that nobody’s allowed to criticize Rowling, because other adults might get their fee-fees hurt for being reminded that they’re not reading Finnegan’s Wake.
Furthermore, in Rowling, shouldn’t there be a magical university or universities, an Oxbridge or Heidelberg, for the smarter students? What’s the purpose of O.W.L.s otherwise? Rowling perhaps curtailed this to avoid having to write a second series about grown-ups. . . .but it makes the transition of wizards to grown-up status oddly abrupt.
I think the purpose of O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s are for job placement. In one of the books all the students have to go in for careers counseling, and Harry is told that to be an Auror he needs to get x, y, and z N.E.W.T.s in order to get the job. It would make sense that other jobs have similar requirements about how advanced you need to be in various subjects.
It really bothers me when literate adults who should know better decide that nobody’s allowed to criticize Rowling, because other adults might get their fee-fees hurt for being reminded that they’re not reading Finnegan’s Wake.
Then again, tapping them on the shoulder and reminding them constantly does what now?
Ding ding ding ding!!!! Add only that it often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anybody who has dealt with the civil service or a university admissions panel knows this: when Harry walked into the Ministry to become an Auror, perhaps as early as days after destroying the greatest dark wizard of all time, there was somebody there INSISTING! that they couldn’t hire him because he hadn’t the requisite academic qualifications and his papers weren’t Exactly So. Not because the admittor was was a Death Eater, mind, but simply because (s)he was a bureaucratic dick. (”Real world experience? Nonsense! We have rules here! And the manual clearly says…”)
Oh, I’m quite sure that the snob factor is tied to the jealousy factor. Look at much of the academic reaction to Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich which, more than fifty years later, is still key to research in and understanding of Nazi Germany. The amount of vicious hissing that came out of academia that a journalist* had the NERVE! to write such a book was startling. What beat them back (like holding up a crucifix to a vampire) was the fact that Shirer’s research was the best of anything out there, so the usual “shallow!” mud thrown by profs wouldn’t fly or stick.* - Bear in mind, though, that this was back when high-profile journalists actually researched and reported.
I know it’s complety pointless to jump into this thread at 3 bazillion plus comments, but I’ve always thought that JK’s literary twin was more likley to be someone like Frank Baum that someone like Dickens. The Wizard of Oz is the well- beloved first book in a long series of completley forgotten sequels, all wildly popular when written. I think HP will fall to a similar fate. I ceartainly haven’t enjoyed them past book 3 myself, and was mostly reading to find out what becomes of characters I love, than beacuse the books themselves were engaging. But only time will tell if they can hold up.
Oh, and Jonathan Strange = AWESUM
Literature is partly what a great author puts out, but I think it can be argued it is also what the reader puts into understanding it. One can enjoy MacBeth as a gripping yarn about occult and murder-for-power in Scotland. Or one can talk about the witches as the Norn of Norse mythology, and discuss Lady MacBeth’s sleepwalking as the human urge to gain forgiveness.
Harry Potter isn’t the greatest book in the world. But it does get some people talking about deeper issues. About governments that make a show of dealing with issues without being effective. About media/government collaboration. About school bullying and larger consequences rising from it. ANd lately, about the definition of a hero (most readers don’t seem to agree with Rowling’s).
What I mean is, people can get as much or more out of analyzing a lesser book as they can from a superficial understanding of a great book. Harry Potter has people talking about Ideas… that’s a pretty good achievement.
You may be right. I’m just reading Bernard Crick’s biography of Orwell. When he (Blair) came out of Eton in the 1920s [big gap to now, I know, but the English have a way of continuing things*] only a tiny fragment of the boys went on to university, and that from the most prestigious high school in the country. It was enough to have gone to Eton to help secure a boy’s future.* - A close friend of mine is high up in a British entertainment company; (s)he does not have a postsecondary degree. The chances of him/her holding that position — or, more accurately, rising through the ranks to the point where (s)he would even be eligible — in N.Am without at least a BA or BFA (and more probably an MA or MFA) are close to zero.
Just a word on the dialogue. I was raised with a cockney-accented father, and spent much of my time around Brits of all accents. I never found Rowling’s dialogue stilted or un-English, with the exception of “Cor Blimey” or”Blimey”. Most of the folks that I knew and know shorten it to something sounding like a brusque “ko!”.
The Oz sequels are forgotten? The Tick-Tock Man, Ozma, the Patchwork Girl?
Funny, I kind of thought The Patchwork Girl of Oz was the best.
I loved them too, Samantha, but I was actually in late teens before I even discovered them, and I was a serious child bookworm. None of my school or local libraries contained anything other than Wizard. So yes, I would say they are forgotten.
I don’t so much think the Britishness or lack thereof is what makes her dialogue annoying. The main reason I find it awful is that it’s full of cliches, and just isn’t in any way reflective of how people actually talk (and I don’t think it’s fair to retcon that away by deciding that everyone just sounds like a bad Renn Faire in the English wizarding world).
That said, I think the major problem there, with both of those things, is that she developed her writing style, and the major characters’ voices, for a children’s book. Except that by the time she gets to about book 4, she’s being expected to come up with a book for adults. Even though I think Rowling can’t dialogue her way out of a damp wad of tissues in the sense of adult literature (even of the mediocre fluff kind; I think I’ve read V.C. Andrews books that are less stilted), I have to say I can’t wait to read the first two or three books aloud, “Doing The Voices” at bedtime with my hypothetical future children. With a children’s book, you can sacrifice versimilitude for a little bit of extra fun, because a lot of people are going to be reading aloud. With a book that’s mainly meant for teenagers and adults to read alone (which is basically what books 4-7 are), it becomes glaringly obvious that the dialogue blows.
Forgot whether I actually hit “blaspheme” after the refresh, sorry:
I don’t so much think the Britishness or lack thereof is what makes her dialogue annoying. The main reason I find it awful is that it’s full of cliches, and just isn’t in any way reflective of how people actually talk (and I don’t think it’s fair to retcon that away by deciding that everyone just sounds like a bad Renn Faire in the English wizarding world).
That said, I think the major problem there, with both of those things, is that she developed her writing style, and the major characters’ voices, for a children’s book. Except that by the time she gets to about book 4, she’s being expected to come up with a book for adults. Even though I think Rowling can’t dialogue her way out of a damp wad of tissues in the sense of adult literature (even of the mediocre fluff kind; I think I’ve read V.C. Andrews books that are less stilted), I have to say I can’t wait to read the first two or three books aloud, “Doing The Voices” at bedtime with my hypothetical future children. With a children’s book, you can sacrifice versimilitude for a little bit of extra fun, because a lot of people are going to be reading aloud. With a book that’s mainly meant for teenagers and adults to read alone (which is basically what books 4-7 are), it becomes glaringly obvious that the dialogue blows.
@ six-oh, re education. I think this is something that’s gradually changing with the times. But, going back to the “Up” series (which is a FANTASTIC source of arcane trivia about post-1960 British life for anyone that’s interested in that sort of thing), I know there are subjects who go on to do things that would require a college degree in the US, but don’t seem to in late 70’s/early 80’s Britain (school librarian is the one that most obviously comes to mind at the moment).
Oh, I didn’t think the OZ books weren’t good- I’m just referring to their general status. I never even heard that there were more than one until I was in my midle teens, and I was a serious child bookworm and Librarian’s Pet. None of my school or local libraries contained any of them except Wizard. It was the weird conglomerate-plot movie in the 80’s? I think? that clued me into their existence.
Just points up the whole “durn kids won’t read anything but Harry Potter” is really a failing of adults to reccomdend more titles to them. I’ve buried my younger brother in a pile it will take him till he’s 18 to get out from under.
opoponax:
It is getting baffling here in N. America, and sometimes paradoxical. University administrators who make publich speeches about broadening the net beyond traditional academics then go back to their office and do admissions “thumbs up” on kids with no life experience and a BA, and “thumbs down” on people who have fantastic workplace experience. People in private industry complain about ivory towers, then toss into the circular file all applicants who don’t have a degree. The Percys of this world will always be admitted and promoted; the Harrys? Frequently not.
six-oh, just to be clear, i’m an American. I just have my share of British friends, like certain British TV shows, and am terminally fascinated by English/American dialectical differences, Brit slang, speech as a class marker, etc.
Basically, I’d rather be snogged whilst queueing in wellies and eating crumpets and jam than kissed in line in rainboots over “English Muffins” with jelly. And if that makes me different to other Americans, well so be it!
Yes. This is what bothered me most about the epilogue. I suppose it’s possible George named his kid Fred first, but geeez.
Wow, just read through everyone’s comments. I’ve never laughed so hard in my life. Thank you for commenting and making my life that much more interesting. *throws my arms wide*
With that said, I think I’m the only person here who will mourn Bellatrix LeStrange. I sort of blinked when Hedwig met his end, so to speak, but I nearly cried when Bellatrix got taken out by Molly Weasley. It hurts to have a character played by Helena Bonham Carter meet a fatal end. Without even kissing mouldy Voldie!
Then again, I always love rooting for the bad guys (and girls).
Also, I have to defend J.K. Rowling. In her defense, the American version of the book is different from the English version. Editors in the US tend to “Americanize” the English and redo the punctuation, if not change entire sentences. I’m just saying that some of the cliches and stiltedness of the dialogue may not be her fault. Shoot the editors first!
* is embarrassed by semi-double post*
Re Fred- we had a serious family fight when grandchildren started popping up and everyone wanted to name their first son after the brother that died. The grandmother was dead set against anyone “replacing” her dead son, and there was a lot of “I loved him most” bickering. We ended up with one first name and a bunch of middle names. I think its plausible that the honor was reserved for George.
I had exactly the same reaction. Looking back, I don’t really know why I thought that, but I just read the whole book “seeing” Hermione as a black character. I kind of wish they’d used some artictic license and cast her that way for the film.
Loved the first two, but the third is such an unmitigated mess that it ruined the series for me. NITPICKY SPOILERS: Miss Coulter’s change of heart was completely pulled out of the author’s ass; She defeats the most powerful “Angel” because he’s horny?; Angels have no corporeal or physical being, but you can apparently set them on fire or send bugs to bite them; The kids break up because they can only leave one window open, and it has to be the one out of the land of the dead, even though Lord Asriel apparently has a back staircase that leads out of it; Will must be about 15 and Lyra couldn’t be more than 12, but they save the universe by having sex? Ew.; The knife “chooses” its owner by cutting off two of his fingers, which apparently can’t be healed except by a special potion Will’s dad made up, so how did all the previous owners not bleed to death within a couple of days?
I’ve gotten pounded here before for saying this, but I don’t think Dicken’s evaluation should have ever risen above that. In fact, I would leave out “well crafted” and add the word “hack”. If he’s your standard of “brilliance”, Rowling beats him hands down.
McGonagall kicked ass in this book! I wish there had been more of her. I can’t wait to see Maggie Smith do this in the movie.
Also, I have to agree with everyone who thinks that the “Harry Lost In the Wilderness” plot-bog should have been exchanged for “Neville and Ginny Undermine Snape at Hogwarts hile Waiting for News of Harry”.
I don’t get the Harry/Ginny haters. I totally fell for their relationship and was extemely disappointed that she didn’t get a part in this book. The bits of their romance in the earlier books seemed completely natural to me, and his reason for breaking it off was lame. She should have been in on the quest. It would have been nice to see her as an equal in the partnership.
In regard to the recent movie, how the hell are they going to get around the minor, but pivitol importance of Sirius’ mirror in the last novel?
@ notl33t, my understanding of the British vs. American versions is that what is changed is mainly word choice, where Scholastic thought Americans wouldn’t “get” the British term. Like in the British version Dumbledore’s office password is Sherbet Lemon, which is a candy that doesn’t exist in the US, so it’s changed to Lemon Drops. Also things like “stove” for “cooker”, “bathrobe” for “dressing gown”, etc. That said, I haven’t read the British versions personally. And while some of the changes in word choice do lend a different semantic nuance to the text, and I agree that the editing is a bit heavy handed, I don’t think that could turn a writer from golden to groan-worthy.
Especially because Deathly Hallows is virtually unchanged, and the dialogue doesn’t magically improve.
There were many parts of the book that just drove me crazy; I go into it in detail in my post on the topic. Here’s the gloss, though.
1. Way too many pointless deaths; 2. Very crappy pacing (two hundred pages of whining in the forest was simply too much); 3. Spotty character development given the magnitude of some concluding actions.
I was actually hoping for better. It wasn’t awful, but I did not believe this book stood up well as a coda for the series.
Rowling answers dozens of fan questions in chat:
http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/7/30/j-k-rowling-web-chat-transcript
Just thought you’d be interested! Among many other things, she confirms that George’s first son is named Fred. Also, Ginny became a famous Quidditch player for some years, then retired and combines her fmaily life with writing for the Daily Prophet. Oh, and Ron joined George in the joke shop.
I’m a public librarian (assistant director, actually) and I can tell you, without a doubt, that there is nothing I do in my job now that I couldn’t have done straight out of high-school. I got a master’s simply because there was no other way of getting a position above page or circulation clerk without one. The schooling itself was useless, though.
I always thought that the headmasters’ portraits were entirely magical; they simply appeared suddenly as soon as a headmaster died. I wondered if Snape’s didn’t because he wasn’t a “real” headmaster, only appointed by a rogue takeover. Then again, maybe JK just forgot to mention it.
I haven’t had a chance to read all the comments yet, but I just wanted to comment on my own opinions.
I found the camping part of the story very hard to read, and I think I know why. For 6 books, Hogwarts has been the setting, and even when nothing major was happening in the plot, there was action, attending classes & detentions, Quidditch practice…, to take your mind off the lack of exposition. In this book that was taken away, and it took some getting used to. Also, some comments I’ve seen complained about the long camping scenes, and blamed Rowling. But that is the wrong target. In every book, Harry has made mistakes, he’s human. This is a continuation of this. Harry doesn’t know what he’s doing, and making mistakes, like hiding, when he could do more damage by being out in the open.
I love how she took advantages in the book to show how Harry’s instinct to save people helps him in the end, like with Wormtail & Malfoy. When he rescued Malfoy from the Room of Requirement, I was like “Uh! SHould have let him die.” But if he had, when Narcissa asks him about Malfoy in the forest, he couldn’t have told her that he was still alive. If Draco had been dead, she would have turned Harry over to Voldemort then, and he probably would have died, again. But, by saving Draco, put him in the position to be assisted by Narcissa when he needed it. It also tied in well with Voldemort’s parallel storyline. Every evil act Voldemort committed, really only made him weaker, torturing the Malfoys, terrorizing Kreacher, even pursuing the Elder Wand, caused his downfall, while Harry’s senseless acts of kindness, worked to his benefit.
Also, loved Kreacher. My prediction was that Dobby would lead the house-elves against the Death-Eaters, but it worked that Kreacher did it instead. And my first thought after Dobby appeared at the Malfoy’s, after Harry yelled at the mirror, was “Assistance will always be given at Hogwarts, to those who ask for it.”
I also love Ginny. I have since the first book. A lot of people felt that she was a real minor character in the books, and that as Harry’s future wife, she should have gotten more attention, but I don’t agree with that. First of all, she is in the books a lot. She is easy to overlook, but once you actually start looking for her, you see her a lot more that at first glance. And, while love was an important theme of the story, it wasn’t necessary romantic love. Plus, I loved that after Harry had her leave the Room of Requirement, he told her to wait, and she didn’t. Duels to win, Death Eaters to taunt!!! One of my biggest complaints about strong-willed women characters in children’s stories, is that their overriding desire is to find “true love”, but Ginny, Luna & Hermione blow that out of the water.
Snape’s story was truly tragic, and I balled that his last wish was to look into Lily’s eyes one last time. I’d had a feeling that Snape and Lily had a past since OotP. After Dudley was attacked, and Petunia spouted out what the dementors were, Harry asked her how she knew. She said, “I heard that horrible boy telling her one day.” It raised flags, because I couldn’t imagine that Lily and James had much contact in the summer, and then later in the book they showed the Lily & James didn’t have anything to do with each other during school, so I wondered who the “horrible boy” was, and Snape jumped to mind.
In the epilogue, I wished she had told if Dudley and Harry kept in touch. It wouldn’t have taken much room to say that, “The Dursley’s survived due to the efforts of the Order, and Harry and Dudley, unbeknownst to Petunia and Vernon, kept in contact, swapping news of their children and achievements.” I did like in the chapter “Dursley’s Departing” how Harry explained that Voldemort might kidnap them, expecting Harry to rescue them. Vernon’s and Harry’s eyes locked, and their shared a thought, though Rowling didn’t spell it out, you just know that they were both wondering if Harry would rescue them.
All of the deaths were heart-wrenching to me, including Hedwig’s.
At first, I was a bit put out by the “Deathly Hallows”, b/c I felt that Harry had enough to try to do, w/out this as well and I agreed with Hermione. But then I remembered, there is always a mystery to solve for Harry and his “Scoobies” and Hermione is always wrong about something.
Anyways, blah blah blah, I think I’ve said enough for now.
A minor nitpick question relating to OotP:
OK, so no one can see Thestrals until they have seen death, but did no one ever walk in front of one of the school carriages and bump into an invisible horse?
I’ve seen complained about the long camping scenes, and blamed Rowling. But that is the wrong target. In every book, Harry has made mistakes, he’s human.
No, sweetie. Harry is a fictional character in a novel. A novel written by Rowling. While on the one hand, I think Rowling’s willingness to expose her protagonists’ flaws and let them make their own mistakes is what elevates her above a mere kid series hack, the bottom line is that when a book is poorly paced and not very well conceptualized (like, y’know, you need to give your characters something to do every once in a while), that is the fault of the author, not that of a fictional character. If the character of Harry didn’t seem to want to do much of anything outside of Hogwarts, she should have decided to go somewhere else with the story.
I’ve seen a lot of people ticked that Neville pulled the sword out of the hat, but remember, Nagini was a Horcrux, so you couldn’t just kill Nagini and destroy the soul, it had to be attacked with something truly fatal, like a basilisk tooth, fiendfyre, or the sword that had taken the aspects of a basilisk.
Or the achievement of the author. I’m reasonably well read on the Second World War, and I was impressed by the slow, painful camping time. Two main reasons:First: Others have remarked on how it was a mistake to take the characters out of Hogwarts. Incorrect. The characters belonged in Hogwarts as much as a known, identifiable member of the Resistance would have been in his hometown. To be where you belonged and where people expected you to be is to kill yourself, the people who know you, and the cause you seek to have triumph. Have you pondered the notion that the only reason that Neville and Ginny weren’t quietly murdered is that they were the goats tethered to the tree as bait for the tiger? Every day Harry isn’t with them is an extra day of life for them because the enemy needs them alive to watch and wait for its real prey to show up.
Second:If you’ve read the accounts memoirs of people who have done wartime deep-penetration resistance work you realize that Rowling does a fairly good job of recreating the stifling periods of boredom, the need (almost to the point of madness) to do SOMETHING! NOW! no matter how self-destructive, the snappish viciousness between former friends as the strain tells, and the sense that even the smallest false move can lead to exposure, capture and death. (Regarding that last-named, don’t forget that it was one slipped word that did lead to their capture and abuse.)
To be where you belonged and where people expected you to be is to kill yourself, the people who know you, and the cause you seek to have triumph.
Oh, I’m not saying Harry should have gone back to Hogwarts under the conditions set forth in the story. You’re right, that would have been suicide.
However, if you discover that you’ve made up a story where, for pages upon pages, nothing much happens, and all your protagonists are just sitting around passively waiting for someone to hand them a way to destroy their horcrux, then it’s probably a good idea to question whether that story is really worthy of publication. Unless your story is Waiting for Godot. Which this ain’t (though on second thought, I might have enjoyed the ‘camping’ bits if there had been an element of that existential questioning that makes Godot so interesting.).
The least she could have done is to do what most writers do when they come to a point where they really can’t escape a period of downtime — go see what’s happening with someone else!
That said, I think a couple of chapters of cabin fever could have worked. and I though Ron storming off and then returning to redeem himself was spot-on. But 200 pages? Is that really necessary? and do i really want to read a book where it is?
Yes.Yes, you do.
Next!
I had a feeling Snape was going to bite it in the end since the first book. He was always my favorite character. I learned of his fate from some horney Snape fan Yahoo groups. All of those women are in mourning, and they even held vigils.
Rowling says she’s going to keep writing. I wonder if her new books will have the same following has her Potter books?
or, you know, you can go read Honest, Decent Literature that Teaches Life Lessons where you’ll never deal with a slow plot point instead of reading something that you enjoy.
Mothworm, I kind of agree with you that it would have been been interesting to see more of Neville, Ginny, and Snape at Hogwarts, but part of me is glad to have not read of more crap Snape had to deal with. On the other hand, maybe after several “punishments” of being sent to help Hagrid it might have dawned on them that he wasn’t really their enemy (and they would presumably have the good sense to keep their mouths shut about that).
Potter, again
Now that I have finished reading HP7, I finally let myself go around and see what others are writing. Here is some of the best I found so far, to be read only if you have finished the book (or…
Who or what am I or opoponax jealous of exactly?
Give this poster a prize. Again the Salon review of DH was spot on in regards to its place vs. the other books.
That was my problem too. While I understand quite well how it can be frustrating for a character to want to do something but be circumstantially unable. I did not believe Rowling needed to subject us as her readers to sixty thousand words of nothing at all going on.
And I was frankly offended at the amount of emotional karma she blew on frickin’ Dobby — there were actual, real, honest-to-Allah human beings dying, and while Fred gets the literary equivalent of “whoops, he’s dead, move on”, Dobby gets a g.d. state funeral.
Ridiculous. Totally ridiculous.
opopanax,
” If the character of Harry didn’t seem to want to do much of anything outside of Hogwarts, she should have decided to go somewhere else with the story.”
Um, no she shouldn’t have, because it wouldn’t have been Harry doing something, it would have been Rowling. That would have been Harry acting like someone else, and readers wouldn’t have gone for it. I would have liked to see the group doing hit and run strikes(Rebel Alliance style) against the Death Eaters, small attacks that didn’t really do much damage, but drew a lot of attention, and just kept Harry visible, giving people hope and rubbing salt in Voldemort’s wounds by staying at large. But Harry didn’t want to risk being captured before all the Horcruxes were destroyed(the boy knew he had been lucky, and didn’t want to keep counting on it), so decided to stay under cover.
My point is that the reader should be mad at Harry for being a dumbass, I suppose you can be mad at Rowling for making him a dumbass, but I don’t. When I read, the characters become real, especially if they are as well written as Rowling’s, and it is their actions that tick me off, make me happy, or make me cry. I am not consciously thinking of the author when I read. Plus, Harry always goes off a dumb track(red herrings are notorious in HP)in every book, changing that for the sake of page space and exposition in the final book, would have been a huge change, and not very loyal to the previous books.
Shorter Aeryl: If Harry hadn’t kept them in the woods, he wouldn’t have been being Harry.
True. So where were Hermione’s and Ron’s familiars? They would surely have been a way to find out what was going on, or get word to someone. Yet they were strangely absent. For months. That’s not Harry being a prat; that was Rowling doing less-than-ideal plotting and pacing.
Overall I thought the book was decent, don’t get me wrong; but it was not the strongest of the series, and I think it could have benefited from being carefully and closely edited.
Um, no she shouldn’t have, because it wouldn’t have been Harry doing something, it would have been Rowling. That would have been Harry acting like someone else, and readers wouldn’t have gone for it.
Again, I’m not sure you’ve caught on yet, but Harry Potter = Invention of Someone’s Imagination, and Joanne Rowling = Actual Human Being Who Really Exists In The Real World.
I think the idea that characters have their personalities and you can’t just force them to do something that feels wrong has a lot of merit, in a general sort of sense.
But really, really and truly, writers are human beings who are crafting a piece of art that is their novel, which includes characters, all of which is A COMPLETE INVENTION OF THE WRITER. You have to do your creation justice, and you can’t just throw in ideas that ring false. But at the same time, the writer has to be in control, and she has to use all her talents to tell the best story humanly possible.
It wouldn’t have rung false to tell us a slightly different story, or to craft the necessarily slow and boring bits so that they do what they need to do without getting unnecessarily bogged down. There are a great many ways of doing this without just deciding “wow, this is boring. Ooh, I know, I’ll have Harry meet up with Jack Sparrow and become a pirate!”
As a writer, you don’t get a pass to let the story slide out of your control and into mediocrity by explaining away that this is “who Harry is” and “what the characters wanted to do.” That’s not craft, that’s solipsism. It’s the lazy high school sophomore way out. I didn’t feel like doing my homework so I made up some lame excuse. Which isn’t necessarily something I believe of Rowling — or I won’t until she actually uses that line of reasoning as a cop-out for why she made the “camping” section so long and drawn out.
My joyously beautiful face, of course.(Stops giggling at own joke.) Seriously, it wasn’t a direct or implied reference to either of you. First, it was aimed more at the concept of the debate, between “high” and “low” literature. (Again, Orwell is a treat to read about such discussions.) Second, I had the Shirer example front-and-centre of my mind when I typed those words.
Wow. I feel like in this thread I’ve become the “dump on Rowling” figure I really didn’t want to become.
I feel like I should add a disclaimer that the “camping” sequence is really the ONLY part of the book I felt had a major structural flaw. In fact, via this thread, a lot of the things I’d thought were inexcusable plot holes, devices so transparent as to be “cheats”, etc. were important for reasons I didn’t realize at first. Especially Neville taking the sword from the Sorting Hat, which I now realize is both necessary and perfect.
OK, I’ll say I’m still vaguely annoyed at the way the sword just appeared out of thin air in the lake near where they happened to be camping, the location of which nobody could have known, and Snape’s patronus appeared to Harry, who just happened to be the one on watch (c’mon, you KNOW Hermione would have assumed it was either dangerous or not real), etc. etc. If there’s a reason it had to be this way (other than the plot grinding to an absolute dead halt after Godric’s Hollow), could somebody please tell me?
Are you the MarioKart playing English Major?
If so, maybe you should consider whether Lit is really for you.
I am in the middle(more like beginning) of rereading Deathly Hallows(just finished the other 6) and I think there is a scene in “The Prince’s Tale” where Dumbledore tells Snape how this works. Perhaps it was just waiting for Snape to get some free time(with all the madcapping at school, it was probably hard to get away).
I’ve been thinking about how Lily ended up falling for someone she clearly thought was an idiot. After losing Snape, she’d have more time to observe the interactions of her fellow Gryffindors, and she’d notice how loyal the arrogant Marauders were to poor sickly Remus Lupin. Finding out they’d mastered advanced Animagus magic in order to look out for their friend must have helped change her mind, especially considering Snape’s betrayal.
On the second read-through, that sword in the pond maneuver sticks out like the proverbial thumb. I can understand why she did it, the plot bits it takes care of, but I can hardly think of a clumsier hack.
Spoiler warning, please!
Don’t fight it, embrace it.
he didn’t just need a place to hide a horcrux. he needed a place both obscure and secure, and above all he needed to believe himself to be the most astoundingly powerful and brilliant wizard of all time. so the room, to him, at the time he entered it, would appear to have been lost to the ages, unfindable by anyone.
This is brilliant. I never thought of it like that, but I will now.
Lupin was basically destined to be attacked by a werewolf from birth, with a name like that.
I was waiting for the longest time to find out that when you become a werewolf, your name changes to something appropriate, like Remus Lupin or Fenrir Greyback, and that Lupin had been born with a different name. Instead, I got Teddy Lupin, which sounds like a children’s toy. I am not pleased.
yeah, remus lupin, the werewolf name to end all werewolf names. actually i always was amused by the way she named her characters so that you knew something about them before they even spoke — i think that in a children’s book it’s both very entertaining and rather traditionalist — BUT, wtf, this one especially doesn’t make any sense because you can’t simply have “grown into your name” when it’s a WEREWOLF name, and plus it has no depth to it like the other ones did. she might as well have named him “wolfypants mcwerewolf”. bleh.
You have to admit, those things were terrifying.
yeah, remus lupin, the werewolf name to end all werewolf names.
I mean, at least “Fenrir Greyback” sounds like a reasonable pseudonym a hack idiot would give himself. “Remus Lupin” is too literal and clinical even for the man himself to think of.
Also, what’s with James Potter getting to have a normal human name with all the Sirius Blacks and Peter Pettigrews around him? Why doesn’t he have to be called Bambi?
I don’t think Dicken’s evaluation should have ever risen above that. In fact, I would leave out “well crafted” and add the word “hack”.
Hee. I actually like Dickens, but this makes me giggle.
Like in the British version Dumbledore’s office password is Sherbet Lemon, which is a candy that doesn’t exist in the US, so it’s changed to Lemon Drops.
They stopped doing that though, which left little American-version-reading me in the position of reading the entire series in a week before DH came out and wondering why Harry misremembered the Lemon Drops password from book 1 or 2 as Sherbet Lemon when he tries to get into Dumbledore’s office in book 4.
or, you know, you can go read Honest, Decent Literature that Teaches Life Lessons where you’ll never deal with a slow plot point instead of reading something that you enjoy.
Hee. Because when I think of Dickens, et al., I think “fast-paced.” I mean, let’s face it, that’s the REAL reason Tolkein is a better writer than Rowling, right? Because Tolkein never, ever, spends pages and pages and pages elaborating on a plot point in which either or a lot happens but no one cares anyway (hi, Battle of Helm’s Deep!) Yup, that Tolkein. Master of brevity, that one.
FWIW I didn’t mind the forest scenes. I like the air of despair that they conveyed. And I still like Rowling’s dialogue–in fact I was just having a conversation with someone about how it’s one of my favorite parts of the books.
Oh, and something I’ve been meaning to add to the discussion: my “lost it” moment.
There’s a little one-off scene somewhere during the Battle of Hogwarts (which part, or during the interlude, I forget exactly) where we see one of the major characters (I want to say it’s either Ginny, Hermione, or Luna, but it could have been Harry himself, I don’t know) comforting a fellow student who has been mortally wounded and is literally crying for her mother. And the comforter reassures her that it will all be OK, and she’ll see her mother very, very soon. That was it. I broke down, so much so that just remembering the scene makes me feel like sobbing. I think there are tear stains on the page.
I also have to say that the entire last third of the book (minus the epilogue), basically from the moment they realize they’re looking for the final Horcux at Hogwarts, is absolutely brilliantly done. To the word. If the entire book had been like that, I’d have agreed with whoever it was who said in absolute terms that J.K. Rowling Is Brilliant.
Re: the sword in the lake..
Snape put it there. Dumbledore said that he (Harry) had to find it under circumstances underwhich he would have to endure difficulty and display heroism. Snape replies that he ‘has a plan’.
As for how Snape found the kids, well, he may just be better at looking then they are at hiding. Or he found Ron in the forest. Might have to ask JKR on that one.
Check that. Snape knew where they were because Phineus heard Hermy mention where they were while she was taking the tent out of her bag of holding
Dude, are you serious? I found Dobby’s death very moving, and sort of assumed that JKR was trying to broaden the understanding of who’s a “person” deserving of respect and grief. I thought learning more about house elves and goblins was an interesting expansion of the world.
And I get that she could have devoted more space to some of the other deaths, although I’m personally in the “realistic depiction of the suckiness of war” camp about that, but it seems weird to me to say that in a fantasy world in which we accept that elves and goblins are sentient beings with roles to play, a character shouldn’t get attention because he’s not human.
Iif you just don’t care about Dobby, fine, but harsh on him for his cheesy hat or something or something, not because he’s an elf. SPEW would be all over you for that.
she might as well have named him “wolfypants mcwerewolf”.
And…you owe me a new keyboard!
Angels have no corporeal or physical being, but you can apparently set them on fire or send bugs to bite them
Angels are made of Dust, a material elementary particle. They are specifically physical beings, not supernatural in any way (within the universe of the story, obviously). Their forms are less solid than human bodies, but they’re not ill-defined “spirits.”
The kids break up because they can only leave one window open, and it has to be the one out of the land of the dead, even though Lord Asriel apparently has a back staircase that leads out of it
The angels explicitly say they plan to close Lord Asriel’s hole in the sky as well.
Will must be about 15 and Lyra couldn’t be more than 12,
Will is 12 in The Subtle Knife, and I didn’t get the sense that more than a few months pass between that and the end of The Amber Spyglass.
but they save the universe by having sex? Ew.
I don’t remember them ever having sex in the book. I didn’t assume they did, because they just seemed too young for that.
The knife “chooses” its owner by cutting off two of his fingers, which apparently can’t be healed except by a special potion Will’s dad made up, so how did all the previous owners not bleed to death within a couple of days?
Will’s dad made an ointment of bloodmoss, which is not exactly widely available but is at least well-known in the Arctic region, if only commonly used by bears. He’s hardly the only person who could have come up with it.
One of the nits you wanted to pick was: How the hell is there only one boy named Roger in the entire world of the dead? Even Will had to have the sense to give his father’s last name.
The camping chapters totally worked for me.
Yes they were long and slow, yes they mainly consisted of Harry, Ron and Hermione being unable to figure out what they were supposed to do or how they’d do it, but I think that was necessary for the reader to feel the same sense of despair the characters must have been feeling. Here were three kids on their own, running for their lives with nobody to guide them and trying to figure out how to bring down a fascist dictatorship. It had to seem overwhelming and hopeless, otherwise the victory at the end would seem way to cheap and easy. When Ron left, I almost found myself almost doubting that they were ever going to resolve the story by the end of the book.
Loved the Aeschylus quote at the beginning too; it surprised me at first but felt so right. It might set off a new round of howling from the wingnuts, too — “We sing to you, dark gods beneath the earth.”
Speaking of wingnuts, my local newspaper published the predictable letter to the editor from someone claiming that the Death Eaters are Al Qaeda, while the Democrats are the Ministry officials who refuse to admit that there’s a threat. (I suppose this would put Condi in the role of Hermione, while Cheney would obviously be Peeves). On the other hand, I thought all of Dumbledore’s unheeded warnings amounted to: “Voldemort determined to attack inside the U.S.”
If deadpan sarcasm is art, then would somebody please frame this and put it in a gallery?
Hermione finally managed to overcome some of her own prejudices in the big Kreacher scene and realize that you’re not really reaching out to others if you don’t respect their different values and mindsets.
Except the values and mindset in question are that house-elves really do like being enslaved, and ask only that you treat them kindly. Given the obvious parallel to human slavery and racist and sexist oppression in general, I find that message in incredibly poor taste. Yeah, house-elves aren’t human, but it’s disingenuous to create that parallel and then act like it only applies to the fictional characters.
Off topic, but thank you Junk Science for your clarifications on Pullman’s Dark Materials.
Will the movie “The Golden Compass” bring fame and fortune to Philip Pullman as “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” did for JK Rowling? I hope so. Perhaps Pullman’s blasphemous ideas would have get extra publicity from the Religious Right?
Will the movie “The Golden Compass” bring fame and fortune to Philip Pullman as “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” did for JK Rowling? I hope so. Perhaps Pullman’s blasphemous ideas would have get extra publicity from the Religious Right?
I think it’ll make him a lot more popular, but I doubt he will get the same following that Rowling has, simply becuase his trilogy is finished, and you don’t have the whole “what happens next” anticipation to keep the converstations going. If the movie had come out before The Amber Spyglass it probably would have generated a lot more excitement though.
And yeah, the religious right will have a field day with Pullman– honestly, I can’t understand why they haven’t been after him all along, rather than concentrating their energy on the Christian-compatible world of Harry Potter.
Yup, that Tolkein. Master of brevity, that one.
Brevity is not always good, I’ll have you know. My love to the Helm’s Deep chapter has not diminished in the slightest, ever, despite having read the book too many times to count.
Given the obvious parallel to human slavery and racist and sexist oppression in general, I find that message in incredibly poor taste.
I felt that, given Kreacher’s character, I had less of a problem with the whole redemptive scene, but yeah, this is what I thought about Dobby originally, namely that a race who feels that its entire purpose is to serve wizards and be liked could easily be the result of conditioning and restriction of rights from the wizarding community. Namely, something that could happen to any group of people which was treated similarly and forced into certain roles by an overpowering society. In a word: evil.
Opoponax, this is the point where, if I’m talking to someone on a list-serv I take it off-list - not because I have any expectation that the tone of the conversation will degenerate, but because I think we’ve gotten to the point where the conversation really isn’t going to be of interest to anyone else on the thread. Since that option isn’t available, and because I think your irritation (as implied in your prose) is at least in part produced by misunderstanding.
That’s not entirely true, though she never has won a Newbery Medal or any of the other really big ones, the books have received honors from the American Library Association. Ironically enough, the only really big prize that any of the books has received was the 2001 Hugo Award that Goblet of Fire received. (Ironic because the Hugo and the Nebula are the two biggest awards in adult science fiction and fantasy.)
Well, then, what’s the problem? ::
::
You know, soda really hurts when it comes shooting out of the nose at an extremely high rate.
Having cleaned my monitor, I have to compliment you on a simply perfect description of Tolkein (and I say that as someone who loves his work).
Then again, I’m the girl who paused partway through Marquez’s The Autumn of the Patriarch just so I could ask my cat, “Do you think he would have gone into a fatal seizure on using a paragraph break?” so my sense of the absurd is a little off.
IIRC, in one of the earlier books, JKR mentions that the Room of Requirment is the place where all lost objects end up, which is why it’s filled to the ceiling with stacks of stuff. I’m perfectly willing to admit to error in recall, I am an old hag, after all.
What I don’t understand is that what Harry really needed was to find the diadem. That being the case, why wasn’t the Room empty of everything but a table with the diadem on it?
On a side note, I can’t believe that I’m still at work after 1:00 am when I have to be back at 8:00 tomorrow because I couldn’t stop reading this &#$%^@!! thread.
What I don’t understand is that what Harry really needed was to find the diadem. That being the case, why wasn’t the Room empty of everything but a table with the diadem on it?
Probably because that’s not what Harry asked it to do. He probably SHOULD have asked it to do that, but he didn’t have Hermione or Neville-Master-of-the-Room with him.
re: races — Lee Jordan has dreads in the beginning of Order of the Phoenix, so I’d guess he’s black.
Am I alone in thinking the supervillain of the books wasn’t Voldemort but Umbridge? OoP was and still is my favorite book and I hated to see Umbridge dangled in front of me in DH and then forgotten. I really, so, so, so badly wanted to see her punished. Ooh. She was big evil, boy.
What happened to Dolores Umbridge??
On JKR’s disputed patina, y’all could’ve saved yourselves a boatload of bandwidth by memorizing and reciting this handy and time-worn aphorism (it even comes in Latin flavor, so you can sound especially full of yourself!):
I’m away from the innertubes for a weekend and this much-anticipated thread swells halfway to a thousand posts before I can wade in. At least I got a few points in earlier in the week with some of the usual suspects over at punkassblog.
People who have a chip on their shoulder about enjoying anything while it is also enjoying commercial success should step back and pay attention to how much control over her own creation she acquired, contrasted with how little she had to start with. She couldn’t even keep the title she wanted on her book at first, and now she can dictate whether or not a particular subplot’s omission from the film will create continuity issues for later films. I have tremendous respect for her accomplishment. I have only personal quibbles over how and what she did to a creation that she was sensible about sharing with her readers. To grind the serial numbers off of so many cliches and make it seem so original is no small feat. Just about any comparison to any other author is one of apples to oranges. C. S. Lewis captivated me as a child, and made me cringe as a slightly older child, talking down to his readers. Pullman’s take on Lewis says it better than I can:
Tolkien had worlds to build in order to create his own language, and had the good taste to eschew allegory, which Rowling has also had the good taste to avoid. They both excelled at establishing a sense of place, and making the impossible plausible.
My primary complaint about the world is the unquestioned assumption of 19th century spiritualist metaphysics that is standard in just about anything for the last hundred years or so, found in everything with “real” ghosts and an afterlife, from Narnia to the Buffyverse. If all Harry has to do to be with those whom fate has separated from him is surrender to Voldemort, and wake up in heaven with all his pals, then I don’t quite see the heroism of the sacrifice. Until book 7, there was a high degree of ambiguity for the most part, that she collapsed into an objective certainty for the first time. You had Dumbledore in the first book declaring that death is just the next great adventure, but at least it was advanced as that character’s belief, nothing more.
Did death hold the horror of retribution for the crimes Voldemort had committed to vanquish death? Or did he fear total dissolution of being? If Harry had walked into that forest clearing with no more certainty about his chances of surviving after death than he had about the survival of Sirius at the end of book 5, ready to use his very last moment of existence to save his friends, his actions would have been even more heroic than they were.
But he had already resolved to do the deed before he knew how to open the snitch, so Rowling robs Harry of his heroism. Even after employing the resurrection stone, there is the possibility that the apparitions were due to nothing more real than the manipulation of the scheming AD, a fully dimensional Mirror of Erised reflecting nothing more real than Harry’s desires. Harry could have done the right thing as Dumbledore’s chump, for all we knew at that point. Instead, JKR chose to sugarcoat death, to make it easier for him, and for the readers, to take. When AD has a chat with Harry on the Astral Plane, worth a million bucks from the James Randi Foundation, Harry’s accomplishment is reduced in stature, its poignancy lost in Albus’s magical fine print and clumsy exposition.
I could probably make a bigger deal about this, but I’m likely one of only a handful of readers to see it this way. Resolving the ambiguity about death is something I don’t think she had to do to write a story every bit as compelling, but then, I’m not the one who had her story to tell, nor her reasons for telling it.
—
Next to Tolkien’s artful silken web spun from night spiders fattened on stolen trees of light, Rowling’s world is K-Mart Halloween cardboard patched together with duct tape and staples. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
Oh dear. Everyone seems to be jumping on the Opoponax, merely because she was the first person to point out that J. K. Rowling is not a brilliant writer, nor an awesome writer: that’s absurd.
What is true is: Rowling, without being especially skilled as a writer, accomplished something awesome: she wrote a novel that became a children’s bestseller, and from that made the leap to become an adult bestseller: and by the end of the series, she had people queueing at midnight to read her book, which is something that my English teacher told me in the early 1980s, when describing the Dickens riots a century earlier, we’d never see happen again because no one ever got that keen on books any more.
Writing a children’s bestseller is a much more awesome accomplishment: not that children are immune to hype, but the early Harry Potter books weren’t hyped. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone became a children’s bestseller by word of mouth. That’s awesome.
I didn’t queue up at midnight: I was one of millions who’d ordered my copy via Amazon. I read the whole of Deathly Hallows by midnight Saturday night, and I’ll probably re-read it again. I like Harry Potter. It’s a grand school series with magic. I like Rowling. She hasn’t got a knack for a well-turned sentence or a flowing line of dialogue: and she badly needed an editor for the last three or four books and didn’t get one. It’s nonsense to argue that if you like Harry Potter you shouldn’t notice that Rowling isn’t a brilliant writer, and rather childish to dump on people who point this out.
Just want to say, I agree with you Jesurgislac. I’ve been staying out of that whole debate, but you’ve said it really well. Ken Cope also makes an excellent point though, in that it’s perfectly acceptable for one person to find something to be “brilliant” even if it doesn’t meet with traditional standards of “good” writing.
We do, however, need to avoid the attitude that things we like must be immune from criticism– and that goes whether the literature we hold dear is Harry Potter, or a canonical classic like Dickens.
It might set off a new round of howling from the wingnuts, too — “We sing to you, dark gods beneath the earth.”
If the Libation Bearers sets the wingnuts to howling, I officially quit. I mean, It’s freaking classic literature!!!* Aeschylus is not a satan-worship manual; even the goddamn puritans accepted without question that a thorough study of the classics* was integral to the notion of being an educated human being.
*by “classic” here, I mean ‘Greek and/or Roman’, not Great, or Important, or Canonical, or whatever. Though the Oresteia certainly is all of those things.
People who have a chip on their shoulder about enjoying anything while it is also enjoying commercial success should step back and pay attention to how much control over her own creation she acquired,
I think it’s important to separate a disdain for “commerical” success from a willingness to point out the realities about Rowling’s abilities as a writer. If my beef was that Rowling is too commercial, and we all know that anything that is overly popular is bad, I’d hardly be championing people like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison as the ones truly worthy of greatness. Both of them have put out a great many bestsellers and are goddamn Nobel Laureates; Morrison is a favorite of the Oprah Book Club. Their works are assigned reading in classrooms all over the world. I tried really hard in my above posts to avoid mentioning authors who really are obscure, because I didn’t want to create confusion between “too popular” and “not talented”.
If I’d wanted to say that people shouldn’t like Rowling because her books are too commercial, I’d have told them they ought to be out saving Soft Skull press, or reading whoever won this year’s Booker and Whitbread prizes.
and now she can dictate whether or not a particular subplot’s omission from the film will create continuity issues for later films.
No she can’t. She can warn the production team that they should be mindful of small plot points that become vitally important later. But she doesn’t actually get to decide what goes into the final films. No writer really does. See, for instance, Michael Crichton’s huge rafting set piece from Jurassic Park that Speilberg felt free to omit, regardless of Crichton’s clout or his role in the preproduction stages of the film.
This, by the way, is a major pitfall of making the film version of a popular series of books before said series has played out. Especially a series by a clever writer who likes to give us a tidbit in one book and then later bring it back as a major plot point.
completely disagree with Hedwig comment!!! he was harry’s owl, one of the first links to the magical world…. gosh, and hedwig was inncoent…
In matters of taste, there can be no dispute.
While this is no doubt true, taste is not really the issue here. Or not as far as I’m concerned. You can like whatever you want. I like Harry Potter quite a bit myself, and also enjoy a great many other cultural products which aren’t “Great” or “Classic” or “Important” in any way. Or even very well made, at all. But there is such a thing as a well-crafted novel, and it’s something that can be understood somewhat objectively. We can all still like Rowlings work, even if we can also admit that she has this terrible problem about letting the plot run aground until a deus ex machina can come along to give it a jump, and REALLY needs to go easy on the “blimey”.
For those interested:
Black Characters of Harry Potter -
Kingsley Shacklebolt
Dean Thomas
Lavender Brown
Lee Jordan
Angelina Johnson
Others:
Cho Chang (East Asian)
Parvati Patil (South Asian)
Padma Patil (South Asian)
For those interested, there’s a rather bad article here, with rather good comments: here
Perhaps because Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle were also in the room, and it was their requirement that he not find the diadem? The room was being presented with a paradox of two irreconcilable requirements and did the magic equivalent of the first-generation targeting software for the CIWS on ships: unable to decide it simply RESET and did not specifically provide either requirement.What did Hedwig do? Like all of our pets, she was Harry’s most constant companion. People may not think my own pet does much of anything, but even the thought of his impending death puts tears in my eyes. Pets are extensions of ourselves, and to quickly and easily kill Hedwig illustrated how great and immediate the danger was to Harry, himself.
re: JKR’s creative control…
Rowling has creative control over the films, period. You may notice she also has an Executive Producer credit, which means a substantial amount of the money used to make the films is hers. Disney approached her to make a themepark based on the books, and was turned down over the issue of creative control, which is why Universal, willing to cede creative control to Rowling, will open a Hogwarts themed adventure.
In anticipation of an onslaught of 3 dozen posts on the auteur theory of filmmaking and the collaborative nature of the process, I’ll ignore any more egg-sucking tips for grandmothers.
My thoughts on the Room of Requirement are that it is a store room, and that when it creates other rooms for its occupants, it pulls stuff from the storeroom to make the room. Moody’s Foe-Glass showed up in the DA meeting rooms, and it was probably thrown in storage after the Triwizard tournament. The DADA books Harry finds were probably left behind by other students.
Also, Harry wasn’t looking for a room with just a diadem, he was looking for the room in which he had seen the diadem in the previous year when he hid the Half-Blood Prince’s book, so that is what the room became again.
I don’t remember if it is specified in the book how Snape found the group to give them Gryffindor’s sword, but my thought is that since Dumbledore invented the Deluminator(and knew Ron would leave and come back), that his magical portrait was able to track Ron’s usage of the Deluminator to return to Harry & Hermione, and so informed Snape.
And does anyone think the Deluminator was the coolest thing evah!! It explains how Dumbledore was always where he needed to be.
“Rowling, without being especially skilled as a writer, accomplished something awesome”
now that’s just silly. it’s such circular logic to say, but if a books not well-written, people won’t care to read the story. if i have to sift through bullshit, crappy writing to get to a good, interesting plot, i’m not going to bother.
for example. take someone like gregory maguire (wicked) who can’t write well enough to create a grocery list but who has really good *stories*. his characters are completely lifeless, his conflicts make no sense, the ending is forced, everything is flat, boring, dull, uninteresting, grey, blah. but underneath that, the story is pretty fascinating. and no one clamours at the bookstore doors to get their hands on the brand new maguire book.
but to say that rowling isn’t a great writer is fairly pretentious. harry potter wouldn’t get this level of exposure if it was written by maguire or john grisham or jennifer weiner.
i certainly respect the desire to snub things that gain popularity, lord knows i do it constantly. but at least admit that’s what you’re doing.
or hell, barring that, grab the book and transcribe a phrase or two that is written poorly.
rachel: now that’s just silly. it’s such circular logic to say, but if a books not well-written, people won’t care to read the story.
It is circular logic, and as most circular logic statements are, it’s plain wrong.
I give you: Left Behind.
It’s atrociously written - far far worse than J. K. Rowling - yet it’s become a bestseller. The authors are telling a story that people want to read.
J. K. Rowling is telling a story that people want to read. She’s not a good writer: she’s in John Grisham’s class.
No, let me take that “not a good writer” back. She’s not a great writer: she’s not a brilliant writer: she’s not an awesome writer. Nor is John Grisham. But I like to read Grisham’s novels, when I’m in the mood, and I like to read Rowling’s novels. Still, it’s fair to recognise: there is competent, there is good, there is excellent, there is the best.
Much of the discussions have been centered on how JK Rowling ranks as a writer, but little is mentioned regarding the team that is behind her. Can we assume when she was writing POA, her publishers would have insisted on giving her some help. How well she worked with her team I cannot venture to guess. Was she patronized because she is JKR, best-selling author? Did she allow her editors to make mincemeat of her writing? Did she listen to their suggestions? Could better editing help the GOF or DH?
I often wonder if JKR had been to graduate school and suffered the scrutiny of the Dissertation Secretary, would she allow errors that ended up on the “Mistakes” thread of Mugglenet.com? How could she and the staff at Scholastic miss the two blatant errors below?
Quote: “The cover of OOTP shows Harry in the Department of Mysteries holding his wand in his left hand. However, it is clearly stated that his right arm is his wand arm”.
Regarding the Cover of HBP, quote:
“The cover illustration portrays Dumbledore with a normal-looking right hand, but the text makes it clear that it is Dumbledore’s right hand and arm (p. 58) that are blackened and shriveled (p. 48), and that are still in such condition at the precise moment depicted by the cover illustration (p. 567)”.
People were obviously not doing their job, but still the covers went to print.
The blue tinge permeating the image betrays the fact that it was obviously retrieved from a closed circuit surveillance camera using Kirlian techniques, from which positive impressions are considered one generation of degeneration too far. The most controversial flaw is the slightly exploitative way in which the image of Harry on the front cover is artificially composited with those of the deceased members of the Order of the Phoenix, who could only be posed together after the retrieval of the resurrection stone from the periphery of Aragog’s former lair in the Forbidden Forest (this excursion was led by Quibbler publisher Xenophilius Lovegood’s daughter Luna, at great personal risk). Such public controversy as surrounded the origins of this image was dismissed by the wizarding world as yet another slander by The Daily Prophet, further evidence of the decline of its credibility.
The incident shown on the cover of Half Blood Prince is from the only known record of Professor Dumbledore and the young Auror together at the Pensieve, as related in chapter 30 of The Goblet of Fire.
Mary GrandPré and Paul Kidby and John R. Neill have performed at least as much magic as any of the characters they have helped bring to life.
Dumbledore and Harry are not at the Pensieve on HBP, they are at the basin the Horcrux rested in(it’s green).
You don’t think that hand looks withered? You should see Dumbledore’s other hand, tanned, muscular and handsome! The only reason it doesn’t look blackened is that it’s getting the full blast of supernaturally irridescent algae from the (fabulous!) uplighting in the horcrux basin. That, and the airbrushing and the photoshopping.
You don’t think that hand looks withered? You should see Dumbledore’s other hand, tanned, muscular and handsome! The only reason it doesn’t look blackened is that it’s getting the full blast of supernaturally irridescent algae from the (fabulous!) uplighting in the horcrux basin. That, and the airbrushing and the photoshopping.
You don’t think that hand looks withered? You should see Dumbledore’s other hand, tanned, muscular and handsome! The only reason it doesn’t look blackened is that it’s getting the full blast of supernaturally irridescent algae from the (fabulous!) uplighting in the horcrux basin. That, and the airbrushing and the photoshopping.my links (to other pandagon posts) must’ve put me in the moderation cue. sorry for the repeats. I’m all fanwanked out, now.
The book was slow and boring. Full of meaningless death and torture.. Bush and Bin Laden are not two sides of the same coin. If you believe that to be true, then you are a Cornelius Fudge. The enemy is at your door and you don’t even know it, which leads to more deaths.
The book was fantastic, I really enyojed it, however I didn’t expected the death of Lupin or Tonks. I heard rumours about the death of Ron, Harry or Hermione, but I knew that it can’t happen. I thought of somebody less important, like other members of the Weasley family. Like Fred or Percy.
I was so sad, when Voldemort killed Snape. I newer liked him, but when I got to know that he was in love with Lilly, I understood everything. That he was so cold with Harry, because, he was jelous of James. That Lilly loved James, not him. On the other hand it could be terrible for him, to look into Harry’s eyes, because it made him remember to Lilly.
Chiming in late (damn mono) in case opoponax checks in to say:
Thanks, opoponax, for patiently continuing to express what many of us found true: the books are engaging, but not without deep flaws. That this is a point of view to be respected appears to be a matter for dissent here. Whatever. I see this divide all the time. As much as I love books and movies, I also love to spend hours figuring out where they went wrong and how they might have been better. Many people aren’t interested in doing that, ok, fine, but why do they take such offense ? You’ve been polite and mild. I’ve enjoyed (and agree with many of) your thoughtful comments, and wonder if you know of and could post a link for another place for people who want to discuss what’s bad as well as what’s good about HPDH. Even if I’m reading old posts because I’m late, I am interested in what others’ think.
And even though, or because, no one is here anyway, my pet peeve:
Harry, Hermione, and Ron wasting half the book in the cabin in the woods is the worst element in HPDH. Every HP book has too much vamping, but the endless camping trip was like watching the worst Angel episode ever.
As usual, we find our heroes Harry/Angel and Cordy/Ron, sitting around brooding, whining, and bitching, while casualties mount all around them. Hermione (Wesley) does all the scut (intellectual, thus valueless, thus women’s or low-status male’s) work, until enough the show/book is half over, when H/Angel finally gets to kill something and get all the glory. Cordy/Ron takes off - in the middle of a war - for some shopping and a mani-pedi; Wes/Herm keeps doing everyone’s work as well playing Mum; H/Angel broods some more, and can’t be arsed to crack a book, even though the world is ending. When Cordy/Ron returns and performs an unbelievable task, H/Angel kisses hir ass, and when W/Herm has the nerve to be upset that s/he buggered off for a spot of the soft life, they think she’s just being a bitch as usual, not that maybe she had a reason, and hey, when will you have those answers for us, W/Herm, we’re waiting.
This episode portrays the full flowering of Hermione’s handmaiden/doormat status. Ron isn’t even a Nice Guy, he’s a total ass, a mental and moral midget, who Hermione has no reason to be interested in, much less lurve. JKR has the nerve, after preaching in real life that girls should not go for bad guys, to have Hermione marry one. Empowering.
Caukee,
Your analysis was original, painting a parallel with another Scooby gang, while noting the salient sexist points. Contrast your insightful contribution with the insufferable literature snobs offering little more than “HP is the SUXX0R & U PotterManiacs are PWND.”
I agree completly with your whole argument-
infact, i ws quite suprised but the intellectual thinking you had inquired into it.
but i do disagree with you on one accord- hedwigs death. I thought it was ONE of the most disturbing of the series. hedwig, was always tehre for harry no matter what situatio. Hedwig was so intelligent, always finding ways to get harry his presents for his brithday and such. I believe Hedwig was symbolisim in the beginning of the book that, ANYONE was up for grabs, and anyone could have died. Hedwig had a strong effect on me, she was harry’s first true friend and companion.