Sexuality! and Poor Writing! - JKR's Mistake

[sistermagpie]

> Alla:
> 
> Great post Mike. What I am wondering about though is how the leap 
is 
> made from disliking the book or hating the book to calling JKR 
> herself evil.
> 
> I mean, she is a celebrity, so I am not disputing anybody's right 
to 
> call her names, but I am always scratching my head as to how 
people 
> arrived at that conclusion.
> 
> Meaning how they (not just Magpie, anybody) managed to figure out 
> what kind of person JKR is without ever meeting her. Of course 
JKR's 
> friends and acquaitances if they post on this list are excluded 
from 
> this statement, they met her in RL and I understand that they can 
> form a judgment about her, any sort of judgment ( I am saying that 
I 
> understand how they can make a judgment of her as a person whether 
I 
> agree with it or not).

Magpie:
Not me at all! I don't feel like I know what kind of person she is, 
but I can react to what she seems to be saying when she talks. So I 
can react to actual things she says in interviews and talk about 
that persona. And reading the books I don't think it's a leap to say 
how she seem to feel about the story. I don't think it's crossing a 
line, for instance, to say I think she finds it satisfying to have 
Hermione smack down certain characters based on the story. I don't 
think that's a general judgment on what she's like as a person. It 
just says "She finds this thing happening satisfying."

Alla:
> Can't writer write something just because her muse called her in 
that 
> area?
> 
> Is it a given that writer has to AGREE with what she writes? If 
she 
> would not specifically punish Snape or Dumbledore, but still 
> disapproves of child abuse, didn't she make it very clear that 
their 
> actions were wrong? ( well, for those who agree with this of 
course).

Magpie:
Sure a write can disagree with what they write. But I don't think 
that's the same as saying that nobody can guess at anything based on 
what the author wrote. It seems a bit silly, for instance, to say 
that yeah JKR wrote this whole story and had all this stuff 
happened, but none of it reflects anything about her at all. Like, 
maybe she really thinks that Harry's a tool and hates him but she 
was forced to write the story this way because the muse mugged her 
and tied her down and made her write it. There might not always be 
much point in wondering exactly what the author is like, though. I 
think it makes a lot more sense to just talk about the book, what 
the book seems to be saying, what the story is saying. It doesn't 
always matter how the author came to put that stuff down, because 
you can't know. Sometimes the author is looking at something 
completely differently than the way it comes across on the page.

Alla:
> I mean, when you read "Brothers Caramasov" or 'Idiot" or "Writings 
> from psychiatric clinic" ( not sure how this one is translated in 
> English, so just translated word by word from Russian), one would 
> think that Dostoevskiy may have had some mental problems.

Magpie:
I never thought that. Are you suggesting that people are saying that 
because JKR writes a bad guy, for instance, that she is a bad guy? 
Because I don't think that's the idea. It's silly to think that 
anything any character in a book does or says must be something the 
author agrees with--if that were true how could any author write a 
story? There would be no conflict. Author's aren't confined to 
writing characters whose views they endorse. Often they write 
characters who are being devil's advocates to their own beliefs. 
JKR's universe is full of conflicting characters, so she can't 
really agree with all of them. But I think there's a difference 
between that and looking at an author's work and seeing some basic 
ideas that the author believes that come through in his work. 
There's nothing particularly insane about any of those works that 
I've read.

-m