Le Guin's Potter bashing

[mranan at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 90630

Certain quote deleted for easy formatting
--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Jim Ferer" <jferer at y...> wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Tim Regan" 
<tim_regan82 at h...> 
> wrote:

> > Answer: I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics 
> > were carrying on about the "incredible originality" of the first 
> > Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, 
> > and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid's fantasy 
> > crossed with a "school novel", good fare for its age group, but 
> > stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically 
> > rather mean-spirited.
> 

<Enter>
I hope this isn't a start of another endless de ja vu of "Look that 
author bashed HP, so let's bash her/him back here" thread. While 
everyone is entitled with their opinions, I'd rather trying to figure 
out why le Guin would think so other than why she is wrong at bashing 
HP. The fact that we like something they don't like does not mean 
that they are doing something unreasonable.


First of all, le Guin is over 70 years old...I am not saying that old 
people don't have open minds, but the social and ethical environment 
they experienced over years differs vastly from us who were born much 
later. It is quite possible that her acceptance on a pop novel is far 
less than most of us, as you can find out from other questions being 
asked in that interview. And for those of you who know well about 
Taoism...they adopt changes very slowly and prefer to be "isolated" 
from political and social movements to focus on the scholastic and 
literary sides of things. They are never avid supporters of a 
particular trend, per se.


With that in mind, let's look at her comment:

"stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically 
rather mean-spirited."

This is all drawn from a very highly set literary PoV (AKA "the snob 
view"). And if you raise the bar high enough, you will see her 
points. HP wasn't that highly rated among the writing groups I was a 
members of, although most members were HP fans anyway. 

I am not experienced enough to tell about writing 
styles..."imaginatively derivative" mostly refers to the settings 
that JKR adopted from established (fantasy or not) books and yet did 
not derive far enough from the modern world, and as she developes 
more along the books, some appear to conflict with others. One 
fantasy/sci-fi tradition is that your create your world and the story 
happends under its rule, where in HP we don't find that necessary 
because the world setting is rather vague compare to big sets such as 
LoTR and WoT.  

"ethically rather mean-spirited" refers to the card-board image of 
B&W portrayed by some characters in the books as well as some words 
used to represent it. It is a bit early to draw such conclusions as I 
don't think this is what JKR intended to keep until Book 7. And I 
think whether this comment is reasonable or not depends on how she 
will write the rest of the series. This is one of the most fun part 
about HP, that Harry's view might be so jaded and many things were 
not be what was told. To strictly criticize HP on this issue based on 
facts up to OoTP, I would partially agree with le Guin.

>From the above one can see that HP was usually bashed due to its 
somehow man-made special nature: a children's book turned out to be a 
series actually grows with its readers, a result would not be 
materialized with its success business-wise. If it was to remain as a 
children's book, or not be have so many pop concepts that attract 
millions of buyers and be highly praised, traditional authors would 
not be so harsh on it. And ironically that is exactly where HP's 
literary highlight and originality comes from: It opens a route on 
using low-fantasy settings to create an vivid, easy-to-read book that 
can be mass-marketed to break the age barrier in reading. It also 
suggests a new form of fantasy fiction where the business concept was 
heavily favored over its literary intentions (whether on purpose or 
not). Which was, unfortunately, loathed by many professionals since 
good fiction was meant to be an higher art that only tells its 
greatness to selected targets who could understand and appreciate it, 
Not something so widly loved and blindly followed by the entire world 
like the earlier Disney movies. (Well, Disney were not bashed like 
that, they end pretty soon and they don't grow with your kids to make 
more money...)

To break down the roots: HP was hated among traditional writers 
because 1.the forever war between the "pop Vs. pro" debate in the 
book industry 2.the powerful marketing strategy and the somehow 
frightening global fever brought by the publicity after the initial 
success of PS. le Guin's comments just proved these once again. 
Don't ask her to find out what the fuss is all about, because the 
nature of the fuss itself was part about this book that she does not 
find appealing.