[HPforGrownups] Truth, light, knowledge, the WWF, Dickens and Trelawney

[Carol Bainbridge]

No: HPFGUIDX 43553


>darkthirty
>There is no abstemiousness from truth in
>Tolkien. There is, rather, an over-abundance of it,
>volumes worth. <snip> Not so Potter.
>Knowledge comes "after the fact."

Wait a minute.  I'm getting confused here.  Are you talking about how the 
characters themselves deal with truth?  I understood you to mean how the 
authors dealt with truth, that is, how true to life the stories were.

>darkthirty
>Well, this seems a bit dangerous to me, in the
>context of this thread. I wouldn't necessarily put it that
>way, but now you mention it, perhaps I do perceive
>something in the "spiritual exercise" that doesn't fully
>appreciate exactly how much, or exactly what, belief is
>being "suspended."

What exactly is dangerous?  Can you elaborate (simply and concisely please) 
on what you are perceiving as a spiritual exercise?  And when you ask what 
belief is being "suspended," do you mean instead what DISbelief is being 
suspended?  As in a necessary quality for reading fiction is the willing 
suspension of disbelief?  In this case the disbelief would be in 
magic.  Most of us really don't belief witches and wizards and their magic 
exist, but we willingly suspend that disbelief in order to enjoy the stories.

>darkthirty
>A realistic reading of the books seems
>to require the knowledge of what beliefs one is
>suspending.

How would you define a "realistic" reading of the books?  (And again, I 
think you mean suspension of disbelief.)  I have read innumerable 
interpretations of various texts, all claiming to be the most "realistic," 
but it all comes down to the framework, the criteria, the perspective, one 
uses to interpret those texts.  One could interpret the HP books using a 
feminist framework, a Marxist framework, and a number of other 
perspectives.  The interpretation would be considerably different for each 
reading, and each one would be considered the most "realistic" reading of 
the books.  I'm guessing that you are doing a rather Calvinistic reading of 
the books.  That's fine, but it's only one reading, and it's one which will 
raise a number of important issues for you, such as an apparent 
pre-destination.

>Rowling tosses asides about "our" world,
>posits a universe where "our" world and a parallel magical
>world exist side-by-side, and in this context, places a boy
>who seems "destined." That to me seems a context that
>could be perceived as compromising and compromised,
>not only within the story, but in the larger context of the
>books' popularity.

I don't quite see how the context of parallel worlds is compromised and 
compromising.  How is it compromised and what is it compromising?

>They are popular, I hazard, because
>they compromise. We desire a world where our "deepest
>desires" hold sway, a world where we just *are* whatever.
>"Just Harry."

I dunno.  That's not what appeals to me at all.  Quite the opposite, in 
fact.  Part of the fun of the HP books for me is imagining that I could be 
something *other* than "just" me.  I think that's one reason I love the 
Moody/Malfoy/ferret scene so much.  What fun to imagine seeing your nemesis 
get turned into a ferret and bounced around.  If I were "just me," I 
couldn't participate in such a world.

>darkthirty
>But Erised and the dialogue around it made it
>clear that the thesis being presented, in contradiction to
>the actual treatment of truth in books, was that Erised
>was a fraud. Erised becomes useful only when Potter
>has, in the context of the books, dropped the fantasy.

How Erised is a fraud?  It reflects desire.  Is the desire a fraud?  Is the 
reflection of it a fraud?  When does Harry drop the fantasy of Erised, 
thereby making Erised useful?

darkthirty
>My reading also doesn't find much joy in the Potter
>books, or rather, it finds joy, so far, only in the pathos of
>someone sustaining this fantasy, which makes life livable,
>in the face of facts, of evidence, of truth.

Facts, evidence, truth of what?  In any case, I'm not sure I would call the 
dominating emotion in HP joy.  I'd be more likely to call it hope.  Even 
so, I do see joy in the HP books, the most obvious examples of which would 
be Harry's winning the quidditch matches for Gryffindor.

darkthirty
>The
>books are more adult disguising themselves as children's
>books than children's books appealing to the adult.

JKR has said that she did not write these books for children.  She wrote 
them for herself, so I don't see how "disguise" can be an issue.

darkthirty
>The
>very age of the characters is the key here. "Wish I'd gone
>to school at a place like that, where merely saying
>something would make it so." Etc. Why are we grown-ups
>so interested in this school? Why is all the fan fiction
>about ships? There seems to be an advanced strain of
>"unconditional love wish fulfilment" going around.

I don't think the assessment of Hogwarts is accurate and I don't see how 
these ideas are related.  Merely saying something at Hogwarts does not make 
it so.  And even if that were true, what does that have to do with 
"unconditional love wish fulfillment"?  Maybe much of the fanfic centers 
around that idea, but an awful lot of literature does.  I see it as a 
rather human condition to wish for unconditional love.  In addition to 
that, I certainly wish I had gone to a school like Hogwarts, but it has 
much more to do with the fact that I hated my school and found it 
dreadfully dull and boring.  How exciting to think that I might have been 
going to arithmancy rather than geometry.  Even being bored in Professor 
Binn's history class sounds like more fun than being bored in my old 
history classes!  Now that I'm older and a teacher myself, I fantasize 
about teaching at Hogwarts!  It sounds like much more fun than I have now 
(and I like my job!)

darkthirty
>In my reading, Harry is, in
>fact, a greater hero than he could ever possibly be in the
>magical world of the books.

Interesting.  I think Harry is quite a little hero.  How is he a greater 
hero in your reading?

>Carol
>She writes in such a simple style, with lots of
>humor, but underneath it all lie plenty of serious questions
>about life.
>
>darkthirty
>Exactly. I am trying to point to the very serious
>question of the relationship between what we are, for
>instance, and what we know. We know the world is
>horrifying and terrible. Are we?

Are we what?  Horrifying and terrible?  Is this getting at the question of 
whether mankind is basically good or evil?  That if evil exists in the 
world, humans must be evil since we know it exists?  And you're looking at 
what Harry is and what Harry knows?  And be extension the question of who 
we are as it relates to what we know?  Not being a Calvinist myself, but 
closer to a Sufist, I don't see the world this way at all, nor does this 
kind of question come up for me, although I do like to think about such 
things at times.

darkthirty
>As support for this, I refer
>to the houses. They are all *in* Hogwarts'. And just how is
>my reading denying there are serious questions? A
>fantasy world, even in the pathological sense, or
>especially in the pathological sense, is full of serious
>questions.

I don't think I said your reading was denying that there were serious 
questions.  I believe I was stating a reason I like the HP books so 
much.  I'd say there are more questions in a pathological fantasy world 
than in a non-pathological  fantasy world, but ultimately, I'd say we agree.

darkthirty
>On the one hand, I get the impression that my
>reading makes some think I expect something of
>Rowling's "world" that I don't find there. This is just not
>true. I am stating what I do find there.

Ah, but what you find there is based on your interpretation.  The fun of 
much literary discussion is in seeing just how everyone can look at the 
same material and come up with different interpretations of it.

darkthirty
>A sense that, in
>spite of everything, Harry is "destined" to succeed, so far.
>Of course it matters.

What I meant when I asked if it matters was that it is a fictional 
creation.  It is not life.  It seems rather odd to question whether Harry 
was "destined" to succeed, when if the author didn't have that destiny in 
mind, at least as far as it's gotten so far, we wouldn't have much of a 
story.  In this sense, JKR is God and she has plans for her creations.  She 
claims that she has the last chapter of the last book already 
written.  That tells me that Harry's future is pretty much 
predestined.  Now if we want to look at that same issue within the context 
of the story itself, we certainly can.  Does Harry have free will or is his 
future predestined?  That might be fun to discuss, but I, for one, would 
not be able to say much about it since Harry has not yet gone beyond age 14 
in the books and I don't know the outcome of the book or the events, 
including the decisions Harry might have to make, that lead up to it.  All 
I could do right now is talk about predestination in general (which I 
personally do not believe in) and that would be a general philosophical 
discussion, not related then to HP.

darkthiry
>This group spends a lot of time
>debating the possible reasons Voldemort wanted Harry
>dead, for example. They debate what, about Harry's
>destiny, is the issue.

Yes, but until we know Harry's ultimate destiny, how can we know it was 
"fate"?  As I said, I'm not a Calvinist and don't see the world the way the 
Calvinists do.  However, once we all get through reading Book 7, I'll be 
open to discussions on Calvinist ideas as they may or may not exist in the 
finished story.

>Carol
>I don't think Dumbledore knew just how bad the
>Dursleys would be to Harry.
>
>darkthirty
>But Dumbledore had "learned" of how bad they
>were. And still sent him back.

Yes, but we learn in Book 4 that Harry is well-protected at the 
Dursleys.  My guess is that Dumbledore arranged some sort of charm or 
protection for Harry when Harry first went to the Dursleys, before he 
learned just how bad the Dursleys were.  At the end of Book 4, Ron tells 
Harry that Dumbledore wants him to go first to the Dursley's house before 
going to the Weasley's.  It seems like that is more for Harry's protection 
than some insensitivity on Dumbledore's part.  Again, it's really hard to 
know what's going on because we don't have all the details that may come 
out in the last 3 books.

darkthirty
>But Carol, what is an understanding of the text?
>Are you suggesting that *only* debates about Crouch's
>mark (?), Moody's (?) foe glass, Voldemort's reason for
>wanting Harry dead, the houses to which the Marauders
>belonged etc. etc. add "understanding" to the text?

No, I'm not suggesting that at all.  I believe I was referring quite 
specifically to the specific method of literary criticism that sees a text 
as a reflection of an author's subconscious.  It presumes to know what is 
in an author's mind based on what is in the books and therefore presumes to 
understand what the author intended.  I find that mode of criticism to be 
quite presumptuous since none us can *know* what is in anyone else's mind 
or what they really intended.  As I said, it's fun to discuss, but doesn't 
tell us about the *text*.

darkthirty
>My reading, indeed, is exactly the
>opposite of this. 1500 pages. That's all we have.
>We should have cleared up all the bits long ago.

I disagree.  The series isn't completed and we don't have all the 
details.  Some of what has been discussed will, I'm betting, be cleared 
up.  Some of it won't be.  Good fiction allows for a great deal of 
ambiguity; that's part of what makes it so good.   People are still 
debating issues in Shakespeare's works and one would certainly say that 
THOSE bits should have been cleared up by now. After all, it's been over 
500 years!

darkthirty
>Instead of looking at the world of the books as self-
>contained, which, as I have pointed out a few times now,
>Rowling herself plots against, I can only look at them as
>they really are -

But isn't the issue in part exactly *what* they really are?  I don't think 
anyone here has a corner on that reality.  And the worlds of all works of 
fiction are self-contained.  It doesn't matter how closely they resemble 
the real world or not.  They are a world in which the events in them take 
place.  Neither the events nor the characters exist outside the books.  Or 
are you referring to the Hogwarts world within the world in the books?  Two 
separate things.

darkthirty
><snip> If I am talking
>about anyone's "subconscious," I am talking about the
>adult readers'. This is completely tied to the canon, it is
>not some comment about fantasy books in general.

My comments about the subconscious was in response to your following statement:
 >I'm not sure how much of this line Rowling is conscious of when she
 >writes. I have no intention in this post of addressing that
 >particular moot area.

I wasn't criticizing you or questioning your ideas; I was simply adding 
some information about a method of literary criticism that does consider 
what authors bring to their writing subconsciously.

Carol Bainbridge
(kaityf at jorsm.com)

http://www.lcag.org