That ol' children's books chestnut

[davewitley]

No: HPFGUIDX 95641

I read this article (in real newsprint, on real paper - yes, it still 
exists!) in the Observer today:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1189466,00.html

It's by the author of 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the 
Nighttime', Mark Haddon, and he says a number of interesting things.  
I especially noted this:

"Genre fiction says: 'Forget the gas bill. Forget the office 
politics. Pretend you're a spy. Pretend you're a courtesan. Pretend 
you're the owner of a crumbling gothic mansion on this worryingly 
foggy promontory.' Literary fiction says: 'Bad luck. You're stuck 
with who you are, just as these people are stuck with who they are. 
But use your imagination and you'll see that even the most narrow, 
humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough 
care.' "

I recommend the entire article.

(The terms literary and genre roughly equate in his article with 
adult and children's or young adult.)

I don't want to suggest Haddon as a special authority but this 
passage struck a chord with my own feelings about the HP series - 
that in some rather hard-to-define sense they don't quite get to 
grips with the way that life is progressively limiting upon us as we 
get older.

Thoughts?

David