Appeal of the story to the reader WAS: Re: Of Sorting and Snape

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 175590

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "cubfanbudwoman"
<susiequsie23 at ...> wrote:
>
> houyhnhnm:
> > > > There *is* something mean spirited in the books. The stories 
> > > > appeal to the mean in readers and for some they are not nearly
> > > > mean enough, as we have ample evidence.
> 
> > > Jen:  What do you mean here, houhnhnm?  I'm intepreting it as a 
> > > pretty negative message about readers who like the story but 
> > > don't want to go any further if I'm misinterpreting or reading 
> > > more into it than you intended.
> 
> SSSusan:
> Wow. I hope there was a different meaning behind this statement, too, 
> than how I read it. :(  
> 
> I am a lot of things, but mean is a thing I don't recall ever having 
> been accused of being

Sydney:

Goodness, this is certainly the board for immediately putting the
worst possible construction on someone's posting.  

I doubt houyhnhnm meant that the meaness was the ONLY pleasure in the
books-- she herself (or he himself?) made a list of various other
things she enjoyed in them I believe.  But the appeal to.. if not
meanness, payback?  vengeance? what some call 'karmic justice'? .. is
pretty blatantly a large, almost a controlling part of the books. 
Loads of people have commented on it both to like and to dislike it. 
I think the word 'mean-spirited' came from both of us commenting on
Ursula LeGuin's remarking on how she didn't like that particular
strain, and that's the word she used.  In any event, it's a pleasure
in watching people suffer because they are the people they are, and
what to me feels like a decided lack of generosity on who those people
who deserve to suffer are.  

I myself obviously find a huge amount of stuff to enjoy in this series
or I wouldn't be this obsessed with it!  But the strain of, well,
meanness crossed a line that I could no longer ignore it as I had for
the rest of the series.

-- Sydney