Harry Potter vs. Lord of the Rings

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 108851

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Cathy Drolet" <cldrolet at s...> 
wrote:

Cathy Drolet:
> This is only my opinion if you're interested in reading the books.
> 
> Harry Potter (HP to save myself typing) is by far the easier read 
> for several reasons. Lord of the Rings (LOTR) is set in a  
> completely made up fantasy world, in a completely different, long-
> ago time.  The language is different, it's older style English, and 
> some Elvish (an invented language, most of which is translated in 
> the books). The main story of HP starts in 1991.  It is a fantasy 
> world, but it is a magical world within the normal world of the 
> United Kingdom.  The magical world is, for the most part, hidden 
> from the normal world, but you see enough of the normal world to 
> know it is there.  The language, apart from magical words that you 
> will learn the meaning of in the books, is the same language as we 
> speak (apart from some Britishisms like jumper for sweater and 
> fringe meaning bangs).


Geoff:
Don't forget that it is a English book written in UK English and that 
the substitutions which you have mentioned along with things like the 
replacement of "s" by "z" and "ou" by "u" are external to the 
writer's output. 

Tolkien's world is meant to be our world many thousands of years ago. 
As he comments in the prologue to "FOTR": "Those days, the Third Age 
of Middle-Earth, are now long past and the shape of all lands has 
been changed; but the regions n which Hobbits then lived were 
doubtless the same as those in which they still linger: The North-
West of the Old World, east of the Sea." So it is a fantasy world but 
within the normal world so there is a parallel with Harry's world.


Cathy Drolet: 
> Professor Tolkien (LOTR) could be a very, very wordy man.  He could 
> take several paragraphs to describe what J.K. Rowling (HP) 
> describes in a few sentences.  I know people who, when re-reading 
> LOTR, don't read any of the descriptive stuff, just jump from 
> dialogue to dialogue.


Geoff:
I, for one, don't - because the wordiness is there for a purpose; to 
build a detailed picture of a world being changed, a world under 
threat. I find that his writing produces a superb mental picutre of a 
landscape or a scene. JKR doesn't need to do this because so often 
her story turns on the interaction of individuals and not the 
interplay of mighty armies.


Cathy Drolet:
> LOTR is one long book.  My single book edition is 1008 pages not 
including the Appendices (which are a very good read on their own).  
However, it is mostly published as three books called, in reading 
order: 'The Fellowship of the Ring', 'The Two Towers', and 'The 
Return of the King'.  You cannot read any one of those books and have 
any idea of the whole story.  (It is sometimes published as seven 
books, which makes it even worse.  However, I've only ever seen this 
as a boxed set.)


Geoff:
Yes but bear in mind why. The book was published in three volumes 
because of the paper shortages of the time and that the whole book in 
one would have carried a prohibitive price tag in thos days. It is, 
as you say, one story and the three volumes are divided into six 
books for structural purposes - an idea frequently used in writing.

Finally, just to underline some of the points I have made, I repeat 
part of a posting I wrote last year on the group as message 76390:

*****************
I first read Tolkien in 1955, a year after the last volume was
published and it grabbed me straight away. For many years I read it
annually and have now done so at least 25-30 times. Nowadays I don't
go to it so regularly because of other JRRT stuff which has been
published posthumously.

To be realistic, there is a gulf between JRRT and JKR partly because
of the style and perhaps the depth of the stories. Tolkien is a
master wordsmith and was basing the epic on a baseload of "myth"
which he had been amassing for 40 years (at the time when LOTR first
appeared). His writing is very detailed and his word pictures conjure
up incredibly vivid pictures in my mind. LOTR however was not a
children's book on publication although it initially grew out of a
children's book.

I have gained more enjoyment out of the Potter books than any other
juvenile fiction I have read. I think the way in which the books grow
darker and tackle deeper problems (such as gratuitous killing in GOF)
is a tribute to the writer's skill. If we are seeing it from Harry's
POV, PS shows us a naive, gauche boy taking tentative steps into a
strange, exciting and unsettling new world. We see him growing in
confidence (sometimes unfounded!) and experience and the latest books
are now tackling themes which would not be out of place in fiction
written specifically for adults.

Frankly, I would rather read something like the books I have
mentioned or watch things like Star Trek than get involved in themes
which mirror real life - family rows, affairs, terrorist violence
etc. Escapist maybe, but the volume of traffic on this site shows
that many of us can not only enjoy this material but let our own
imaginations speculate how we might write the next book or how we
would the characters to develop; we may disagree politely with each
other over who is going to betray whom whether Petunia is a closet
witch but it is all very stimulating stuff whether there are split
infinitives or not. I can handle Tolkien and Rowling and enjoy them
both absolutely without comparing which of the two worlds are better
defined or described.
*****************