Reading Harry Potter as one book

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I see that a better copy of the review is up at the MythSoc site: http://www.mythsoc.org/reviews/harry-potter-law/

[samaranth]

Very enjoyable review, Voronwë. The book itself sounds intriguing, too, and definitely worth a read.

I was interested to hear about your experiences reading the Harry Potter books. Great literature they may or may not be, but JKR has created a fascinating complex world. Apart from the magic, and the flawed, engaging characters, I like the way that she's held a mirror to the social and societal structures of our own day to day world. Nor has she avoided writing about some pretty intense moral issues.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Definitely well said, Sam!

[eborr]

Sometimes I think that I can go over the top with my enthusiasms, but I have got nothing on these people.

I sometimes wonder at the expectations people have of writers, from my perspectiive, where there might have been inconsistencies in the books, none of them were sufficient to ruin my reading experience. I understand the rule that writers of fantasy and science fiction are in some way beholden to create a universe which is more consistent that in any other literary form, but I guess that stems from some kind of inferiority complex which bedevils science fiction and fantasy writers.

Writers of "fine literature" labour under no such expectations.

Due praise to all the writers in this collection and to you V for getting up to speed with the Potter universe to offer expert testimony on these books.

I enjoyed your review, but I think it's unlikely I will read the collection

[Primula Baggins]

Interesting post, eborr. I do know that the consistency of worldbuilding SF and fantasy writers strive for is definitely expected by their serious genre readership and is not necessarily due to any inferiority complex. It's probably a special case of the modern literary convention that every event in fiction must be plausible, whereas every event in real life isn't, necessarily—in real life, incredible coincidences and sudden character changes happen that would cause the reader of a modern novel to throw it across the room.

In other words, readers of fantasy and SF expect that a world built from the ground up is not going to contain any obvious inconsistencies, because that would make it all seem false. I know that's how I feel as both a reader and a writer, and it's definitely one reason I'm enjoying this series more than I expected: GRRM can build worlds.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

By "this series" I assume you are referring to Game of Thrones not Harry Potter (based on the reference to GRRM)?

[Primula Baggins]

Sorry, that's right. Boy, am I tired.

[Morwenna]

Leaping into this discussion rather late...

My husband and I had resisted the Harry Potter phenomenon, but several of our (adult) friends told us how enjoyable the books were. Still we held out, until Goblet of Fire won the Hugo. At that point we gave in and bought all four existing books, and read them in succession. After that the hard part was waiting for each successive book! I liked them far better than hubby did; he agrees with several of you here that JKR really needed a good editing job. I, on the other hand, never had such feelings. I was one of those who was just happy to visit in that world and take in all there was. And it's the story, and the characters. One of the first things that struck me was the very realistically-drawn characters, lovable in their humanness. Yes, the magic is wish-fulfillment, but that didn't bother me. What did bother me was the Transfiguration spell, which changed objects into creatures and vice versa. There's something in me that sympathizes with those creatures; such a spell would be cruel in my eyes. But that's nitpicking. There's a lot of fun and a lot of depth in these stories.

Literature: don't get me started! Just read C.S. Lewis's An Experiment in Criticism. I was an English major, and I firmly believe that that book should be required reading for all literature (and any arts) majors everywhere and for all time!! I do read criticism of my favorite authors, just for fun, and yes I do sometimes get a charge out of seeing one critic take another to task. But that's the point: they're as diverse as readers are. And readers far more often "get it" than do the critics.

World-building: somehow I don't think it was much of an issue till LotR came along. That set the bar. But now that it's there, it almost has to be heeded.

[CosmicBob]

I read the Potter series and found that the writing improved as it went on. I don't know if this was by design because the target audience was getting older, or if she just got better. But I thought it worked out well for young adults who were growing up as the books were being published. But for someone who is older now, it may seem simplistic at the beginning.

My son, who is now 10, started reading Potter when he was 6 or 7 and he was able to do fine with it, even as the last book came out. The midnight release for Deathly Hallows was the only one he was old enough to attend. But he did enjoy the series. He's read it several times. Once was enough for me though.

I think with Tolkien, since to most of us, LOTR was always available as a set, we never experienced what the Potter fans have where we desperately anticipate the release of the next book. I was quite excited when "Children Of Húrin" came out, but there were no midnight release parties for it! (At least not around here). That kind of excitement can build a tremendously loyal fan base. The fact that Rowling has actually finished the story also helps. People know there is an end.

My son has read The Hobbit and a few times I have started reading Fellowship aloud to him, but it doesn't yet hold his interest. We are probably past the reading aloud stage with that. I did buy him a nice LOTR set for Christmas a couple of years ago. I am hoping he will start reading them. My leverage is that I won't let him see the movies until he has read the books, and he really wants to see the movies! Plus, we just got the blu-rays! That was the thing with the Potter movies too, he couldn't go to them until he had read the particular book. It did motivate him, though he enjoyed the books.

[Primula Baggins]

My daughter turned 18 a few days before the final film came out, and she and her friends went to the midnight show as they had to all the others since reaching high school. I got a real rite-of-passage vibe from them this time around, though. My daughter told me, "This was our childhood." Tears were definitely shed.

[samaranth]

Prim, my son (and I) felt much the same.

Our story (from my blog) if you're interested.

sam

[Voronwë the Faithful]

What a wonderfully written story, sam! Thanks for sharing it, I enjoyed reading it very much.

[Primula Baggins]

What a lovely and meaningful essay, Sam! This bit spoke straight to me:

‘So it’s over for us then,’ he said to me. ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not a story simply told by one person – there may be no more books, or films, but it does go beyond that. It’s a story that will grow and change each time you read it, each time you watch the film because of what you, yourself, bring to it.’ His imagination. We all bring our individual imaginations to the telling of this tale, and there is no limit on how far they can fly..

Such good and wise advice.

Thank you for linking to it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I have another review of a book about Harry Potter - Harry Potter and Resistance by Beth Sutton-Ramspeck.

https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cg ... t=mythlore

[Eldy]

I recall you mentioning that you were going to review this, V, so I'm glad to hear your thoughts! I've not read Ms Sutton-Ramspeck's book myself so I can't really speak to that, but as someone who grew up with the Harry Potter books and has re-immersed myself in that world in a big way over the past two years, I've thought a fair bit about a number of the things mentioned in your review. It feels weird to think back on the consensus interpretation of HP in left-of-centre circles in the 2000s (decade): how it was an unmitigated plea for tolerance and acceptance and such. Of course, there were other interpretations even at the time, but fast forward five or ten years and there was a lot of scorn being heaped on the series from some of those same left (and left-ish) types, as epitomised by a widely circulated 4chan screencap that reads in part, "Rowling is a liberal centrist Blairite that doesn't really believe in anything".

This was back when Rowling didn't publicly express her anti-trans views except through dogwhistles* - until 2020, you could get jumped on for pointing those out - so I don't think it's solely her status as the international face of centre-left transphobia that's behind the reassessment of the series. I think there are quite a few signs in the text itself that Rowling was never the avatar of progressiveness that many people wanted her to be, and it's even clearer in some of the ancillary material she's written outside the main books. For example, Hermione's stance RE: house-elves is far from the only example of JKR using social justice movements and pleas for tolerance as a punchline, and I'm still not over her coming right out and saying that her depiction of lycanthropy was a "conscious reference" to HIV when Fenrir "you know how much I like kids" Greyback, the only named werewolf in the series other than Lupin, is a fantasy gloss on the homophobic canard of the predatory gay man who wants to spread his unnatural affliction by assaulting children.

Anyway, this isn't meant to be a pure HP bashing post, because neither nostalgia nor the active fanfiction scene would've been enough to keep me invested in the Potterverse for so long if the books didn't have a lot of things going for them. At the same time, I consider it a serious flaw for a story to set up a horrendously unjust society with far deeper problems than the Dark Lord currently menacing them,** but not actually address any of the issues that enabled the villain to begin his reign of terror. Dumbledore explicitly drew attention to this at the end of Order of the Phoenix with his discussion of the Fountain of Magical Brethren's symbolic falseness, but Harry doesn't even try to resolve any of those problems in the final two books. (Then again, Deathly Hallows also fumbles the whole "Harry will win because of his ability to love" concept and instead hands him his victory because of nonsensical rules about wand loyalty (which can be determined by the Disarming Charm, aka Baby's First Duelling Technique) introduced earlier in that volume. ) All that said, the series contains multitudes - or, less charitably, Rowling is sloppy and contradicts herself - so nothing I've said is meant to deny that there are progressive and pro-resistance messages in HP. For my part, re-familiarising myself with the series has increased my cynicism about its politics, but I'm happy for anyone with a more optimistic view than me!

---

* Some people argue Rita Skeeter's "heavy-jawed face" and "large, mannish hands" are one such dogwhistle, meant to imply she's a trans woman (Rowling would probably not use that term :V). I wouldn't be shocked if that was the intent, but it could easily be nothing more than an example of JKR's uncomfortable fixation on bodies she finds unattractive. Her greatest dislike appears to be fatness - nothing in HP compares to this mind-boggling passage from The Casual Vacancy - but Marge Dursley's moustache points to a dislike of masculine traits on cisgender women.

** In fairness, Rowling deserves credit for mentioning such issues at all. Plenty of fantasy-adventure novelists would not have done even that much. Also, I want to be clear that I didn't expect any of these entrenched societal problems to be solved by the end of Harry's seventh year, but a sense that magical Britain had started down the right path would've been nice. Instead, we end right where the first book started, with Voldemort defeated but not much reason to be confident the Ministry of Magic will manage to forge a lasting peace this time, much less create a just society.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Thanks for your thoughts, Eldy, and for taking the time to read my review. It took me a long time to actually review the book, in large part because of such conflicted feelings about Rowling and her work, but I continue to believe it is worth engaging with.