Why no Harry Potter, eh?

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

So I looked at ONTD's "Ten of the most Epidemically Overrated Books," and was incensed to find that books like On the Road and The Great Gatsby made the list but the Harry Potter series didn't (though at least the Twilight series did). I mean really, Harry Potter is the epitome of an overrated book series, given that there are people seriously making the point that it's so deep and meaningful and needs to be read in AP English classes. Never mind that it's a children's book series!

Well, these were the people who said that a bunch of authors besides Rowling disliked the idea of fanfiction without bothering to consider WHY they might feel that way (specifically, that Rowling is the only one who's all that fandom savvy because she's modern in a way that the others aren't). Maybe they just think Rowling is their darling author too, and you can't say anything bad about her.

Comments

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

... although I've come to believe they are the most overrated books of all time -

It's so *easy* to say that, isn't it? I quite totally agree.

There are no doubt other books that have been published that are as bad - plot holes, absolute reliance on dei ex machina, passive boring storyline, artificial story structure (the Dark Lord Mental Broadcast Network) and so on and so on, but the sheer magnitude of commercial success that Rowling's series enjoyed puts it in a class of its own. "Absolute worst book ever"? Maybe not. "Absolutely worst book ever, when normalised against its commercial success"? YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES.

Re your reasons, I don't see #1, I didn't pick up on any great reflection of society's values/movements in Rowling's work. Rather, she drew heavily on the old 'British Public School' trope, brought in Nazis and called them Death Eaters (at least in DH) and so forth. I.e. viz your #3.

Goodness I hate that old 'worldbuilding', often seen in this sentence - "it doesn't matter if she failed in the rest of her writing, we'll give her a free pass because of her WORLDBUILDING". Well, that sort of sentiment. I didn't see much originality in her 'world building'. 'Energy and brilliance' makes it easier to accept I suppose. I know it's impossible to look back and objectively access the true 'brilliance' that went into it though ... still, I can think of other contemporary work equally as 'brilliant'.

How much weight would you put on these reasons? Do you think a lot of her success, most of it, is due to #4? The HP phenomenon became something that, once it reached a 'critical mass', just kept on rolling, regardless of the quality of the consequent books. So I see something like 'clever marketing and good timing' as something that very well might 'luck into' enough kick at the start to get things rolling and build up that momentum. Is there anything in the HP marketing that was new, unique to HP?

Do you think the internet had much to do with it? Was HP the first big successful work which built on - and encouraged - internet participation? Rowling was ignorant of the fan sites for a long time, but then she got into it, at least in terms of working with the largest (and most sycophantic) of them.

(I have to remind myself that the online fandom is a minute part of the HP readership overall.)

I've been wondering off and on for the last few years just why such a bad series was so successful. Maybe you're right; there *was* 'brilliance' ... in the EARLY books. Being more for the kids they didn't click with me as much as #4 or #5, which is where I saw the drama/tension rack up and get 'serious'. Were books 1-3 really that good?

Sigh.

[malic-ba.livejournal.com]

'Worldbuilding'? I, too, really hate hearing this applied to HP. Because to me this is one of the series' real weaknesses. JKR did throw together lots of interesting elements, but for it to be worldbuilding, you have to put some thought into how the world would actually function away from your story. You have to set up the 'laws of nature' for your world, not throw in extra random things when you need to get out of a plot hole. Internal consistency!

Speculative fiction is my favourite kind, and 'worldbuilding' is probably the main reason why. How could the universe be different? What would the consequences be? I love books where it takes time to decipher what these context rules are. (It's probably the roleplaying background :) ) To hear JKR praised for this when she just fundamentally hasn't done the work makes me crazy. Not only has she not done the work, she looks down and dismisses the whole genres of people who do. ('Oh, maths' ?!?)

There are some brillant essayists and writers in fandom who find / create / retcon a WW which hangs together from the fragments JKR has (intentionally or unintentionally) given us, and it is an intriguing and mythical place. They are the real worldbuilders of the WW, to my mind, and I really wish my slice of the millons JKR has made could go to them.

/end rant/

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

... but for it to be worldbuilding, you have to put some thought into how the world would actually function away from your story. You have to set up the 'laws of nature' for your world, not throw in extra random things when you need to get out of a plot hole. Internal consistency!

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES.

:-)

That's what I detest about Rowling and those slavish fans who rapture over her 'worldbuilding'. She just threw things in willy-nilly, without any thought (her "oh, maths!" personality probably made it difficult for her to see how 'internal consistency' was knocked for a loop). And then when she had to tie things together and make things work, in her series' endgame ... she FAILED. Horribly.

It's the fans who attempt to give her a free pass on that which vex me. It's *easy* to build something, anything - a book, a car, a bridge, a house - if you're not going to be held accountable for the end result. Who cares if the car doesn't start? IT LOOKS PRETTY!!.

Bah. The real world shouldn't work that way. A travesty that it did, for Rowling.

There are some brillant essayists and writers in fandom who find / create / retcon a WW which hangs together from the fragments JKR has (intentionally or unintentionally) given us, and it is an intriguing and mythical place. They are the real worldbuilders of the WW, to my mind, and I really wish my slice of the millons JKR has made could go to them.

Yes. They've put so much *thought* into their work, so much more than Rowling. The satisfaction from reading their material is sometimes an order of magnitude greater than that which is obtained in reading the HP books.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Before DH I read so many fan essays on how the spells work, how are spells invented, what the Dark Arts are. Or how wizarding economy works. But now it is clear Rowling never thought that far. As usual, much of the praise for 'world-building' is for things readers put into the world in attempt to make sense of the snippets Rowling tossed here and there with little thought. People like Jodel or pharnabazus did more Potterverse world-building than Rowling.