An aside ...
I could have sworn I'd posted here more recently, but no. Er, been v busy sewing, writing, travelling and at the moment coughing up a lung (again?! It must be the lack of sleep that gets me because in all other ways I'm as healthy as a horse (a happy horse, not a pit pony.))
Having a strange day dealing with death in the family and the serendipitous finding of old friends at the same time, plus a package that I had thought sacrificed to the mail gods finally arrived from England today, much postal happiness! But enough of this blather, what do I think this is: LJ? On to today's rant, the subject of which is Harry Potter.
And a few of you are looking at me askance. There's the "Sweetie, this is a mad SCA rant Blog, you're confused" brigade, they should hold off for a few days and I will finish up the glowing wrap-up of MidWinter; there's the "Dude, you have degrees in Eng Lit and have a suspiciously thick pile of notebooks beside your bed that would suggest a touch of authorialism, what's going on?" set, they should read on for an explanation; and there's the "ARGH! ARGH! She mentioned He Who Must Not Be Named!!" gang and to them I say, seriously, and you thought Animal Liberationists were zealots? Take a deep breath and get over it.
So, Harry Potter. I like JK Rowling's magnum opus. I was late coming to it, just after book 3 hit the shelves, and so came in at the time when it was taking its more adult turn. I liked the first two books well enough, but they were light and sweet for the most part, and if they'd stayed like that, I wouldn't have kept reading, or at least not in hardback. But they didn't. Things grew darker.
And I realised why I was enjoying reading: because these were, as all good kids should be, focussed on death. Death is the cornerstone of great children's literature, whether narrowly escaping it, being touched by it, needing to administer it for a greater good, or embracing it as a final peace. From the Brothers Grimm to Joan Aiken, from Beowulf to the Bible, everything that I was passionate about reading as a child keyed into the sense of mortality that I had so strongly as a young child (then lost for a little while as a teenager, then met differently after my most serious near-death experience (because I'd had enough life by then to reach some sort of calm about the whole thing)).
So books three and four are my favourites, where the structures of the kids' world slowly reveal themselves as unsafe, unprotecting, and able to be beaten. But the traditional virtues of loyalty, perserverence and ingenuity are valued, too. No one is valued solely for their looks, the heroes are all stupid on occasion (more so in books five and six) and the bad guys are presented with enough ambivalence that their badness is usually not wholly certain (Voldemort, Bellatrix Lestrange and Lucius Malfoy aside).
Books five and six have been fascinating for their treatment of a post September 11, 2001 world. Terrorism and its media responses litter the page. Civil liberties are eroded as governments panic. Watching JKR's responses to the turn of the millennium has been fascinating, even if her editors clearly threw up their hands and stepped down from parts of their posts after book 4 (because 5 and 6 could have stood a little sharpening).
More than just seeing the children grow up in 'real' fictive time (which is interesting in itself), the series has presented a world that fractures under the weight of an unexpected attack. I can't think of any other children's literature set in any roughly 'real' world that deals this explicitly with the current climate.
Yes Potter has plot problems (usually inconsistencies that would have been caught by keener editors), yes she's not a perfect writer, yes the whole blockbuster juggernaut thing is annoying. But I will be getting up early tomorrow to go and pick up my copy, and I will enjoy reading it, just as I enjoyed watching the film last weekend (and somehow I ended up enjoying that twice. Brilliant Umbridge, but I missed the Prophet vs the Quibbler subplot.)
As to what I think will happen, look away now if it's Friday night and you don't even want speculative spoilers, feel free to read through and laugh if it's after that and I'm horribly wrong:
* I think Voldemort will die and Harry will live, powers intact and perhaps no longer needing glasses or possibly without his scar since JKR has made such a point of physicallising issues in her texts.
* I think the characters we care about who die will include Hagrid, because he's pretty much fulfilled all of his narrative functions and she was desperately looking for somewhere to stash him in the last book. I suspect a Weasley may cop it, probably not mum because JKR has some well-grounded dead mother issues, and that means Dad can't die either, or either of the two younger kids. Percy could well be in for it -- sacrificing himself to save one or more family members in a way that is both apologetic and redemptive at the same time, otherwise my money would be on Charlie, since all he does is ride dragons and act like Lord Flashheart.
* If we really do lose one of the Big Three, my money would be on Hermione, since this has all been one giant first novel and first-time novellists often kill off "themselves".
* If she kills Neville, I will swear a whole lot. I'm keen for him to end up with Luna Lovegood, and for the two of them to break new ground in cryptoherbology.
* Snape good or bad? I'm going for good based on nothing more than Dumbledore's trust and my undying passion for Alan Rickman. Suspect he will play crucial role in denoument, quite likely to end up dead hero. After all, what else is there for him to do? (Stepping right away from his endless terrifying adventures in slashland.)
* I'm willing to wager a tiny amount on Draco turning out good, too, and ending up as head of Slytherin House while teaching potions. Alternatively, he ends up as Voldemort's butt monkey and dies in a scene of cliffhanging anticipation. But I suspect that if there are any cliffhangers involving Draco, he'll turn the balance in Harry's favour at a crucial moment. Because JKR finds it really hard to make smart people plain old bad.
* Depending on how much influence JKR had on the last film, Ron could turn out to be more central. Rupert Grint was cheerfully stealing all the scenes in the film (mostly because he's a slightly better actor than the others) but he seemed to be awfully foregrounded, as he was in book six, although that was mostly to give the subplots somewhere to hang.
* Harry will end up very happy, perhaps an auror or teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts. Because JKR is the most motherly mother in the world, and there is no way on Earth she's killing her baby.
In just over 12 hours, I can find out for myself!
Having a strange day dealing with death in the family and the serendipitous finding of old friends at the same time, plus a package that I had thought sacrificed to the mail gods finally arrived from England today, much postal happiness! But enough of this blather, what do I think this is: LJ? On to today's rant, the subject of which is Harry Potter.
And a few of you are looking at me askance. There's the "Sweetie, this is a mad SCA rant Blog, you're confused" brigade, they should hold off for a few days and I will finish up the glowing wrap-up of MidWinter; there's the "Dude, you have degrees in Eng Lit and have a suspiciously thick pile of notebooks beside your bed that would suggest a touch of authorialism, what's going on?" set, they should read on for an explanation; and there's the "ARGH! ARGH! She mentioned He Who Must Not Be Named!!" gang and to them I say, seriously, and you thought Animal Liberationists were zealots? Take a deep breath and get over it.
So, Harry Potter. I like JK Rowling's magnum opus. I was late coming to it, just after book 3 hit the shelves, and so came in at the time when it was taking its more adult turn. I liked the first two books well enough, but they were light and sweet for the most part, and if they'd stayed like that, I wouldn't have kept reading, or at least not in hardback. But they didn't. Things grew darker.
And I realised why I was enjoying reading: because these were, as all good kids should be, focussed on death. Death is the cornerstone of great children's literature, whether narrowly escaping it, being touched by it, needing to administer it for a greater good, or embracing it as a final peace. From the Brothers Grimm to Joan Aiken, from Beowulf to the Bible, everything that I was passionate about reading as a child keyed into the sense of mortality that I had so strongly as a young child (then lost for a little while as a teenager, then met differently after my most serious near-death experience (because I'd had enough life by then to reach some sort of calm about the whole thing)).
So books three and four are my favourites, where the structures of the kids' world slowly reveal themselves as unsafe, unprotecting, and able to be beaten. But the traditional virtues of loyalty, perserverence and ingenuity are valued, too. No one is valued solely for their looks, the heroes are all stupid on occasion (more so in books five and six) and the bad guys are presented with enough ambivalence that their badness is usually not wholly certain (Voldemort, Bellatrix Lestrange and Lucius Malfoy aside).
Books five and six have been fascinating for their treatment of a post September 11, 2001 world. Terrorism and its media responses litter the page. Civil liberties are eroded as governments panic. Watching JKR's responses to the turn of the millennium has been fascinating, even if her editors clearly threw up their hands and stepped down from parts of their posts after book 4 (because 5 and 6 could have stood a little sharpening).
More than just seeing the children grow up in 'real' fictive time (which is interesting in itself), the series has presented a world that fractures under the weight of an unexpected attack. I can't think of any other children's literature set in any roughly 'real' world that deals this explicitly with the current climate.
Yes Potter has plot problems (usually inconsistencies that would have been caught by keener editors), yes she's not a perfect writer, yes the whole blockbuster juggernaut thing is annoying. But I will be getting up early tomorrow to go and pick up my copy, and I will enjoy reading it, just as I enjoyed watching the film last weekend (and somehow I ended up enjoying that twice. Brilliant Umbridge, but I missed the Prophet vs the Quibbler subplot.)
As to what I think will happen, look away now if it's Friday night and you don't even want speculative spoilers, feel free to read through and laugh if it's after that and I'm horribly wrong:
* I think Voldemort will die and Harry will live, powers intact and perhaps no longer needing glasses or possibly without his scar since JKR has made such a point of physicallising issues in her texts.
* I think the characters we care about who die will include Hagrid, because he's pretty much fulfilled all of his narrative functions and she was desperately looking for somewhere to stash him in the last book. I suspect a Weasley may cop it, probably not mum because JKR has some well-grounded dead mother issues, and that means Dad can't die either, or either of the two younger kids. Percy could well be in for it -- sacrificing himself to save one or more family members in a way that is both apologetic and redemptive at the same time, otherwise my money would be on Charlie, since all he does is ride dragons and act like Lord Flashheart.
* If we really do lose one of the Big Three, my money would be on Hermione, since this has all been one giant first novel and first-time novellists often kill off "themselves".
* If she kills Neville, I will swear a whole lot. I'm keen for him to end up with Luna Lovegood, and for the two of them to break new ground in cryptoherbology.
* Snape good or bad? I'm going for good based on nothing more than Dumbledore's trust and my undying passion for Alan Rickman. Suspect he will play crucial role in denoument, quite likely to end up dead hero. After all, what else is there for him to do? (Stepping right away from his endless terrifying adventures in slashland.)
* I'm willing to wager a tiny amount on Draco turning out good, too, and ending up as head of Slytherin House while teaching potions. Alternatively, he ends up as Voldemort's butt monkey and dies in a scene of cliffhanging anticipation. But I suspect that if there are any cliffhangers involving Draco, he'll turn the balance in Harry's favour at a crucial moment. Because JKR finds it really hard to make smart people plain old bad.
* Depending on how much influence JKR had on the last film, Ron could turn out to be more central. Rupert Grint was cheerfully stealing all the scenes in the film (mostly because he's a slightly better actor than the others) but he seemed to be awfully foregrounded, as he was in book six, although that was mostly to give the subplots somewhere to hang.
* Harry will end up very happy, perhaps an auror or teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts. Because JKR is the most motherly mother in the world, and there is no way on Earth she's killing her baby.
In just over 12 hours, I can find out for myself!
Labels: Harry Potter
posted by Miss D at 8:58 pm
6 comments
