Literary value and fan interaction - please help with my research!

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 162750

bboyminn wrote:
> 
> First let me say that I have no idea what 'literature' or
> 'literary' means. Apparently, to some, it means dull 
> boring high-brow pseudo-intellectual writing in which the
> author is intent on proving (at least to himself) that he
> is smarter than you. And that by reading and approving of
> his book, you are simply trying to bask in the glow of
> the author's towering intellect.

Carol responds:
Or it could mean what it used to mean when I was an undergraduate,
written works that have stood the test of time, books that continue to
be meaningful for tens or hundreds or thousands of years. If
Literature meant "boring high-brow pseudo-intellectual writing in
which the author is intent on proving (at least to himself) that he is
smarter than you," it would largely be confined to James Joyce.
(Granted, some other classics, such as "Moby Dick," may seem to fit
this definition, but they were written with other motivations and at
least some readers find it rewarding to study and interpret them.)
These days, literature professors argue that there are no universals,
but I disagree. Love, death, fear, courage, loss, joy, triumph,
defeat--all those emotions and experiences are universal or nearly so,
as is the conflict between good and evil, however we define those
terms. So I would say that literature is the expression of those
themes and others in story form. *Good* literature involves the reader
in the struggle (conflict is a necessary element of literature). I
know that others will disagree with my definition, but that view is
the reason that I earned my PhD in literature and considered that
subject (and English composition) important enough to spend eighteen
years of my life teaching it.

bboyminn: 
> As far as 'criticism', I am equally baffled. Apparently, a critic is
someone who compains about everything, and especially about whatever
his area of alledged expertise is.

Carol:
Ah. You've touched on one of my pet peeves. Literary criticism has
always had an element of evaluation as well as analysis, too often
(IMO) leading to attacks on works that don't meet the critic's
standards for a particular genre. However, not all types of criticism
lead in the same direction. Textual analysis, for example, simply
examines the literary work and tries to interpret its symbolism,
themes, plot and story structure, and narrative technique. Above all,
it examines the characters--their relationships, their conflicts,
their motivations, their development. Postmodern criticism, however,
has other goals, mostly critical in the sense you're talking about,
examining a work to see how well it gets across the preconceived
values of the critic. A feminist critic, for example, is interested
solely in the depiction of women. A Marxist critic examines the
economic and social structure of the work. A deconstructionist critic
examines the language in the work to show how it fails to communicate
the author's intentions, so far as they can be determined, having
themselves been expressed, if at all, through language. Cultural
studies considers all forms of expression, from graffiti to the King
James Bible, to be of equal value, all of them merely illustrating the
values of a given culture. (Okay, I'm oversimplified and biased
against these postmodern forms of criticism, but none of them, IMO,
really helps us to understand the work itself or to interpret it
because all of them are using the literary work to demonstrate
something outside the work that fits with the critic's own philosophy
or political agenda.) Please, everybody, don't throw rotten pumpkins
at me!

bboyminn:
> 
> Is JKR a great writer, not necessarily, but she IS a great
storyteller. I think of many 'folk' storytellers in
> the oral tradition; the gramma suck, they use regional
> idioms, and speak in lower than common language. In other
> words, they do it all wrong, yet they manage to hold their
> listener's spellbound. That is that magic of a great 
> story teller, and I think JKR has that magic. <snip>

Carol:
I wouldn't place JKR in the oral tradition, which BTW had its own
formulas. (Ever notice how everything comes in threes, rather like the
formula for most jokes? Sorry; I'm oversimplifying again. But even the
Anglos-Saxon bards had their kennings, e.g., "whale path" for "sea,"
and the Greek epic poets had their epithets, e.g., "ox-eyed Hera,"
"wine-dark sea" to help them remember their story and make it fit the
meter.) Yes, JKR writes fairly simply, especially in the early books,
because her intended readers are children, and given the attention
span of many children and the limited time available for adult readers
to ponder the message, simplicity is probably a virtue. It does, as
you say, enable the reader to picture the scene and characters for
him- or herself, and it does speed up the story. In, say, the
nineteenth century, when books were often read aloud to the whole
family and there were no movies, TV, or computers to make us all
impatient, the writing style in general was more leisurely and more
detailed, both in sentence structure and description. Point-of-view
was also more likely to be omniscient, with the narrative voice
sometimes commenting, perhaps ironically, on the events, before Henry
James came up with his idea that the story should be told from a
single (not necessarily reliable) point of view. At any rate, JKR
experiments with story structure, combining genres and sometimes
following, sometimes violating, the expectations set up by a given
genre. What she's doing is not as simple as it looks, and while she
borrows (and adapts) creatures and traditions from myth and folklore,
her novels really have little in common with the folk tale genre
except the deceptively simple style. When have we ever encountered an
unreliable narrator in a folk tale?

bboyminn:
> Further, JKR has created flawed charaters, we see Harry as lazy,
withdrawn, unreasonable, forgetful, and any number of other
characteristics that we also see in ourselves. These books would be
loved by the religious right, but gathering dust on bookstore shelves
if JKR has tried to force a moral message into the story. She has a
story to tell, a story of characters who make mistakes. She doesn't
put moral messages into the story, she just tells the story of people
as they exist in her imagination, and lets what ever moral message we
might derive spring forth from the story. <snip>

Carol:
I agree that readers of all ages identify with her flawed characters,
and certainly we react differently to different characters. I
disagree, though, that her moral message is concealed (though Harry
hasn't gotten it yet). It's pretty clear (to me) that her messages
include mercy rather than revenge, trusting others to learn from their
mistakes, being kind to your subordinates or dependents, equality for
all races. There's an element of multiculturalism and a condoning of
rule-breaking that make me uncomfortable, but that's just me. Still,
if the story entertains, if it's what Sir Philip Sidney called "a
medicine of cherries," the moral message is at least palateable. I
just wish it were *less* conspicuous (e.g., Dumbledore's remarks about
the fountain of Magical Bretheren.)

bboyminn:
> I think it is the very moral imperfection in JKR's world that brings
the moral message forward. Harry struggles to do the right thing, and
ultimately when it counts, he makes the right decision; the greater,
compassionate, selfless decision. Yet, in the small things he
struggles, just like each and everyone of us struggles to know and do
what is right, and that is why we so deeply identify with Harry,
because we see our daily struggle for what is right reflected in him.
<snip>

Carol:
Here, I agree iwth you, except that Harry is still making mistakes and
hasn't yet learned all of the lessons that Dumbledore has tried to
teach him. I think that will happen in Book 7 (which will make those
who like Dumbledore and what he stands for happy and irritate those
who think that Harry is already right and/or that he should be his own
man, not Dumbledore's). Just my opinion, of course, and I may well be
wrong. 

bboyminn: 
> Personally, though I only gave it one try, I found Tolkein to be as
dry as yesterday's toast. I need a story to move much faster than that
and to be far less of a struggle. <snip>

Carol:
True, the story does take a few chapters to get going, but I think you
might like it if you gave it a chance. You can always skip over the
descriptions and just read the action and dialogue (though I don't
recommend it--you'll end up missing important points). But if it's
wrong to condemn the HP books without reading them, isn't the same
true of LOTR? I'll bet you five galleons, sent by e-mail, that you'll
like at least parts of the story. ;-)



> Which brings me back to JKR's compact writing style. If 
> the story is a bit dull, don't worry, in a few pages the
> story will have made huge leaps and will have certainly 
> moved on to something more interesting.
> 
> 
> > 3. Do you have any experience, personal or otherwise, 
> > of interaction with J.K. Rowling? If so, what was the 
> > nature of the interaction?
> > 
> 
> bboyminn:
> 
> Being a financially challenged person from the heartland
> I've never had occassion to meet JKR.
> 
> 
> > 4. Have you had any indications that Rowling changed 
> > something in her books because of outside influence? 
> > If so, what kind of influence and by whom?
> > 
> 
> bboyminn:
<snip> 
> I have often suspected Snape's revealing dialog at Spinners End was
prompted by fans. Many of us have debated how and why Snape was able
to return to Voldemort when it seemed that Voldemort had every
intension of killing Snape. That perhaps seemed a mystery worth 
resolving, and Spinners End gave Snape and JKR the perfect
opportunity. <snip>

Carol:
I disagree. I think that Spinner's End," which only *seems* to answer
our questions, some of them already raised by Harry, but really only
reveals what Snape has told Voldemort to keep him alive to this point,
was planned from the beginning. Note that the second half of the
chapter sets up the UV, on which the main plot of the book, or at
least Snape's role in that plot, depends. Bellatrix's presence, and
her opposition to Snape, are also necessary to the plot, both to the
UV and to Draco's learning Occlumency and otherwise resisting Snape's
help. JKR has been raising questions about Snape from the beginning of
the series, and she's both revealing and concealing key information in
this crucial chapter, which places Snape in a dilemma in some ways
matching Harry's as outlined in the Prophecy, which Harry himself
describes as becoming a murderer or being murdered. (I'm
oversimplifying yet again, but this post is already too long!)

> bboyminn:

> bboyminn:
> 
> Were does this crazy ill-conceived idea come from that it
> is every author's responsibility to create a picture 
> prefect model of the world? JKR is telling a specific
> story about specific characters, and these characters are
> who they are and do what they do. Her job is to tell the
> story and nothing else. 
> 
> It is certainly not her job to appease every politically 
> correct wacko's idea of that utopian world should look 
> like. Hermione is Hermione, love her or hate her, she is 
> one individual in one story, not an unrealistic unlikely 
> model of some critics fantasy 'every girl'. <snip>

Carol responds:
I know exactly where this idea comes from: the nonreligious left,
which runs the universities, at least in the United States and
possibly in Europe. The same people who gave us postmodern criticism
in place of textual analysis. The same people who decreed that
students taking freshman composition should be politically
indoctrinated rather than taught to organize their ideas logically and
express them clearly and grammatically. The same people who caused me
to feel so uncomfortable and out of place in academia that I changed
my profession.

Carol, apologizing for the tone of resentment that permeates parts of
this post, exiting lecture mode, and requesting that no one reply
offlist to this post as I don't want to get into heated discussions
and really should be editing a manuscript