[HPforGrownups] Re: A sandwich

Lee Kaiwen leekaiwen at yahoo.com
Tue Oct 30 01:13:06 UTC 2007


No: HPFGUIDX 178647

Geoff Bannister:

I bet that even someone as meticulous as JRRT didn't debate
> why every sentence was there.

Apparently you haven't read the History of Middle Earth; yeah, he pretty 
much did. And then spent a lot of time revising and correcting the 
published editions afterward -- right down to the implications of his 
(then-novel) spelling of "dwarves", ranting at the publisher for 
changing "bride-price" to "bride-piece" and spending countless days 
plotting the movements of his characters down to the hour. Gave new 
meaning to the word "meticulous".

You may not have read Tolkien to criticize every sentence, but many folk 
do (just try reading the debates over balrogs' wings), and Tolkien's 
fanatical attention to detail is part of the reason LoTR is a classic in 
ways HP can never hope to be. Tolkien's universe hangs together with a 
consistency the Potterverse long ago gave up any hope of claiming.

> Personally - shock, horror - I actually read them to enjoy them.

Ditto. And part of what makes Tolkien so much more enjoyable than 
Rowling is precisely that there are no glaring inconsistencies that leap 
up to knock you out-of-story. Even those who do choose to comb through 
Tolkien at the microscopic level (*because* they so enjoy the story) 
don't get mired down in OOC moments, deus-ex-machinas, mcguffins, 
mind-numbingly twisted logic regarding elder-wands or math errors (nor 
has anyone ever accused Sauron of being an idiot). Because they're not 
to be found in Tolkien, and folk have been picking him apart for over 
fifty years. DH, on the other hand, was being ripped to shreds 
consistency-wise withins days of publication. Nor did Tolkien run around 
giving interviews while getting facts about his own universe wrong.

Yeah, Rowling could have done with a bit more attention to detail.

 > Nothing she has written seems to please certain people and
 > DH is written off as a disaster.

I can only speak for myself, but I found the early books extremely 
enjoyable, which is why I stuck with the series. I found OOP a slight 
let-down, but by the middle of HBP things had begun spiraling out of 
control. And yeah, DH *was* pretty much a disaster.

 > I didn't expect that my expectations would coincide absolutely
 > with the author's thoughts.

It's not so much about expectations -- at least if you mean specific 
ideas about plot- and character-development. I, for one, had none (well, 
only one). I was willing to let JKR take the story and characters 
wherever she wanted to go. It wasn't the direction of travel that 
bothered me, but the quality of the ride. And even though in the end I 
got my one wish, it turned out to be one of those 
careful-what-you-ask-for moments.

--CJ




More information about the HPforGrownups archive