Readers in the WW (was: JKR and "Think of the Children!")

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 162089

Magpie:
> > I think Harry is cheerfully and unashamedly presented as a boy not
much interested in reading--never was, never will be, and we've got a
very detailed picture of his activities.  <snipping> It would have
been simple to say Harry liked to read (unlike Dudley) or liked
school.  JKR made him a slightly different boy. He's not a booklover,
didn't like school etc.
> 
> Jen:
>  Neri's point works along with the character point though, that 
> part of the reason JKR didn't make Harry a book lover was so the WW 
> wouldn't be seen as part of his imagination or the lines wouldn't be 
> blurred once he does enter the WW.  In Narnia the kids don't believe 
> Lucy at first because she does have a wonderful imagination, in part 
> from being very literate and living with book-reading siblings.  
> Plus in a fantasy series like Narnia or the Borrowers, there's an 
> adult outside the world who knows of the world and lends the air 
> of "it doesn't matter if it's true or a child's imagination, 
> believing makes it real."  JKR completely bypassed such a storyline 
> by having the Durlseys know the WW is real and decide to deny it, as 
> well as having Harry act as a fairly unimaginative boy--even his
far-fetched dreams turn out to be real!  That way there's *no*
question the WW exists, no question it's part of Harry's imagination. 

Carol responds:
Good points, but I wonder whether part of the reason Harry isn't like
the Pevensie kids is that he didn't have access to books. The Dursleys
aren't readers, and Dudley's (untouched) books were in his second
bedroom, which Harry didn't have access to when he was younger than
eleven. He couldn't play with Dudley's toys or his computer, and he
probably didn't mindlessly watch television as much as Dudley did or
enjoy the same shows. In nice weather, he could play outside, most
likely by himself, but on cold, rainy days, surely he could have
curled up with a book from the school library. Maybe the Dursleys
discouraged him from reading fiction, and fantasy in particular,
because they didn't approve of anything imaginary?

It seems clear that Harry never developed the habit of reading for
pleasure, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he wouldn't have
entertained himself that way if it were the entertainment available.
He might even have enjoyed, say, "Peter Pan" or "Treasure Island," but
such books, particularly "Peter Pan" because it deals with magic,
would probably have been kept from him. At any rate, the only books we
know of in the Dursley household were in Dudley's second bedroom, and
by the time Harry had access to them, they would no longer have
interested him because he'd discovered a world where magic was real.

If Harry were a "normal" orphan whose parents really had been killed
in a car accident, I can see him reading as a means of escape, and I
think the books would be those that a child born in the late 70s or
early 80s would be familiar with, some classics, some more modern, so
that young readers born in, say, the late 80s or early 1990s could
identify with him. But Harry isn't that kind of orphan and we don't
see him at a point when he could have read Muggle fiction even if the
Dursleys allowed him to do so. By the time we see him, he has neither
the need nor the time to read fiction, fantasy, or tales of the sort
that, say, Frodo or Bilbo would listen to even if they exist in the WW.

Another point that no one has touched on: If Harry enjoyed reading
fiction and fiction existed in the WW, JKR would have to invent it, or
at least the titles of the books, as she would not have to do for an
orphaned protagonist of a book set in the RL. There's no point,
really, since no reader can have read the invented books (unless JKR
writes them herself, as she did with "Fantastic Beasts" and "Quidditch
through the Ages"). The titles would serve only as color and
background information, with a few linguistic jokes (of the Libatius
Borage as the author of a book on potions variety) but they wouldn't
serve to help young readers identify with her protagonist. The glasses
and "knobbly" knees and vulnerability do that.

A sidenote on "Helas, je me suis Transfigure mes Pieds", a play by the
French wizard Malecrit mentioned by zgirnius upthread. Clearly, we
have another linguistic joke here--a playwright named Malecrit (bad
critic?) who is presumably a bad judge of good writing. And the title,
which I think translates to "Alas, I've transfigured my feet" (please
correct me if I'm wrong; I took Latin, not French, as my foreign
language), can only be a farce. (The Lexicon translates "Malecrit" as
"badly written," but I'm basing "crit" on "critic" and similar words.
I could be wrong, but it's a Libatius-Borage-style joke either way.)

Carol, whose mind is on fruitcake ingredients and hopes that this post
is not too jumbled to be intelligible