Follow-up on the Byatt review

[Catherine Keegan]

Potter critic hit by backlash as spellbound experts support author
http://www.news.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=752752003

CLAIRE SMITH
cmith at scotsman.com

THE literary world yesterday leapt to the defence of JK Rowling - after 
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was savaged by the leading author 
AS Byatt.

In a waspish review in the New York Times, the Booker Prize-winning Byatt 
said the fifth book on the boy wizard was lacking in any real sense of 
magic. She also compared Harry Potter unfavourably with other classics of 
junior fiction and said Rowling’s narratives were "made up of intelligently 
patchworked derivative motifs of children’s literature".

The literary backlash was bound to follow the publication of the book. Yet 
a second backlash - against the attacks - has kicked in surprisingly 
quickly, with the ink barely dry on Byatt’s assault. Byatt, whose novel 
Possession won the Booker Prize, said: "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 mirror-worlds of soaps, 
reality TV and celebrity gossip."

However, Byatt was immediately accused of wasting her energies and literary 
jealousy.

Lindsey Fraser, a literary agent, said of the attack: "I was at the Albert 
Hall with 4,000 kids when the new novel was launched.

"The kids were so excited, but when JK Rowling came out and read an 
extract, you could have heard a pin drop. Very few writers have that. I 
doubt very much that AS Byatt would have that effect."

And Randall Stevenson, a reader in English literature at Edinburgh 
University, said most creative writers took inspiration from many other 
sources.

He added: "I don’t think JK Rowling should be put down for that. 
Shakespeare used composites of other stories. But the combination is quite 
original.

"There are thousands of people around the world trying to imitate her 
[Rowling] - but there are none who have succeeded."

Marc Lambert, the chief executive of the Scottish Book Trust, said it was 
unreasonable of Byatt to attack a book for children as if it were intended 
to be a work of serious adult literature.

He said: "It seems to me that what JK Rowling does is put together an 
enormously entertaining and interesting world for children. If AS Byatt is 
judging it by other criteria she is making a category mistake." The latest 
Harry Potter novel has also won praise from Stephen King, the celebrated 
horror writer, who described the book’s evil Professor Umbridge as the 
greatest make-believe villain since Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs.

He added that Rowling was a natural storyteller "bursting with crazily 
vivid ideas".

JK Rowling’s publishers, Bloomsbury, declined to offer an opinion. A 
spokeswoman said: "We don’t comment on reviews."

Never afraid of speaking her mind when it comes to other authors, in 1995, 
Byatt lambasted Martin Amis, the novelist, for demanding a £500,000 advance 
for his novel The Information to pay for expensive dental implant treatment 
in the United States.


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