Requiescat in Pace: Unforgivables.

[urghiggi]

No: HPFGUIDX 174943

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Katie" <anigrrrl2 at ...> wrote:
>
Katie:
> She's not Nietzche or Plato or 
> something! She's not Saint Augustine! She's just a really good 
> fantasy author who threw some classical and Biblical stuff in there 
> for profundity...which worked. >

Julie:
Of course she's not Nietzche or Plato. But she HAS to believe, herself, that the books are 
'about' something more than a superficially clever story. Because the themes are not just 
sprinkled in like raisins in a fruitcake; they're pervasive. All that stuff about a 'soul' and its 
immortality or lack thereof, what death means, the relationship of the living to the dead -- 
that stuff is central to the series, not peripheral, as is all the stuff about love being 
stronger than mere might. As the series has progressed, the "fun" aspects (the quirky 
spells, quiddich, house rivalries/points, jokes, etc) became more and more peripheral and 
the "big" notions have taken more and more of center stage. (Thus some reviewers' 
complaints that the charming wimsey of the earlier books is extremely diluted by HP5, or 
even earlier.)

Lots of authors write really entertaining fantasy. Eoin Colfer for instance. The Artemis Fowl 
books are fun stories. But they're not messing around with metaphysical themes. 
Peripherally, there's some "different races/species can be friends" stuff in there, but that's 
about it. I read that stuff, I enjoy it as fantasy, I don't expect any more. The author doesn't 
ask that much of me.

Whereas ... Pullman, Tolkein, Lewis, L'Engle ... and, yeah, JKR ... write fantasy that, at the 
very least, seems to want to be 'about' more. (Not in the sense that "hey, I'm going to set 
out to write fantasy that's deliberately crafted to be didactic" but rather "hey, this is the 
kind of story/subject matter I'm interested in as an author.")

What JKR is interested in, apparently, is an exploration of some pretty heavy stuff.

Julie H, chicago