Harry Potter sucks

[the_faery_queen]

i have thought that myself, to some extent. not that she didn't nkow it wasn't fantasy, but if she thought she was writing childrens lit, perhaps she didn't think it was considered the same as adult fantasy? i mean, a LOT of stuff for children IS fantastical in some way, alice in wonderland (i know it's old but there you are) winnie the pooh, really. even thomas the tank engine, it's talking toys, it's magical lands, it's weird stuff going on. her's is MORe fantastical, what with magic and other realms or whatever, but perhaps she did just classify what she wrote as normal children's stuff and not actual fantasy genre stuff, like eddings and martin and so on

and i guess, in theory, she may have then thought the hugo was a kid's award, if she knew nothing about fantasy to begin with.

but she has said other stuff, like she wants to subvert the genre (which one? fantasy or kid's lit? from what i hear, she hasn't subverted either) and i read, about the prospect of harry dying, that books in that genre often have main cgharacters doing that. again, where?

so yeah, i think she is arrogant, but there is an argument for some level of naievty as well. but really, she should have found out what the hugo was when nomianted if she didn't know. it's only polite. not knowing, or just dismissing, is kinda rude.

[pyan]

I refuse to believe that she had no discussion with her publisher on the placement of the books, or the publicity campaign, and no-one even mentioned the word fantasy with regard to HP!
Even less that an author who has been hawking a book about magic round dozens of publishing houses clains to have no idea that the book can be classified as a fantasy novel in the first place.

[dwndrgn]

Actually, being a fan of the Harry Potter books myself, I've read a great deal of information on and about the author. However, not once have I read an actual article/interview that quotes her as saying her books aren't fantasy. Nor have I read anything about her disregard of the Hugo award. Not that I don't believe that she has said/done these things, only that I prefer to work with actual facts rather than rumor. I've seen countless things where people start rumors for their own petty reason and once it has made the rounds of the internet, the world has accepted it as gospel (consider the fact that people STILL fall for those Nigerian spam emails and other hoaxes meant to scare them or waste their time or get them to download a virus). So, if anyone here has an info on where these interviews could be found I'd be eternally grateful (ok, I'm not immortal so maybe not eternally...).

In the interest of research, I just spent a great deal of time searching through 15 pages of results with the search term rowling+interview+hugo and got nowhere. So, if someone knows where these interviews or articles are to be found I'd appreciate it.

Thanks!

[nixie]

I agree with Dwndrgn.I haven't read the books only because I haven't got round to them. Nor have I read the comments she has supposedly made about Hugo awards.If a little bit of arrogance has crept in so what, she has down more for literacy in children than all the so called experts.
Have you ever noticed the more successful a person is the more petty jealousy they attract?

[Thadlerian]

Come to it, I can't really find anything referring to such an incident either. I got it off Werthead in the thread on the Pratchett board, he mentions it twice, and I've come to regard him as a rather well-informed person within the SF/F genres.

[SpaceShip]

I have purposely not read any HP books as I could then turn round and say that I hadn't pinched anything from her. Funnily enough, though, my son, who has read a couple of them, told me I should as it seems some of her stuff HAS crept into my writing - weird that! I reckon it must be a virus! However, she has done remarkably well and many of my friends read and re-read her stuff - so it can't be all bad! Reckon it's like everything else - we all have different tastes and some of us could eat chocolate till we burst while others hate the stuff (not met many of them, though). Hmm, talking about chocolate ...

[j. d. worthington]

Well, it likely came from such things as the following (which is what sparked TP's comments):

J.K. Rowling Hogwarts And All -- Sunday, Jul. 17, 2005 -- Page 1 -- TIME

which includes the following:

The most popular living fantasy writer in the world doesn't even especially like fantasy novels. It wasn't until after Sorcerer's Stone was published that it even occurred to her that she had written one. "That's the honest truth," she says. "You know, the unicorns were in there. There was the castle, God knows. But I really had not thought that that's what I was doing. And I think maybe the reason that it didn't occur to me is that I'm not a huge fan of fantasy." Rowling has never finished The Lord of the Rings. She hasn't even read all of C.S. Lewis' Narnia novels, which her books get compared to a lot. There's something about Lewis' sentimentality about children that gets on her nerves. "There comes a point where Susan, who was the older girl, is lost to Narnia because she becomes interested in lipstick. She's become irreligious basically because she found sex," Rowling says. "I have a big problem with that."

It's precisely Rowling's lack of sentimentality, her earthy, salty realness, her refusal to buy into the basic clichés of fantasy, that make her such a great fantasy writer. The genre tends to be deeply conservative--politically, culturally, psychologically. It looks backward to an idealized, romanticized, pseudofeudal world, where knights and ladies morris-dance to Greensleeves. Rowling's books aren't like that. They take place in the 1990s--not in some never-never Narnia but in modern-day Mugglish England, with cars, telephones and PlayStations. Rowling adapts an inherently conservative genre for her own progressive purposes. Her Hogwarts is secular and sexual and multicultural and multiracial and even sort of multimedia, with all those talking ghosts. If Lewis showed up there, let's face it, he'd probably wind up a Death Eater.

Granted, Rowling's books begin like invitations to garden-variety escapism: Ooh, Harry isn't really a poor orphan; he's actually a wealthy wizard who rides a secret train to a castle, and so on. But as they go on, you realize that while the fun stuff is pure cotton candy, the problems are very real--embarrassment, prejudice, depression, anger, poverty, death. "I was trying to subvert the genre," Rowling explains bluntly. "Harry goes off into this magical world, and is it any better than the world he's left? Only because he meets nicer people. Magic does not make his world better significantly. The relationships make his world better. Magic in many ways complicates his life."

There may be other things buried in the mountains of stuff out there, but I'm not quite interested enough to search. However, this might be a possible source for some of that:

authortrek.com - J K Rowling page: bibliography biography interviews essays news articles

assuming she mentioned the award in any of these interviews (which I think unlikely).

Incidentally, in looking for these things, I came across the following:

[quote]The asteroid (43844) Rowling was named in her honour in early 2006,[58] and the newly-discovered Pachycephalosaurid dinosaur Dracorex hogwartsia, currently at the Children's Museum in Indianapolis, was named in honour of her world in May 2006.[59] There is a housing development in Bristol, near to her childhood home called Rowling Gate.[60][quote]

This is from the Wikipedia article on her:

J. K. Rowling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That seems a bit much, frankly....

[Rane Longfox]

I think what KiwiBird was suggesting is that she didn't know she'd won a Hugo... I mean, it's very prestigious within the sci-fi community, but if she doesn't move in those circles, then maybe she just didn't realise. Or, more likely, some "exectutive assistant" at her publishers didn't realise. Honestly though, she must win awards for her books two or three times a day

That quote is rather interesting though, JD - she starts off by saying she didn't know she was writing fantasy, and finishes by saying she was trying to "subvert the genre", which does rather imply that one of those is a blatant lie.


I would also suggest that whoever wrote that artical knows absolutely nothing about the modern-day fantasy genre... but thats a whole different kettle of fish.

[andrew.v.spencer]

Arrgh that article (in J.D.'s) post is infuriating. It peddles ignorance as knowledge.

[Thadlerian]

A character entering an alternative world and finds it's no better than the initial world he left. Take that, you whole, collective fantasy genre! How does it feel to have been subverted?

[j. d. worthington]

Rane, Andrew: What can you expect from a reporter who says "She uses the word obviously way more often than the average person does[...]" Can anyone point out to me the flaws in that sentence... at least, for anything that is reporting rather than blogging?

Oh, and Thadlerian: What? You mean Harold Shea didn't enjoy being caught in the middle of Ragnarok?

[Dave]

Since people do seem to want to knock Harry Potter, I think we should keep this thread. Personally, I've enjoyed the books and while the characters may not be extremely well drawn, I have found myself eager to discover what happens to them next. I also think her writing is better than many books I've read. But mainly I have to commend her for getting millions of schoolkids to put down their Gameboys and actually read a book!

Originally Posted by Rane Longfox

Where in the books does the main character use pot?

There was some discussion I read last year about this in Newspapers. How making potions from weeds and herbs was causing kids to experiment with drugs. I don't think that is a serious problem, just more Tabloid scaremongering because there was noone in Government making a slip up that particular day.

[j. d. worthington]

For clarification: I'm neither knocking nor defending the books (or Rowling -- though I couldn't resist responding to that comment that Thadlerian mentioned, and the fact that they're naming scientific discoveries after her seems a bit ... off... ). I put in the links because I've been seeing questions about where the information about her knocking fantasy, disregarding the Hugo, etc., came from, and this is what I found. On the books themselves -- as I said, they have got a lot more kids reading, and a wider variety than just the HP books; but I've not read them, and they're rather far down my "must read" list. So for my own part, it's best to say I'm rather indifferent to them at this point, but I do find such flagrant ignorance of a field she makes disparaging comments on rather offensive. That aspect does bug me.

[Rane Longfox]

Originally Posted by Dave

There was some discussion I read last year about this in Newspapers. How making potions from weeds and herbs was causing kids to experiment with drugs. I don't think that is a serious problem, just more Tabloid scaremongering because there was noone in Government making a slip up that particular day.

Hahahaha, a very fair point.


Teehee

[pyan]

Who posted that Wikipedia article, her publisher?

She later withdrew the fourth Harry Potter novel from contention (for the Smartie Prize ) to allow other books a fair chance.

I wonder how William Nicholson, who won it for The Wind Singer, felt about that?