Byatt's attack on us (not long anymore)

[psychic_serpent]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "bluesqueak" <pipdowns at e...> 
wrote:
> --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Tim Regan" 
<timregan at m...> 
> wrote:
> 
> > But there is something lame about the Harry Potter books (though 
I 
> > love them to pieces), and I like the Byatt review for trying to 
> > tease that out. I've several adult friends who are well read, 
who 
> > enjoy good children's fiction, but who read them and just didn't 
> get 
> > it. Like Pullman <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-
> > OTChatter/message/12664>, I think that JKR has "the quality of 
> > making children want to read on without any effort at all" and 
it 
> > works on me too, but does the potterverse feel philosophically 
> > coherent, does the evil in it feel fully three-dimensional?
> > 
> I think A.S. Byatt has a very common fault; she confuses 
> simplicity with stupidity and originality with profundity. If a 
> book is plain in style, it's not a complex book. If it uses plot 
> elements found elsewhere, it must be full of cliches (we will 
> quietly ignore the works of William Shakespeare, whose collection 
> of plays contains precisely one original plot [grin]).

I think that another thing that bothered me about Byatt's review was 
that she doesn't seem to recognize that different authors have 
different strengths.  Pratchett's strengths, for instance, are humor 
and a facility with English I've rarely seen elsewhere.  His turns 
of phrase keep making me want to read bits of his books aloud to the 
people around me, they're so wonderful.  There are very few other 
authors who inspire me to do that, just to share what the author has 
done with the language.  (F. Scott Fitzgerald and Willa Cather are 
two of them, for me.)  I never really feel compelled to do that when 
reading HP, much as I love the books.  The way Pratchett's books are 
constructed, OTOH, drive me nuts.  One event just flows into 
another; I could do with some chapters, thank you very much, some 
structure.  This is obviously NOT his strong point.  (Not 
counting "Good Omens," which he wrote with Neil Gaiman, who has a 
finely honed eye for structure.  I'm reading his "American Gods" 
right now.)

I'm rather mystified about Byatt's inclusion of Cooper in her 
pantheon of authors whose work is to be preferred to Rowlings, as I 
found her Dark Is Rising Sequence to be extraordinarily flat.  It 
had wonderful research and a series of events that could have been 
gripping, but the way the story was told and (especially) the lack 
of depth in the characterizations made me feel the entire time that 
I was skimming along the surface of it.  It never drew me in; it 
always felt more like an academic exercise, investigating what she 
was doing with various British-based myths and legends.  I never 
felt invested in her hero or any of her other characters.  Cooper's 
two books about a boggart are much better for characterization, 
perhaps because, like the HP books, those stories are more about a 
collision between the modern and mythical worlds and the children in 
them feel more authentic and do not lapse into archaic language use 
which feels inauthentic and awkward.

Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy is far superior to Cooper's 
series, in many respects (IMO), but his writing does not grab the 
reader (at least, not this reader) at first.  I had to force myself 
to slog on until I reached "The Amber Spyglass" where, I felt, he 
really hit his stride.  It took two of the three books in the 
trilogy for me to feel that way.  Once I was there, I was very 
impressed with his fully realized world, and the rather daring 
philosophies he was putting forward in what is ostensibly a 
children's book (another categorization that's open to debate).  

But while Pullman's writing is more than competent and certainly 
never awkward, neither does it make one want to bash on reading at 
four in the morning to find out what is going to happen.  He doesn't 
write "page-turners."  Somehow, I think that if a writer's prose and 
plot are compelling you to do that, it's no small thing, and for 
Byatt to disparage that ability is to disregard the art of the Bard 
down through the generations--people have always preferred the story 
that demands that more be told to the one that is the most 
beautifully told.  It's human nature, I believe, to have this 
preference.  The most beautiful language in the world being used in 
the service of a pedestrian story is wasted.

I think that JKR has several strengths, including the ability to 
tell a compelling story, characterization, and the ability to inject 
humor into her stories.  Her humor is more ironic than Pratchett's--
it's very Austen-like, revealing her own bias.  While I don't read 
JKR for her language use, which is actually somewhat awkward at 
times, she is no less adept at creating another world than LeGuin, 
whose prose is lovely but also fails to create characters in the 
Earthsea trilogy who are fully rounded, rather than archetypes (the 
stilted language may be part of why I feel this way).  

That said, I've noticed, especially in OotP, that JKR only lavishes 
her characterization magic on the characters she genuinely likes; 
the Dursleys remain two-dimensional (despite Dudley's girth) except 
for Petunia, who is starting to show hidden depths.  Draco Malfoy 
and his father give no hints about why they feel compelled to be on 
the side they're on.  Her villains still remain lacking, for my 
taste.  I'm still waiting for them to come up to scratch with the 
rest of her characterizations.  This is why Byatt's mention of Dahl 
also mystifies me; while I love many things about Roald Dahl, his 
characterizations are also somewhat cartoonish (the Wormwoods in 
Matilda come to mind, or the aunts in James and the Giant Peach).  
His humor is more biting than JKR's, rather dark at times, and he 
certainly never creates a viable world (two books about Charlie and 
the Chocolate Factory and it still doesn't feel remotely plausible, 
even though it's loads of fun).

I think that the real testimony to whether JKR has managed to create 
a viable world is the fact that so many people around the world feel 
compelled to write in that world.  Fanfiction started a while ago, 
largely with Star Trek fans, but the current explosion of HP 
fanfiction isn't, I believe, just because so many people have read 
the books.  The fact is that as a result of reading them, people 
feel as though they could go through the barrier at King's Cross 
station, that they could find a town in Surrey called Little 
Whinging and a street called Privet Drive, that they could, if they 
looked hard enough and weren't subject to anti-Muggle charms, find 
the Leaky Cauldron and go through it to get to Diagon Alley.  

She has managed to make it all feel so real that it's possible to 
forget that she's making it up--it's more like she's stumbled 
through the barrier at King's Cross herself and is bringing back the 
wizarding world for our delight, and she makes us believe that that 
world goes on even when we're not reading the HP books, that there 
are many, many other stories to be told--about Snape, about the Trio 
when they're grown, about the Founders--that also merely need to be 
discovered and brought back to a waiting world.  Even folks who 
don't dabble in fanfiction feel that world is real enough to discuss 
at great length the laws, the educational system, the social 
structure, the economics, etc., etc.  That is probably JKR's 
greatest gift to us, and if Byatt has utterly missed it, it's 
definitely her loss.

--Barb

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