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."

Comments

[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.