Identifying with Muggles/Support for parents of Muggleborns; Magic late in life

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 158138

> 
> Ken:
> 
> The success of Gilderoy Lockheart's books would argue otherwise.
> As in the Muggle world the many live mundane lives. The few live
> exciting lives and write books for the rest of us.
> 
> 
> Magpie:
> Well, as somebody who actually likes to read this exchange is incredibly 
> depressing.  Books are not all about exciting people relating their exciting 
> lives to us poor boring folk.  Literature covers ordinary lives as well, and 
> finds extraordinary things there.  People write extraorindary things without 
> ever leaving their own small town or throwing in a single dragon. There's 
> plenty of Muggles who work with exotic animals or play extreme sports--they 
> aren't generally also revered authors.
> 

Ken:

Yes, that is a good point but I don't understand your depression. I would argue 
that any book, whether it is considered literature or not, has to be exciting on 
some level to be effective. It does not have to be about exciting physical events
but if a book fails to excite your mind on any point would you bother to read
it? One of my favorite books is a discussion of telescope optics. Most of you 
would find it boring in the exteme and too dense to follow. There is a beauty 
to technology that outsiders can never appreciate. The hurdle you must leap
to understand what is going on is too high for most folks. It is a little secret 
that scientists, mathematicians and engineers share among themselves. 

So yes, there are all kinds of books and all kinds of books can be extrordinary
depending on the skill of the author. There is no reason that the WW should
not be as excited about Muggle literature as Muggles are. I certianly did not 
mean to depress you by limiting my counter argument to the narrow front
on which the battle was joined. Human creativity is an immensely wide 
and beautiful thing. Few humans indeed can appreciate all of it. I have as
much trouble appreciating some art and literature as you may have appreciating
the beauty of formal intregration by parts. The point is that the WW seems
to appreciate and value almost none of it.

> Ken:
> Really the only thing charming about the Potterverse is that against all 
> odds we do meet some very nice people there. And then *we* seem to spend all 
> our time trying to make these nice people out to be horrid, bigoted 
> monsters!
> 
> Magpie:
> I like looking at the flaws in the "nice people" in the books and get pretty 
> impatient when describing something imo accurately in a scene gets people up 
> in arms about making somebody nice into a monster.  Or where people act like 
> there's something amiss when different people have different reactions to 
> characters in scenes.  One of JKR's talents is the way she writes scenes in 
> ways that are truly ambiguous, where her "good guys" do behave in ways that 
> are flat-out wrong.  Or at least complex enough that there's room for 
> different reactions.  Nobody in real life is liked by everyone all the time. 
> And sometimes people insisting their reading is the only one that's right 
> are wrong.
>
>

Ken:

You are certainly entitled to your reactions and your reading of the books. 
If those of us who disagree are not welcome to express our disagreement
here, what is the point of the group? I don't deny the complexity of the 
characters, As to *when* they are flat out wrong, there we have deeply 
different views.

Ken