Lupin is worse was 'Re: Are there no depths

LadySawall at aol.com LadySawall at aol.com
Wed May 26 19:27:36 UTC 2004


No: HPFGUIDX 99517

In a message dated 05/25/2004 6:20:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Renee writes:
> She could. But in that case, she'd be a liar. In the Albert Hall 
interview, quoted in post 98769 by Justine, JKR called Lupin 'a 
great man', and the other things she says about him confirm the 
positive connotation this phrase has (if anyone can give me a quote 
where it's used in a purely negative way, to denote a thoroughly bad 
guy, I may have to change my mind about it). 
Melanie:

> My impression is, that JKR has a better opinion of Lupin 
than he actually deserves. Which is a testimony to the power of her 
characterisation: In RL the person you admire can be the one your 
neighbour detests while still being the same person (I'm not talking 
about situations where the neighbour knows more about him). JKR has 
given Lupin a number of qualities she admires and one huge flaw. 
Some of her readers think the flaw overshadows the good qualities. 
But to me, it's apparent that she doesn't.

And Jo Ann:

This is why I tend to be very cautious about accepting JKR's statements at 
face value.  She may or may not be trying to put one over on us, but there's 
also no guarantee that her definition of "a great man" (or "a deeply horrible 
person" or any of her other descriptors) is going to agree with my own, or yours, 
or the guy down the street's.

When we get to the end of the stories, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see 
JKR saying in interviews, "Well, there you have it...now you know everything 
there is to know about Character X, don't you agree that he's a (insert quality 
here) type of person?"  And a large contingent of her fans replying, 
"Umm...no."

Jo Ann


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