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David wrote:
I wonder if one of the things the author is setting up and undercutting is the British School Story.Yes, to me as well, which is why I described it as an "eye-roller." It was standard school story fare, and it also—particularly in the Esteem Boost For Neville part—reminded me quite a bit of an After-School Special, as well. [1]
The points award scene didn't press any buttons for me, but I think that's partly because I would see that scene, and a number of other aspects of PS, as fitting in with the school story genre. Taken together, they left me not very impressed with the book. It felt derivative to me.
I suppose that what made it seem particularly annoying, rather than merely trite, was that the book did seem to be diverging from the standard school story format in so many ways. You mentioned the life and death nature of the conflict as one of these. I did feel that the school story genre was being neatly kicked by the "Oh, forget the stupid Cup, it's far more important to save the world" aspect of the plot. I was also partial to the nasty sarcastic school master with an unexpectedly poetic opening lecture, the high fantasy element of the Mirror of Erised, and the snap of much of the dialogue. It all conspired to make me feel that in spite of the rather tedious (IMO) opening (I have mentioned that I don't like Dursley sequences, yes?), there was a very creative authorial mind at work, one who seemed interested in toying with the rules of a number of different genres -- and probably in breaking them as well.
This made me feel vaguely cheated when the story was resolved with such a very standard Victory-cum-Humiliation-of-Enemies sequence. It made me feel talked down to, in a way that most children's books ::nervous glance at Penny and Heidi:: do not. In some way that I find difficult even to articulate, it read like pandering to me.
The cartoonish Dursleys also don't fit, though they didn't recall Dahl to me so much as Grimm: another genre referenced to be left behind, IMO. (Actually I don't like much of Dahl either, even when written by himself ;-) )
I like Dahl now. As a child, I had a violent love/hate relationship with him. His books always made me feel strangely furious, and yet I could not seem to keep myself from returning to them over and over again.
It's interesting that they reminded you of Grimm, though. I was so strongly reminded of Dahl that I found it irritating, but it didn't even occur to me to read them as Grimm's evil step-parents.
The place in the series where I am most reminded of Grimm, actually, is (punningly enough) PoA, in which Sirius Black always reminds me of one of the animal-man mentor figures from one of the more obscure fairy tales.
Once COS starts, the pattern is fatally wounded IMO simply because Harry is ageing.
It's also wounded from the very start, I think, by the expansion of the fictive world. The beginning of CoS gives us the Burrow, and thus seems to open up all manner of possibilities for further exploration of the fictive world outside of either Hogwarts or Privet Drive.
Really, though, it was the doubling of Harry and Riddle, the implications of a much deeper and more complex history to both Hogwarts itself and Voldemort's earlier reign, and the introduction of an entire body of new cultural boundaries and distinctions to contemplate (pureblood/Muggle-born/Squib, wealthy/impoverished, human/elf, aristocrat/trade [yes, sorry, I do see ample evidence of a wizarding class structure existing apart from the issues of either blood or wealth]) that made me feel as if the series was going someplace more complex that the first volume had led me to believe.
(To be fair, Wodehouse also took his characters into adulthood, though I don't think they developed.) Jennings and Billy Bunter will never get any older, and that I think has some of the same kind of appeal that the points awarding ceremony can have.
Although I do like the fact that the tone of the books is evolving as the series progresses, I also think that there's quite a bit of the comforting repetition common to series fiction in the HP books, and that to some extent that repetition serves to provide the reassurance of predictability even in the face of a steadily maturing moral perspective. Some of the comforting repetitions may be omitted from book to book—no Quidditch matches or House Cup in GoF, no train ride to Hogwarts in CoS—but enough of them are always retained to provide that sense of familiarity and comfort. I suspect that this will continue. It would not really surprise me all that much if even Book Seven were to start out with Harry at the Dursleys, thinking about how little he can wait for school to start.
—Elkins
[1] Probably US-Speak, so let me explain. "After-School Specials" are short made-for-television movies that used to be [I'm not sure if they still are] aired in the late afternoons, timed to coincide with the return of children home from school. They tried to tackle ::cue portentious voice:: Serious Topics believed to be important to older children and younger adolescents—things like peer pressure and divorce in the family and bullying and the like—and they almost always did so very badly. No real adolescent would have been caught dead watching one of these programs. I highly doubt than anyone much over the age of seven would have been able to sit through one. Needless to say, the Serious Issue Of The Week was always wrapped up in some tidy package by the end of the one-hour programme, usually with a treacly feel-good sort of scene in which the protagonists of the story Learned Something New or Made Amends or Triumphed Over Their Opponents or some other such rubbish. The last scene always seemed to be either a shot of lots of happy kids cheering, or a heart-warming hug. [back]
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on February 1, 2003 3:49 PM
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