Occlumency VERY VERY LONG

[Geoff]

No: HPFGUIDX 191737

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, sigurd at ... wrote:

Otto: 
> As I said, all adolescents are self-absorbed and narcisstic. Can't blame them, that's all they have-- that's all they have, that's all they know-- their bodies and their immediate friends, and most of them have absolutely no resources or power.  Rowling is simply catering to their world view-- at 11 to 18. After 18 when they get jobs, grad school, real work and responsibilities "La Drole du Guerre" (the boredom of war and combat fatigue) takes over and they realize they are nothing special at all-- and the magic world dies.

Geoff:
She's damn good at catering to them. I have met few female writers who 
are as good as JKR at having a handle on the male adolescent mind (and 
also many rather older guys).

Generalisation has crept in again. Not every adolescent is self-absorbed 
and narcissistic. I don't feel that I went by that path very much and I
must say that I didn't suffer from what might better be termed 'ennui 
du guerre', possibly because I worked professionally with older teenagers
for over thirty years.

Again, I have done a lot of reading of fantasy fiction at a more sedate(?) 
age. I did discover LOTR in my teens but other books such as the Narnia 
series and Alan Garner's two "Alderley Edge" books -"The Weirdstone of 
Brisingamen" and its sequel I found in my late twenties and I got into 
Harry Potter at a somewhat more advanced age. Perhaps I should have 
been checking the stock market or tutting over the state of the economy 
rather than following the Machiavellian antics of Voldemort and his 
cohorts in the Wizarding World but the latter makes for more interesting 
evenings.

OK so, as a well-known UK window sticker puts it, I'm a recycled
teenager.

So?

Otto:
...The best example of this is science fiction- There really is no such thing as science fiction. There is only fiction cast into the future to make a point or explore some issue of the present. The science in most science fiction is laughable, and really only Isaac Asimov paid much attention to real science.

Geoff:
Hmm, well seeing that Arthur C. Clarke, one of the world's leading 
SF writers predicted satellites just after the war and the communicators
in Star Trek looked suspiciously like mobile phones, writers have had 
their moments of enlightenment.

And, of course, Harry's tale is set against the modern world (as are the 
Garner books) and not in imaginary worlds such as Middle Earth or 
the imagined culture of the 24th century.