Whatever happened to nostalgia?

[Geoff Bannister]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, Barry Arrowsmith <arrowsmithbt at ...> wrote:
>
> Aaaah, the good old days!
> Remember them?
> The world was bright, we were young(er) and the future was replete  
> with possibilities.
> Joy was it then to be alive.
> And now?
> What happened? Are the golden lads and girls finally come to dust?
> 

Geoff:
Something strange has happened. I have found myself agreeing (to 
an extent) with Kneasy.

I did an analysis of my posts just out of interest. In the nearly three 
years I have belonged to the main group, I have up to this moment in 
time contributed 1858 messages. (Did I hear someone say 1858 too 
many?).

My accuracy is because I learned early on to distrust the labyrinth 
which lurks behind the button marked Search and have kept an 
archive of my posts so that I can easily track an older message or 
thread topic down if I want to quote,

Of these, 1502 were sent prior to the publication of HBP which 
happened almost on my second 'birthday" in the group so I was 
averaging about 750 posts per year.

In the ten months since that day, I have posted on 356 occasions 
which is going to pan out at about 420 if I keep up the same rate. 
That is a hefty reduction in my output. Why?

I felt that last July marked a watershed in traffic on HPFGU. Prior 
to that, there were always several threads running covering a wide 
range of topics - delightful things such as the identity of Mark 
Evans and a long thread mainly between myself and Shaun Hately 
discussing the whereabouts of the newsagents in Vauxhall Road 
where TR bought the infamous diary and a host of other, 
sometimes inconsequential, topics.

Since HBP, we have had thread after thread analysing Sanpe's 
behaviour; what are the other Horcruxes; can Harry be a Horcrux 
and such like.

Often, these have turned into "table tennis" matches between two 
or so people holding opposite views and hanging onto their theories 
like Dementors onto Barty Crouch Junior.

Then, from time to time, a new poster appears writing "I have just 
had this great thought about X" . Everyone groans inwardly and 
thinks "Yes and Queen Anne's dead. You're the 32nd person to 
suggest that. Have you looked back two days on the group?"

Perhaps we are getting jaded. Perhaps the tension of a likely wait 
into next year for Book 7 is getting to us. The camaradie seems a 
little thin sometimes.

I have on occasions in the past remarked that perhaps we take 
ourselves and our HP obsession/interest/critical analysis/... too 
seriously. I read the books as an escape from the real world and 
don't want to be dragged back in because someone is 
complaining at the lack of correlation between them and us. I like 
to approach my reading in an attitude of "the willing suspension 
of belief for the moment", an approach which allows me to enter 
Hogwarts or Middle-Earth or Narnia with perhaps child-like 
excitement; anybody suggesting second  childhood will receive 
a week's worth  of detentions.

Maybe, I'm a one-off in that respect; I suspect I'm not. I don't 
anticipate that everyone will agree with me anymore than many 
group members will agree with my Christian approach to the books 
but it is that gentle disagreement and interchange of ideas - both 
on the group and sometimes in off-group emails – which
makes HPFGU a unique place.

Finally, I am sorry that Kneasy holds such a low opinion of LOTR. I 
would point out that Tolkien did not expect everyone to beat a 
path to his door to acclaim his success.

He summed up people's reaction very succinctly as follows:

The Lord of the Rings
is one of those things:
if you like it you do: 
if you don't, then you boo!

"It is our choices, Harry, that show  what we truly are..."