Defend OOTP against my horribly Muggle mind

[A Featheringstonehaugh]

No: HPFGUIDX 76468

Message: 23
   Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2003 17:11:14 -0000
   From: "artcase" <artcase at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Defend OOTP against my horribly Muggle mind!

 
My Dear Art, 
 
     I  feel obliged to respond to your recent post.  You wrote in part:
 
> I still stand by my insistence that GOF was grammatically a nightmare. 

AF:  Indeed. Speaking of grammatical nightmares......
 
<snip, snip, sssssssnip>

<This WILL sound harsh. Every writer gets lucky and slips in the "purple prose" that <trickles down from the Muse.
 
AF:  Yes.  "Spare" us, (PLEASE), from "cliches" such as "purple prose that trickles down from the Muse."  and from the "overuse" of ("punctuation") marks and CAPS. 
 
< JKR has the "world" of HP beautifully developed in her imagination. For that, 
<the series warrants a nod. Her lack of training and experience show 
<in her writing, but are improving the more training and experience 
<she receives.
 
AF:  What is improving  -  JKR's lack of training and experience?  And this perceived lack of training and experience is improving with  ____ training and experience?
 
< Almost every beginning writer WILL make mistakes, and 
<their (sic) work in retrospective (sic) improves with age.
 
AF: "their" and "In retrospective"? Typos, no doubt. Surely you intended to write "his" and "in retrospect".  
 
<To qualify any of these books as stunning examples of Literature would be an insult to 
<Strunk & White for starters. 

 
AF:  To qualify?  Even with that curious word choice, perhaps a better phrasing would be:   "To qualify any of these books as stunning examples of Literature would, for a start, be an insult to Strunk and White."

< I will not disqualify 
 
AF: And now disqualify?  Qualification or the lack thereof is important to you, isn't it?
 
< that the world of HP is wondrous and (if I dare abuse the pun) "magical," but it is not <Literature (with a capital "L" as taught in moldy institutions around the globe) in the 
<true sense of the word. 
 
AF:  Quite the run-on sentence.  Additionally, I am puzzled as to why one would expect a world to be Literature.  Are we to assume you intended to say that the books describing the HP world are not Literature?

<Despite the examples I have listed above, I (and many others as 
<evident (sic) by this list traffic) still love the books and the world of HP.
 
AF: As evidenced by.    
 
 <Maybe, just maybe, that helps qualify it
 
AF: Examples and books being plural, I'm certain you  intended to write "...maybe, just maybe, those (examples) help to qualify them (the HP books)...   
 
 <as literature.

Art

AF:  Surely , just surely, you meant Literature, not literature. Let's not forget that capital letter, shall we?  Ah, well.   Perhaps with more training and experience, you too will write with more -- as you so memorably phrased it --  training and experience. 
 
 
A. Featheringstonehaugh 









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