The way we read HP (long)

[caliburncy at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 30387

Hi all,


--- In HPforGrownups at y..., dfrankiswork at n... wrote:
[A typical piece of David Frankis brilliance: eloquent and well-
articulated in exactly that way that I never seem able to achieve.]

No promises, but I think I'm going to answer this in two parts.  This 
first part, this one, is an isolated and somewhat tangential response 
to David's original point, taking it in a slightly unintented 
direction.  It's rambling and perhaps even irrelevant, but if you 
believe the seeking is worth more than the finding, then perhaps it 
is nevertheless worth reading; I couldn't say.

The second part, when I get a chance to write it, will respond more 
to the specific points David raises as they are relevant to our 
discussions of HP, specifically surrounding some of our means of 
analytical speculation, and will be far less tangential, I hope. 
<crosses fingers>



--- In HPforGrownups at y..., dfrankiswork at n... wrote:
> These [Ebony's et al--ed.] posts raised for me what is a very
> profound question:  How do we read the books: analytically or
> imaginatively?
> 
> 1) Identification [with the characters--ed.].  I had never really
> considered this before, but I had always seen identification as
> immature, and the grownup approach to be objective detachment.  I
> believe that implicit in Ebony's approach is the opposite assumption

Well, regardless of what opinion is whose, I tend to think that 
*both* are necessary, and in balance.  You can't really have one 
without the other and have a proper reading experience.

On the one hand, books are very clearly designed to manipulate the 
reader.  Yes, manipulate.  I recently likened (as many have done 
before) the craft of writing to that of hypnosis--and for the purpose 
of this post, I will also add meditation.  And there is a great deal 
of truth to that comparison.  Consider the following excerpt from 
Alan Paton's novel, "Cry, the Beloved Country":

   There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills.  These
   hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond
   any singing of it.  The road climbs seven miles into them, to
   Carisbrooke; and from there, if there is no mist, you look down on
   one of the fairest valleys of Africa.  About you there is grass
   and bracken and you may hear the forlorn crying of the titihoya,
   one of the birds of the veld.  Below you is the valley of the
   Umzimkulu, on its journey from the Drakensberg to the sea; and
   beyond and behind the river, great hill after great hill; and
   beyond and behind them, the mountains of Ingeli and East
   Griqualand.

Notice that there is no character; the character is "you".  And in 
this sense, elements of the passage bear a striking resemblance to 
the kind of thing you might hear in a hypnotic or meditative exercise 
("Imagine yourself floating on a pool of still water . . . " and that 
sort of thing).

The same thing is ultimately true of any book, including Harry 
Potter.  The descriptions we are given may well be "Harry saw 
that . . . ", but the meaning is still ultimately "you".  Whether you 
are there as a disembodied observer viewing everything from a certain 
distance or whether you are there inside the head of the viewpoint 
character varies (not only from book to book, but from moment to 
moment in the same book).  Still, the end result is the same: You are 
there--in essentially the same fashion as with hypnosis or 
medititation.

This seems hardly surprising, because story-telling was at one time 
an oral tradition (and remains, to a lesser extent, one today).  But 
that's not the real reason for the likeness; at least I don't think 
so.  The reason is that the first goal of the writer is ultimately 
the same: to lull the reader out of a state of consciousness.  Notice 
I say the "first" goal, not the "biggest" or the "most important".  A 
writer can have all kinds of goals for his or her work, be it pure 
fun and escapism or the sharing of what the writer feels to be a 
little piece of universal truth or whatever.  But before anything 
like that can be achieved, the reader *must* be manipulatable, 
partway out of the state of consciousness.

So when I say the reader *must* be manipulatable, I mean that for 
much more than mere textual description, of course--I mean 
*everything*, including perhaps the most important factor of point of 
view, which appears to be the partial subject of David's musings.

We are, to a large extent, expected and required to identify with (in 
this case) Harry's point of view, and without that identification the 
books fail to function.  They simply DO NOT WORK otherwise, because 
they would then fail to invoke the "fictive dream": the cumulative 
effect of all this hypnotic stuff I am talking about.

Without this identification, the only books that would work are those 
that happen to key in precisely with the reader's sensibilities--in 
which case writing would be the most futile and intellectually 
stagnant activity imaginable.  We would then only identify with those 
characters that fit our pre-existing interpretations of "ethical 
righteousness", which would then lead us to never question 
what "ethical righteousness" really means, if anything.  You could 
never learn anything, because without identification books that have 
imperfect protagonists become unreadable.  And I've yet to see a book 
with a perfect protagonist (nor would I like it if I did).  The magic 
of identification is that we can support the cause of someone whom we 
might normally even dislike.  Even Harry, who we like on the whole, 
presents us with certain opinions that we partially accept through 
our identification with him, but which we ourselves might normally 
disagree with outside the "fictive dream".

So on the other hand (by now you've probably forgotten that there 
*was* another hand), we need the objective detachment too.  (Or at 
least subjective detachment, since I hesitate to say that any of us 
are ever truly objective.)  Given a character that we find morally or 
otherwise repelling, we would probably not want the magic of 
identification to take us *too far*, so that we accepted and approved 
unthinkingly of their every decision, any more than we would want to 
be unable to identify with that character at all.  There has to be 
enough self-awareness while reading to still evaluate against 
ourselves.  Yes, I mean "against ourselves" and, yes, that is quite 
possible.

Books (among other things) make it possible, because there are, in a 
very strange way, two entities of "us" when we read--there is 
the "us" that is basically the compilation of how we read, interpret 
and are absorbed by this "fictive dream"--but also the "us" that is 
the us of everyday, the real version of ourselves, with all our usual 
opinions and experiences.  I don't really know how to explain it, to 
be quite frank. (Can you tell?)

But the basic idea is that, I, for example, upon reading book seven, 
will most likely read about the destruction of Voldemort and have two 
conflicting takes on it.  The part of me that is currently within 
the "fictive dream" will take it at face value and readily support 
the "poetic justice" for no other reason then because that is the 
interpretation that the books present: that this is A Good Thing.  
But another part of me, the part that comprises my own opinions and 
philosophies outside of the "fictive dream" will be a bit less 
convinced, because that part of me does not really believe in this 
sort of justice--I'm something of a self-declared pacifist. (Can you 
tell?)

So there will then ensue a brief internal debate, in which my views 
are challenged against . . . whose?  Is it really the author's?  To 
some extent, perhaps, since I have just stated that I, in reading 
JKR's books, will have my views temporarily manipulated by her, 
presumably to reflect some of her own beliefs.  But the final 
interpretation, even within the "fictive dream", is partly my own as 
well, because no "fictive dream" is complete and all-absorbing, and 
my own perceptions taint an accurate coloring of the artist's 
intentions.  So at the most fundamental level, I really am 
challenging my own existing views against another possible set of my 
own views.

And that's how themes work, really--somewhere inbetween the "fictive 
dream" and objective detachment.  Reading solely for the "feel" of 
what's there makes it impossible to contemplate and appreciate what's 
*really* there.  Critical analysis of themes is very revealing in the 
one sense, but keeps the analyzer in such a distant state that the 
potential for the analyzer to actually be affected by those themes is 
pretty much non-existant.  So neither practice in exclusion really 
understands and experiences themes, I think.  It's the balance 
between the two that achieves it.

Therefore, for ultimate effectiveness of the reading experience, I'm 
not convinced that one can really survive without the other and 
accomplish anything meaningful whatsoever.  As for how these two 
affect our speculative analyses, that's another issue altogether, to 
be tackled in . . . Part Two. <cue ominous music>

Off to write more,
-Luke