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pegkerrI've been reading the essays in Jack Zipes' book Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children's Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter which David Lenander kindly lent to me in preparation for the Harry Potter panel tomorrow (the last essay in the book is a critical look at the books; Zipes doesn't look upon them kindly). I wish I had time to finish the entire book, but I need to get it back to David tomorrow.
Also in preparation for the panel, I've been reviewing one of my favorite articles on the Harry Potter books, "Harry Potter's Magic" by Alan Jacobs. This was the article that sparked the train of thought that led to my writing the essays on the Harry Potter For Grownups Yahoo Group on the Seven Deadly Sins/Seven Heavenly Virtues as used in the Harry Potter books. One of Jacob's points jumped out at me as being worthy of thought as I mull over the new ice palace book: Jacobs is speaking of the scene in the Chamber of Secrets where Dumbledore is talking with Harry about why the Sorting hat put Harry in Gryffindor rather than Slytherin:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pameladean says at the end of Tam Lin about choosing between a heart of stone and a heart of flesh. (Think about it: if Nick Tooley from Tam Lin had gone to Hogwarts, wouldn't he have been placed in Slytherin?)
In my entry on my dinner with Pat Wrede, I explained some of the preliminary thoughts I've had about creating a villain for the book. One thing I forgot to mention about that conversation with Pat: I had told her about the fairy tale "The Frost King," but remarked in passing that I didn't think I'd include the evil stepsister. "Oh, but you must," Pat said quickly. "Or at least, you must have a character who fills that function. You see, you have to have two characters, one who makes the right choice, and one who makes the wrong choice." That led to our discussion over whether it was perhaps Jack who makes the wrong choice whereas Solveig learns to make the right one. The danger to be avoided here is that the struggle of the choice turns entirely to Jack rather than Solveig; I want Solveig to be the protagonist. Remember the pivotal scene in LOTR, where Gollum comes upon Frodo and Sam sleeping and he almost repents of his plan to feed them to Shelob? Sam woke then and spoke sharply to him, and from then on Gollum was wholly committed to treachery (Oh the irony, that one of the best characters--Sam--says the thing that pushes Gollum over the line to choose the heart of stone). Tolkien did this to keep Frodo as the protagonist--otherwise the focus of the internal struggle would have switched to Gollum. Therefore, I want to highlight Solveig's struggle to make a choice, not just Jack, otherwise focus switches to Jack alone. The embodiment of the wrong choice might be represented by a villain, who might be a very experienced master of magic, and Jack is his journeyman assistant. This individual (call him Mr. X--he doesn't have a name yet) is the one who earlier was trying to use Solveig's magic, but he got her pregnant, which meant he couldn't use her magic as he'd planned. He's Ingrid's father.
Anyway, that bit in Jacob's essay about the "strong tendency of magic to become a dream of power . . . make it a wonderful means by which to focus the theme of Bildung, the choices that gradually but inexorably shape us into certain distinct kinds of persons" makes me think of Mr. X. I am also thinking aboutdiony's remarks about the uses of magic. Mr. X is "engraving his character" in such a way that he has chosen the heart of stone.
He is becoming a little clearer to me, now. BTW: If you continue to read my LiveJournal, please accept that you will be receiving all sorts of spoilers on the book. I'm writing about process here; I'm thinking out loud for my own purposes and for the interest and amusement of others, and so I'm going to be giving elements of the plot away. If you want to open up my book with no idea of what happens when it gets published two or three years from now (or, god, four or five or six or seven years from now, depending on how fast I can write it and the vagaries of the market) STOP READING NOW.
For those of you who are still with me:
Mr. X was formerly Solveig's lover. He is actually several hundred years old, but when he tried to seize Solveig's latent magic, it backfired on him because he had gotten Solveig pregnant, and one of the effects of that backfiring was that he lost a little of his grip on his immortal youth. Let's say that Solveig thought he was in his late twenties at the time of their affair, but now, when she meets him again when Ingrid is six, he looks about, say, fifty years old. So it doesn't occur to her that he is her old lover, but she thinks Mr. X might be related to her old lover. He knows who she is, of course.
I think that he might have worked himself into the position that he's the contact for the people who have commissioned the ice palace. Whoever is on the committee to run the St. Paul Winter Carnival, he has insinuated himself onto the Board of Directors (or whatever their organizational structure is) and he is, therefore, the "client contact."
This has all sorts of slimy possibilities: Mr. X visits her in her office and picks up the picture of Ingrid she has on her desk. "Lovely little girl," he says . . . and she can't figure out why the way he says it gives her the creeps.
Hmm. Perhaps all this musing is rather incoherent. If so, sorry. (Peg goes off to think some more).
I'll be meeting with Inga the architect tomorrow, too. I've been invited to her office and then we'll have lunch, and I'll fish for information. Wish me luck!
Peg
Also in preparation for the panel, I've been reviewing one of my favorite articles on the Harry Potter books, "Harry Potter's Magic" by Alan Jacobs. This was the article that sparked the train of thought that led to my writing the essays on the Harry Potter For Grownups Yahoo Group on the Seven Deadly Sins/Seven Heavenly Virtues as used in the Harry Potter books. One of Jacob's points jumped out at me as being worthy of thought as I mull over the new ice palace book: Jacobs is speaking of the scene in the Chamber of Secrets where Dumbledore is talking with Harry about why the Sorting hat put Harry in Gryffindor rather than Slytherin:
I like this concept that character is "that which is engraved." This seems to me to be getting close to what Lois talks about when she says she writes about identity in her books, and again reminds me of what"So I should be in Slytherin," Harry said, looking desperately into Dumbledore’s face. "The Sorting Hat could see Slytherin’s power in me, and it--"Harry is stunned because he realizes for the first time that his confusion has been wrongheaded from the start: he has been asking the question "Who am I at heart?" when he needed to be asking the question "What must I do in order to become what I should be?" His character is not a fixed preexistent thing, but something that he has the responsibility for making: that’s why the Greeks called it character, "that which is engraved." It’s also what the Germans mean when they speak of Bildung, and the Harry Potter books are of course a multivolume Bildungsroman--a story of "education," that is to say, of character formation.
"Put you in Gryffindor," said Dumbledore calmly. "Listen to me, Harry. You happen to have many qualities Salazar Slytherin prized in his hand-picked students. Resourcefulness . . . determination . . . a certain disregard for rules," he added, his moustache quivering again. "Yet the Sorting Hat placed you in Gryffindor. You know why that was. Think."
"It only put me in Gryffindor," said Harry in a defeated voice, "Because I asked not to go in Slytherin. . . ."
"Exactly," said Dumbledore, beaming once more. "Which makes you very different from [Voldemort]. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." Harry sat motionless in his chair, stunned.
In this sense the strong tendency of magic to become a dream of power--on the importance of this point Lynn Thorndike, Keith Thomas, and C. S. Lewis all agree--makes it a wonderful means by which to focus the theme of Bildung, of the choices that gradually but inexorably shape us into certain distinct kinds of persons.
pameladean says at the end of Tam Lin about choosing between a heart of stone and a heart of flesh. (Think about it: if Nick Tooley from Tam Lin had gone to Hogwarts, wouldn't he have been placed in Slytherin?)In my entry on my dinner with Pat Wrede, I explained some of the preliminary thoughts I've had about creating a villain for the book. One thing I forgot to mention about that conversation with Pat: I had told her about the fairy tale "The Frost King," but remarked in passing that I didn't think I'd include the evil stepsister. "Oh, but you must," Pat said quickly. "Or at least, you must have a character who fills that function. You see, you have to have two characters, one who makes the right choice, and one who makes the wrong choice." That led to our discussion over whether it was perhaps Jack who makes the wrong choice whereas Solveig learns to make the right one. The danger to be avoided here is that the struggle of the choice turns entirely to Jack rather than Solveig; I want Solveig to be the protagonist. Remember the pivotal scene in LOTR, where Gollum comes upon Frodo and Sam sleeping and he almost repents of his plan to feed them to Shelob? Sam woke then and spoke sharply to him, and from then on Gollum was wholly committed to treachery (Oh the irony, that one of the best characters--Sam--says the thing that pushes Gollum over the line to choose the heart of stone). Tolkien did this to keep Frodo as the protagonist--otherwise the focus of the internal struggle would have switched to Gollum. Therefore, I want to highlight Solveig's struggle to make a choice, not just Jack, otherwise focus switches to Jack alone. The embodiment of the wrong choice might be represented by a villain, who might be a very experienced master of magic, and Jack is his journeyman assistant. This individual (call him Mr. X--he doesn't have a name yet) is the one who earlier was trying to use Solveig's magic, but he got her pregnant, which meant he couldn't use her magic as he'd planned. He's Ingrid's father.
Anyway, that bit in Jacob's essay about the "strong tendency of magic to become a dream of power . . . make it a wonderful means by which to focus the theme of Bildung, the choices that gradually but inexorably shape us into certain distinct kinds of persons" makes me think of Mr. X. I am also thinking about
diony's remarks about the uses of magic. Mr. X is "engraving his character" in such a way that he has chosen the heart of stone.He is becoming a little clearer to me, now. BTW: If you continue to read my LiveJournal, please accept that you will be receiving all sorts of spoilers on the book. I'm writing about process here; I'm thinking out loud for my own purposes and for the interest and amusement of others, and so I'm going to be giving elements of the plot away. If you want to open up my book with no idea of what happens when it gets published two or three years from now (or, god, four or five or six or seven years from now, depending on how fast I can write it and the vagaries of the market) STOP READING NOW.
For those of you who are still with me:
Mr. X was formerly Solveig's lover. He is actually several hundred years old, but when he tried to seize Solveig's latent magic, it backfired on him because he had gotten Solveig pregnant, and one of the effects of that backfiring was that he lost a little of his grip on his immortal youth. Let's say that Solveig thought he was in his late twenties at the time of their affair, but now, when she meets him again when Ingrid is six, he looks about, say, fifty years old. So it doesn't occur to her that he is her old lover, but she thinks Mr. X might be related to her old lover. He knows who she is, of course.
I think that he might have worked himself into the position that he's the contact for the people who have commissioned the ice palace. Whoever is on the committee to run the St. Paul Winter Carnival, he has insinuated himself onto the Board of Directors (or whatever their organizational structure is) and he is, therefore, the "client contact."
This has all sorts of slimy possibilities: Mr. X visits her in her office and picks up the picture of Ingrid she has on her desk. "Lovely little girl," he says . . . and she can't figure out why the way he says it gives her the creeps.
Hmm. Perhaps all this musing is rather incoherent. If so, sorry. (Peg goes off to think some more).
I'll be meeting with Inga the architect tomorrow, too. I've been invited to her office and then we'll have lunch, and I'll fish for information. Wish me luck!
Peg
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(no subject)
Date: 2002-11-20 01:44 am (UTC)Interesting side thoughts now about parenthood and stewardship and all that. The difference between parents who raise their kids, and parents who think they own their kids. (And some think they own everything that belongs to their kids, too. As you know, I have an ancestor whose savings were taken by a parent; she had to save up a second time to get enough money to leave home to get an education. The parent never thought he did anything wrong, since the way he figured it, what belonged to the kid belonged to the parent.)
Don't mind me; I'm just fretting over your characters' wellbeing and safety. ;-) Carry on!
(no subject)
Date: 2002-11-20 09:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2002-11-20 08:34 pm (UTC)K. [curious]