[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
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