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Post by mummifiedstalin on Mar 26, 2011 10:56:58 GMT -5
I can't get over her excessive use of adverbs. I find them distracting and they take me out of the story. Regular author: "I'm mad at you!" he said. Rowling: "I'm mad at you!" he said angrily. RRRRRGGGGHHHH! That's a British-ism. American tastes usually avoid excessive adverbs and adjectives while British audiences enjoy it more. Blame Hemingway? It's something I've encountered a lot, though. On average, for whatever reason, it seems to be the case, even in essay or expository writing. American composition teachers will often tell students to use creative verbs and avoid adverbs/adjectives for the most part. British comp teachers will insist that students sprinkle in descriptors more often. Why? Who knows...tics of verbal culture.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Mar 26, 2011 11:00:25 GMT -5
derivative, formulaic, and I don't like them one little bit (though I've only read one and a chapter of a second, I think that's enough to know). They'd be fine for nine-year-olds, though. Loathe the movies, too. Since they were written for nine-year-olds, that's a good thing, isn't it? Heh. Seriously, though, I'm always wary when people criticize something for being "formulaic" or "derivative." What it seems like that often means is that something is enjoyable on the surface. Entertaining in a familiar way. Easy to digest? Is that bad? Sure, if we judge every novel by the standards of "Genius Novelty and Vast Originality"...but...really? Anyone who likes mystery novels likes derivative, formulaic fiction. Anyone who likes any kind of story that can at all be classified as a genre likes "derivative, formulaic" fiction. And everything fits a genre, even "avant garde" is a genre. EVERYONE, I would argue, likes something that's derivative and formulaic. What we *really* like is something that is once derivative AND new. Simple newness is just randomness. But anything good takes something old and makes it new somehow. I think HP does that. She's not Shakespeare, sure, but she wasn't trying to be. What she really did was re-invent the children's epic. Narnia and Tolkien fantasy epics had largely "grown up" (with a few exceptions), but Rowling seems to have brought it back around to kids. Now, the YA shelves are filled with similar types of long epic fantasy things aimed at kids. It helped make The Golden Compass series more popular, Eragon, and all the other things you see up there. It found a way to grab kids attention for REALLY LONG stories, not just books with the same characters over and over. And HP really is one long story, especially the second half of them. What I think she also did was take a lot of cliche'd things about "magic" and give them new life. Her type of fantasy isn't Tolkien-esque. It's magic of the casual Halloween type. Witches, wands, crystal balls, etc. But she tacked a serious back story onto that type of flimsy world of "wizard" schlock and made it live. I think that's pretty extraordinary. It's a fascinating balance of high and low (if Tolkien-esque fantasy is all "high" fantasy). Here, you've got kids trying to turn their brothers into frogs and ferrets (or whatever) AND the big bad wizard backstory with real world consequences. Fun stuff. Like I said, I've come around to defend it because when I first tried to read it, years ago, I had the same reaction: dull and done. But I wasn't really paying attention. Reading it with my son and seeing what he reacted to forced me to see it in a completely new way, and I get it now. It may not be the kind of thing I would have read on my own without him, but I'm grateful to him for showing me what I would have missed.
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Post by mitchell33 on Mar 28, 2011 22:34:19 GMT -5
she's a better writer than the chick who wrote those "Twilight" books which if you look the way she wrote it isn't very good. the adverbs don't bother me to be honest in the Harry potter books.
all authors do that.
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Post by callipygias on Mar 29, 2011 1:19:21 GMT -5
Hold the phone! Let's not start insulting Twilight. It's one of the few popular series that equals the greatness of the Potter series.
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Post by mccloud on Mar 29, 2011 10:03:43 GMT -5
Ooh, someone put extra snark in their cereal today!
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Mar 31, 2011 11:39:16 GMT -5
Hold the phone! Let's not start insulting Twilight. It's one of the few popular series that equals the greatness of the Potter series. Amen. Sign me up for your bookclub.
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Post by Weirdo Writer on Mar 31, 2011 21:58:27 GMT -5
Hold the phone! Let's not start insulting Twilight. It's one of the few popular series that equals the greatness of the Potter series. I find your views intriguing, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter!
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Post by crowschmo on Jul 2, 2011 12:25:39 GMT -5
I noticed when these books first started to come out how excited kids would get, and anxiously await the next one. I thought, wow, this is really popular. But, looking at the cover illustrations, I concluded it was just kiddie stuff and I wasn't interested. I did appreciate the fact that kids were getting into reading, however.
Then, they announced a movie was coming out. Some kids seemed happy about that, others were worried it would get ruined getting the Hollywood treatment, and they even complained that the images they had in their minds would be corrupted by the live action version, and were actually on the fence about whether or not they WANTED to see a movie. That kind of impressed me as well, knowing kids usually wanted instant gratification and were getting kind of lazy in the imagination department, and would more often than not want to SEE something rather than read about it.
Soooo... I decided to cave and see what all the hype was about. I got the first 3 books fairly inexpensively through Book-of-the-Month club. Then I waited til the movie was out before I read them. I wanted to see the movie fresh without having read anything first.
And I actually liked it. (Though I pretty much guessed everything that was going to happen). I'm usually not into kids' movies (hate them, actually), but this one wasn't overly "kiddie", even though, of course, since that was the target audience, it was kid-friendly.
It must be hard to try to write your characters growing up, and still keep the original age-group in mind when putting this stuff together. Sure, the first group of kids that read the original stories are aging right along with the characters and they have to wait (and continue to age) until the next book comes out. But, once the books are already out, young kids who read the first book aren't going to want to wait until they are the appropriate age to read the next one. So it can't be easy to have the stories and characters mature, but still keep that kid-friendly feel, and still appeal to older kids and adults.
I think Rowling did a pretty good job with that.
I've read all the books and seen all the movies thus far and am going to see the last one. I like the characters and the stories for the most part, though I was kind of hoping for a bit more at the end. I was a little disappointed in the way some of it went. There were a few things I thought were going to happen that didn't pan out. It seems like she just kind of wanted to get to the end because it was kind of long. (But that happens for me for a lot of stories, you get set for this big ending and it just kind of...)
For instance: Harry and Ginny. Absolutely no chemistry whatsoever. She likes him, he kind of thinks of her as a little sister, then all of a sudden, he likes her, too. The way it was written, I was kind of thinking she was putting together a love potion and that's what made Harry start thinking about her all the time.
There was other stuff, too, but I won't go into that, because I am taking a page from Joel and the 'Bots and saying to myself: "It's only a book/movie and I don't have to accept the ending the author wrote."
So, I'm writing my own alternate universe version, starting with Half-Blood Prince. I'm actually going more with the movie version characters than the book characters (I think of both of those as alternate version universes of each other, anyway - a bit different).
It's a bit more Snape-centric (getting a little sick o' Harry) and I've included some characters in more detail that Rowling just mentioned in passing in the real version. I've even put in some new characters - including a group of renegade house elves (will Dobby fall in with a bad crowd?).
Then I have a prequel in mind as well, covering Severus' years at Hogwarts (and Lily and James, Sirius, Remus, Peter, et al.)
We'll see where that goes. It's hard to write because I have so many scenes in my head, and once I start writing it's hard to get all that stuff on the page without losing it all.
As for the real book and movie:
Since most of the story was faithful to the books (with alot of edits for time, of course - definitely not CLARITY - do people who didn't read the books know what's going on?) it would be fun if the LAST movie went in a completely different direction and threw everyone for a loop and changed things up a bit.
I don't see that happening, though.
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Jul 17, 2011 11:08:50 GMT -5
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Jul 17, 2011 16:53:05 GMT -5
That's a weird article, especially at the end. It starts off by (reasonably, I suppose) blaming the attraction of Harry Potter (which Byatt sees as basically castrated fantasy...with any real sense of seriousness or mythic creation, cut off) on the way that our own lives are also disenchanted. A fair point.
But then she ends by saying the real problem is that people haven't been taught how to read well because "cultural studies" has killed our appreciation for great literature? Axe grinding, anyone?
I'm someone who still fully inhabits fantasy worlds all the time, some written for children and some not. But does that mean that I'm necessarily a naive reader at the whim of my psychological make-up? To be honest, I'm more mystified by the people who are "mystified" that adults could get attracted to "children's" literature. (Note in the article that the fantasy writers she likes aren't classified as "children's lit": Tolkien, Cooper, LeGuin, Pratchett.) There remains quite simply a bit of snobbery in this: I like these books, and therefore they are good, while the popular phenomenon of Harry Potter must explained in terms that reduce other peoples' tastes to unconscious (and largely infantile) psychological impulses. THEY read blindly, while *I* read with intelligence.
But even if Byatt's right that the books speak to a largely pre-pubescent preoccupation with personal safety (personal dangers and an impersonal world that threatens by its lack of comfy-ness), is that really fair?
What bothers me about readings like this is that it turns the people who read and enjoy the books into some kind of monolithic straw-man. THEY are people obsessed with certain psychological factors and are credulous readers who simply react to rather than reflect on their books. But Harry Potter is one book among others. Does its popularity really mean that we have to grandiosely contract and abstract any and all who like it into a psychological test case?
I dunno...it still just sounds like a polite way to denigrate other people. Even if it's true.
So what about me? I like Harry Potter. But I also like a lot of "heavy" stuff. Does that call my other literary tastes into question? I have a feeling that Harry Potter primarily got popular not because of its inherent merits but because, for whatever reason, it became something of a marketing buzz. They are quick, easily digestible, and fun books. And, at a certain point, they gathered momentum. Tolkien did the same thing: plenty of people read and talk about Tolkien who don't really enjoy reading him as much as they do the idea of what he represents. But Tolkien is a certain kind of phenomenon that goes beyond the stories. The same goes for Potter, I think.
I doubt that its popularity can be justified on the basis of what's actually in the books. They are decent stories that are fun to read. But does that account for the fervor? No, a lot of that has to do with the simple fact that a lot of people have read them, and they become a kind of cultural commonplace. Not many people really actually like McDonald's, but it, too, is a cultural commonplace. You can't explain its popularity on the basis of the quality of the food alone.
In other words, people who expect to be awed by Harry Potter on the basis of the books alone, in the same way that they are awed by more "literary" or less "well known" authors who speak more directly to them, are doomed to failure. Part of the fun of these kinds of things is sharing them with other people, and without the entire cultural and social edifice that goes along with them, no...you won't get it.
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Jul 17, 2011 18:18:56 GMT -5
ahhh, so that would let me in my lifestyle out. I'm so independent of my culture, any sort of flag-waving (whether literally, for a nation or cause or for a popular "franchise") misses me entirely and I can only judge a thing on its own merits, out in the desert or woods, with the coyotes and birds and bears around me. But I am really old--could have grandkids easily if I'd bred--and I think one reaches an age where books aimed at children just don't appeal any more. (Neither does Peter Jackson's version of Tolkien--very 12-year-old-boy vision of the thing, whereas the author himself was middle aged when writing it and there's plenty in there you don't even see until you reach middle age.)
I think you're right that Byatt changes her argument mid stream (which is like changing a urinal mid-stream--really not a good thing) and I was more interested in the Freudian analysis than "relativism stinks," for I think it doesn't. In many ways, it's the opposite of elitism, isn't it?
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Jul 17, 2011 19:42:30 GMT -5
That makes sense. Like I said above, I didn't like them until I read them with my son. And sorry to get cranky in the above. I just got a sense of her holding her nose while talking about the books, which is unnecessary.
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Torgo
Moderator Emeritus
-segment with Crow?
Posts: 15,420
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Post by Torgo on Jul 17, 2011 23:32:58 GMT -5
I personally stopped reading when I read this statement: "Ms. Rowling's magic world has no place for the numinous. It is written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip." While I do enjoy the occasional cartoon, that the biggest load of bullhonkey I've read all day. This statement does not reflect myself, nor does it reflect my girlfriend, her brother, her mother, and the various other people I know that enjoy this series (well...maybe my sister). It seems very much like an underhanded insult to those who enjoy the series, and snidely sticking one's nose up at them, claiming to be the superior because they wrote an "analysis" on the subject. While I did agree with several points in the article, I'd prefer not to have someone explain to me why I enjoy something, let alone someone who doesn't even seem to see any merits in it themselves. And one who never even met me as well. I won't even bother pointing out the inconsistencies with the books she's explaining with what the books actually are. That would be for the uber-nerds to do, and I simply don't care enough. I do question why everything needs to be analyzed in this day in age, even when it all boils down to opinion? This is a fictional story about a boy with a magic stick who makes sparkles with it. People read it because they like it. Why treat it as if some sort of blasphemous taboo? Why should we treat it like the psychology of homicide, rape, incest, pedophilia, ect? Seems like a waste of time and effort to me. To debate the merits and demerits of it is one thing, but the article is one-sided. And what irks me is that it's devoted to the one side trying to explain the other. and I think one reaches an age where books aimed at children just don't appeal any more. I must respectively disagree with this statement, myself. While I admit to not being fairly elderly, I'm 27 next month (though I admit, I didn't think I'd make it past 25), there is one part of my personality that I am deeply proud of, it's my inner child. I have gone far beyond the point of putting childish things to rest, that doesn't mean that we have to let our sense of wonder and playfulness die. Yes, I am an adult, and I like adult things. I like a good gathering of friends, having intelligent debates, and enjoys me the sexual intercourse. But I like sitting around in my sleep clothes on Saturday morning, having a bowl of cereal, and watch some non-intellectually stimulating animated television. I can't look at this from the perspective of someone beyond my years, but I know one thing, if the child inside me dies, then I have lost the purest portion of my soul. And if I ever realize that it is long gone, I will feel hollow, as if life won't be worth living anymore. I feel there's more than enough room for the child and the adult to thrive in the same being. After all, we can't become an adult unless we've been a child. Who we are as a child helps mold who we are as an adult, whether we lose touch with that side or not. I choose to nourish this portion of me, and I'm happy with who I am, which is more than I can say for people I know who have lost touch with it who struggle to get through the day. Studying the film careers of various filmmakers, I know I'm not alone in this embrace of the inner child. Keeping in tune with the Harry Potter theme of this thread, I'd like to offer the following: Alfonso Cuaron directed both Children of Men and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Mike Newell directed both Mona Lisa Smile and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I haven't seen any of David Yates' British work, but I hear fantastic things. Furthermore: Christopher Nolan directed both Memento and Batman Begins. Stephen Spielberg directed both Schindler's List and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sam Raimi directed both A Simple Plan and Spider-Man. Guillermo del Toro directed both Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy. Ben Affleck, star of Reindeer Games and Surviving Christmas, directed Gone Baby Gone and the Town. That seems like a fair amount of people who are in touch with both their adult senses and their inner child. I'd consider that a code to live by.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Jul 18, 2011 7:36:00 GMT -5
Torgo, I'll respectfully disagree with your respectful disagreement, at least on this point: I do question why everything needs to be analyzed in this day in age, even when it all boils down to opinion? This is a fictional story about a boy with a magic stick who makes sparkles with it. People read it because they like it. Why treat it as if some sort of blasphemous taboo? Why should we treat it like the psychology of homicide, rape, incest, pedophilia, ect? Seems like a waste of time and effort to me. To debate the merits and demerits of it is one thing, but the article is one-sided. And what irks me is that it's devoted to the one side trying to explain the other. I think Harry Potter is exactly the sort of thing we should analyze because it's become so huge and so popular. We should investigate the reasons such a vast swatch of the world likes this story, and "It's a fun story" isn't sufficient. There are tons of fun stories out there. So why did this one become so world-wide? I should probably clarify that, while that article irked me, I'm not against psychological explanations in general. I'm against ones that are so vastly reductive as that. I'm usually a fan of Byatt, but this one seemed much more about her than about Harry Potter, too. (Her comment about Tolkien, too: she reads it when she's sick because it's devoid of sex and therefore comforting...HUH!? I mean, I get it, but doesn't that say way more about what *she* finds comforting and stressful and a source of conflict than about the literature itself?) I also think that she's probably right in general. It simply *is* true that in Harry Potter's world, most things do come down to personal and family issues, even when we're supposedly dealing with threats to the entire world. Voldemort is ultimately a threat to Harry and his friends on a personal level rather than a serious threat to the world or an embodiment of certain broader notions of evil. He's a big monster under the bed that threatens his father figures (Black and Voldemort), and it ultimately comes down to a one-on-one combat with the background of being protected by a mother's love. She's right that these are concerns that show a world dominated by a pre-pubescent sense of concerns. The problem is that she dismisses that as unworthy of adult attention rather than looking at the ways that it can be productive, that Rowling has presented a thoroughly compelling tale told in that mode which can be alluring to both adults and children alike (in ways that, say, a lot of kids' TV can't), and which might actually be interesting for adults to sink in to and reflect on. She just seems to assume that if other people enjoy something, they do it by completely believing in it without a shred of reflectiveness. She points out how she reads all kinds of young adult literature with both enjoyment and reflection. But she assumes that people who read Harry Potter fall under the sway of their infantile impulses, and simply respond unthinkingly. I think that's a false claim that doesn't play out if you ever just talk to people who like the books. Most adults I know who like them read them with a sense of distance. They enjoy them and really get into the fun of the details, the spells, the school politics, etc. But that doesn't mean that they don't also recognize how the world Rowling creates isn't a real "political" world, how it often turns magic just into an alternative form of technology, how it casts events that should affect the larger world in terms of a tween's sense of relationships. I think complaints like Byatt's would be valid if there was a vast host of people saying that Rowling should replace Shakespeare as the poet laureate of our world. But no one says that. People who dismiss HP often assume that "fans" imply such a thing, but it's not the case.
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Jul 18, 2011 9:12:08 GMT -5
good rebuttal, mummy. It'd have worked an an op-op-ed to her article but that wash published 8 years ago.
Torgo, the child in you will fade one day, and it's not a tragedy. It's nature taking Her course. We age, things change, our attitudes shift dramatically. I still laugh--look at the topic of this board that I spend such a high percentage of my net hours at--and I still have great belly laughs talking with friends, but Harry Potter and comic book movies hold exactly zero appeal for me. No one I hang out with--mostly people over 65--cares at all about Harry Potter, and whether you believe it or not, they all live happy, engaged, fun lives.
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