Eaglie's Aviary

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Sunday, October 21, 2007

Getting Literary about Rowling's Potter Revelations
posted by Eaglie at 1:18 PM

This was submitted by Andy, and he asked me to post it for him since his Internet wasn't working.

WARNING: SERIOUS LITERARY CRITICISM COMING UP! AND SPOILERS! FOR HARRY POTTER!

Well, not really that serious. It involves Harry Potter, so nothing's that serious.

J.K. Rowling told the press recently that Dumbledore was gay (note the "was").

She really did write these books to increase the ire of fundy Christians, didn't she?

Now, far be it from me to say, "Dumbledore shouldn't be gay. Not that there'd be anything wrong with that." But was it really something we should care about?

And now comes my critique of Rowling as a writer. She can write all the books, stories, comics, movies, poems, video games, and whatever other texts are possible, but if it wasn't in one of those, she doesn't need to reveal it to the world. It's the sign of a bad writer to fit in more information THROUGH THE PRESS, rather than THROUGH A TEXT. In an earlier interview, Rowling told the press many more parts of the future than were needed.

They say the best writer fits in everything that needs to be said in the shortest amount of space. Rowling seems to have failed to do that. Yes, I know Rowling is trying to create a fully fleshed-out world, but it's not just a world: the books are one big text, and nothing else besides those should be needed. Or else Rowling is not an effective writer.

This is not to say the Potter books are not effective texts. If she thinks it necessary, than the words should have been in the book. If they weren't necessary to fit in the 700+ pages of one of those books, I think that it's stupid going back to tell everyone these things.

So Rowling: you have finally reached a place I cannot defend you. Also, Ian McKellen really should have played Dumbledore.

I would just like to make note, Andy, that while you had some very nice lines there, you just did a literary critique of Harry Potter.

Labels: Critique

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