And now let the sneering begin
Jun. 24th, 2003 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrI ran across a couple of articles today, here and here, which dismiss Rowling's books with sneering condescension. Some representative samples:
Since I've seen this attitude before, I've been thinking about this all day. Look, if you haven't figured it out, (and if you're on my friends' list, you probably have) I really do like JK Rowling's books. Usually, I can say that without blushing, but occasionally, I find it difficult to admit, because I do run across the attitude found in these articles, and in some of the offhand (and occasionally not so offhand) remarks I've heard when discussing the books with other people. It can be painful to listen to challenges to your judgment and taste, which, when boiled down, resemble statements like these:
These books may be popular but they are not well-written. If you like them, you have unsophisticated, nay, "infantile" taste.
These books may be popular, but then there are other fantasy novels (and fantasy novelists) who are better and more literary and who deserve all this attention more.
These books are facile and their examination of theme is simplistic. If you like them and intrigued by the themes they explore, well, that means you're a really shallow person who isn't capable of subtle analysis, aren't you?
These books are about children and therefore are a waste of adults' time, who after all, More Important things to think about.
As a fantasy author who has been on a number of different panels at different conventions, I've heard it all. Some of it is clearly jealousy from other professionals in the field who clearly are mad enough to spit nails about the fact that JKR is getting all this lovely money and attention and they, more worthy, are not. I don't mean to imply that the ONLY reason that a fantasy writer wouldn't like Rowling might be because he or she is jealous! Although I have seen jealousy, it would be ridiculous to say that it's the ONLY reason a fantasy writer might dislike the books. As for readers in general, I understand that there are plenty of people who have perfectly legitimate reasons for disliking Rowling's work because, well, it really doesn't suit their taste, books set in English boarding schools (even magical ones) don't interest them, they don't like her style, etc. Rowling's books just might not work for some people.
What interests (and irritates me) is the really intense condescension in the nature of some of the criticism. Sometimes the condescension is so thick that I just smile and keep my mouth shut, knowing that it would be hopeless to even say anything.
It bothers me. Sometimes it infuriates me. When I speak up to defend the books, I'll sometimes catch the arched eyebrows and the superior little smiles, quickly hidden, and I think to myself, why is it so necessary for you to think you are superior to me because I like these books and you don't? Why do you assume that my enjoyment of Rowling's books is "infantile" and you, since you hate them, are not? Why does Bloom assume it is Rowling's books that will be put in the dustbins of history, since he dislikes them (although he admits he didn't even finish the first and hasn't read the rest) and not the ones that he likes?
I pulled out both Emma Bull's "Why I Write Fantasy" and Joanna Russ's How to Suppress Women's Writing as I've been thinking about the mean-spirited sneering tones of these two articles. They explain a lot. Fantasy, Bull says, is dismissed as being of the past, the concern of children only, and therefore not important. But, as she says, fantasy was originally the literature of sophisticates, kings and queens--and if you make the mistake of arguing that it was the literature of the "childhood" of the human race, then you are seriously underestimating your ancestors. Fantasy, Bull argues, is really subversive--it allows the writer to draw some pointed conclusions about what's really going on in our own world (think about Professor Umbridge and what Rowling is saying about education, cowardice, the nature of bureaucratic evil. "Infantile?" Hardly).
Russ talks about how women's writing is marginalized, and I see her observations operating here in these articles: She wrote it, but it isn't high art, literary, sophisticated. She wrote it, but she doesn't deserve the fame. She wrote it but it's too popular, and therefore not worthy of the attention of people with really superior taste. She wrote it, but it's about silly little childish things (like friendship, courage, self-sacrifice and death). She wrote it, but it's really just escapism (friendship, courage, self-sacrifice and death??? Escapism???)
Comments?
Peg
When it comes to gripping, unchallenging brain candy, the main difference with the boy wizard is that you can read about him in public, smug in the knowledge that you are part of an accepted cultural trend. In today's infantile culture, it's okay to aspire to be childlike.and this:
The latest instalment of Potter-mania, however, has taken our cultural infantilism to a new low.
In attempting to account for Harry Potter's success, debate has raged over the content of the books. Some have hailed them as new classics, with their roots deep in the rich traditions of children's literature, and others condemned them as superficial and derivative. In my view they are reasonably enjoyable to read, pacy and humorous, with a few surprises; but the characters, especially the evil ones, tend to be caricatured and superficial, and the plots, despite a few twists and turns, are fairly predictable.There's more of the same at the links I provided above, if you can stomach it.
But whatever the quality of the literature, this certainly does not account for the appeal of the Potter books. Ultimately, they are pure escapism - and that's what has worked for adults. . . .the main characters in the Potter books are children, and the adults are mostly stupid or evil. In identifying with these child protagonists, you could see adults' enthusiasm for the Harry Potter books as reflecting a rejection of the grown-up world, where things are complicated and don't all turn out right in the end, where adults do bad things and get away with it, and where nothing seems certain.
It is not only in fiction that more and more adults seem to want to escape from this reality, rather than get to grips with it.
Since I've seen this attitude before, I've been thinking about this all day. Look, if you haven't figured it out, (and if you're on my friends' list, you probably have) I really do like JK Rowling's books. Usually, I can say that without blushing, but occasionally, I find it difficult to admit, because I do run across the attitude found in these articles, and in some of the offhand (and occasionally not so offhand) remarks I've heard when discussing the books with other people. It can be painful to listen to challenges to your judgment and taste, which, when boiled down, resemble statements like these:
These books may be popular but they are not well-written. If you like them, you have unsophisticated, nay, "infantile" taste.
These books may be popular, but then there are other fantasy novels (and fantasy novelists) who are better and more literary and who deserve all this attention more.
These books are facile and their examination of theme is simplistic. If you like them and intrigued by the themes they explore, well, that means you're a really shallow person who isn't capable of subtle analysis, aren't you?
These books are about children and therefore are a waste of adults' time, who after all, More Important things to think about.
As a fantasy author who has been on a number of different panels at different conventions, I've heard it all. Some of it is clearly jealousy from other professionals in the field who clearly are mad enough to spit nails about the fact that JKR is getting all this lovely money and attention and they, more worthy, are not. I don't mean to imply that the ONLY reason that a fantasy writer wouldn't like Rowling might be because he or she is jealous! Although I have seen jealousy, it would be ridiculous to say that it's the ONLY reason a fantasy writer might dislike the books. As for readers in general, I understand that there are plenty of people who have perfectly legitimate reasons for disliking Rowling's work because, well, it really doesn't suit their taste, books set in English boarding schools (even magical ones) don't interest them, they don't like her style, etc. Rowling's books just might not work for some people.
What interests (and irritates me) is the really intense condescension in the nature of some of the criticism. Sometimes the condescension is so thick that I just smile and keep my mouth shut, knowing that it would be hopeless to even say anything.
It bothers me. Sometimes it infuriates me. When I speak up to defend the books, I'll sometimes catch the arched eyebrows and the superior little smiles, quickly hidden, and I think to myself, why is it so necessary for you to think you are superior to me because I like these books and you don't? Why do you assume that my enjoyment of Rowling's books is "infantile" and you, since you hate them, are not? Why does Bloom assume it is Rowling's books that will be put in the dustbins of history, since he dislikes them (although he admits he didn't even finish the first and hasn't read the rest) and not the ones that he likes?
I pulled out both Emma Bull's "Why I Write Fantasy" and Joanna Russ's How to Suppress Women's Writing as I've been thinking about the mean-spirited sneering tones of these two articles. They explain a lot. Fantasy, Bull says, is dismissed as being of the past, the concern of children only, and therefore not important. But, as she says, fantasy was originally the literature of sophisticates, kings and queens--and if you make the mistake of arguing that it was the literature of the "childhood" of the human race, then you are seriously underestimating your ancestors. Fantasy, Bull argues, is really subversive--it allows the writer to draw some pointed conclusions about what's really going on in our own world (think about Professor Umbridge and what Rowling is saying about education, cowardice, the nature of bureaucratic evil. "Infantile?" Hardly).
Russ talks about how women's writing is marginalized, and I see her observations operating here in these articles: She wrote it, but it isn't high art, literary, sophisticated. She wrote it, but she doesn't deserve the fame. She wrote it but it's too popular, and therefore not worthy of the attention of people with really superior taste. She wrote it, but it's about silly little childish things (like friendship, courage, self-sacrifice and death). She wrote it, but it's really just escapism (friendship, courage, self-sacrifice and death??? Escapism???)
Comments?
Peg
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Grrr.
Date: 2003-06-25 05:41 am (UTC)What strikes me most about this is... its childishness. The whole piece makes no attempt whatsoever to actually engage with the text, and comes across as merely a hack generalisation for the sake of bucking a 'cultural trend'. It's incredibly facile: like a slightly more verbose version of an eight-year old saying: "Ner, I'm not reading that, it's for little kids, and I'm A Big Girl/Boy," or an angsty teen desperately wanting things that aren't 'mainstream' because they are Special and Different and Clever.
It just makes me snicker. I mean, I don't like the music of, say, Justin Timberlake, but I'm not going to write articles claiming that everyone who likes him is some kind of brainless moron who's just too 'infantile' to appreciate Bach or Schoenberg or Thelonious Monk or whoever. In my experience, most of the adults who read the HP books appreciate a wide range of artforms, from the intensely 'literary' to blockbuster Hollywood movies. . The writer of this article seems to be implying that picking up a Harry Potter book is tantamount to 'rejecting the adult world', as if the books were some new kind of anti-ageing device that immediately return your brain to a state of pre-teen bliss. (Which also suggests that they think childhood is some kind of angst-free state where everything is always sunny and uncomplicated, and everything turns out well in the end. Pah. The kind of safe, threat-free childhood they seem to mean here is a relatively modern invention, and also, for a huge majority of children, a myth. And I think Rowling understands that, and handles it pretty well).
I do think that the HP books have prompted a lot of adults to read more children's lit, as have the recent LotR movies. People are, perhaps, remembering that they used to read a lot of books which were fun, exciting, had plots, and weren't full of gratuitous sex scenes, long angsty paragraphs of ham philosophy or the author ticking off a list of suitably pseudo-intellectual literary references. (Not that all adult books are like this, but you get my drift). And yes, they are going out and buying them, reading them in public, and not feeling as if they have to be furtive about it. I see that as more of a liberation from constraints on what they 'should' read than a sign of intellectual poverty. It's also had the effect of blurring the boundaries between children's and adult fiction in an interesting way, so that you get children's books playing with quantum physics (His Dark Materials) and Booker Prize-winning 'adult' literature about a little boy drifting in a boat (Life of Pi). I think what's important to remember here is that definitions of what is 'adult' fiction and what is 'children's' fiction are mostly arbitrary, and made up for marketing purposes. Anything that smashes open those rigid little categories has to be a good thing.