Good writer (was: Harry IS Snape!)

[Mira]

No: HPFGUIDX 141289

lupinlore <bob.oliver at ...> wrote:

> I think it's several things.

Thank you for taking the time to write this,
Lupinlore, and I am sorry for the late reply. I
submitted one shortly after your post, which was
(rightly) returned to me by the list elves, and it
took me a while to think about how to make it look and
sound better.

You have transcribed exactly my first impressions
about HBP. However, the more I think about it, the
more it seems that these are subjective reactions, and
the harder it is to put the finger on what hurts. I'll
analyse below what worked for me and what not, in an
attempt to find an explanation for why I, for once,
reacted to HBP the way I did.

> In the case of HBP, I think the romance hurt a lot.
> It just wasn't well done or particularly believable, 
> even taking into account that these are teenagers. 

I agree with you that (for me!) some developments
(i.e. Hermione loves Ron and Harry loves Ginny) are
quite unexpected. I much prefer the shy version of the
youngest Weasley to the amigdal-sucking, tomboy bully
without a trace of femininity that we (or at least I)
see in books 5 and 6 (the awkward Cho-Harry romance
was at least interesting!). I do want to hide away
and die of embarrassment each time I read the
Hollywood-style kiss after the last Quidditch match and
I find the various animals that awake in Harry's body
with various occasions become quite boring. On the
other hand, rationally I can appreciate the humour and
realism of Ron's Lavender experience, as I do find
satisfying enough the psychological insides provided
by Hermione's behavior and by Harry older-brother
delusions. My mind finds them interesting enough, in
principle, it is just that, unlike with previous
romantic developments, I feel zero connection with
what I read. But on the whole, I am fine with the
romance part.

> However, I think more to the point JKR is hurt by
> the way the 
> different books come together, or rather fail to
> come together. The 
> radical changes in tone from one book to another are
> jarring and work 
> hard against suspension of disbelief. Much worse,
> the characters 
> develop in odd and unbelievable ways, generally
> dictated by the 
> demands of the plot. I hold to the idea that in
> good writing 
> character dictates plot, not the other way around. 
> In the last 
> couple of books JKR has violated that maxim a
> depressing number of 
> times.

This could indeed account for part of my
disappointment. The funny thing is that, for me,
characters seem coherent enough for the first five
books; it is only in HBP that I feel like with those
soap operas where they change the actor who plays a
certain role between two seasons. I know Dumbledore is
Dumbledore, he just does not look like Dumbledore. I
know Hermione is Hermione, it is just that she has
earned a completely new face in this book. It goes for
most of the others. Harry is called Harry, but he does
not have any of the distinctive features that made
Harry Harry, he is suddenly a Dumbledore clone who
cannot do anything wrong, except infallible Dumbledore
does make mistakes these days. It felt a lot like HBP
was about completely different characters than the
rest of the books. Which, somehow, all seem less funny
that they used to be. The book is funny enough at
times, but most characters have become, frankly, a
little boring. Even with Luna, who I believe has two
of the most memorable lines in HBP, we are reminded
that she has a knack for uttering embarrassing truths,
but Luna never did this in OotP. It is not that she is
not a better, more interesting character this way. It
is just that she is a different character than she was
before.

> To make matters worse, the plot lines are often
> dictated by tired and 
> predictable formulas. JKR herself has said that
> Sirius and 
> Dumbledore both died because the standard formulas
> of hero literature 
> require that Harry lose his father figures. Not a
> very good reason 
> to kill a couple of characters with whom she might
> have done far more 
> interesting and original things, and even much
> deeper and more 
> insightful things from the standpoint of writing and
> literature. 
> Also, be honest, who that has ever played D&D could
> read about 
> the "quest for the seven horcruxes" and not at least
> titter, if not 
> outright guffaw? It was like she walked into a
> comic-book shop and 
> decided to use the plot of the first old D&D module
> she found lying 
> in the Clearance Sale box.

Again I agree only partly (possibly because I never
played D&D and have no idea what it actually is:)

In a sense, I loved every moment of HBP, and those I
did not, for instance Harry's speedy recovery, I can
still accept as realistic enough and necessary to the
plot. I loved Horace. I loved Harry's new aptitude in
Potions. I loved that Draco could not become a
murderer (although this does not necessarily makes him
a better person - I think he is still a few lines
short of that). I loved Ron's birthday surprises and
the first chapter and Luna commenting Quidditch and
Snape being in as much pain as the trapped Fang when
called a coward, I loved Harry's new appreciation of
his uncool friends and his celebrity status, I loved
the fact that Molly and Arthur still call each other
by pet names, I loved McGonagall standing up for Neville 
and valuing Hagrid's advice, I LOVED Fleur showing that
beauty does not equal shallowness. I could live with
the prophecy being overruled by the power of choice,
although it felt like an idea which Jo got from fans
and liked so much that she did not care about
practically cancelling all significance of OotP, I
didn't even hate the idea of the Horcruxes, provided
that Jo links it in future interviews with deeper
concepts, for instance by proclaiming how hate breeds
hate, I loved this and that and the other and I did
not mind the rest, but all in all, I just could not
care less. Perhaps I felt emotionally anesthetized by
Dumbledore's death, which I knew from the spoilers,
but somehow, it all felt so remote, so cold, so
inconsequential, so average.

> Worst of all, JKR has a bad habit, as I've said
> before, of writing 
> herself into corners and then getting out by, well,
> cheating. It's 
> like the old Saturday matinees where you see a car
> go over a cliff 
> with the hero inside and spend all week wondering
> how he's going to 
> survive, only to return the next week and be treated
> to a scene where 
> the hero jumped out of the car BEFORE it went over
> the cliff. I am 
> among those who thought JKR made some fairly serious
> mistakes with 
> OOTP, but I was hoping she would deal with them
> fairly. Instead, she 
> just swept most of the challenging plot-lines
> (Harry's anger and 
> guilt, Dumbledore's complicity in the Dursleys abuse
> of Harry, 
> grieving over Sirius, house unity, the development
> of Neville and 
> Luna, McGonagall's mishandling of Harry and the
> Umbridge situation, 
> Harry's relationship with Lupin in the wake of
> Sirius' death, even 
> much of Harry's hatred of Snape) under the rug with
> either a couple 
> of brief sentences or with no mention at all.

I am one of the few readers who actually liked OotP.
Despite the fact that Order members seem to come and
go and plot quite a lot compared to how little they
seem to be doing, despite the flat prophecy climax, I
enjoyed the writing in Book 5. The one thing that
spoiled it for me was Dolores Umbridge. Not that I
haven't seen, uhm, unsatisfied women becoming
blood-thirsty tyrants before; it is just that she felt
too, well, too much. But on the whole I still enjoyed
OotP. I don't see McGo's attitude as misguided, on the
contrary, I think Harry should have appreciated that
she treated him, for once, as an adult and an equal
and the many signs of support she gave to him; in fact
I have enjoyed McGo steadily more in the last two
books. I loved Angry!Harry and Depressed!Harry, I
think they were described in an exquisitely realistic
way; I loved Luna and the new Neville and St. Mungo's and 
SPEW and Grawp and all the things that other readers found
irritating. Yes, the writing was not perfect, but I
still found it thoroughly entertaining and emotionally
involving. And I believe (read: hope) that most loose
threads would be tied quite elegantly in Book 7, so I
don't take issue with them as yet.

> Finally, she gave us a plotline (the whole Snape
> plotline) in HBP 
> that was so blatantly manipulative it felt like she
> was wearing 
> boxing gloves instead of using the delicate touch
> that was needed. 
> And, given the problems above, she leaves little
> faith that she'll 
> resolve it without a lot of rug-sweeping and
> hand-waving.

Well, I believe that she enjoys her fans' theories a
little TOO much. Knowing that we hang on her each word
for clues, I think that she gives us a lot of words,
not only in Snape's story, whose only purpose is to
mislead us and start us on funny theories she could
laugh about. I don't find this particularly nice, but
on the other hand, I agree that after the often
abusing scrutiny we subject her to, she has the right
to at least a bit of fun.

> In the wake of all of that, I think most of the
> books (with the 
> probable exception of OOTP) are good judged on their
> own merits, but 
> they don't fit together smoothly or believably --
> even allowing for 
> the "Harry growing up" effect that is sometimes
> trotted out to excuse 
> some of the roughness. All in all, the story arc
> and especially the 
> development of the characters and the follow-through
> of challenging 
> plotlines just aren't up to the potential that shone
> through in JKR's 
> better work, particularly PoA.

PoA is still my favorite too. I simply love that book.
I believe it is the last written before Warner Bros
started developing the movies, and I believe it shows.

And with this I come to what I believe are the real
reasons why I did not enjoy HBP as much as the other
HP books. I believe that this impression is based
mainly on off-the-page mechanisms. For once, I have
loved the books for a long time, but I became involved
in fandom only between OotP and HBP. Since then, I
have read so many utterly excellent thoughts on the
Harry Potter world, from people so talented and
intelligent, that almost anything Jo would have
written was bound to sound a little disappointing. Not
because she is not an excellent writer, which I
believe she is, but simply because the standard was
too high already. It could also be that I have read
more and my taste has evolved in the last years, but
this does not explain why I still love the first five
books whole-heartedly.

More importantly, I believe that Jo's writing and
interests have evolved as well, which I see as the
reason why her style varies so wildly between
different books. I will resist saying that she seems
now to write a lot more for the sake of writing than
because she loves the characters and her story, I
won't even press the issue that her books read a lot
more like a script these days. Whichever way I look at
this issue, and much as I would love to read about
Harry and his friends forever, I believe that seven
books is probably too long a series for an author to
keep interest, to write tightly and consistently and
to stay committed to the same characters all the way
through. I think Jo is ready for different projects
now, and that such a long attachment to a single idea
is never very wise.

I am adding this paragraph after having read Pippin's
_excellent_ post about OotP
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/141269).
I must confess I never looked at it this way, but I am
entirely convinced that her/his interpretation is
correct, and I am looking forward to anything she/he
has to say about HBP, which I am sure would refine my
understanding of it too.

Mira


		
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