Manifesto?

[nrenka]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Barry Arrowsmith" 
<arrowsmithbt at b...> wrote:

> Kneasy:

<snip>

> It's all down to reader perceptions, each is different to a greater
> or lesser extent - and they mean bugger all without a confirmatory
> nod from the author. 

I take it you're not of the "text takes on a life of its own 
completely independent of what the author may have intended it to 
mean" group of interpretation, then?  I'm not either.  Lots of people 
out there are.  Deconstruction isn't totally dead, although Derrida 
is.

A subquestion: what about things where we are not likely to get 
confirmatory nods from the author in an explicit sense?  It'd be 
awfully dull literature if she set things up and then resolved every 
little point in a completely explicit way; so if you want to you can 
still argue that Snape didn't *actually* drop Harry's vial off the 
desk in OotP, but it's only Harry's flawed perception of events that 
leads him to unfairly blame Snape.  A trivial example, true, but 
perhaps an illustrative one.
 
> A lot of those that have romped around Jo's playground for a while
> are aware that some of the comments she's made could well have
> been preparation for unexpected and unwelcome plot developments,
> at least where some fans are concerned. The statement that she 
> "doesn't care if only six books are bought" she still won't change
> the story, for example. Sounds good to me. Something to look
> forward to. Hope it's nothing trivial. There's a fair chance that
> others will be horrified - assuming she had a reason for making
> the statement in the first place.

I hope she surprises me.  I like being surprised.  My main interest 
in the series is seeing how she sets up things to play out, after all.

> Kneasy:
>
> I doubt that *any* of the theorisers are as intensely involved with 
> HP as the moralists are. Most are doomed to seeing theories 
> rubbished; so what? It's not important. But it seems to be for the 
> moralists.

And the ficcers, at least some of them.  I'm not sure that you have 
to fall explicitly into the 'moralist' category to have a profound 
level of investment in your own ideas about plot/characters/whatever.

> Kneasy:
> We'll continue to disagree, I think.
> Nobody in their right mind could ever conceive of JKR (or any 
> mainstream author, come to that) developing HP along some of the 
> fanon lines. But looking at the more, let's say, conventional 
> outpourings - I don't
> believe it means as much as you think. You may recall that there are
> three(?) TBAYS from yours truly - the MADAM WHIPLASH series. Does
> that signify an indictment of JKR for not making Hermione a sex-pot
> dominatice? Nope. It's a humorous counterpoint to the Hermy of the
> books and means nothing. But stuff like that is fun to write and I'd
> guess most would regard the more readable fanon as an adjunct to
> HP rather than as an attempt at a replacement.

That's a more conventional, perhaps, way to approach it--although 
what is conventional depends on what community you are in.  There 
are, my dear Kneasy, people out there who are here for the fic and 
greatly prefer it to the source material, or those who consider the 
source material by itself, without the fic, to be boring and dull and 
not worth one's while.  Fanon in some cases has taken on such a life 
of its own that it does function as a replacement for canon, a 
simulacra if one wishes.  What one likes, or where we were at when 
the universe of a fic or such was spawned is retained--what comes in 
and is disliked is replaced, and people merrily argue over the merits 
and qualities of fanon portrayals and elevate them above 
what 'merely' goes on in canon.  At times such fanon fic becomes a 
platform for polemic and 'fixing' everything that Jo screwed up.  I 
suspect it's rather not your part of the fandom.

-Nora notes that it isn't hers either, but it's fascinating to observe