[HPFGU-OTChatter] Byatt's attack on us (not long anymore)

[Jennifer Boggess Ramon]

At 7:47 PM +0000 7/8/03, Tim Regan wrote:
>
>Essentially, the review says that the reason adults enjoy Harry
>Potter books is because the books are derivatives of the Enid Blyton
>and Billy Bunter books we enjoyed as kids.

Wonder what she makes of those of us who didn't read such things (are 
the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books the US equivalent?  I didn't read 
them either).

>She
>contrasts the restricted imaginary world of the Harry Potter books
>with the metaphysical wit, genius for strong parody, startling
>originality, and amazing writing of authors like Terry Pratchett
>(whom I haven't read).

The Spouse has been known to claim that the Harry Potter books are 
"the gateway drug for the Discworld novels."  That's beside the 
point, though.

I have read a decent amount of Pratchett, and comparing his work to 
Rowling's is about as profitable - and as reasonable - as comparing 
either's to Tolkien.  Okay, the comment that Pratchett "writes 
amazing sentences" is true - when he's on form, at least - and JKR's 
wordsmithing is, I think, deliberately simpler, never ornate.  I 
think that's a stylistic choice on her part, and I don't think it 
detracts from the story at all.  Does it make it less good as 
literature?  That's a matter of opinion.  If you want some truly 
stunning sentences, you can go to Faulkner and Joyce, whom I really 
don't enjoy reading.  Chaucer's sentences tend to be fairly simple 
(although it depends on whose story he's telling), on the other hand, 
and he's definitely literature - and someone I do enjoy.

Both Pratchett and Tolkien have the advantage that their worlds are 
wholly constructed by them.  Tolkien's is a constructed mythic past 
for our world or something quite like it, and Pratchett's is a 
fast-and-furious parody of everything that was ever based off of 
Tolkien's (and many other things besides).  Neither is wholly 
original, but they create mostly-coherent worlds.  Rowling's 
Potterverse doesn't hang together quite as well, I admit.  Part of 
that is time - she's spent far less time on it than Tolkien spent on 
Middle-Earth.  Part of that is a mater of circumstance - the 
Discworld absorbs change very easily, by virtue of its own internal 
rules, while the Potterverse requires reasons for large changes. 
Mostly, though, I think it's because the Potterverse takes place just 
outside of our own modern-day world - it has to accommodate not only 
Rowling's universe but the real one, too.  That's a far harder task.

In some ways, it's easier to depict a numinous world when it's far 
away in time and space.  The Discworld is both.  Middle-Earth is at 
least well displaced in time.  The Potterverse is essentially here 
and now.

>but does the potterverse feel philosophically
>coherent,

Is the real world?  It's not as philosophically coherent as Tolkien 
is, but even he's not perfectly consistent, and it's at least as 
philosophically coherent as Pratchett is.  Moreover, I'm not entirely 
sure that's a flaw.

I do wish someone (psst!  Hermione!) would give us more of an idea of 
the metaphysics of magic in the Potterverse.  I do feel that's 
missing, and it's one of the things that it bugs me that Harry's 
never worried about.

>does the evil in it feel fully three-dimensional?

If you had asked me this after CoS, I would have answered "no." 
After GoF, it would have been "maybe."  Now, I think I'd have to 
answer "yes."  Voldemort himself isn't three-dimensional at all - he 
barely manages two on a good day - but he's not the be-all and 
end-all of evil in the Potterverse.  There will always be another 
Evil Overlord around.  Real, lasting harm is in figures like Umbridge 
and Fudge, in beings like the dementors, in the relationships between 
the wizards on the one hand and the house-elves, centaurs, giants, 
and other beings on the other.
-- 

  - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon			boggles(at)earthlink.net
"It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the 
act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. "
	- Gauss, in a Letter to Bolyai, 1808.