The Complaining and Bitching Thread

Grrrr, my boss emailed me about a records issue, basically trying to "remind" me of the things we need to do for new hires...I politely wrote back that we'd had the same conversation in October and that I haven't hired anyone new since then; my latest hires were from before the policy went into effect. Thanks, Gmail.

 

My point is twofold: 1) There are many others who do similar things she does, 2) There are others who have far greater imaginative powers.

At best, I consider J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series a mish-mash of common themes and tropes that got denser as the story progressed. It kinda resembles The World of Warcraft, where they hit every goddamn trope out there because they need to keep adding new content to keep the subscription numbers up.

Compared to Harry Potter, there are also much better works in terms of structure and language. The need of a heavy-handed editor reached desperate proportions by the end of the Harry Potter series.

In the end, it's children's literature. Sure, it's passable and gets kids (and adults) reading, but there are much better examples out there.

I'll admit, though, I haven't read Rowling's two most recent publications.

 

I think of it as a gateway into better things. I feel the same way about The Hunger Games. Perhaps that is why I love both series--they do a great job of hooking readers.

 

That's certainly where they have merit. I'm just wondering what proportion of those readers (if they continue reading) will move on to read nothing but potboilers. I mean, it'd be great if they all also went on to discover Virginia Woolf or James Joyce, or Annie Proulx or Salman Rushdie, but I won't hold my breath.
--- merged: Jul 16, 2013 at 10:31 PM ---

Nearly. I'm not concerned about uniqueness per se. I'm more concerned about...newness, I guess? It's a bit different. You can have something consist of familiar elements but have it presented to you as something fresh and new (think Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber)—not to mention brilliantly composed (again, Carter).

I don't think Rowling accomplishes this.

 

Twist ending...

 

Do they even lift, bro?

 

I can't say for sure at this point, but I think Ursula Le Guin accomplishes much greater things in her Earthsea trilogy compared to Harry Potter. (I've only read the first book.) There were elements of strangeness and newness that I appreciated, even while it used themes and motifs familiar to anyone who reads fantasy or likes mythology.

There are other examples I've read about that have this about them. (Unfortunately, I read a lot of trash as a kid, and so I'm only learning about such books now.) This is especially important in fantastical works. It's one thing to have a book chock-a-block with common/popular symbolism, motifs, themes, etc., it's another to present the fantastical in a way that derives from the reader a sense of awe. This requires more "space," not more "stuff." I'll admit, it's incredibly difficult to do, especially after Tolkien, where much of fantasy is more about the familiar than the strange.

I'm not familiar with Hiaasen, but maybe his books have such quality, and your daughter is intrigued by them for that reason. [EDIT: I just looked him up. He writes realist fiction, which is another thing all together. ]

 

Everyone borrows/steals. That's not the issue. The issue is that I don't think Rowling is particularly good at it.

Unparalleled to me means beyond compare. I don't think she's beyond compare technically or aesthetically. She is only beyond compare business-wise, i.e., marketing, book sales, and other revenues. But we're talking about her imagination here. My argument is that it's more pedestrian than unparalleled.

I already agree with that idea. I think Harry Potter has done a lot to revitalize reading generally and fantasy literature specifically. That's great. But it's not what we're talking about here. Someone had the gall to call Rowling's imagination unparalleled and I took issue with it. You may disagree with me, but I hope at least you understand my own opinion on the matter. One merely need read Le Guin, Gaiman, Beagle, L'Engle, Seuss, Dahl, etc., to know that Rowling's imagination is hardly unparalleled.

You don't need to go this far, but when you start looking at Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, M. Shelley, the Brontës, Tolkien, King, Rice, etc., the idea becomes, to me, quite untenable.

And I'm being nice. I can think of at least a few people who would consider the idea absolutely ludicrous.