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

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/But I totally would have voted for Heart of Darkness above Gatsby. Who decided "the jungle is dark and mysterious and Africa is a symbol of HUMAN SAVAGERY WHICH YOU CANNOT ESCAPE MWAHAHA" was deep?/

I had to read "Heart of Darkness" for a class and I hated it because it kept smacking me in the face with its blatant racism while I was trying to get through it. My class ended up having a discussion about whether Conrad was racist or if he intentionally made the narrator racist in order to make a point about racism. I don't know, but it really bothered me that the only African in the whole book who got to speak like a human being (and not like an animal - gee, that's not racist, right?) was the guy who announced that Character X (should I give away the ending?) was dead.

And if Conrad wanted to make a point about racism, wouldn't it be better to make the *actual* victims of racism - you know, the *Africans* and not the whining white men who didn't need to go over to Africa in the first place and who had the option of leaving - actual people and characters, instead of symbols and bestial caricatures? Whatever one may say about Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," at least her black characters actually had voices and were clearly intended to be people.

[sunnyskywalker]

That book was such a miserable slog when I had to read it in school.

Didn't one of the Africans get to say he'd like to eat someone? Not that the extra line is a good thing... I think what Achebe says about the "maybe he intentionally made the narrator racist to make a point about racism" defense is a good rebuttal: he doesn't provide an alternate frame of reference to the narrator's even in hints, so it doesn't really work. Besides, I agree with you - if he treats the characters as symbolic props instead of people in the narrative, how seriously could we take any attempt of his to say that it's wrong to treat Africans as, well, props for Europeans?