Lupin quotes was Re: Never again

[naamagatus]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
wrote:
> 
> > Naama:
> > Wait. You used Lolita to demonstrate something about JKR. 
> How did we  end up talking about Nabokov? 
> 
> Pippin:
> Sorry. I was thinking about the full quote. Here it is.
> 
> Speaking in a rare interview for a new Radio 4 series about 
> famous people's favourite books, she confides: "There are two 
> books whose final lines make me cry without fail, irrespective of 
> how many times I read them, and one is Lolita. There is so 
> much I could say about this book. 
> 
> "There just isn't enough time to discuss how a plot that could 
> have been the most worthless pornography becomes, in 
> Nabakov's hands, a great and tragic love story, and I could 
> exhaust my reservoir of superlatives trying to describe the quality 
> of the writing."
> 
> If JKR doesn't care about the characters, why would she 
> consider their story a tragedy that moves her to tears? It seems 
> to me one of the things she is admiring is the authorial 
> tour-de-force of getting the reader to feel pity and sympathy for a 
> person who has done repulsive things.
> 

I think that, again, you're jumping from one thing to another. 'To 
care' for a character isn't the same as 'loving' a character. Of 
course great literature makes you care about the characters. But that 
sense of empathy and shared humanity is very different from the 
simple liking/loving of a certain character. In fact, they're almost 
diametrically opposed: the first is about going beyond traits and 
personality to that vision of humanity as such, whereas the second is 
exactly about partiality - liking/admiring a character for their 
personality/traits (for the same reasons you like/admire a person in 
RL).


> > Naama:
> > 
> > I'm not arguing at all against normal people being capable of 
> evil -  in the real world or in the Potterverse. Nor am I arguing 
> against a  Lupin-like person in the real world succumbing to evil. 
> There are  plenty of examples. 
> > 
> > What I am saying is that JKR couldn't love (a word she uses) 
> Lupin,  if, in her head, she knew he had betrayed his best friends 
> and their baby son. She wouldn't include him in a list of favorite 
> characters, or describe him as a wonderful teacher etc. <
> 
> Pippin:
> I'm not comfortable assuming that. Dumbledore says that 
> James would have saved Pettigrew. ESE!Lupin has many more 
> redeeming qualities than Peter.   Whether JKR believes, as a 
> Christian, that even a soul stained by murder and treachery is 
> beloved by  God and could be redeemed if only its owner would 
> seek salvation, I don't know, but it isn't out of the question, is 
it?

I would think that JKR certainly believed that. However, this goes 
back to what I said above - the difference between acknowledging 
humanity in a person as such, and simply liking/disliking them. When 
JKR replies to the "who is your favorite character" question, she is 
talking about personal preferences - in fact, she is talking, in that 
context, as any fan might. She is *not* talking from that very high 
moral ground you describe. She is not taking God's point of view at 
that point. She is simply listing the characters she is particularly 
fond of, admires, likes - those she is partial to. I return to my 
question: do you really think she could be particularly fond of, 
like, admire, a character who betrayed his best friends? After all, 
once you have managed to convince yourself of Lupin's guilt, didn't 
it make you not like him as a person? (I may be wrong, but that's the 
impression I get from your posts.)



Naama