[HPFGU-OTChatter] Ms. Byatt affair; (was: Check out this news article and respond!!)

[Przemyslaw Plaskowicki]

On 7/10/2003 6:03 PM, Tonya Minton wrote:

> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3055381.stm

Hi,

Well, I happen to observe all AS Byatt fuss, I'd like to make a few points.

First, let me quote Maxim Gorky: "You must write for children just as 
you do for adults, only better." And obviously JKR is doing just that.

Secondly, I belive that Ms. Byatt is missing crucial point. Writers 
exists for readers, not vice-versa. Books had two basic purposes:
- to give information to readers (manuals, school-books, encylopedias 
and the like);
- to give pleasure to reader.
Unless book does not fulfill at least one of that purposes it won't be 
read. And it doesn't matter if 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.", and it does not matter if such books met Ms. Byatt 
abstract standards of "good book".

All that stuff regarding escapism I'll refute quoting C.S. Lewis:
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been 
ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them 
openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the 
fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

Best wishes,
-- 
Pshemekan