NEWS: Academics Talk Potter: Pratchett Complains

Rottenwood said:
I had the Drudge Report on while doing some E-mailing, and needless to say, ol' Drudge accused the Harry Potter books of corrupting the nation's youth. He assumed the kids reading the books would go out and "drink unicorn's blood" and "fly away on their broomsticks," and perform all manners of demonic witchery. I hope those kids hunting unicorns are really patient.

In any event, this is probably what Rowling is really trying to avoid: catching the wrath of the 'moral majority' who have demonized everything from Dungeons and Dragons to Grand Theft Auto. (We nerds catch it in the shorts every time the powers-that-be decide to hate on a hobby.) You should've heard Drudge belittling adults that read Harry Potter books... shit, it IS 2005, is it not?

wottan said:
Part of the reason people deny affiliation with genres like fantasy and sci-fi is that they dont get much recognition by the 'literati'. Just as how lord of the rings is still only dubiously respected by the literature community, so does it work for others of the genre. Its just people trying to disassociate with genres that dont get official recognition outside their own bounds.

Also Terry Pratchett is awesome, and his point is dead on I think.

Keith said:
It's hard to remember now that Harry Potter has become a huge franchise and financial institution, but she really did write the first one on napkins in a one bedroom apartment, and it took off on word of mouth among kids.

burning_bright said:

maybe us nerds should start our own political party? elect nerds to office, to do the bidding of us nerds....hmmmm....

MrStitches said:

Sarah Vowell has a good piece about electing nerds to office, specifically Al Gore, in The Party Cloudy Patriot

burning_bright said:

i shoulda guessed that gore would be an acceptable nerd candidate.

MrStitches said:

Well, she said that he isn't, because he doesn't know how to mock himself as every good nerd should. By mocking himself, he would have taken that ammunition away from the conservatives, and make him more likeable.

In message <1122867580.754290.203330@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, Alex
Clark <alexbclark@pennswoods.net> writes
>Tim Behrendsen wrote:
>>
>
>He seems to be quoting and paraphrasing the same article that was
>published in _Time_, for which a link was recently posted to AFHP. I
>wish that the person who posted this to The Leaky Cauldron had included
>more information about the context; it is not clearly stated that it is
>this article to which he is responding, regardless of what publication
>it might have appeared in.

Well, I'm back, with a nice new provider which work with Turnpike.
Anything been happening while I've been away?

Oh. My word. I might as well come in here as anywhere.

Let's take it a bit at a time. You know what I wrote, because I think
the entire text has been quoted here somewhere. No, in fact not the
*entire* text--the original letter sent to the Sunday Times referred to
JKR quite politely as Ms Rowling; a small courtesy, but deleting it
makes the relevant sentence twice as harsh, which may be why it was
done.

And the BBC website put a nice little spin on thing on things with a
headline suggesting I'm directing a tirade at J K Rowling, rather than
expressing annoyance at the habits of journalists and specifically
one telling phrase* clearly used by someone else*.

As soon as the Harry Potter boom began, journalists who hadn't read
a children's book in years went "Wow, a wizards'school! Wow,
broomstick lessons! " and so on, and generally acted as though the
common property of the genre was the entire invention of JKR. This
continues, sometimes quite ridiculously. And now we have
Groomsman's 'knights and ladies Morris dancing to Greensleeves'
With such an easy wave we can dismiss, oh, Ursula leGuin, Diana
Wynn Jones, Jane Yolen, Peter Dickinson Alan Garner...fill in the list.

Pointing this out is, apparently, an attack on JKR. I don't have any
problem at all with her rise, only with such third-party silliness such
as the above, which insults good authors who wrote great books at a
time, not long ago, when advances were always low and hype was
unknown.


No, I do not think these words originated with her. It's self-evident in
the article that they are the voice of the interviewer, who is very .
visible in the piece. The tone and presentation make it obvious. Read
the paragraph beginning 'It is precisely Rowling's lack of
sentimentality...' He's giving us *his* opinion, and the guy just had a
nice line he wanted to use. Read the context and say I'm wrong.

And remember: what I was doing was apparently the right of every
Englishman, which was to write a letter to The Times -- for an audience
that can be assumed to have read, with some intelligence, the article in
question. Believe me, if the ST guys had read it as an attack on the
lady herself, it would have been an article, not a letter.


But out there now, I believe, are various morphs of the BBC piece, with
extra venom. You don't have to think about it, just react. 'Pratchett
Attacks Journalist' just would not be as much fun. Every story needs a
villain, right?

And then there's my question. Why didn't the interviewer ask it?
Here's the worlds best-selling fantasy writer who has just said she
hadn't thought she was writing fantasy and also that she doesn't
really like the stuff. She goes on to say that she didn't finish TLOTR
or the Narnia series and has issues with Lewis. No problem there,
but all this revelatory stuff just floated past, apparently unexamined.
Id like to know how an author can write in a genre she doesn't like--
really. I'd like to know what she thinks she *is* writing.

I'm jealous? Well, that saves having to have any discussion at all,
right?

But I will pick up on the comments about Tiffany Aching and 'the
school for witches'. As he Discworld take on Witch v. Wizard magic
has been in place for a very long time. Tiffany's daydream of a magical
school' *could *be Hogwarts --or Unseen University or Miss Cackle's
Academy or any fantasy school or all or none. It might even be five
seconds of Tiffany's wishful thinking. So what? Granny
Weatherwax's often voiced distrust of books, magical tools goes all
the way back to 'Equal Rites' in 1987. Why should she suddenly be
talking about another author's creations?
--

--
Terry Pratchett

MrStitches said:

New to the genre? It is the fantasy plot.
Normal dude suddenly finds out he can do magic.
Quickly learns that not only can he do magic, but he is the most bad ass magician in ages.
AND he has to fight the biggest badass dark wizard. That is every fantasy novel ever. Except Harry Potter is in school.

Ahriman said:

I'm not saying you're not correct in your assumption that this is basis of most fantasy novels. When you break it down further, fantasy is just an over-emphasised version of a great number of novels, across genres. The essence of protagonist and antagonist conflicting over something, anything, is the basis of the majority of fiction. Conflict is what authors are taught drives the novel, are what makes it interesting to the reader in the first place. In worlds where a great number of things are exaggerated; it's not hard to understand why the protagonistantagonist relationship in fantasy fiction is heightened too.

You can break down almost any genre and find a singular common thread to the work (ie. All mystery novels involve somebody solving a mystery). That's why it's a genre.

The separation between good fiction and bad fiction (fantasy or otherwise) lies in the ability of the author to tell the story along the way. It's not always necessary to be completely original to write well. Telling a story that been told a hundred times in a new an exciting way is the hallmark of great writing as much as attempting to put forth completely original thought.

I think that people find it easier to willing suspend disbelief in a poorly written political thriller than they are to suspend disbelief in an excellently written fantasy novel. This often leads to harsher criticism of fantasy work than the genre on a whole deserves. Harsher than many other genres (see romance novels) receive for sure.

[edited to add] Someone said the Pratchett might be jealous of Rowling superceded him. I would that hard to believe. Rowling is the most financially succesful novel in contemporary british fantasy history. She is not no way the pre-eminant novelist. I do believe that that title still belongs to Pratchett.



[Edited on Aug 01, 2005 by Ahriman]

MrStitches said:

Well, my point was that she said she said she didn't think she was writing fantasy while she was doing it. But the whole time she was writing one of the more common fantasy stories. I'm not saying it's bad that it fits one of the fantasy formulas, I've read at least 3 other series that fit this particular mold, and loved them. But saying she didn't think she was writing fantasy is kind of a joke.

Ahriman said:

My mistake then, misread what you were complaining about. Sorry 'bout the rambling then.