Lots of Harry Potter News

[rattlesnakeroot]

I've been out of things with a bad cold this holiday weekend, so I missed alot of news! So I'm putting all the news I could find into this one post

This is long so all of it is under the cut.

Comments

[ms_arithmancer]

He's not, actually, one of those snobs that thinks literature died in the 19th century. I get the impression that he would consider some writers in Oprah's list "good literature", his objection to her book club seems to be not *what* they read, but what he sees as the shallowness of the discussions that ensue. Note his wish that Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" (a novel of the 1970's) be owned by every middle class family in America. I have no opinion on the merits of that novel, having never read it, but Wikipedia describes it as "an epic postmodern novel" which is "frequently digressive ... subverts many of the traditional elements of plot and character development, traverses detailed, specialist knowledge drawn from a wide range of disciplines, and has earned a reputation as a "difficult" book." Which description, by the way, makes it highly unlikely I will ever try it, LOL. Difficult's not a problem, it can hardly be less so than reading 19th century lit in French, for example, but I've never felt a need to subvert plot and character development, and tend to feel there is little point to doing so for its own sake. If this is done to some other purpose, the article fails to mention it.

I can live with those stick-in-the-mud snobs, most nineteenth century "classics" are quite acceptable to me as reading material for any number of reasons.

But don't worry. As a result of three years in Harry Potter fandom, I have a great deal of respect for students of literature, whom I have found to have lots of interesting and meaningful things to say about both the HP series, and any number of other books that have come up in our discussions. I think, however, that I got a lot more enjoyment, and learning, out of such discussions that I would have out of a "readings in Lit" survey course in college, espcecially if this guy had been teaching it.

[rattlesnakeroot]

Let's just say that guy is wrong, wrong, wrong!

I've tried Thomas Pynchon's books back when I was in college. Much too complex for me. I read for pleasure, not work.

That writer just seems to echo the idea that people have become "dumbed down" where literature is concerned, and that's just not true. If anything, the public schools stress literature from kindergarten up more than they did when I was in school.

[ms_arithmancer]

Yes, they do. Josh asked me a couple of weeks ago whether a Tintin comic book was an example of a "personal narrative story". I needed to email his kindergarten teacher for an explanation before I could answer, LOL. (It's a way to say a first person narration, it turns out, so the answer is "no".)

[rattlesnakeroot]

Wow - that's an advanced topic for someone so young! But yes, a personal narrative just means someone is telling a story in their own voice.