Subverting the genre?

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Talisman" <talisman22457 at y...> wrote:
> Ah K, up to your usual naughty tricks?  Once again you?fve caused me 
> to stop caring about what Rowling is up to, at all.   I?fd much 
> rather follow the antics of your slightly soiled imagination.  Now 
> that's true subversion.
>

Slightly soiled?
You underestimate me, madam!
I'm at one with good ole Tom Lehrer:-

"Stories of tortures
Used by debauchers,
Lurid, licentious, and vile,
Make me smile.
Novels that pander
To my taste for candor
Give me a pleasure sublime.
(Let's face it, I love slime.)

All books can be indecent books
Though recent books are bolder,
For filth (I'm glad to say) is in
the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
(I could tell you things about Peter Pan,
And the Wizard of Oz, there's a dirty old man!)"

And if in my humble way I can persuade the reader to consider a, let us
say, slightly more adventurous interpretation of certain aspects of HP,
then I will not have pounded the keyboard in vain. Some may see this as
subversive, others as merely a filling in of a few intriguing background 
blanks that Jo has inexplicably neglected.

Whatever; subverting the text is one thing, and an everyday event at that;
subverting an entire genre is more difficult by a couple of orders of 
magnitude and it's doubtful that Jo has hit that particular target.

Kneasy