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

[sunnyskywalker]

Maybe it's a British thing? But then, I've heard some British people say that they were divided into houses but didn't have that kind of cutthroat competition, so I don't know. It sounds like originally, it was just that they had four teachers who divvied up the students according to their personal teaching preferences, and they thought maybe grouping students with similar interests or inclinations would be useful and so made the Hat. Which isn't necessarily a terrible idea, depending on the execution.

Given that you started university around age 14 in medieval times, maybe what was really happening was that Hogwarts was on the cutting edge of the university movement and they were grouping the students into different degree tracks - doctorate in potions, doctorate transfiguration, etc. (Well, given that they apparently took any magical kids, not just already-educated ones, they would have had to teach a fair number of them to read just to start because they would be statistically more likely to be farmers, so it wouldn't be exactly a university. More like a cathedral school with university tacked on for advanced students? Idk. There could have been some outside influence on their academic structure, anyway.) And there was some kind of strife between the houses due to "external deadly foes," so maybe that's what started the bitter rivalry. But they might never have intended for the houses to be quite so competitive (maybe friendly competitions now and then or something, but not so bitter and longstanding).

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

maybe what was really happening was that Hogwarts was on the cutting edge of the university movement and they were grouping the students into different degree tracks - doctorate in potions, doctorate transfiguration, etc

That would definitely make sense, but it seems pretty silly to divide them up at age 11, rather that letting them at least first learn enough about the different choices that are available. If I had to pick a career at that age I would have been a princess lawyer veterinarian. ;-)

[sunnyskywalker]

Oh, it doesn't work very well any more, that's for sure! That's what happens when traditions fossilize and no one remembers the original reason for doing it...

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

This is reminding me of 'The Lottery' for some reason. Although at least in that story people could state a reason for what it was that they did, even if it seems like a pretty perverse one.

[sunnyskywalker]

*shivers* That story is so creepy.

I wonder whether they used to associate personality traits with different disciplines, maybe based on humoral theory or something? Transfiguration is warm and... well, I suppose it could be moist or dry, depending on what you're transfiguring... therefore you're either choleric or sanguine and thus bad-tempered and courageous, or something. Probably it would require a lot of ridiculous backbends to make it work, but then, that's kind of par for the course for humoral theory anyway.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

That's a really interesting idea! I hadn't thought of it that way.

And yes, it's a fantastic story, isn't it? I think what really makes it work is the rather mundane way in which Jackson leads up to it, so that when the reader finally catches on it's absolutely horrifying.