Literary offenses and the authors who commit them

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

So in my daily internet browsing I stumbled upon a link to an excellent little essay by Twain on the subject of literary offenses - Fenimore Cooper's, in this particular case, but helpful in diagnosing such in other authors too no doubt. Many of the specific offenses he names were, indeed, quite familiar, as I'm sure any reader of this comm would find. So I started thinking that perhaps we need to...update the essay a little (with due apologies to Mark Twain). But I don't want to do it by myself - it's so much more fun to shred authors together, no? So how would people feel about a little impromptu project, "JK Rowling's Literary Offenses," eh? I'm sure someone here has something to say on the subject, JKR-worshippers that we all are..... ;)

As a taste of the delightful bloodletting waiting for you at the link, have a few bits:

"[The rules of literary art] require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the "Deerslayer" tale [by Cooper] dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together."

"We must be a little wary when Brander Matthews tells us that Cooper's books "reveal an extraordinary fullness of invention." As a rule, I am quite willing to accept Brander Matthews's literary judgments and applaud his lucid and graceful phrasing of them; but that particular statement needs to be taken with a few tons of salt. Bless you heart, Cooper hadn't any more invention than a horse; and don't mean a high-class horse, either; I mean a clothes- horse."

"A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are -- oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language."

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[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

And in this corner, we have Entertainment Weekly, appropriately abbreviated EW, on the 100 Greatest Books of All Time:


7. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter: The Complete Series (1997-2007)

Surprised to see Harry so high on our list? Well, his is the richest coming-of-age tale ever. Thanks to Rowling's luminous storytelling and dazzling imagination, people will still be tearing through it in a hundred years.

They also put an album by Conmanyay West ahead of anything by Bruce Springsteen, the Beach Boys, or Marvin Gaye.

Anybody want to ask me why I let my subscription run out about 15 years ago?

[attilathepbnun.livejournal.com]

*scratches head* Ohh-kay, I confess that I do rather like Harry Potter, especially the early books, but 'the richest coming-of-age tale ever'???
The mind boggles, trying to guess what someone slipped into the water supply to the EW building ....

And who is this Conmanyway West? I've never heard of them, who-or-what-ever they are. Some kind of musician, I suppose from context ...

P.S. I confess I have never actually read James Fenimore Cooper myself. I read Twain's essay in my youth, and was thus so frightened off from J.S. Cooper, I've never even seen the movies

*waves at oneandthetruth*

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

*waves back*

And who is this Conmanyway West?

Ah, that's Kanye West. I didn't read Mad magazine for 20 years growing up without learning how to parody people's names. ;-)

Reading what condwiramurs quoted made me wonder how much rewriting they had to do to make such a good movie version of Last of the Mohicans, the one with Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe. I saw that decades ago, when it first came out on video, and really enjoyed it.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

It's possible that Last of the Mohicans was just a better story. I don't remember Mark Twain saying anything about that one--just about some of James Fenimore Cooper's other works

[wolf-willow31.livejournal.com]

... the richest coming-of-age tale ever ...

That really frosts me! The designated heroes never grew up. In fact, Gryffindors never grow up, it seems.

This reminds me of when a newspaper (the Globe and Mail, I think) declared DH to be the Book of the Decade back in 2010. It wasn't - it was the Marketing Event of the Decade. There's a big difference there.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Surprised to see Harry so high on our list? Well, his is the richest coming-of-age tale ever. Thanks to Rowling's luminous storytelling and dazzling imagination, people will still be tearing through it in a hundred years.

Coming in a bit late here, but really? And I might be proven wrong, but I don't really think that it is going to become a children's literary classic. Even when I was a fan, I didn't think it was *that* good.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the reminder! But you're not the first to spot this; I first read Twain's essay after being pointed to it by another reader disappointed by JKR's final gift to her loyal audience. I tried to search, without success--maybe it was someone in the Deadly Hollow community? But anyhow, JKR's errors were there compared to Fenimore Coopers...

But as to the quotes you selected, I must register a protest. JKR DID succeed in making me take a deep interest in the good characters she wrote--all three of them! Sev, Nev, and Luna. Why, it's my interest in Sev and my disapprobation of the fate Jo wrote him that precipitated me into this fandom....

... What? You think that the author meant Harry, Ron, Hermione, and their fellow posturing Gryffs to be taken as her tale's heros, and loved by readers....?

Are you SURE of that? Really? After the odious way she made them behave?

You really think so?

Then, oops.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

I was actually one of the people who mentioned this essay, several years ago! I forget the context, but DH always reminds me of this one. (It's also true, though, that Twain had no respect or understanding for the romantic tradition Cooper wrote in - but, whatever you think of Cooper, the essay is a hoot, and boy! does it ever apply to DH!)

[sunnyskywalker]

Sounds like an excellent game! Taking a few in order...

1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But as we see by the epilogue, conditions in the characters' world has remained static from approximately the 1950s through 2016, with no visible change in the abusive relationship between wizards and Muggles, relations between magical species, the educational system which forces students into official cliques with stereotypical roles to play, or anything else of consequence which was introduced throughout the prior seven novels. True, they have managed to kill the particular villain who troubled them during their school years, and the designated hero now has a family which presumably treats him better than the Dursleys - but the latter result was not a result of anything in particular that he or any other major character did, and the former seems to be but a temporary reprieve until a new villain inevitably arises, given the unchanged conditions of wizarding society.

2. They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as subplots such as SPEW, Grawp and Hagrid's mission to the giants, and two out of the three Hallows demonstrate, a very large percentage of this series could have been axed and no one would have missed it. To the contrary, most readers probably would have appreciated the story without so much such random detritus.

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in sections such as the eternal camping trip, during which the characters display so little brain activity that they might as well be Inferii.

4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in Grawp.

5. The require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, meaning that characters will not regularly make proclamations such as, "It is I, Remus J. Lupin!"

6. They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention in the "Deerslayer" tale, asnearly every damn character's case will amply prove. See: the DTCL corpus. (Some of the more notable examples: Harry displays little of the unusual capacity for love he is credited with, instead frequently hating people more than he has ever hated anyone in an upward spiral of hatred; Ginny's reputed cleverness, magical talent, and strength of character amounts to literally throwing shit at doors, making boogers fly, throwing fits when she isn't included in the adults' meetings, and violence against fellow students who verbally annoy her; and McGonagall shows rather more favoritism than a "fair" teacher ought. Also, Dumbledore.)

I imagine we can get quite a bit out of #15, "[Do n]ot omit necessary details."

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

But as subplots such as SPEW, Grawp and Hagrid's mission to the giants, and two out of the three Hallows demonstrate, a very large percentage of this series could have been axed and no one would have missed it. To the contrary, most readers probably would have appreciated the story without so much such random detritus.

Don't forget the annoying romantic subplots. I think I may have skimmed through those even back when I was a fan. Also, number 6 is incredibly true and it makes me sad that even people who ought to know better (ie, people who have actually studied literature in college) haven't seemed to notice it.