Implying people who don't like Harry Potter just don't get it, and aren't down with the kids. I find this insulting. You say Potter is escapism, and you are right, but if it was just that why do so many people care? And what, really, is the point? There are a number of classical and Christian references in Potter, enough to qualify it as a Christian text. So, if Rowling's opus is to be considered worthy of our care and respect it needs to be something more than just idle fantasy. Why do you think no one reads Worst Witch books anymore? Also, what are you escaping to? Because if I could pick a fictional world to live in, Potter would be the last one I'd look at. The economy has gone to the dogs, all education outside magic is ignored, so you have adults with the critical thinking skills, math and communication skills of a very young teenager. And a justice system that couldn't stop a very active mass murderer for a number of years. Also, this is a world where children are put into harms way at every step of their education, in the novels it's presented as quirky light relief, yet I don't think I'd be allowed to bring a lion into my classroom and shoot it dead to show my students what Hemingway was talking about. Also, there is no higher education system in the Potter universe, so teachers are basically just the gifted pupils, apparently. Imagine if a young wizard meets, by chance, a pretty muggle girl and they fall in love and decide to live together and settle down. He's got the marketable skills of a 12 year old, so he can only hope for either low-paid labour work or low-grade college courses, and will struggle to adapt to the more technical side of muggle life. Eventually, unless he works really hard to make up for 8 full years of education, he'll have to go back to the magic world. Imagine a young witch has really strict parents, and demand after her Hogwarts education is over she should come back to them and be a normal muggle 20 something, and she again faces the same problem. Neither seems very free or light-hearted, does it? Also, on terms of day to day life nothing in the magical world makes sense. Everything seems built to make it as whimsical and 'magic' as possible, but why use an owl or a flying telegram in the age of the text message. The series is set in the 1990s, mobile phones were expensive, but they were actually a thing. Also, the wizarding world is isolated from the muggle world, and has no interest in it, which is just illogical. Ok, sure, it might be nice to make a cake fly or whatever, but muggles put a man on the moon. And also, what would the wizarding world do when they found out about nuclear weapons? Why haven't they heard of them by the 1990s? And, to top it all off, during the series Rowling practically takes pains to show us the magic world affecting the muggle world, yet it's still a secret. That's not childish escapism, that's a plot hole the size of a US state. That's to say nothing of how easy Voldemort found it to manipulate the entire magic society, implying the world was already some sort of miserable totalitarian state. To be honest, it already is, the entire house of Slytherin seems to be this getto where bad seeds go, and sometimes you do get during the series characters of the Slytherin house who actually are nice people, but it's rare, and they are fighting against the culturally reinforced idea they are bad people. Also, the characters are really disappointing for a series apparently so deep and 'epic' (a word I would not use in relation to Harry Potter). Voldemort's a moron, there is no other word for it. Harry Potter doesn't do anything and always gets the metaphorical girl and martini glass by the end, Ron is there a lot of the time for comic relief when children are not put in danger, and Hermione's a know it all geek who barely gets any development because she's the author surrogate. Dumbledore isn't also too bright himself for being an apparent genius, and his whimsical nature is practically on Pratchett levels. And Pratchett is taking the piss. Also, ever noticed how the actors of the film series have became the characters of the novels? That doesn't point to good characterization to me to be honest.
Tactics/strategy etc. I found your post enlightening - helps me look at things differently. But as a general question to all - based on daemon's post, do such authors sit down and decide that e.g. school ought to have this meaning, or I want school houses to represent that, or magic means something else? And then that's how they try to write to guide the reader's perception. Or, perhaps like a painting, the artist does what he wants to capture his scene - perhaps not consciously thinking of meaning - but the viewer makes up their own meaning? Was Da Vinci really trying to portray an enigmatic smile? Or is that the art world telling people what to think? I don't know. Any thoughts?
Well I guess I better throw my hat into this, look I’m far from a literary genius and when to be honest until I joined this site I just took all novels as literature. But at the end of the day.....I honestly don't think it matters. Seems to be a lot of talk on here about how things are written and things being easy to read. As someone who reads both modern and classic works literature (Being it literary fiction, fantasy, crime, romance etc) and as someone who writes my own work. I can say this. I can't write like James Joyce Can't write like Hemmingway or Twain Or Cormac Mccarthy Hell I can't even write like Stephen King or Dean Koontz or JK Rowling. I know that was an odd assortment of writers from past and present but my point is.....I can't write like them but most I can do is write in my style. Now look my style is still developing and everybody grows in their craft. You write more you improve same as any skill. But not everybody can write things that are more in that lyrical artistic way......I can't and I bet a lot of people on this site can't. We all have different styles Some more simple and straight Some more like that more post modern art way of writing Some do both I wouldn't say easy to read is escapism .....it might have more mass a appeal but I don't think its lesser and it is my personal belief every genre can tell meaningful and beautiful character. We are all writers and we all do things differently. It would be ever so boring if we all wrote the same. I'll agree that the simple style has more mass appeal. But I'm fine with that.....story and characters come first for me and I prefer to make my own meaning but I also like uncovering hidden details......but that's just me and I'm sure a lot of us writers are like that. BUT And its a very big but. At the same time I have nothing but absolute respect for people whom have that art with words style of writing and it’s even more amazing how they enjoy it. @Lemex Lemex once read me a passage from a Thomas Pynchon and damn thing was beautiful.....not much can be said. It was amazing writing that had far more artistic precision then anything by a lot of others authors (King, Rowling etc) And I'm gonna check Thomas Pynchon's work But when all is said and done. Everybody is gonna pick up their own style and I and many others prefer a more 'To the point' style of writing and though developing the craft is still extremely important and though our more 'easy to read' style might not be the most amazing piece ever put to page. No matter how good I get at writing.....my story will always come first. Story teller before I'm a gifted writer and I've had to work really hard just to get to the level I am now with narrative writing (But I'm really proud and will improve even more with practice) And I think both more the art style and the simple style both can touch the hearts of anyone and both have great value. Cause like I said We all love the craft we all just got different methods of using it and different beliefs when we write.....anything. Ain't it a beautiful world we live it? Gotta support it all
I cannot speak for anyone who defends it as a classic. I just recognize what it offers to people that they (at the time) could not get anywhere else, or would have a hard time finding elsewhere. I happened to get a lot out of it. I give it credit for that. Funny, considering the following: I would not contradict any of that, except for the statement that Harry does nothing and that Hermione is barely developed. Anyway, none of that contradicts anything I said. The original question is "Why do Rowling et. al. succeed?" I identified some things Rowling succeeded at and explained why readers liked that so much. So what if she failed at some things, too. And that is not unique to Harry Potter. It is a pattern. Every now and then, a work of fiction comes along that accomplishes some cool new things and people appreciate it for those things while forgiving it for the things it fails to accomplish.
Then this is why critics of the series call it bad. They find flaws in it they consider unforgiveable. It's not because people like me who don't like it have this irrational hatred of the series, and it has nothing to do with being old and stuffy. I'm exactly the age group Harry Potter was originally pitched to, people who where about the age of the characters when the first book came out. So aside from Harry does nothing and Hermione is barely developed, either I understand the series perfectly and don't like it, or the series has this grand quality I'm missing? That's what I'm really taking issue with to be honest.
We will not be able to communicate about Harry Potter meaningfully until we describe it with the same vocabulary. To you, it is either good or bad, as a whole. (I have no idea what a "good book" or a "bad book" is, and I do not see how those terms can be defined in any useful way.) To me, it contains elements that are either interesting or uninteresting, individually. (You have not acknowledged any of my points that identify those elements.) That "grand quality you're missing" is not something that makes Harry Potter good as a whole. It is a bunch of elements that appeal to people. Listing off the elements that do not appeal to you does not negate the elements that appeal to other people. I am not trying to convince you that Harry Potter is "good". I am merely answering the question of what makes Rowling successful, and sharing a bit of what I got out of the movies at least.
Well, your post was I must admit an interesting one. I did read it carefully. However, it only described Rowling's tactics to make the series appeal. To your credit you did this quite well, but to me a book is 'good' when it passes certain tests. And they are usually levels of success in the execution of style, story, character and message. Something like Game of Thrones I think is pretty good, even though I suspect it's all meaningless. RR Martin has an excellent handle on character and story, and might not get many points for his style, but it's functional and at places pretty tight. Not all the time. I can't say Potter matches up very well to any of these basic things, but often it's more like a gut feeling toward a novel. Don't misunderstand me though, there are good things I can point to in Potter. Some of the characters are very good, particularly that Neville kid, and in some scenes with Voldemort in the last books Rowling handles the macabre pretty well. Also, the last book quotes The Oresteia, so I can't hate it for that reason. But on the whole, I don't think Potter is good enough to hold as a good example of modern popular literature. I'm glad to see people returning to Tolkien, and by extension people are taking a big interest in Beowulf, which as far as I am concerned is a blessing from God. Murakami's rise is also another very good sign, and I do like The Hunger Games too, even though it's basically Battle Royale light in the first book. I don't dislike something because it's popular, such a thing is just silly, I don't like something because I don't think it has merit. The merits of Murakami's post-modernism need hardly be commented on, his novels are poetry in pros, and Hunger Games has a lot to say about the right of a government to rule when you look for it. Potter, I just don't see the point. Incidentally, the best King books in my opinion are either very well written, like Shawshank, or serves a point, something like Man in Black Suit I guess.
I think different people read for different reasons. Honestly, I read for characters first, plot second, language third. As long as the language doesn't get in the way of my enjoyment of the characters and plot, I barely think about it. Other people read for language, first. The plot and the characters are just what the words are being used for, but the words themselves are the most important things. Even within each set of priorities, there are going to be different interests. Like, even with my love of characters, I can't stand the over-the-top dominant alpha males that are so common in romance and NA writing. I just can't stand them. Other people might not enjoy reading about the quirky, funny betas that I adore. Fair enough. Where does the instinct to classify books as good or bad come from? Why can't we just say, "I didn't enjoy it" or "I loved it"? I mean, okay, it's helpful to others if you can break down what you did or didn't like, but going from there to classifying an entire book or an author's entire ouevre as 'trash' or whatever... I don't really understand that urge. In terms of the OP? I think those authors hit the Zeitgeist. Stephen King has been doing well for long enough that I think we have to conclude that his books offer something valuable to a lot of readers. The other two? It really feels as if the world was just ready for a feisty child-wizard and, apparently, some sparkling vampires. But maybe they'll end up having longevity as writers and we'll elevate them to Stephen King status in terms of consistently providing something that a lot of readers want.
I think you're one of the people with the exact opposite priorities from mine... You'd probably rank it writing, plot, characters, right? Because, honestly, it's been a while since I've read Tolkien, and I do remember his writing being quite nice, but the plot bored me to death and the characters almost all felt flat. The personification of evil, the pure-evil creatures with no moral challenges whatsoever? For me, that's a book I can't get much out of. I haven't read past the first Harry Potter, so I can't really comment on that series, but Game of Thrones? It's entering book-throwing territory for me. You think Martin has a handle on his story? To me it feels as if it's spinning completely out of control, with the last book introducing even MORE characters in even more settings, bloating the whole thing up to the point I'm starting to doubt we'll ever get a satisfying resolution for it all. I loved the first book, and each subsequent one has fallen further down my scale of enjoyment. Different people enjoy different things in books. I think that's just fine!
I think it comes from the fact that some books are bad and some books are good, and I honestly believe these things can be valued objectively. Something like Twilight has long been seen as bad and is destined to be forgotten about, all copies being turned into toilet paper. Whereas a novel like The Road seems destined to become a classic. Sure literature is subjective, but when everyone starts to agree on a novel's quality (which is what sets a novel like The Hobbit apart from When it was Dark by Guy Throne) then things start to be come matters of fact. No. The characters are most important I'd say. Depends on which one you read. Lord of the Rings is pretty poor compared to The Hobbit, which I think is a very fine piece of writing. Martin has this notable habit of killing characters he no longer has use for, but when you read the series the story follows a logical sequence and makes perfect sense. And hasn't any really obvious plot holes. Martin has a handle on his story, yes, I do think so. Yes, people can read whatever they want, and don't need me telling them what to read. But when people expect me to take Harry Potter seriously, then there will be words.
Twilight got 3/4 of a million dollars in advance as a result of a bidding war, before even one book was published. The idea that the publisher just thought they could market it to success seems too simple. These books show that, at least for popular fiction, not only are there other important things besides technical writing ability, but that some of these other things are more important than mastery of the technical aspects of writing (if I can make the distinction).
I don't disagree with your point of view. However, I do find it interesting that you saw the movies first, then read only the first two books and lost interest after that. So, unlike @Lemex, what you're actually discussing here is not JK Rowling and her writing, but the quality of the movies that were made from them. In fact, you admit you didn't actually like the books enough to get past the second one. We're not really discussing writing then, are we? What we're discussing is how successful movies get made on the back of successful books. I think that's the reason you and Lemex are not quite connecting here. You're actually discussing two different things. I think, from what he's said, that he's read the books. All of them.
I think, actually, you are quite right. And yes, I've read the entire series. I'm even slowly re-reading them too, or more accurately currently listening to The Philosopher's Stone on audiobook.
I think some people, the ones most likely to get involved in long conversations about whether books are good or bad, might agree on quality (and often even there, they don't - we've all seen critics debate each other, and we've all seen the nasty things initially said about some of the books we now consider classics). But I don't agree that the masses of people think the books they're buying are bad. They may say they believe that, because they don't want to earn the scorn of the self-appointed arbiters of book quality, but why the hell would anyone go to a store and buy a book they truly believed was bad? So, something like Twilight has been declared 'bad' by the literati, but people still go to buy it. Why? Because they love bad books? Or because they're using a different standard from the literati, and indicate their appreciation with their dollars rather than their words? I haven't read Twilight, so I can't say what I think about it. But I definitely think it has provided a hell of a lot of enjoyment to a hell of a lot of people. Which, in my mind, makes it a good book.
I am only referring to elements that were presented in the books and then presented again in the movies. Have I said anything wrong about Harry Potter if you assume I am referring to the books and have not seen the movies?
This is why time is the most important factor. Hence my referencing an obscure novel by Guy Throne. If you can name me one person who has bought When it was Dark as a christmas present for a friend in the last 20 years then I'll concede your point. When it became a thing, everyone I know was saying things about 50 Shades of Grey to the effect of 'It's crap, but I can't stop reading!' or 'I know it's not literary, but sometimes you just need to read something tacky'. People smoke, people like what is bad for them. Why are books exempt from human nature. I like 'fine books', I also would also much rather have a well cooked and prepared meal than a Cornish pasty from Greggs. It's not the literati that has decided Twilight was bad, it was the people. How it usually works is this, a book is popular for a while, and then if it's decided good by buyers and makes enough of an impact it becomes a studied text in universities. And then, if it survives that, it becomes a classic. If it fails, it disappears from the public consciousness. Good and bad are more a matter of the accumulation of everyone's tastes, rather than the benign judgement of the snob-gods.
I can't speak for King and Meyers, but from what I've heard about Rowling, the reason she succeeded was because at the time, kids didn't have much in the way of a good fantasy read. The fantasy books out there were too dark and gritty, and the books the kids were forced to read were the type of books that hammered morals in your head and you were forced to analyze and write a paper about it. Harry Potter was light fantasy for kids, something they could get into for sheer pleasure and fun, it had its morals, but it wasn't blatantly obvious, and they weren't forced to write long-winded papers on it. Could it have been a better series? Yes, but for its time, I can see why it succeeded. I mean, I'd read this book series a hundred times before I read Where The Red Fern Grows one more time. At least the first book didn't end with Harry having to watch Hedwig die to some owl disease and him pondering on the lessons of life and death and being a man. *shudders* I mean, even when she did die, he reacted just as you'd expect any teen to react when a beloved pet dies. He didn't stare at her corpse and wax lyrical about it. In short, it was a fun, entertaining little fantasy series for its time where readers could enjoy it without having to watch Harry stop the flow to contemplate his navel every five pages.
Well, I don't know. I didn't read beyond the second book myself, nor did I see any of the movies. I just pointed out that you and Lemex are discussing two different sources. Sometimes movies edit a lot out of books. Certainly the Lord of the Rings movies, while 'faithful' to the books in most respects, are not the same as the books. I wouldn't want to be discussing the books, then discover that the person I'm talking to has only seen the movies. I'm not making any value judgement on your opinion regarding the story elements. Just pointing out that you and Lemex are not coming from the same source. Ultimately if the books hadn't been successful, there probably wouldn't have been any movies, but they are not the same. One of the things I mentioned in my earlier post was that I'm concerned that, once movies of books get made, people quit reading the books. As writers, I find that a bit of a shame. The story may be similar or the same, but the experience is not. ............ Just for information, my husband, who will be 70 years old this year, read all the books and loved them. He read them as soon as they came out, pre-ordered them, all that hoopla. He's also seen all the movies. He said the movies were 'okay' —some better than others—but they are not the same as the books. We have all the books on our shelves, but only one of the movies on DVD. The first one. (Which I have not seen all the way through.) My husband was taken with the movie version of Hagrid and Snape, but more lukewarm about some of the other portrayals. So there you go. Books and movies aren't really the same, and reading the book can give you a different opinion of what characters are like. When you see a movie, you're experiencing the moviemakers interpretation of the book. When you read the book, you get to do your own interpretation. I'm not saying one is better than the other ...but they are different experiences.
@Link the Writer, you raise an interesting point. For everything else that can be said about Potter, at least it wasn't another Tolkien clone. The film missed out Tom Bombadil from The Fellowship of the Ring. I can understand why, but it misses out a pretty good little joke at the Council of Elrond, and another way of showing not just the power of the ring, but also (which the films missed entirely) that the War of the Ring was only one part of a larger story. A lot of people even miss the joke I'm referring to. it's literally a line that says the Council should not give Tom Bombadil the Ring of Power because he's so powerful and thoughtless he'd misplace it, throw it out with the rubbish.
The problem is, though, that we don't have the benefit of time for most of the books you're already calling bad. So if the only way to know whether a book meets your qualifications is to wait twenty years, I guess the jury is still out on Twilight, Harry Potter, and 50 Shades. Oh, well, if everyone you know says something, it must be universally true. Or, is it possible you're running in crowds where people who are especially self-conscious about the perceived quality of their reading? I mean, just the fact that they're speaking to you, someone who's clearly pretty into literature, would affect their responses, wouldn't it? Even so, there's a big difference between "I know it's not literary" and "It's crap." I haven't read 50 Shades, but I also haven't ready anything that would make me think it's 'literary'. What I'm saying is that 'literary' is not the same as 'good'. They decided it was bad by making it a runaway bestseller, spawning movies and super-successful fanfic adaptations and countless thousands of ripoffs? That's how they show a book is 'bad'? Again, though, we haven't had long enough for this 'test' to be applied to any of the books you've already declared are 'bad'. So...?
I can forgive the Tom Bombadil omission, and even the 'scouring of the shire' omission as well—not because these were bad parts of the book, but because the movie version is long enough without them. But what I found hard to forgive is the hatchet job Peter Jackson did on the character of Faramir—making him into a waverer, when in fact, in the book, he never wavered at all. And I was also disappointed at the weird movie take on Gimli. Jackson's vision made him into a cartoony drunken Scotsman and undignified figure of fun. Both of those changes really made me grit my teeth. However, otherwise, I was really stunned by how good the films were. But I've read the LoTR books many many times. I don't know how I would have felt about them, if I'd only seen the movies.
A few thoughts: 1. Whatever else you say about Twilight, as I've noted before it was singularly responsible for getting my daughter back into reading. For the first time since she was very young I caught her in her closet with a flashlight after bed time. It wasn't because it was a bad book, and I count that as a win; 2. Twilight also wasn't read solely by adolescent girls, and given the sales I suspect other demographics accounted for a significant number of sales. When it came out, I was working at one of the largest law firms in the country. There were a large number of attorneys and staff reading it. I knew people with Ph.Ds reading it, and not so they could chortle over how bad it was. They liked it; 3. Whether something becomes a classic or not isn't the sole measure of how good it is. The ones that do become classics tend to be good, but there are plenty of good books that have gone out of print over the years. There are other books that are considered classics within a genre that went out of print almost immediately, and remained as such for 25 or 30 years before the author brought them back by self-publishing or through a small press. You can't say if a book fails to become a recognized classic it must not have been good; and 4. Most of these discussions boil down to two errors: 1) failure to recognize that the engagement of readers on the level of something like Twilight or Potter, which the vast majority of writers will never even come close to approximating, is a significant indicator that the author has done something very right (and these were legitimately enjoyed books; I think you can argue whether 50 Shades falls into that category or whether it was just read as a phenomenon, which may be the case for some books); and 2) the impulse to view one's own subjective preferences as objective standards of what is good or not, and therefore to rationalize in any way possible to explain the success of something one doesn't like. The latter leads to a lot of convoluted reasoning that is, if I can borrow a word from across the pond, bollocks (in my humble opinion).
It may actually be still out if you can only accommodate one definition of the word 'bad' in your vocabulary. It wasn't directly spoke to me most of the time, but I didn't make that clear. My apologies. But yes, I know many people, all with different tastes and differently levels of critical reading skills. When everyone I know is calling something shit, it doesn't seem unreasonable to suspect it's shit. And I've read a bit of the first book, and found it to be the case. I don't think we understand and use the word 'literary' the same way. So smoking is a multi-national, multi-million dollar industry at least. Do you think smoking is good? Yes, I think it's bad. I can justify it with facts. Time is yet to formally decide if it's to be remembered, and therefore 'good'. There are some 'good' books I don't care for, but signs are showing it'll go the way of many other fad reads and be forgotten. It's been trashed by academics recently. I can't say it's objectively bad, but I do say I think it's bad. Expressed in the thought 'It's bad'. If you get upset at the thought I think Potter's crap, just understand I think that. I don't actually know that.
I didn't follow this, but if you're using more than one definition of bad in these discussions, maybe you could clarify that now to avoid confusion? I think smoking would be just fine, if it weren't killing people. Are you suggesting that Twilight is killing people? With facts? Like, not subjective opinions, but facts? I'm intrigued. What have you got?
Regarding Faramir and Gimli, yeah I have to agree especially with the former. In the book, Faramir comes off as a very honest, loyal man who even tells his soldiers to not flip out if Frodo and Sam so much as blinks (I still love that passage in the book, it's like he's saying, 'Just be cool, guys. Any bodily function they're doing isn't a sign that they're sending secret messages to each other.' ) But in the movies, he's basically a huge jerk in which Jackson's Return of the King hastily tries to redeem. With Gimli? Yeah, for being the guy who represented the dwarves in the movies, he comes off as a bumbling, drunken fool which is...less than stellar. I imagine Book!Gimli was much more well-rounded than that. And now I'll go read the posts about Twilight because damn you all post fast.
