tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post1080304638037108638..comments2024-02-23T03:28:33.435-05:00Comments on Culture Industry: Harry Potter's vocational dilemmaMark Scrogginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01431113440875342809noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-86602956743403888842010-05-20T13:21:56.072-04:002010-05-20T13:21:56.072-04:00What is it that Edmund Wilson called the Tolkien b...What is it that Edmund Wilson called the Tolkien books? --"oh those awful Orcs!"<br /><br />There's one easy way to avoid all this stuff. Just say no.<br /><br />The Potter phenomenon: Too old for kids, and too juvenile for grown-ups. Who, then, is it written for? Weird pre-teen nerds who live entirely in a fantasy world? They were never happy as kids, and they'll be immature and impractical as adults.<br /><br />"Now, how is it that these long-winded volumes of what looks to this reviewer like balderdash have elicited such tributes as those above? The answer is, I believe, that certain people – especially, perhaps, in Britain – have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash. They would not accept adult trash, but, confronted with the pre-teen-age article, they revert to the mental phase which delighted in Elsie Dinsmore and Little Lord Fauntleroy and which seems to have made of Billy Bunter, in England, almost a national figure. You can see it in the tone they fall into when they talk about Tolkien in print: they bubble, they squeal, they coo; they go on about Malory and Spenser - both of whom have a charm and a distinction that Tolkien has never touched."<br /><br />--http://jrrvf.ifrance.com/sda/critiques/the_nation.htmlCurtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-6845257203013018102010-05-12T20:51:59.704-04:002010-05-12T20:51:59.704-04:00Try "Harry Potty and the Cauldron of Shite&qu...Try "Harry Potty and the Cauldron of Shite" for a title.Jeremiahhttp://twitter.com/jdcommonlynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-63723962037528925812010-05-03T14:02:55.955-04:002010-05-03T14:02:55.955-04:00You might enjoy tracking down Christine Brooke-Ros...You might enjoy tracking down Christine Brooke-Rose's witty, rather exasperated take on 'Lord of the Rings' in her essay 'The Evil Ring, Realism and the Marvellous' ('A Rhetoric of the Unreal', 1981). C B-R concludes, 'As the story advances, or rather ambles in travelogue, stumbles in delays and spreads out in reduplications, it is as if the evil power of the ring that weighs down Frodo with its intolerable burden were paralleled by the (evil?) power of realistic discourse as it weighs down the marvellous.' Having kept my Harry Potter virginity, I don't know if JKR has avoided this trap. (She is much to be congratulated on Good Works in real life by all accounts, however.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-36376136694547758572010-04-28T00:23:26.480-04:002010-04-28T00:23:26.480-04:00Whoops, meant to link the editorial (via).
Word v...Whoops, meant to link the <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7096786.ece" rel="nofollow">editorial</a> (<a href="http://crookedtimber.org/2010/04/14/j-k-rowling-on-welfare-and-patriotism/" rel="nofollow">via</a>).<br /><br />Word verification: prions, evidently what's addling my brain.Vance Maverickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07477306994564623348noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-86469912061938487422010-04-27T23:34:22.378-04:002010-04-27T23:34:22.378-04:00I haven't read these books, and my daughter is...I haven't read these books, and my daughter isn't there yet (the Magic Tree House series is more her speed, for now). But did you see Rowling's recent editorial? She went not to Eton but to <a href="http://www.wyedean.gloucs.sch.uk/" rel="nofollow">Wyedean Comprehensive</a> ("head girl in 1982"), and the strange hybrid school she invented may reflect a view of the public school of literary tradition, as seen from quite another sort of place.Vance Maverickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07477306994564623348noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-22551697440351262742010-04-27T22:53:15.441-04:002010-04-27T22:53:15.441-04:00Actually, I think it's more like the school in...Actually, I think it's more like the school in Pink Floyd. I mean, a teacher who has you write "I will not tell lies" on your hand so many times that it leaves the words as scars? <br />The first time I read the books, I was irritated that Harry would never tell the teachers when he saw trouble coming. This time, I'm annoyed that the teachers can do so little to avert disaster. Why should Harry be the one who has to unravel the mystery, every time?<br />Why indeed? Maybe the books should be read as bloated psychomachia. It's The Lord of the Rings, it's Star Wars, it's losing your finger to save the world; acknowledging the darkness within yourself is the way to win the game.<br />My favorite volume is "The Order of the Phoenix" because I like the kinky sadism of Umbridge's magic pen. "This thing of darkness, et cetera, et cetera."<br />--Jennifer LowAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com