Plus Star Wars has Lightsabers, which are so much cooler than wands.
Plus Star Wars has Lightsabers, which are so much cooler than wands.
I have to say that JBI's detailed dissection of Harry Potter is more entertaining than just saying the generic "HP is populist drivel" comment.
Heck of a post JBI. Detailed and well argued.
This is true, although the coolness factor dimmed a little when Lucas decided to have them in frame every 10 minutes in the prequels.Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandis
Vladimir: (sententious.) To every man his little cross. (He sighs.) Till he dies. (Afterthought.) And is forgotten.
For the most part a good selection, with one exception. King Solomon's Mines isn't even as well written as Harry Potter. It's shocking that it sold something like 50 million copies back in the 19th century. It's also an adventure novel for adults, though I guess you could read it to children as it's not terribly difficult.
I'll agree with you there. I only included it because I don't think it was written as a work of "children's literature".
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It may not have been intended as children's literature but I read it when I was about ten-years-old and I thought it was great.
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Well, I have read 3 first books. But there is no book not rooted on reality.
Who exactly? JBI read them, I didn't. Has anyone called it flat out crap?I haven't read Alice since the time I was a kid, about 40 years ago. I was actually parodying the anti-Potter posts on this thread - people who haven't even read the series making ridiculously extreme negative statements about them. (Sorry, I'm very fond of this word.)
Hence why Bloom mentions a teen book about schools while talking about HP influences. Anyways, that is like scratching the surface of Alice. The book is rooted on philosophy and mathematic. Alice is even based on a real children (some characters) on real teachers. It is oniric indeed, no wonder the surrealist movement loved it, but it was an unique way to portrait a dream, because the chaos was just the surface. No wonder a few decades and people would be arguing the roots of all language are in the subconcious and dreams as a form of expression, which our reality can understand. No wonder Joyce liked it, after all Finnegans Wake is all that oniric experience.Anyway, based on what I read then and remember, the world of Alice is a bizzarre dream world, something like a drug induced trip, where weird things keep happening one after the other. I got tired of it after a while, and I'm only explaining why I didn't like it. The HP books are nothing like a drug induced trip. Even with the shifting staircases and Whomping Willow, screaming books, talking portraits, magical mirrors, ghosts, trolls and house-elves, Hogwarts is still a school, and people there have to deal with homework, exams, friendships and rivalries, bullying, fear of getting expelled, alienation, prejudice...I could go on and on. I liked the reality of the HP world better than the completely whimsical world of Alice. That's all there is to it. It was not meant as a general statement about the merits of whimsicality vs reality.
Of course, HP is more simple, it is traditional realism.
Works with little literary merity are forgotten. The influence is certainly an evidence that work has a lot of merits. And that is what makes a classic.Well, influence only proves that the work was influential. It really does not say anything about its intrinsic literary merit.
Yes, Lewis Carroll, genius.Genius has this capacity to rip off or absorb lesser works that have some appealing or innovative idea and make it into something of its own, and the same process applies to popular culture.
Actually I think JBI implied in his "well-argued" post that he only read the first couple of books as well, then watched the movies, but I could be wrong.
Last edited by Drkshadow03; 10-11-2012 at 08:24 PM.
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I read in some form books 1-4, part of book 5 and part of book6, then none of book 7. Books 1-3 were literally read to me by more schoolroom teacher when I was a child.
That being said, much of the reading was not done in English. Book 4 was done in a mix of English and Italian, book 5 in parts English, parts Italian, parts French, book 6 mostly English, with Italian mixed in.
The books have the convenience of being so basic and available in so many languages that you can use them as basic textbooks for language learning. I was going to read the Chinese copy of book 7 when I started until I found that it was just too dreadful to read in any language. Dry and overly melodramatic, the things you skim over when you read in English surface harder in other languages. The text makes no sense in Chinese, as far as I am concerned.
As for my post being well-argued, I do not edit my posts usually, and I wrote that straight without pausing, hence why it is a mix of oratory and stream of consciousness (I use the same set phrases at the beginning of every paragraph). The post is very me, and I meant it to be a constructive summary of a sort to try to steer this thread into a more mature debate.
As it is, the original topic is exhausted - simply put, even the most devoted Potterites did not like the new book. Nobody is anticipating it, I bet many wish she had just not written it.
Last edited by JBI; 10-11-2012 at 09:07 PM.
Yes and I recall JBI saying he read the books before, not from this topic. He had to say it before, the "you didnt read the book to talk about it" is a commun argument since they assume "anti-potter" are snobs who would not read popular literature.
Nothing new here. Calling Alice crap was just a uncalled attack on the book which was not similar to any of supposed attacks done against HP.
Exit, pursued by a bear.
We weren't the ones who added Alice to the argument, though.
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its' own reason for existing." ~ Albert Einstein
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Why it's good-because the books ARE good:
The Harry Potter series is comprised of seven books in which the central character, Harry Potter, discovers he’s a wizard, and attends a wizarding school where he makes friends and fights the dark lord Voldemort who killed his parents, and who, in an altered form, is trying to take over the wizarding world.
In each book of the series, Harry not only advances a year, but faces a new and daunting task in his battle against Lord Voldemort. In the first book Harry faces down Professor Quirrell and is able to keep Quirrell from stealing the Philosopher’s Stone and thus keeps Voldemort from making the elixir of life. In the second book he fights a basilisk and is saved by a phoenix; in the third he returns to the past where he saves the endangered hippogriff, Buckbeak, and later watches himself call his patronus, a stag, to save himself from being killed by the dementors. In The Goblet of Fire, Harry participates in the triwizard tournament, although he is technically too young to do so. He is forced to witness the death of a schoolmate, and risks his life returning Cedric Diggory to his father for burial. Harry endures the physical and emotional abuse (above and beyond that of his aunt and uncle who raised him) of Delores Umbridge in The Order of the Phoenix, when she forces him to submit to having “I must not tell lies” written with a special quill in the back of his hand. His scar burns when Voldemort experiences a strong emotion. Harry must endure his belief that Snape is guilty of killing his beloved Dumbeldore in The Half Blood Prince, and in The Deathly Hallows Harry willingly sacrifices himself to death at Voldemort’s hand.
All of this is well-known to anyone who has read the books. I put it here, both to refresh my memory , and to show the breadth of both Rowling’s imagination, and the seemingly impossible tasks that Harry was faced with each year that he returned to Hogwarts. In this, Harry could be compared to Hecules or Arthur, particularly the Arthur of the Welsh prose tale Culhwch and Olwen. Harry is very much an archetypal hero as delineated by Jungian tradition:
• Unusual circumstances of birth; may be born in dangerous circumstance
• Leaves family or land and lives with others
• An event, sometimes traumatic, leads to adventure or quest
• The hero has a special weapon only he can wield
• The hero has supernatural help
• The hero must prove himself many times while on the quest
• The journey and the unhealable wound
• Hero experiences atonement with father
• When the hero dies he is rewarded spriritually
http://tatsbox.com/hero/
Harry fits all of these categories. His special weapon is the love of his parents, in particular his mother. His “unhealable” wound is the loss of his parents; his “atonement, I think, is that he is able to vanquish Voldemort, and so gain some peace of mind for their loss. Harry, in the last book of the series, does die, although he is revived, and finds that Voldemort is dead: he is thus, rewarded spiritually.
And Harry, like Arthur and like Jesus, suffers. In The prisoner of Azkaban, “whenever Harry is near (a dementor), he is forced to relive his worst memory: hearing the last moments of his parents' lives before they are murdered by Voldemort, which begins with Harry hearing his mother screaming.” (Wikipedia)
In The Goblet of Fire he is forced to watch as Voldemort’s minions kill Cedric Diggory.
In the next book Harry is able to see the Thestrals, as a result of having seen Cedric’s death.
Harry has a mark on his forehead that marks him as “special” but which also brings him much negative attention and some bullying.
Harry is also connected in a mysterious way to Voldemort. When Voldemort experiences a strong emotion, Harry’s scar begins to hurt.
Harry breaks down at the end of The Order of the Phoenix, “screaming that he’s had enough of all the pain and anguish and death and destruction.”
There are also elements of Christianity in the book in the recurring themes of death ,rebirth, love and sacrifice, as well as numerous references to mythological creatures, including but not limited to Centaurs, hippogriffs, and unicorns . For a more complete list you can look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical...n_Harry_Potter
Of all of Rowling’s characters, the most interesting are probably Harry himself, Dumbledore and Snape, all of whom are enmeshed psychologically. Snape is particularly a tragic and ambiguous figure, having despised Harry’s father when he was at school, and having loved his mother, and who was, like Harry, an outcast. Harry is always uncomfortable around him and never trusts him. It is not until Snape’s death that the truth of his actions is revealed. In this respect, he and Harry are more alike than they could ever have known.
Are they books for children or adults? According to Ernie Bond of Salisbury University: “Personally I would consider the whole series to be for "all ages."”
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/col...universit.html
Like Arthur, Harry must face and overcome a series of obstacles and it is to Rowling’s credit that while the outcome is not ever really in doubt, she is able to maintain a level of suspense to the end of each story. Rowling isn’t a great writer , stylistically, but her books are well-plotted, her characters are warm and engaging, the stories have heart and soul and imagination. What more could a kid-of any age-ask for?
Last edited by qimissung; 10-12-2012 at 01:57 AM.
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its' own reason for existing." ~ Albert Einstein
"Remember, no matter where you go, there you are." Buckaroo Bonzai "Some people say I done alright for a girl." Melanie Safka
That does not clarify why the books are good, or show he has any development as a character. Everyone knows he faces new adventures, but that doesn't mean he learns anything.
But is this not evidence of just how derivative HP is? True, it's always difficult to escape the fundamental plots and archetypes that characterise most of world literature, but Rowling's seems less adventurous than it might have been.
Just out of interest, and perhaps as a better point of comparison than the Alice books, has anyone read Ursula le Guin's Earthsea books? As a young teenager, it was those that first made me realise that Harry Potter was not the revelation I thought it was. The first book, A Wizard of Earthsea has many similarities thematically with Potter - a young, gifted boy uncomfortable in his community discovers his huge talent for magic and is dispatched to a school for wizards. I felt, however, that le Guin's work was much more compelling - her charcters underwent deep and meaningful development, the underlying exoticism of magic was somehow more profound, and the threat was not from some arbitrary dark lord but rather borne out of the characters' own actions and weaknesses.
Oh, having just check wiki to find the date of publication (1968), I found a link to page about influences of Potter, which I'll link to here. Le Guin's reaction is interesting:
The basic premise of Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), in which a boy with unusual aptitude for magic is recognised, and sent to a special school for wizards, resembles that of Harry Potter. Le Guin has claimed that she doesn't feel Rowling "ripped her off", but that she felt that Rowling's books were overpraised for supposed originality, and that Rowling "could have been more gracious about her predecessors. My incredulity was at the critics who found the first book wonderfully original. She has many virtues, but originality isn't one of them. That hurt."
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
I personally loved The Wizard of the Earthsea. The sequels were good, some of them had members better than the first.
Leguin though is already an established adult author who has been recognized by the establishment for her novels, particularly The Left Hand of Darkness.
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