In Defense of PoA and GoF

[prefectmarcus at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 27557

Let's face it, the best reason of all to read PoA is the last 
Paragraph.  It is, by far, the best closing of any of the books.  I 
would have loved to seen the look on Uncle Vernon's face, wouldn't 
you?

As for GoF needing cutting, I sincerely don't think so.  Let's not 
forget that one of the strengths of Rowling's writing is her sense of 
pace.  Her high energy moments are always counterbalanced with low 
energy moments.  My favorite example is from SS.  After dealing with 
Quirrel, we have Dumbledore joking about a toilet seat.

There is a tremendous amount of high energy stuff going on in GoF.  
There is a tremendous amount of setup for future novels in there.  If 
you cut out the "unimportant" stuff, you run a very real risk of 
losing that delicate balance she tries so hard to achieve.

In the final analysis, it comes down to a gut feeling.  I used to be 
a Tom Clancy fan.  I can't stand to read him anymore.  Why? Because 
his later novels just got bigger and bigger and bigger without adding 
anything to the core story.  They simply got overweight.  I could 
skip 20 pages at a time and not miss anything.

When I finish GoF, I get the feeling of eating a well-balanced meal.  
I honestly can't think of anything I would cut out.  It all fits.  It 
all is balanced.  It flows.  Cutting just for the sake of cutting so 
we can fit it inside of an artifical boundary is wrong, IMO.

When I first read "Lord of the Rings" as a teenager, I thought it was 
over long.  There were entire sections I would of sliced out.  Now 
when I read it 30 years later, I find many of those "poor" sections 
have become some of my favorite parts.

JKR has stated several times that HP4 was always envisioned as being 
a large book.  She never realized how big until she actually wrote 
it.  She also predicts HP7 to be huge.  All the rumors of HP5 being 
as big or bigger are just that, rumors.  Until the book is coming 
close to publishing, I don't think we really need to worry about 
OoP's size.

Marcus