No More Pottering around or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows!
First the embarrassment of having actually bought an original Harry Potter and that too on day one! Phew!
Don’t blame me. I was sick with fever and needed something to do on a ruined weekend and I decided that being in touch with popular culture won’t hurt me. Besides I have read the other 6 and hate to not finish something I have started, a la Magnus…And by the way, your brain doesn’t really work like you want it to, when your body temperature crosses 103 deg. So forgive me my follies. And besides I hate people who think it is really clever to tell you the ending of a book or a movie you want to read/see. I wanted to see if JK Rowling would finish off her favourite creation like another popular writer of fiction before her, albeit much classier (AC Doyle for the uninformed). Most writers tire of their creations, especially when the popularity gets a little hot under the collar. Or would JK Rowling not kill the golden goose? And is there a sign that JKR might weaken and leave herself a Portkey (For those who don’t read HP, it is somewhat like the Teleportation Station in Star Wars!) for an HP8 or another spinoff franchise? Also, if I understand books well, is the ending what I predicted it will be? The answer my friend, is something I shall leave you to discover.
For those of you who have never read a Potter. Don’t. For the rest and those who want to read something anyways, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (HP7) is the story of how the wizard HP and his chums from magic school (Hogwarts) try to bring an end to the doings of the Dark Lord, called Voldemort, while engaging in an adventure filled with magic, romance, tragedy, action and death, amongst other things.
And now for the good news. For Potter maniacs, the 7th is better than the 6th, (which sucked which is not a great comparison by itself.) The bad news, the book is yet another Harry Potter adventure, which is usually a shameless, unacknowledged filching of Tolkien and the rest – I mean seriously, giants, goblins, elves, trees, dark lord, death, to say nothing of wizards etc. I rest my case.
HP7 is a tale much like all other Potters – tales of sacrifice, cruelty, male bonding, female bonding, family, legends, power, talent, etc – masala, in short; what the wise old Indian film industry has unfortunately stuck to, emerging into a century of mostly movies miserable in their creativity or predictability, two important facets of story telling. However it has one redeeming feature – IT IS OVER!
What surprised me most was the occurrence of the F word in HP7, thrice. Ok, the E word, to be precise - Effing, or Effin, rather than you know what. But seriously, is this what I want my kids to be reading (if and when they happen!). I hope not. I wish there is better stuff to read by the time they come around. Anyways, there is some goblin legend to add to what you didn’t really care about in the HP series and some numerous other artifacts, literary devices to keep you occupied. Much though I’d be Pterry (and I am an avowed LOTR fan), one can’t help but be impressed by JKR’s ability to get ‘inspired’ by so much stuff from popular literature. Shows how much decadence my generation has engendered. But then, why read it? The promise of a good book has made me do worse things.
The usual suspects are all there – the Malfoys and various other families that dot the Potter landscape. And what do you expect to read in the last book – More magic, more curses, more deaths than in the previous HPs? What about blossoming romances? Plenty, considering that HP is now 17 and the generation that grew up reading HP, must be itself around the same age, unless you started reading too early or too late, for your own good. But I thought Harry loved Hermione and she did too?! What about the multiple women in HP’s life – Luna, Cho, etc? Will HP have sex? Oh come on, don’t be so puritan? If snogging can be allowed in an earlier Potter, surely sex can’t be all that way off. And besides the average age for losing your virginity in the
The book could be read, if only to know whether HP’s discovery of the Horcruxes in HP6 and the oft repeated quote throughout the latter books of the HP series (apologies to Ms. Hewlett and Packard, Sorry dudes) about whether HP needs to eliminate himself to destroy Voldemort, (Woo Hoo, He Who Must Not Be Named. The one watching over. The one who can see inside your minds. Where did I hear that last? 1984 written in 1948, by a brilliant writer.) turns out the way all good things end. For one, you would want to know what in god’s name are the deathly hallows? Whose death?
And it is not such a bad way to spend a Saturday. If nothing, you can test your reading speed. In the end, JKR does deliver something you can read as a story. Part of her phenomenal success derives from her ability to tell a story, albeit ‘borrowing’ devices from incredibly talented people before her. This is perhaps where the likes of Pratchett, and to a lesser extent, Fforde, in recent times have faltered. They have written for much smarter audiences, with greater doses of humour and creative excursions. For ex, you can never make a good Pterry movie. You can make a successful movie on the HP series, as 5 of them have shown, by subscribing to the LCD.
And please, while you are still reading this, please go read Tolkien,
Labels: Books
posted by D at
7/22/2007 05:07:00 AM
4 Comments:
Oh no...you don't get away with this one. First, the facts:
1. There is NOTHING, NO-THING that JKR's gnomes, elves and wizards have in common with Tolkien's. JKR's elves are mousy, dirty little creatures with bat ears.
Unless you would like to think that Tolkien invented the idea of elves and wizards, in which case I'd suggest you go finish your collection of Japanese comics, burst your inflated doll, and get your machine gun from your grimy pick-up truck, before murdering a Mormon village and shooting yourself in the head.
2. The rest....later
One supersized hug to Ron.
And a bad egg to Dhammo.
I totally agree... it's the simplest kind of analysis to say that the author (who incidentally managed to take the world by storm, stir up the collective imaginations of millions across the world and makes mammoth pots of money for herself and several others) has no originality.
It's one thing to say you didn't like it because a different kind of writing appeals to you.
Its altogether different to say JKR has no talent. What makes you an authority on talent anyway?
Like i said before, a hug to Ron and a bad egg to you, D.
Well you're off in the analogy with Tolkien, but broadly speaking, you are correct in one respect. Rowling simply borrows innumerable tropes and, indeed, whole storylines. She is, of course, an utterly banal writer but she does three things which are the basis of her saleability:
1. Grafts all those tropes on to a modern world setting
2. Writes for those who *don't* read. Her writing is like popcorn- bland- but then look at the number of people who like popcorn.
3. Ensures there's always *something* happening on every page. It could be something utterly trivial- a character throwing a tantrum- and utterly unrelated to the plot, but the incident has a resolution. It is natural human curiosity to read and find out what that is. [hat tip to Amit Varma for this observation] Which explains the apparent contradiction between the bulk of each tome and the relative readability.
You're making the mistake of evaluating it as literature. It isn't and you shouldn't- HP is a slickly packaged mass market commodity with awesome marketing muscle behind it. Very clever, really.
Of course, the series is good movie material. All you need for a blockbuster movie is a set of simple plot elements[e.g. Alien= Jaws in Space] Rowling's clumsiness as a writer becomes irrelevant.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home