The Wisdom of Isaac Asimov

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

The Wisdom of Isaac Asimov

A few days ago was Isaac Asimov’s 99th birthday. (Rather, his official birthday. He knew he was born between Oct 4, 1919 and Jan 2, 1920, and since he hated the idea of being old, he took the latest date possible as his birthday.) One of the comments on a blog I was reading that day about the Good Doctor was the following:

“Story that Isaac told: Isaac sat in on a class where the professor was teaching about one of his stories.  He approached the professor after the class and said, ‘That story doesn’t mean that at all. I should know. I wrote it.’  And the professor looked at him and said, ‘So?’

And at that moment, Isaac said, he realized that the professor was right.  No matter what the author intended, what the reader got out of it was what was really there.”

If only JKR had his wisdom. I suggest that the official motto of DTCL should be the following:

Saith Isaac Asimov: No matter what the author intends, what the reader gets out of the story is what is really there.

P.S. Don’t stop commenting on sunnyskywalker’s thread below just because I’ve started a new one. The intricacies of the Fidelius Charm are entirely worth a thorough thrashing out.

Comments

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

ahahahaahahaaha the idea that Rowling is in any way leftist or concerned with social justice. Although while "virtue signalling" is generally bullshit, applying it to Rowling is probably not far off, so congratulations on finding a decent use for it!

(Also, that's not what postmodernism means at all; but hey.)

[sunnyskywalker]

Thank you! Based on her writing and public statements, JKR strikes me very much as someone who wants to think of herself as liberal, but in the same way Dumbledore wants to think of himself as a wise and kindly old man. There isn't deep thought about justice or the vastly different life experiences people can have evident in her work, but there are bits that sound like NO I AM A GOOD PERSON BECAUSE I DON'T FEEL LIKE A BAD PERSON SO I CANNOT EVER HAVE SAID ANYTHING WRONG EVEN ACCIDENTALLY SO YOU ARE WRONG AND ALSO MEAN. Which is an understandable knee-jerk response, but it's rarely helpful to put those in print.

Like, the books would probably be better if Rowling were a committed Social Justice Warrior.^TM Maybe then the series wouldn't have ended with Harry having a happy magical slave, Ron messing with an innocent Muggle's mind to cheat on his driving test, and the Hogwarts house with values most aligned to social-climbing merchants still being vilified. Would someone genuinely committed to justice and equity who thought deeply about those things have left a plot about an entire slave race unresolved? Really? As Elkins once said, "it can sometimes become a bit difficult to avoid the suspicion that in some indefinable way, the spirit of Aunt Marge is pushing the hand that holds the pen."

Rowling didn't write liberal SJW books. She wrote middling-conservative books with a light liberal gloss so she wouldn't feel bad about herself, but also wouldn't have to actually think about the issues too hard because that could be difficult and painful and might even affect her plot and characters.

And whenever she's faced with how she failed or didn't think of something or chickened out, like imagining Dumbledore as gay and in love with Grindelwald but not actually writing it even though it would have mattered to the plot and characterization, her statements don't admit failure. She just pretends she totally included that all along. Re: Hermione's race, she could have said, "I imagined Hermione as white, but I didn't really think about it and there's no reason she had to be, so why shouldn't someone else write an alternate version where she's black? For that matter, some people genuinely read her as a fair-skinned black girl. Even if I didn't intend that, if that's what they got from the books, it's a valid reading." Instead she talks about how she totally left Hermione's race unspecified so stop pretending she ever mentally defaulted to a white main character.

Denial about one's sloppiness and over-reliance on stereotypes as a writer =/= social justice.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Based on her writing and public statements, JKR strikes me very much as someone who wants to think of herself as liberal ... Like, the books would probably be better if Rowling were a committed Social Justice Warrior. ... Rowling didn't write liberal SJW books.

I agree. I think Rowling - who is 53 years old, born in the sixties - sat down and started writing HP in the nineties with little thought as to 'social justice' and the like. She was a product of her era who was certainly fair minded - Dean was black, there was a balance of men and women in power - but still had her 'defaults' set to the values to which she was accustomed - the Trio were all white, the one supposed homosexual was in the closet. And that was all fine back then!

Time moved on. These days it's my impression - maybe I'm wrong, looking at the wrong review sites - that a lot of Young Adult fiction is *really* pushing the 'progressive social justice' envelope. A novel must have one of every. possible. minority. featured and so forth.

And Rowling has, post Potter, been scrabbling to catch up, try and fit in and impress the friends she's been making that her work was 'progressive' so there! It's her 'pretending' this - in the face of the actual text on the page which belies that pretence - which is maddening. Well, that and how many people accept it.

[sunnyskywalker]

Oh, should comment: I really don't think it's that YA is suddenly trying to "tick off boxes." A lot of the authors actually belong to the groups they feature in their books, and grew up never seeing themselves in books. They're literally "writing what they know" by including characters which share some experiences or characteristics with them. Even a lot of the majority-group authors writing about diverse characters are genuinely looking around and going, "Huh, the actual world I live in is way more diverse than YA and children's books in aggregate would have you believe. That's wrong for a lot of reasons. Maybe let's try to fix that?"

The Children's Cooperative Book Center has been collecting statistics on characters of color in children's books for many years, and they've consistently found those characters to be significantly underrepresented compared to the real-world population. Same for the authors. This is true even for recent years. So part of the "diversity is everywhere!" feeling is actually optical illusion: the books are slightly more diverse than before, and since that is higher than what seems "normal," it looks like "lots." Sort of like those studies where it turns out at people perceive a group of exactly 50% women and 50% men to be dominated by women. There are more than are "normally" there, so they're taking over! Nope. Human brains are not calculators and don't objectively evaluate large numbers well.

Which is a long way of saying that I don't think "times were different then" is even true for the most part. JKR's environment then and now was not actually that different, and she isn't that different either.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

The Children's Cooperative Book Center has been collecting statistics on characters of color ... So part of the "diversity is everywhere!" feeling is actually optical illusion ...

That's not the case in my limited experience. I haven't personally read much YA since HP though; I've kept up with the latest 'Young Wizards' by Diane Duane (who is ticking the boxes enthusiastically) and ... that might be it?

I also come across various reviews here and there and can't help but notice the egregious 'tick the boxes' in many of those cases, but also for the minorities across the other dimensions other than that of race - i.e. sexual orientation, religion and so forth.

JKR's environment then and now was not actually that different -

No, I don't buy that. The 'LGBTQ+XYZABC' acronym didn't exist twenty years ago. The phrase 'non binary' didn't make sense twenty years ago. Homosexual marriage was illegal and homosexuality was largely seen in a negative light twenty years ago. At least in mainstream media. That is most definitely not the case these days. And while there were groups pushing those issues in the 90's when HP was written the DIVERSTIY! push was nothing like the mainstream effort it is today.

[sunnyskywalker]

in my limited experience

Well, that's kind of the point of doing a broader survey, isn't it? Everyone's personal experiences are necessarily limited, and human brains are frankly terrible at drawing accurate statistical conclusions based on our impressions.

I'm not saying it's exactly the same, but there's a lot more lack of diversity and a lot less general support for diversity than Tumblr and Twitter would have you believe, is what I mean. The people JKR hangs out with on a day to day basis are probably her own age, and haven't changed in sweeping, massively transformative ways.

Not to mention, there was a lot more diversity in old stories than we give People Back Then credit for. Loki was arguably gender-fluid (he once gave birth to a horse while in mare form, e.g.). The Round Table included the Saracen brothers Sir Palamedes, Sir Safir, and Sir Segwarides; the black Sir Morien; and Parzival's older half-brother Feirefiz, who was mixed-race and had black-and-white patched skin (which sounds wild, but is kind of possible with vitilogo or chimerism). I really doubt medieval folks were ticking off 21st-century boxes. No one was going, "Guys, we have to add gender identity to Norse myths and make the Round Table more diverse so people centuries in the future will approve of it!" They had their own reasons for telling those stories. It's modern readers' faults if we edit diversity out of older stories in our imaginations.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to add, since, like you, I'm a fan of the Young Wizards:

Those books were always diverse, from the word go. From the very first book, they included a working-class (and very possibly mixed race, though definitely Irish American) girl, a Latino boy, and a gay couple. From the first book! In the 1980s!

And I think Duane was writing what she saw. One of the gay men was based on someone she knew, I believe, and she set the books in modern-day Long Island, a fairly diverse area.

I do think that new writers (like me) make a conscious effort to show diversity in their stories these days. This is not a bad thing! And sunnyskywalker is right; children's lit is still overwhelmingly white in spite of the new voices.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

I agree with both of you one hundred percent. Based not only on her writings but on statements she's made on politics, Rowling is not a leftist. She is a Blairite, a neoliberal, and fairly thoughtless with it, IMHO. She'd like to think of herself as liberal and tolerant--wouldn't we all? I can sympathize with her here. But her natural bent is fairly conservative.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

ahahahaahahaaha the idea that Rowling is in any way leftist or concerned with social justice.

Are you familiar with her twitter activity? If you score her public announcements on Twitter against the usual political metrics - race, immigration, Brexit and so forth - I think you'll find that Rowling is most definitely on the left side of politics, with some of her tweets being firmly in SJW territory I think (although she's not as stupid as the classic SJW kids just coming out of university). So I'll stand by my statement. It was amusing to see Rowling - she's fifty-three years old - learning twitter and gradually making friends, establishing her position on public issues, with thousands hanging on her every tweet. Twitter certainly is a valid means of establishing her bias/leanings. And they're Left.

Although while "virtue signalling" is generally bullshit -

Nah, it's been valid since the pharisees. Check out the Wikipedia page on the subject, there's multiple examples there.

(Also, that's not what postmodernism means at all; but hey.)

Yeah, I'll have to accept that I haven't nailed it down exactly, since I don't fully comprehend the Wikipedia entry on 'postmodernism'; too many referents I've never studied.

Still, when I said that "'postmodernism' means eschewing facts for feelings/popular tropes, I gather", I think I got it more than half right. Looking at Wikipedia again we see that PM 'targets ... universalist notions of objective reality'. I.e. it's against 'truth independent of individual subjectivity'. That's the first half of my statement re 'eschewing facts'.

I don't score 100% with the second half, where I describe that which the postmodernists use to replace those facts. My 'feelings/popular tropes' is in general alignment with the Wiki definition's "self-referentiality" and "moral relativism". 'Feelings' are indeed relative to the person and feelings held en masse are my 'popular tropes'. I think I score 50% on the second part. :-)

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Nope, she's a centrist with pretensions of leftism and nasty unexamined racism, homophobia, and transphobia. I'm actually a leftist; don't question my circular firing squad skills XD

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

Around here, we don’t go by what JKR says in interviews and tweets, but by what’s written in the books, and the books are illiberal and contain little social justice. I’m a leftist liberal who is in favor of social justice, and her books show that JKR isn’t. She just plays one on Twitter.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

It's a trivial but unfair exercise to measure Rowling's work of two decades in the past with today's drastically evolved standards of liberalism, don't you think?

When you say 'books' ... have you read any of her more recent efforts? 'The Casual Vacancy' or the four 'Strike' novels? I haven't ("fool me once", after all). I wonder if she's now ticking the boxes of today's politically correct scorecard with her more recent efforts? Can you tell me how her newer books are 'illiberal'?

Because I don't think the Potter books were all that bad when measured against the 'social justice' standards of her time and intended readership.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

I think your leftism is biasing your perception of Rowling's political position. The Wikipedia entry for Rowling says that she's known for her 'centre-left' views, where they define 'centre-left' as on the left, but not extreme. I.e. not centrist, but leftist. Just not as left as you probably are. (I don't understand the circular firing squad joke.)

Your 'pretension' accusation doesn't hold water - she's donated a million pounds to the Labour party, publically endorsed Labour politicians - Labour being their party of the Left - campaigned against Brexit and so forth. Pretty solid actions that belie any semblance of 'pretence' I reckon.

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

I am British, and Labour has, until Corbyn took over, not been terribly leftist (remember Tony Blair and you'll get the idea). Centrist with a hint of left at best (and Rowling's opinion of Corbyn is not the highest). But this is arguably getting off-topic, so probably better to just yell at the shitty books again.

(Circular firing squad is a common criticism and self-criticism of the left; our standard failure mode is attacking each other - see the People's Front of Judea for an example.)

Rowling’s politics

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

I’m on Twitter; I’ve seen some of her tweets. She is not a leftist. She’d fit right in with the (slightly right of center) corporate democrats. What she is, IMHO, is shallow.

Re: Rowling’s politics

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Well, I and the Wiki public disagree with you. :-) I found a Wiki page devoted to just this subject - Politics of J. K. Rowling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_J._K._Rowling). Lots of folk seem to think she's Left.

Re: Rowling’s politics

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Nope, she's a Blairite. Labour, certainly, but that does not make her leftist. I'm a leftist, and I agree with sharez jek and jana ch. Examples:
She opposes Corbyn.
She opposes BDS and refuses to speak out for the Palestinians.
Though she worked for Amnesty as a younger woman, she wrote a scene in DH that justifies torture.
As I remember, she was entirely in favor of libraries paying authors, which, as an American, strikes me as just plain strange.

And so on.

Of course, the whole world has swung so far to the right that someone slightly right of center, like Rowling, might well seem a leftist to most!

In any case, we're not really discussing her politics, are we? We're discussing her books. Her books are deeply, thoughtlessly conservative with a veneer of political correctness. I haven't read any of her recent work; I refuse to, but I think those who have find she hasn't changed much in this.

Re: Rowling’s politics

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Nope, she's a Blairite.

Which still makes her of the Left; just not as (far) Left as Labour had been previously.

I don't know much about British politics; Wiki says of Blair:

Critics of Blair denounced him for bringing the Labour Party towards the perceived centre ground of British politics ..

Left-of-centre is still Left.

Labour, certainly ...

Yes. She's of the left.

I'm a leftist, and I agree with sharez jek and jana ch.

I think you are (much) more Left than Rowling, and thus see her to your right - which is quite correct - but fail to see that she is still left of centre.

She opposes Corbyn.

She opposes the current leader of the Left-wing party but still supports the Left-wing party. One million pounds sterling worth of support in fact.

She opposes BDS and refuses to speak out for the Palestinians.

I'll let Rowling explain how she's still holding a Left position on Palestine, from here (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/27/jk-rowling-explains-refusal-to-join-cultural-boycott-of-israel):

"Believing in Palestinian rights & deploring occupation, I fear cultural boycott targets those most critical of govt inside Israel & those views should be heard."

You and Rowling are both people on the Left disagreeing about how exactly Israel should be pressured to bow to Palestinian rights and cease occupation. You both believe in Palestinian rights and want the occupation to stop. You're both the same colour on the left/right litmus test. :-)

Of course, the whole world has swung so far to the right that someone slightly right of center, like Rowling, might well seem a leftist to most!

I think in saying that you're agreeing with what I said above; you and sharez jek and jana ch are simply more to the left than what the centre is (these days).

In any case, we're not really discussing her politics, are we? We're discussing her books.

The post was about Rowling's penchant for telling people in the real world how to peruse her books. I said that her post-Potter foray into the world of social media has given her motivation to virtue signal to ingratiate herself with her leftist mates. An objection as to her being of the left was then lodged. :-)

Re: Rowling’s politics

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Look, Madderbrad. I don't care what Wikipedia says. Blair is not left-wing. Neither is Obama, who was rather to the right of Richard Nixon. In terms of left and right, parties don't matter. Policies do. And, in both Britain and America, the so-called left-wing parties have drifted far to the right in my lifetime. Right now, as I write, a young socialist congresswoman is being castigated for suggesting policies like those of Dwight Eisenhower (republican!).

It's a good thing that we finally have some people speaking from the left. In America, there has been no meaningful left wing for decades. I think the same is true of Britain.

As to Rowling, anyone reading her books would assume she was deeply conservative, with a veneer of political correctness. That's what comes through to me.

BTW, true left-wingers are not "Social Justice Warriors". They speak for the human rights of all people. It's the center democrats, in the U.S., who focus on identity politics. They castigated Bernie Sanders because he was not a social justice warrior.

All I've got to say on this subject! Let's get back to the books, such as they are.
(And I did love the first five. I really did. More astute readers--and watchers--than I spotted their flaws by the third book, if not before. I was--hopeful. Oh, well.)

Re: Rowling’s politics

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Look, Madderbrad. I don't care what Wikipedia says.

Ah. Personally, when I don't have immediate/direct evidence on a topic - or I don't consider myself an expert on same - I tend to try and find out more information. Wikipedia is a good source. Inconvenient if it doesn't agree with one, though, I concede.

Blair is not left-wing. Neither is Obama -

I suspect both of them would, if given a litmus test, be classified as being on the Left.

I know you don't care about Wikipedia says but 'Political positions of Barak Obama' was useful to me to confirm my position. Apparently he was 'more liberal' than 77% of the Senate, how about that. Anyway, you don't care about Wikipedia, so I won't go on.

I know very little about Blair. Looked him up just now. Found quite a few pages focused on his politics.

We disagree. At least, I think the two gentlemen were generally of the left; not sure if your 'left wing' means '*extreme* left'?

As to Rowling, anyone reading her books would assume she was deeply conservative -

Would a 'deeply conservative' person write a book where - half? - the authority figures were women? Back then all the current furore over LGBT+ABCXYZ and religion and all the other 'intersectional' dimensions of today's identity politics was invisible to the UK general public. I think Rowling expressed her left-orientated political stance that she had quite nicely with the major issue pertinent then - women's rights. With the books aimed squarely against discrimination against muggles/race.

And the books were being written twenty years ago. We're discussing Rowling as she is now, not back then.

And I did love the first five.

I'm not sure I 'loved' the first five books - I was an adult - but I enjoyed them. HBP was rubbish though IMO, and DH a catastrophe. We agree on this, I think.

Re: Rowling’s politics

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Hey, Brad! You failed to respond to any of my actual points. For example:

In the 1950s, our president, Dwight Eisenhower, was a Republican and considered centrist to slightly right of center. Basically centrist.
1. He spoke strongly and clearly against the Military-Industrial complex.
2. His actual policy as to taxation included a marginal tax rate on the (then) extremely wealthy that went as high as 90 percent.

Proof of this: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/15/bernie-s/income-tax-rates-were-90-percent-under-eisenhower-/

Now, two young women in the Democratic party and the Socialist Democrats of America are suggesting:
1. That we limit the power of the Military-industrial complex and stop wars of regime change and wars of choice (Tulsi Gabbard)
2. That we re-institute a marginal tax of 70 percent on the extremely wealthy (Alexandra Ocasio Cortez).

And they are getting called far left. That is how far right the politicians (including the corporate Democrats like the Clintons and Obama and the neoliberals like Tony Blair) have drifted! It is, sadly, true that Obama WAS (when he started his presidency) to the left of most of congress. That does not make him left-wing. His policies were basically in line with Nixon's. (Nixon, you remember, signed the Environmental Protection Act). The modern-day Democrats are basically 1960's Republicans, and the Republicans are basically Fascists. It was Clinton, in particular, who drove the Democrats to the right, while Thatcher and Reagan, between them, drove the Republicans and the Tories toward Fascism. I'm not saying those two were actually Fascists in the mold of Trump. But they pushed rightward and wanted to destroy the social welfare state.

I think I'm a good bit older than you, and I can actually remember some of this. I saw it. I've seen my country drift rightward. It was more than fifteen years ago when I said, in a professional meeting "This country has no meaningful left wing." The president of the library association responded later, "who is that brilliant woman?" Well, we have a left wing now, thank heavens! But the corporate Dems and corporate labour are not part of it.

As to Rowling's politics AS SHOWN IN HER BOOKS, they are conservative. They are actually 19th-century--for reasons. I went on and on about that in my old essay, "J.K. Rowling and the Mores of the 19th Century"

I think we are going to have to agree to differ, as far as politics go. I WILL drop the subject now. Really!

I also agree with you that Rowling would consider herself left-wing. I just really, really, don't think she is. She's a Blairite.