OOP: Give OoP a chance! (Was: I Didn't Care For OoP -- So Sue Me!)

[Dicentra spectabilis]

No: HPFGUIDX 66025

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Cindy C." <cindysphynx at c...> wrote:
 > > Because the criticisms seem unfair to me.  
> 
> See, I don't understand how criticism can be "unfair."  Wouldn't it 
> be strange for me to read someone's positive reaction to OoP and 
> pronounce it "unfair?"  We all read a book.  Whether we like it or 
> not will be a subjective thing.  So unless someone's criticism of the 
> book is factually inaccurate, how can it be "unfair?"

Saying "OoP didn't do it for me and this is why" is not unfair. 
Saying "OoP sux because it's not PoA" is unfair.  You have to judge a
work of art by whether it hit the goal it set for itself.  If it was
trying to be funny but the jokes were lame, then saying that it failed
in the humor department is fair.  If it wasn't trying to be funny in
the first place, it's not fair to blast it for not being funny.  

You can express disappointment that it wasn't funny, but that's a case
of reader/text mismatch, not a case of Icky Text.
 
> IMHO, the fact that someone 
> like me who is heavily biased in favor of the book and wanted to like 
> it can conclude that it was a disappointment suggests that maybe the 
> problem was the book itself.  

But the fact that some people loved it means that it *does* work on
some level.  Just not at the level that you wanted it to work at. 
That's not a case of "you just don't get it" (i.e. something is wrong
with you).  It's a case of subjective taste.  I just went to see
"Finding Nemo," which most people love to pieces.  I didn't enjoy it.
 Not because there's something wrong with the movie, but because I
wasn't in the mood to see a movie about a father searching for his
child and having little adventures along the way.  Movie/viewer
mismatch.  That's all.  Nothing wrong with the movie, nothing wrong
with the viewer.

> > But it seems like OoP is being judged against the wrong measuring
> > stick.  Nobody likes it because it wasn't enough like the first 
> > four.
> 
> That's not my criticism of OoP.  I didn't like it simply because it 
> Wasn't A Very Good Book.  In fact, that has been my criticism of CoS, 
> too.  GoF was very different from PoA, yet both were excellent and I 
> liked them both quite a lot.  OoP was not excellent, IMHO.

And I think that CoS is pretty good, myself.  It's an extremely
tightly written little piece of literature -- sparely written, no
extraneous material, creative little elements such as Tom Riddle's
diary and Moaning Myrtle, and Exploration Of Serious Thematic
Material.  It's the book that got me hooked.  But it's the least
popular in the series.  That's because the elements in CoS that I like
aren't particularly valued by most people.  Doesn't mean CoS is No
Good, just that its virtues aren't widely appreciated.

> >  It's an orange that is being criticized for not being an apple.  
> 
> No, it's an orange that is being criticized for being dry and 
> sour.  ;-)

And that's subjective.  I didn't find it dry and sour.  Or maybe I
like dry and sour. 
 
> > OoP is the way it is because books 5, 6, and 7 are three parts of 
> > one whole story arc.  Taken together, they will function as one 
> > huge book with all the cool stuff that was present in the first 
> > four books; you'll just have to read all three of them to get it.

> Yes, but we don't know that, do we?  ;-)

Nope.  But I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.  And if
Books 6 and 7 are Excellent in the way you like, then I'll eat my
words with butter and maple syrup.

> Seriously, I think each book in a good series of books should be 
> compelling and should stand on its own.  

And that's where we get the text/reader mismatch.  You've got a
subjective ruler (as we all do) and OoP doesn't measure up to yours. 
That's not the same as Not Being Very Good.  I found OoP compelling
and I think it works fine on its own.  I really didn't feel that lots
of things were left unresolved.  It just didn't seem that way to me.
 
> > Try to see the 
> > thematic impact of OoP in the context of the whole series.  

> But at most, recognizing the thematic impact will only make me think 
> that OoP had thematic impact.  It won't make me think the dialogue 
> was better.  Or that the characters were developed.  Or that the 
> climactic scene was exciting.

You didn't like the dialog.  You didn't like the way characters (or
which characters) were developed.  You didn't like climactic scene.

I did.

And I was blown away by the thematic impact.  But for me the thematic
impact overshadows questions of dialog, character development, and
climactic scenes (which had me on the edge of my seat, btw).  

I prefer Big Thematic Impact over those other elements.  That's my
personal, subjective preference.  Much of it comes from All Those
Years Of Taking Literary Theory Classes, wherein thematic impact is
*ALL* we talk about -- most of the time, the books are extremely hard
to plow through because they aren't written to be Interesting; they're
written to be Significant.  

OoP blows all of them out of the water in terms of interest, believe
me.  I wouldn't recommend more than one or two of the dozens and
dozens of books I read for my courses to anyone not studying
literature at a university level.  They're just not very good reads. 
I didn't actually *like* them, even though I could write essays on why
they were Significant.  I liked OoP and I found it Significant.  I dig
it, but everyone will.

> > Just don't blame OoP.

> But . . . what else should I blame if I didn't like OoP and thought 
> it a middling book?  Surely it's not *my* fault that JKR wrote some 
> lame dialogue and didn't develop the characters!  ;-)

It's reader/text mismatch.  The dialog is lame in your opinion.  The
fact that she didn't choose to develop Lupin and Moody is a failure in
your opinion.  OoP failed you, but that's not the same as being Poorly
Written.

> Seriously, what is troubling me is that the starting point in this 
> discussion is that OoP is wonderful, so those who don't like it have 
> only themselves to blame.  "You just don't understand!" we are told.  
> Oh, we understand plenty, believe me.  Personally, I think there's 
> plenty of room to criticize OoP, and those who are doing so are being 
> reasonable in sharing their disappointment.  

The problem I have is not that people were disappointed.  OoP is very
different from the first four, and therefore some people aren't going
to like the new thing.  The problem I have is "I was disappointed,
ergo OoP is Poorly Written" and "OoP doesn't contain the elements that
I liked from the first four, ergo it is Poorly Written" and "I wanted
to see X, Y, and Z happen in OoP but it didn't, ergo it was Poorly
Written."

By all means, write 1000 essays detailing the reasons why you didn't
like OoP.  Just don't equate personal dislike with literary failure.

And lest I write myself into a corner, I'm not defending all of the
255,000 words in OoP.  There were elements I didn't particularly care
for.  That's true of all the books.  We might even come to a consensus
that X or Y Didn't Work.  But that's not to say that OoP sux.  Just
that it doesn't work for everyone.

--Dicentra