AS Byatt - clueless

[abigailnus]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Catherine Coleman" <catherine at c...> 
wrote:
 
> Why???  What has AS Byatt done?  I've always been a fan of hers - 
> loved Possession, loved the Frederica Quartet (particularly Babel 
> Tower), loved some of her more Gothic, fantastical fiction.  I did 
> find she's a bit difficult in RL - I met her at a reading in 
> Blackheath a few months ago, and found her quite uninspiring to 
> listen to, and quite humourless, but I think some of her work more 
> than makes up for any character defects.

Catherine, you may have missed this the first time around, but about 
the time OOP came out, Byatt wrote an article for the NY Times in 
which she discussed the phenomenon of adults reading Harry Potter.  
I imagine that you can guess what she said - we're childish, incapable 
of dealing with the real world, and have had our imaginations formed 
by watching TV and Saturday morning cartoons.  This has not 
endeared her to the HP fan community, and especially not to HPfGU.  
I'm with you on Possession, although I haven't read anything else of 
hers (whenever I check out an Amazon site for one of her books, the 
reviews invariably start with 'While not as good as Possession...'), but 
she does come off as an awful snob.

You can probably still find the article at the NYT archives, although you 
have to register to read it (it's free).

Abigail