World Building And The Potterverse

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 167657

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" <justcarol67 at ...>
wrote:
>
> Ken wrote:
> <snip>
> > By contrast there already exists a complete version of the Harry
> > Potter series that is 100% faithful to the author's intentions. We
> > just don't have the last installment yet.
> 
> Carol responds:
> 
> I don't think any book or work of art has even been 100 percent
> faithful to the author's intentions, even to the extent that the
> author is fully aware of them. Tolkien said of LOTR, "This tale grew
> in the telling," and the same is no doubt true of the HP books. JKR
> has said that some of her characters grew and developed as she wrote
> about them. Anyone who has ever attempted to write fiction knows that
> characters will do that. 

Ken:

Do remember that this thread has grown with the telling too! It
started with one reader expressing happiness over the fact that JKR
didn't waste time on world building details and this reader expressing
the wish that she had gone a little farther in that direction instead
of constantly hiding behind "the maths". That was a relatively limited
criticism on my part and much of what you say later in your post must
be directed at expansions in the scope of the thread made by others. I
don't disagree with what you say above but it falls a little wide of
the mark set by the statement of mine that you quote. LOTR and HP are
faithful to the authors' intentions, to the full extent of their
individual abilities to fulfill those intentions. The Silmarillion
that we have is not. Criticizing either work for its internal errors
is at least arguably fair. Criticizing the differences between LOTR
and The Silmarillion is not fair.

I certainly agree with your essay in general. Much of what you discuss
is on a different level than what I call world building. To me world
building is the physical framework that the story operates in. It must
be stable and predictable even when new elements are introduced. The
world building you address is, to me, the layer on top of that, the
social world. The level of consistency I expect there is much lower
because I have the real world as an irrefutable example of how
inconsistent human behavior and society are. To an extent errors on
this level make the story seem more organic, more realistic, and so
while we might not agree with any particular choice the author makes
we have to allow that some of these "errors" are by intent.

Since this author makes so many framework errors some readers are less
willing than they would otherwise be to forgive errors that in another
story, even by the same now more mature author, might be viewed more
generously. 

> Carol:
> 
> Aragorn started out as a hobbit name Trotter, for crying out loud.
> Imagine what would have happened had Tolkien retained that initial
> conception of his story. But he didn't have to publish the earlier
> "books" (using his division into six books) sequentially, with the
> events of the first books set in stone as Frodo approached Mount Doom.
> It's just not fair to JKR expect an equal consistency in the HP books.
> 
> Carol, who thought that her own standards of perfection were
> impossibly high until she read this thread
>

Ken:

I remember reading the name Trotter somewhere, the source I read did
not mention that Trotter/Aragorn was a Hobbit though. That would have
made for a far different story. An unworkable one? Only if you imagine
that everything else played out the same and a Hobbit was the heir to
the throne of Gondor!

Who is to say what is fair? You make arguments to support the notion
that we are being unfair to a children's author. My reaction is driven
partly by the perception that she no longer sees herself as a
children's author. Maybe I am wrong about that. If she wants to be
more than a children's author, or even if she wants to be a children's
author but one that can stand rightfully in the same company with the
likes of Tolkien then we are not being unfair. She will have to do
better in her next effort if that is her goal. I think she is
reasonably close as it is and that is part of my frustration. The
amount of effort it would have taken to eliminate most of these errors
is quite trivial compared to the effort she already devoted to the
series. For the want of a nail....

Ken

PS: No one should miss the opportunity now at hand to see the only
remaining Silmaril (which some call Venus). It is shining brightly in
the west just before and well after sunset on any clear evening until
August or so. Oddly enough it really does shine with the light of the
Two Trees. It appears as the Evening Star roughly once each year so it
isn't a rare sight. For some reason it has seemed particularly
striking this time. The Silmarillion says:

"Now when first Vingilot was set to sail in the seas of heaven, it
rose unlooked for, glittering and bright; and the people of
Middle-earth beheld it from afar and wondered, and they took it for a
sign, and called it Gil-Estel, the Star of High Hope."

The Star of High Hope for Harry and friends, perhaps?