Byatt's attack on us

[Anne]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, Jennifer Boggess Ramon 
<boggles at e...> wrote:
> 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).

LOL Jennifer, I didn't read Enid Blyton or Billy Bunter books either. 
In fact I never heard of them until I joined this group. Perhaps 
that's because I am :::cough:::older:::cough than the "typical" adult 
HP fan (whoever that is). I did read a lot of Hardy Boys and also, 
even more juvenile, The Bobbsey Twins (anyone else remember the 
lederhosen that Mrs. Bobbsey made for the two sets of twins for their 
bicycle trip??:-) I also read a lot of Louisa May Alcott, Jane 
Austen, and as I got older, Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Hemingway.

>

> 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.
> 

I haven't read any Pratchett but I have read the LOTR trilogy, plus 
the world's slowest book, The Silmarillion, many years before Harry 
Potter popped into JKR's head fully formed. Part of what I love about 
the Potterverse is that it IS essentially here and now - the 
Wizarding World is basically a parallel universe to our own. I love 
the way various geographical points in the WW seem to exist in 
between the molecules of the "real world" (Platform 9 3/4, 12 
Grimmauld Place, etc.)


 
> 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.

I don't know about that but I'd STILL love to find out more about 
Hermione's parents/family. Stephen Fry asked about them in the RAH 
interview and all JKR said was something like, "they're dentists; 
they don't really care (about the WW)"... which to me seems like a 
typical JKR red herring. She has constructed elaborate backstories 
and families for both Harry and Ron; why would she NOT do so for 
Hermione?? (My inner Hermione is biting her lip at the "injustice" of 
this particular inconsistency ;-)

> 
> >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.
> -- 
> 

Yes, the MoM's attitude during OotP and the end of GoF reminds me of 
the Edmund Burke quotation: "The only thing necessary for the triumph 
of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Anne U
(whose HP fondness goes 5-3-4-1-2)