Harry Potter - WTF?

[jeriendhal]

I have come to a conclusion. I simply don't "get" the Harry Potter phenomenon.


At the urging of Tracy I read Philosopher's/Sorceror's Stone, and while it seemed an okay book, it didn't particularly overwhelm me. Sure, the book was well written, it's (supposedly) going to end at Book Seven, and the idea of combining magic with the traditional British School story was a stroke of inspiration, but the book did not hit me in the gut like some have (ie: LMB's "Mirror Dance", RAH's "The Rolling Stones") After reading PS, I didn't feel particularly enthused to read the rest of the series, and I only watched the first two movies because Tracy bought them herself.

So forgive me if I simply do not understand why grown adults, much less children, treat each utterance from JKR as a missive from the Pope, and each book is worthy of adulation on the order of Tolkien rising from the grave and doing a fourth book in the Lord of the Rings.

It gets even wierder when you toss fanfic into the blender, with people arguing themselves blue in the face over such and such bit being canon or not, and whether JKR is writing a balanced portrayal of Slytherians or blatantly playing favorites (patently obvious villians in a children's book? Who'da thunk?)

I don't get it. I don't get the phenomenon. I don't get the books. I don't get the fanfics. I just don't get it. It's a series of childrens books on the order of The Hardy Boys or (and I'm being generous) The Wizard of Earthsea, not the freaking Holy Bible. Why are people so wrapped up in this series?

Comments

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

[shrugs] To each his own. You're probably right about the villians, but I never had much of an urge to read CoS or further (the fact that they seem to be more bloated and less edited as the series goes on doesn't help either).

[gregmce.livejournal.com]

If you don't enjoy them, fair enough. But...

"the fact that they seem to be [...] less edited as the series goes on doesn't help either"

...it's amazing how you can decide that without having read them. (Larger? Certainly, so I'll allow the "bloated" comment as one that could be made without reading. Less edited? Hard to form that opinion without doing so.)

[cleverthylacine]

Oh, I agree that they're less well edited and if the next one's as badly edited as the last, I shall be annoyed.

I either adore LeGuin or want to use her books as pillows.

I really loved "The Dispossessed" and "Vaster Than Empires" and I think she wrote "The Word For World Is Forest"?

But I like her better in space than with magick.

[gregmce.livejournal.com]

But you've actually, y'know, read the later books and formed that opinion based on that action.

[cleverthylacine]

oh, true. I've read the books dozens of times. I'm a fairly-well known and someone controversial 'personality' (not quite a BNF) in the fandom.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Poor word choice, I'll admit. I'm going by some of the reviews I've read (published and just chatting with friends) that seemed to indicate that. After seeing similar things happen to other authors I used to like (Clancy, Eddings, ect.) I've become wary of such things.

[edg.livejournal.com]

Careful, Royce, your bias is showing. 'Long' != 'bloated' or 'less-edited', and I'm not sure when "less edited" became a slur, for that matter.

For my part, I don't know that I can quantify why I enjoy Harry Potter. I just do. I think it has rabid fans, though, for exactly the same reason that anything else does. I'm sure that somewhere out there, there is a 'Manos' the Hands of Fate fan-club who are busily planning out Torgo costumes and waiting eagerly for Hal Warren's next Super-8 masterpiece. Creative works attract fans, and their creators attract followers; Harry Potter is no different in this regard.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Depends of the sort of editing I suppose. Guiding a writer so that they're able to articulate their story and conclusions well, but letting them tell the story they want is Good Editing. Slash & burn editing to fit the editor's personal prejudices over what the book "should be about", OR simply sitting back and letting an author tell in 600 pages what could have easily been said in 200 pages is Less and/or Bad Editing.

[cleverthylacine]

If somebody *notices* that your books need editing, then you need more editing.

Rowling appears to be going down the same road as Anne Rice: that is, her pet characters become more and more unbelievably powerful and contradictory, her 'villains' become more paper-thin, her books get larger, and she allows less and less editing, assuming that because she's making boatloads of money, she no longer needs any help refining her artistic vision. PS and CoS were tightly written, perhaps a bit too tightly. PoA was just right. GoF could have been shorter and clearer. OOTP? Not only was OOTP even bigger than GoF, the final battle was very hard to follow and extremely badly done. It's very difficult to believe that the Voldemort of OOTP was a threat to Upper Twattington, let alone the Wizarding World as a whole, and she completely forgot that several of the more important Death Eaters had powers and abilities she herself gave them, because in the all-important final battle, none of them were used. I would be the last person to complain about Sirius' death, because I never liked him much--but this too was poorly blocked and handled.