Deathly Hallows Chapter 2

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

Deathly Hallows: Chapter 2

In Memoriam

This chapter starts with the bang-o sentence: “Harry was bleeding.” Way to get our attention! Unfortunately, we’ll eventually find out that Harry is bleeding because he’s an idiot.

Humorously, Harry steps on a teacup placed just outside his room. I think it would have been funnier if Harry had been barefoot. Then he’d be bleeding in two places and he’d have to hop to the bathroom. Then, maybe he could lose his balance on the slippery tiles and end up with his head in the toilet. I’m really surprised Rowling missed his opportunity.

Instead, Harry merely picks up the pieces of broken teacup and throws them into a bin, speculating that the cup is Cousin Dudley’s “clever” idea of a trap.

I’d like to take a moment here to comment on Dudley’s devolution as a villain in the series. In PS/SS, Dudley was mercilessly beating on Harry and terrorizing all the other kids at school from even considering Harry as friend material. He was then punished with by karma and Hagrid with a pig’s tail. And after that he… what does he do, exactly? Nothing much to Harry as I recall. In CoS and PoA, he’s just there, enjoying the adoration of adults who dislike Harry. In GoF, he’s fat. In OotP, he’s shaped up and he’s bullying other kids—but not Harry. In HBP, his only crime is to refuse an alcoholic drink (which, in our country would be considered responsible behavior for an underage boy).

So, in DH, Dudley is reduced to placing teacups outside Harry’s door in a vain attempt to express his admiration. Something which Harry, who is apparently blind to Dudley’s actual mindset, interprets as a hostile action. No, Harry. Dudley isn’t your enemy. He’s your House Elf.

But, then Harry is distracted by the thought that he has four whole days until he can do magic. Not that his magic can heal anything. Even the narrator on Harry’s shoulder thinks he’s lame for never taking a Wizard’s First Aid class.

That should have been one of the elective courses, don’t you think? They could have called it the “Spells That Aren’t as Flashy as Turning Hedgehogs into Pin Cushions But a Whole Lot More Useful” class.

As for me, I’m distracted with wondering why Dudley didn’t set the teacup on an end table or something. Or maybe knock on the door so that Harry would get the tea before it got cold. But then, he’s never been portrayed as being very clever.

You know, I’m not trying to be mean about Harry... he is the hero and I’m trying as hard as I can to like him, but I can’t get over this next bit. We’re told that in six years, Harry’s never really unpacked his trunk completely, but always left a layer of “mulch” at the bottom. Is this a boy thing? I’m a really messy person, but I unpack my bags when I get home. And, if there’s broken glass in it, I clean it out. Even if it means lugging in the vacuum cleaner to my room. It’s not like I have this handy little stick on me at all times that will magically clean stuff.

Also, if I cut myself on something embedded in “mulch,” I put Bactine on the cut. Or iodine. Or clean it out with alcohol. Just because you’re a wizard doesn’t mean you can’t get infected.

Oddly, Harry thinks that his uncle and aunt will probably burn his things in the middle of the night, because they are so anti-magic. He’s obviously forgetting that his aunt and uncle are supposed to leave in an hour or so for parts unknown. The last thing they’d do is lug his stuff along with them for the pleasure of setting it on fire.

Among the things Harry is leaving behind are his school robes. What he’s keeping is his Muggle clothing. This sounds like he might be thinking of hiding out in the Muggle world. Or, that Rowling has finally owned up to the fact that Wizard clothing is stupid.

Harry packs the Marauder’s Map, not that the map will have any purpose on his Quest.

He also packs a small fragment of mirror (which he cut his finger on) and the locket which “cost” Dumbledore’s life. It seems that Harry values things by how much pain they have caused him. Or by how important they are to eventually wrapping up the plot in a surprising twist!

Meanwhile, Hedwig is pretending to sleep because she hates Harry. I’m not making it up. That’s in the book.

Hehe. Harry finds the newspaper he was looking for by remembering the short mention of Charity Burbage’s resignation on the front page. Too late, J.R! You’re placing the Chekhovian gun on the mantelpiece after it was fired!

In my book, this chapter takes up approximately 16 pages. Of those, 11 pages are filled with stuff about Albus Dumbledore’s life. Didn’t we have an entire chapter in the last book dedicated to his funeral? There wasn’t this much coverage of the John Kennedy assassination! (On the other hand, there was some effort to actually catch the man who murdered Kennedy, so maybe it balances out.)

The first article, by Elphias Doge goes something like this: I met Dumbledore when he was eleven and it was awesome! He awesome to me and awesome to Muggles. He was an awesome student and when we graduated, we were going to go on an awesome trip! But his mom died, so he didn’t go. But he was still awesome! He went on to get an awesome job as a teacher! Then he had an awesome duel and even more awesomely turned down the job as Minister of Magic! Wasn’t he awesome?

Dumbledore’s defeat of Grindelwald is considered a turning point in wizarding history on a par with the enactment of the Statute of Secrecy or the downfall of Voldemort. Consequently, it was never included in the history class at Hogwarts.

Harry feels ashamed about how little he knew Dumbledore. I think Harry’s giving himself a bum rap here. He tried to ask a personal question once when he was eleven and even then he could tell Dumbledore was lying.

Besides, Harry never even asked anyone about his parents. Nor does he know the names of Hermione’s parents. So, you know, asking personal questions isn’t Harry’s strong suit.

Then, Harry notices that Rita Skeeter is being interviewed about her upcoming book on Dumbledore’s life. Feeling the need to become enraged, he decides to read through a six-page article of “lies” about his beloved mentor.

By the way, nobody in the U.S. would ever write an interview like this (what with the descriptions of Rita tossing her hair back and such). Is this a common style for British tabloids?

Rita promises her readers that there’s a lot of nastiness in the Dumbledore family—much worse that Aberforth’s illegal goat charms. I don’t know how much nastier you can get than screwing goats. Maybe that isn’t such a big thing in the wizarding world, when you have half-giants and half-goblins running around. But it puts a whole new light on the Blast-Ended Skrewts, doesn’t it?

Rita brings up a controversial take on the famous Grindelwald duel, declaring that Grindelwald basically gave up. I wonder if this is a dropped part of the story. Why make the duel controversial, unless it has some bearing on the Elder Wand storyline? But, since we never find out how the duel went down, this never really goes anywhere and just becomes part of the whole “Was Dumbledore Just a Big Phony?” debate.

Rita goes on to insinuating that there was something “sinister” in Dumbledore’s relationship with Harry. Not that gay = pedophile by any means, but this might have been a good place to bring up the fact that Dumbledore was gay. I find Rita rather restrained for not mentioning it.

Or maybe Doge should have, just to enhance Dumbledore’s awesomeness. After all, Dumbledore appears to be the only gay person in the entire history of Wizardry.

Revolted and repulsed, Harry balls up the newspaper and throws it with all his force at the bin. Bwahaha. Nothing funnier than someone trying to throw a balled-up newspaper with force. I think that’s the nerdiest thing Harry’s ever done.

In his rage, Harry picks up the fragment of mirror and sees a flash of blue—just like Dumbledore’s eyes! He is despondent at the thought that Dumbledore’s blue eyes will never pierce him again. But he does get the consolation of having the mirror cut his finger again as he picks it up. See? They did pierce you after all!

Fan Service:
Shout-outs to Draco’s badge from GoF and Ron’s Sneakoscope from PoA.
Sirius’s two-way mirror finally makes it return!
References to Dumbledore/Harry slash! (Should that be Humbledore?)

Fan Slappage:
No, Harry can’t use the mirror to communicate with Sirius in the afterlife.


DVD Extras:

INT. DAY – GREENHOUSE NUMBER ONE

A first-year student with a pock-marked face listlessly prunes a Flutterby bush. In the background, other students can be seen working on other bushes in groups of twos and threes.

A boy, wearing the Gryffindor colors approaches. The sun, shining behind this head, turns his red hair into a golden nimbus.

GRYFFINDOR
Hullo. You look as though you could use a partner. I’m Albus. Albus Dumbledore.

The listless student, ELPHIAS DOGE, squints up at Albus.

ELPHIAS
Elphias Doge. No one wants to work with me. They’re afraid I’m catching.

ALBUS
That’s silly. Dragon Pox is only contagious for the first two weeks.

He takes out a pair of secaturs and squats down. They begin working on the bush. After a moment:

ELPHIAS
Oh, I say! You’re Dumbledore. Is it true that your father is in Azkaban?

Albus nods.

ELPHIAS
I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as the papers made it sound.

ALBUS
It was.

ELPHIAS
Oh, sorry.

There is an awkward silence. Finally, Albus sits back on his heels:

ALBUS
Well, that’s a jolly good job, if I do say so myself.

They smile shyly at each other.

ALBUS (cont’d)
So… shall we go wank off behind the shed for a bit?

ELPHIAS
(beaming) Oh, I say! Rather!


FADE OUT

Comments

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Oh, the defeat of Grindelwald is totally irrelevant to the *endgame* of settling the problem over Tom Riddle. But if you ignore the whole cult of Harry Potter, really ignore it, and dig into the backstory, it turns out to be potentially the hinge that the whole middle game turns on. Or at least can be fanwanked into reading like it. And for that to work you really do need that *stupid* Albus/Gellert imbroglio to be sitting in their mutual past.

Potentially it's a rather more interesting story than DHs. But it was effectively over by the time Tom got out of Dodge after killing Hepzibah and making off with her treasures. But Tom only has a cameo part in it, and Harry is not even a walk-on.

(I had fun with it in the 'O, the Times are Out of Joint!' essay. Nothing in it is proven -- but nothing is counter-indicated either I am pretty sure.)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh, I completely agree that this middle game is potentially far more interesting--especially if you include DD/GG.

But then, that was my feeling throughout this book. So many more interesting ideas felt swept away so that the whole country could sit around waiting for this kid to find his plot coupons and get the girl.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

I swear, DHs almost reads like a deliberate attempt to dismantle everything that the fans *liked* about the series, the world, and the characters.

Yes, the "middle game" was at least potentially interesting. And at least it was actually *about* the frapping Hallows. For all the good they did, it would have played better if they had turned out to be nothing but a myth.

The Hallows were a whole different story, really. Tom only wandered in across a corner of it. And Harry only got dragged in because Tom insisted on doing it.

That's the insurmountable problem with Rowling's later books. It's hard to blame a newbie writer for burning out when they discover that they've overreached themself. But to turn elements into symbols and decide that randomly plopping a symbol into your story is the same thing as building in what the symbol *means*, is just plain lazy, stupid, and disrespectful of your audience. Throwing in a random war orphan, does *not* show the reader the cost and tragedy of war. We don't care about Teddy Lupin. We never even met him.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

I think this may be part of what diferentiates between a storyteller and a writer. Rowling had already made up her mind what story she was going to tell, and when it grew into something else in the telling, she didn't realize that it had carried her off into terra incognita. And the publishers and studio wonks urging her to write more, more, were no help.

The first half of the series *feels* like it was all planed in one gulp, and the wanderings off the central path don't feel like anything other than amusing side-trips. But somewhere in GoF she seems to have lost the map.

Frankly, I think the plot hole she admits to having fallen into in that book was a lot worse than she ever told us. Since what she did tell us was back at a time that the *last* thing that she dared to admit to, mid-series, was that her whole story had come apart on her. I think she may have down-played just how bad the situation was. In retrospect, almost *nothing* that came out after GoF feels like it grew organically from the first half of the series, even though any number of the incidents in them were sure to have been a part of the original outline.

I think that the "plot hole" sucked her whole damned story down into it, and she didn't really *have* another story to tell (possibly because the story had turned into a fantasy, and she doesn't really respect fantasy).

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

This whole subject fascinates me – why on earth did JKR get it so badly wrong towards the end? Some people are positive that she employed a ghost writer from OotP onwards, because the whole feel of the series seemed to change then. I rather doubt it, though, because the quality of the writing dropped so considerably. (It was never perfect, but it was fine for her needs, and her story telling carried her through.) Why, in the name of Merlin's frilly panty knickers would she pay someone even less capable then her?

She must have kept plugging away, and her lack of coherent plotline was what caused her to start repeating herself and losing control of her own story. That was fatal, because as you rightly say, the storytelling was her forte. I'd like to say that she lost confidence in herself as she got into more of a muddle, but she actually seemed to become more arrogant, so that can't be a reason. In fact, arrogance probably led to the appalling lack of editing that started in Goblet of Fire.

I'm not aware of her problems with GoF, apart from Ron's lost cousin in Slytherin(?) but it must have been something vast to throw her off course like that. My first major gripe with the series is in that book - why on earth didn't Not-Moody create a port-key and whisk Harry off within the first month? It's maybe the first major plot-hole, too big to fan w*nk away. In one of these re-caps, I suggested that the spell to give Voldemort a new body, (obviously particularly dark magic) had to be performed on the Summer Solstice. Weak, I know, but if she’d included it (or some other explanation) in the text, it’d have just been accepted, no questions asked. Maybe her original story covered this, but why didn’t she tie up the loose ends when she had to change course?

I don’t know what she had planned originally, but I refuse to believe that she couldn’t come up with an equally good plan B. After all, me and you and a dog named Boo do it on this site and many others all the time. I wish she HAD employed a Ghostwriter, preferably one who could double up as a GhostStoryTeller, who could have helped her plan the second half of the series. Someone here (was it you?) said that she SAID she took 6 months to plan the last three books, but I find it hard to believe – they just seem so haphazard compared to the first four, which did follow an obvious plan.

JKR admitted that she started to look at Potter websites from about 2000. Wasn’t that when GoF was published? She started to realise just how much she and her work was adored and immediately she and it became far less adorable.

Long-arsed post Part 1

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Weasleys' cousin was the plot hole she admits to. Like I say, I now suspect that little Mafalda was the least of her problems. I think the whole thing just plain came unstuck. Which for a novice writer probably *would* cause a major loss of confidence. And for a novice writer with contracts with big-name publishers and studios, upon which a whole lot of money was riding, well...

Rowling has always been good at the kind of tale that *looks* just fine on a surface reading, but if you give it a poke, it falls apart. The stories are playful and fun because *she* is playing, and she is having fun. But she doesn't build sound foundations, and when she *isn't* having fun, the reader knows it.

And she was certainly not going to admit to the public that she was in trouble with the series before it was any more than half over. And the arrogance that you note was probably largely defensive, since she felt that she was under the gun. And she was right. No one really wished her ill, but she was now in a position that she had to deliver on a contract that she was no longer equipped to handle. Her story had a hole in it, and she didn't have another story, or a patch.

Even the underpinnings of the best of her work fall apart under closer examination. I still think that PoA was her best novel. It fit together just about perfectly. We got the pieces of the faux "mystery" at *just* the proper pacing, and the big reveal managed to surprise us *exactly* as it was supposed to. Yet when you look back it is clear that there was no cheating, everything that we were told pointed *straight* at that final reveal. And the distractions that were strewn in our path were all well built, and completely plausible within the context of the story. The fight between Ron and Hermione over their pets? The uproar over the Firebolt? The hints that Hermione was being in more than one place at the same time? The hints that there was something off about Lupin? Every one of these *worked*.

But the backstory comes apart as soon as you give it a 2nd look. It's like the backstory isn't really built into the action. It's just there to give everything an excuse. There is no *door* from the tunnel into the shack? Not even a *broken* door? And Albus trusted the safety of the *entire school* (and the village as well!) to his own secrecy, a word of honor of a child who was not going to be in his right mind when it *mattered*, and an animate *tree*? That is balancing the whole spinning world upon a teacup.

Perhaps that is the right metaphor for the whole problem. You can enjoy watching a top spinning away, solidly balanced on a tiny point. But as soon as it slows down it starts wobbling, staggering, and eventually topples over. And, as soon as Rowling lost momentum, the series was hosed. She never got back up to speed. Or, not to the speed she needed to be at in order for the story to regain its balance.

She claims to have spent something like three months going over her master plan with a fine tooth comb to be sure there were no more of such plot holes to fall into before sitting down to write OotP. What I now suspect is that she spent that time going over it to see what could be salvaged. I think that whatever happened in GoF blew a hole through the whole middle of the story. And no, she *couldn't* dig herself free. She doesn't have it in her to do that. She has an endless supply of funny *little* ideas, and a bottomless well of grade-school jokes, but she really doesn't seem to have any *big* ones. I mean, think about it. Has she *ever* managed to convincingly deploy what anyone could really call a *big* idea? She's managed some fairly deep feelings, yes. Occasionally, when she wasn't determined to chew the scenery while she did it. But *ideas*? No, not really. WHenever she tries she just comes across as confused. She isn't really a "big idea" person. And the story had grown beyond the point that it would still run on a stream of little ones.

It didn't change on her and then go adrift. It ran aground at book 4 and while she managed a few good scenes after that, she never got it afloat. I suspect that it was never really seaworthy in the first place.

Re: Long-arsed post Part 1

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

I’m a serious fan w*nker – working in market research for 110 years, I’m used to spinning yarns, filling in large gaps in data and manipulating inadequate source material! The Not-Moody non-portkey was the first plot-hole that really stood out for me. I never questioned why Tom Riddle didn’t send the basilisk into the Great Hall- it’s a good point. When he was ranting to Harry in the Chamber he could say something about needing to keep the monster secret until he had the strength to steal Ginny’s life-force, as he couldn’t risk the school being closed down too quickly - so he just enjoyed spreading fear while he was waiting. But once he was safely real, he’d send it into the Great Hall and kill all the Mudbloods in one go – Mwah ha ha ha! Rubbish, I know, but the reasoning doesn’t have to be impressive, it should just be part of the story upfront. JKR rarely covered her tracks.

The first three books were fast paced and enjoyable, so I was happier to go along for the ride (I also think PoA was the best). The last three were slower and more meandering (DH was damned boring), so the flaws (themselves more numerous) stood out more. Then, I went back and re-read the ‘good’ books with a more critical eye. They’re still ok though, if the last three were the same standard, I wouldn’t be on this board.

I really agree with your point about JKR’s lack of big ideas/back story. In fact I think it helped blow a hole in the series. Even if her plot imploded in GoF, she’d have been able to move in a different direction more smoothly if she’d developed some key things more fully – or indeed at all. I dare you to go up to JKR and ask “What is magic and how exactly does it work?”, “Is the wand, and its ability to manipulate magic, the reason Wizards are disproportionately powerful in the magical world?” or “Tell me about the structure, numbers, origins, traditions, history and LAWS of the Wizarding Community” I’ll bet she never thought about it in any detail except to illustrate the stories as she wrote them - or come up with individual paragraphs on quirky Wizards of the Month. As time passed, I got a feeling her world didn’t exist as a separate entity at all in her mind (ironic when you think of how seriously the fans analyse it). We didn’t need to know most of the answers in any detail – the book does target 9 to 12 yr olds after all - but the fact that SHE didn’t know, seemed to come through. If she’d developed it first, before writing the stories (or at least after GoF, when she was floundering), it might have prevented many contradictions – she’d always be referring to a separate, *consistent* set of rules and ideas, not just making them up to suit the current chapter with no regard for what went before.

I know some people still think her magic is mystical or pagan – I have to say I think it’s genetic. Pureblood, Halfblood and Mudblood, to me indicate that magic is defined by what you inherit. If true, is magic dominant or recessive? If the latter, it would explain why Purebloods were so hysterical about Muggle ‘contamination’. (If I’m wrong has she ever explained it?) Have Wizards always existeded, or did they evolve? When and why, is controlled wandless magic possible? Can the Ministry tell the difference from afar? Are they’re more relaxed about it, because underage wizards *can’t* control it? I’m not going to list my endless questions, but despite her claims to the contrary, I don’t think she had any strong FIXED ideas about the bigger picture, which would have informed her writing. Her popularity thrust her out of her league.

Re: Long-arsed post Part 1

[horridporrid.livejournal.com]

As time passed, I got a feeling her world didn’t exist as a separate entity at all in her mind (ironic when you think of how seriously the fans analyse it). We didn’t need to know most of the answers in any detail – the book does target 9 to 12 yr olds after all - but the fact that SHE didn’t know, seemed to come through.

So very, very true. One of my favorite HP essays (a really, really long one (http://community.livejournal.com/hp_essays/7250.html) *g*) linked the Patron-Client system of ancient Rome to how the WW actually worked and it was fascinating and made tons of sense and it seemed to work with the canon we had at the time and I remember getting this chilling little thought, "I doubt JKR's thought this through nearly as well." If only I'd realized how much she'd not thought it through. :(

I can only agree that not knowing the rules of her own world had to have badly handicapped JKR.

Long-arsed Post Part 2

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

I remember reading somewhere that Imposter!Moody was a last minute inclusion which had not been originally a part of Book 4 at all. That originally Moody had been Moody. I suppose it's possible. If you are the author; if you suddenly get a brainstorm which will bail you out of a plot hole, you can certainly go back and retrofit the manuscript to give your new solution some clues and foreshadowing. But I suspect that if this is what happened, she lost a lot that she had needed for the 2nd half of the main series, and some of it was rendered unusable. And if that's what happened, why Imposter!Moody didn't just slip Harry a portkey is something that all too easily would fall through the cracks.

Like why didn't Tom take control of Ginny, call up the Basilisk, and send it straight into the Great Hall during the Halloween feast if he wanted to do some damage? Why fart around painting warnings on the walls, going to the trouble to call up the Basilisk just to petrify the caretaker's cat, and send it straight back to the dungeon? Obviously, since everything happens for the convenience of the author, he decided to fart around because Rowling needed the villain to do something to kick off the main event and she wanted it to be a bit creepy, but essentially small potatoes.

Re: Long-arsed Post Part 2

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Just a comment on POA.

I do understand what you say about the plotting, but I disliked POA when I read it (this is where my dad stopped reading the series), and, in retrospect, all the things that bother me so much about the last two books (not the last three) are fully present there already.

I'm a Snape fan, as you know, and POA was when I began to love him - and to question Dumbledore, perhaps, though I certainly wasn't doing it consciously. The man was clearly in so much pain at the end of the book; he was in agony - and it was played for laughs. I hated that. After DH, I hate it even more.

The conclusion of POA also seems to require a fair bit of stupidity on the part of the adults. Why on earth, for example, didn't Lupin and Black stun Pettigrew, the way the kids did poor Snape? But that's just one example.

Someone on Ferretbrain said the same thing: that the basic tone and problematic morality of the books are quite clear already in POA, if not before. I agree.

Re: Long-arsed Post Part 2

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

All of which are legitimate gripes. The morality issue and the stupidity of the adults has always been present in the series. As well as a deplorable callousness toward anyone who Harry does not happen to like. The series has always hovered in some uneasy space about mid-way between Storybook Land and Toontown. And the Toontown elements tend to be unnecessarily cruel.

It's a very bad mix, really. Cartoons can be fun, certainly, (and, "animation" does not necessarily equate to "cartoon" but Rowling's use of the tropes certainly does!) but they are a really poor vehicle for presenting moral truths, because, being essentially the property of the Trickster, they are inherently amoral in their violence and irresponsibility. And the story of Harry Potter is not a Trickster story. The very fact that Rowling seems unaware of this basic mismatch seriously undermines the claims that she knew what she was doing.

[eir-de-scania.livejournal.com]

I swear, DHs almost reads like a deliberate attempt to dismantle everything that the fans *liked* about the series, the world, and the characters.
***Et tu, Brute? :-P

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Given the pronouncements like; "I wanted to subvert the genre" that she spouted in the Grossman interview back when HBP came out, it's hard to figure out just *what* Rowling was trying to do.

It *almost* reads as a satire. But not quite. And if it were intended as a satire you would expect it to be a bit more evident. And would a writer of Rowling's prominence even *be* trying to write a satire for 10-year-olds?

But if you do remember those pronouncements you can't help but wonder whether she made the boring bits of DHs so boring on purpose. Because it's obvious that the narration does throw us a few snide comments about the characters, in passing. Like that slap that here were three teenagers in a tent whose main acomplishment was to not be dead yet.

But a fair amount of her weaseling around was just trying to dodge the brickbats that she knew were going to be thrown. Like the pre-emptive statement that "some people will hate it".

The sad part is that -- if I'm not competely misremebering -- when she said something like she had done the best that she could with it, is that the statement was probably the unvarnished truth. Her original vision had gone *poof* back in GoF and what she was left with simply wasn't workable at the scale she found herself needing to work.

Re: subverting the genre part 2

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

I think you've probably got hold of something very central to the whole Potter series. And it's something that is indigenous to British culture, while it may be completely missing from various other english-speaking cultures. So I suspect that I have been missing a whole major segment of the underlying context.

School stories, I gather, are *very* widespread in Britain, and probably Europe as well. But while I *think* there were reprintings of some of those serieses in the US earlier than the mid '60s, I was completely unaware of them. I knew about Mary Poppins, and Dr Dolittle, and Beatrix Potter. But I never heard of school stories. I don't think I ever even heard of the genre of "school stories" let alone read one until I was well into High School (heard of that is, not read). Boarding schools showed up around the edges of other reissued British books, like C.S. Lewis's, but the stories that I encountered were never set *at* school. Even 'The Silver Chair' which launched from one cannot by any reasonable criterion be regarded as a school story.

The whole idea of sending your kids away from home to attend school for most of the year was totally foreign in Southern California in the '50s. Private day schools existed, certainly, usually for the hyper-religious, but a *boarding* school was something that no "normal" person had anything to do with. Such places were certainly were not attended by normal children, so why should anyone encourage one's own children to read about them.

Which probably has something to do with the popularity of them in countries where "normal" children (the well-off ones, anyway) *are* by default assumed to attend them. Boarding schools "build character" acto the sales pitch. And that has probably *always* been a major part of their sales pitch. Consequently, parents of children who could not afford to send their children away to boarding schools made do by giving them school stories, in hope that they could build some of that character at one remove. For the kids, it's more like reading about fantasy princesses.

ETA: I never get the feeling from any of the HP books that Rowling was the kind of child who enjoyed *learning* anything. The only skill Harry seems to get any feeling of exhileration from having mastered appears to be flying. And that one precicely because he didn't *have* to "learn" it. He could already just *do* it.

Re: subverting the genre part 2

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Although it doesn't explain why she went off and majored in Classics rather than modern languages. Maybe she just is convinced that kids *don't* enjoy learning things.

Re: subverting the genre part 2

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

There used to be a song back in the 1920s called "My Little Mama Doll" that refers to a child being sent to boarding school. Part of the words, IIRC, were, "Oh, my little mama doll / it was not my fault at all / That I (went?) away / on that cold and (?) day / When they sent me off to school."

Then, in the 1950s, again not completely sure, could have been the early 1960s, there was the TV show McKeever and the Colonel about a trouble-maker boy in a boys' military boarding school. Someone once said it was like the Bowery Boys with uniforms. Definitely a school story, though, with a touch of Sgt. Bilko and maybe McHale's Navy.

Not a whole lot of boarding school stuff. The only other thing I saw about a boarding school was a Christian British import about twins called Lois and Lettuce. My big curiosity was all the references to field hockey, something I'd never heard of.

Re: subverting the genre part 2

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Oh, sigh. I belatedly remembered 'A Little Princess'. It's set in a school anyway. But does it really qualify as a "school story"?

Re: subverting the genre part 2

[tdotm.livejournal.com]

JKR HAS read the Mallory Towers and/or St Claire School books by Enid Blyton. She said so in a pre-Deathly Hallows interview when listing books she’d read when young. What’s more, she also said something along the lines of “They haven’t stood the test of time, have they?” Heh. You hit the nail square on the head! In 20 years, when the hype had died down, I’m sure lots of people will be saying the same thing about Harry Potter.

I think it was in an interview on the ‘Richard and Judy’ Show and is on You Tube if you want to have a look.

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what you mean by the middle game? Are you talking about Dumbledore's game with Riddle, or the plot of the book?

Also, I went to the Ren Hen site, but I couldn't find the "O, the Times are Out of Joint!' essay, but I did find this one: The Significance of 1945 (http://www.redhen-publications.com/1945.html), which was a great read!

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

'O, the Times are Out of Joint!' is up in the main collection in the section called 'With 20/20 Hindsight'. It's really the only one that has been retrofitted with the Albus/Gellert/Hallows business. It took me over a year before the Hallows business finally dropped into any kind of rational context. Once it finally did that, it turned out to be a pretty big deal -- for Albus Dumbledore and his life, and the wizarding world in general. But it hasn't got squat to do with Harry Potter. The "middle game" I mentioned is basically the middle game of the story of the Deathly Hallows. Which is a whole different story.

In any case th4e essay is here (warning, it's long):

http://www.redhen-publications.com/Times.html

I think you were down in the Potterverse UNhallowed collection, which is made up of stuff that has been canon-shafted in some fundamental manner. Even though some of it *almost* worked out correctly, or is accurate in portions. I still think some of it would make better story fodder than a lot of what Rowling gave us, particularly if developed by someone who could actually write. Even if they didn't necessarily develop it in the same direction I did.

Oh, I had some fun with the 1945 essay, although it went through a couple of major shifts when Rowling kept tossing out yet another statement with no apparent awareness that what she'd just said completely contradicted everything she's ever said on the subject previously. And I still think that the whole thing might have played better if Harry had been born in 1920.

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'd comment on the essay, but I'm still reading!

But I will comment on the "1945" one to say, I think the theory that the books would work a lot better in the 1930s than in contemporary culture is spot on!

[eir-de-scania.livejournal.com]

Problem with your RedHen essays is that you take an adult view of Potterverse while JKR is stuck in kid's book/Toontown mode.

Of course, the books would have lived up to theit early promises if our Jo had put half the effort in background- and world-creation that you have in your essays.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Well, I am approaching the issue from the other end (all fans are), which is a whole different ball game from the PoV of the person who has to write it. I'll quite happily stand here and say that I couldn't have written it. But I'd have loved to have had the chance to *edit* it.

Rowling's problems all *seem* to be fairly typical ones for new writers. And, really, even though she claims to have been writing stories since she was six I've never heard of anyone in any interview who confirms it. So, either she was working in a vacuum, never showed anyone her work, and didn't *tell* anyone about her writing except possibly her mother, or she is exaggerating just how much time she really spent constructing stories. And in either case, she wasn't getting feedback. And a writer needs feedback.

Writing seems to have only really become a communal activity in the age of the internet. There have always been writing "groups", yes, but that isn't quite the same thing as hanging your WiP out for the whole world to see and getting comments from the other side of the globe. When Rowling was growing up, writing was regarded as a solitary occupation. We've never really been handed a picture of Rowling as a solitary child.

We really don't have a very well-focused picture of what Rowling was like as a child. Way too much of the hype comes across as having been spun by Bloomsbury's publicity department and echoes of the exotic backgrounds of some of the starlets from the '20s to '40s (Escaped from the sultan's harem! Was the child of wealth and privilege. Is the wholesome girl next door). What she's said about herself (or been coached to say about herself) makes her come across as a Hermione/Ginny cross; smart, lively and always ready to take part in a prank. In reality, she was just as likely to be more of a Myrtle. Indeed, her continual flubs and fumbles in her public statements over her first several years in the spotlight suggest that she may have been rather shy.

But, regardless, it seems evident that nothing she ever attempted to put on paper had the potential scope of Harry Potter, and it was a very mixed blessing that her "major work" (for I doubt that she'll ever produce anything on this scale again) should have been her first crack out of the box.