Jones versus Rowling
Dec. 28th, 2002 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyOr: Why I Love Nan Pilgrim, Charles Morgan, and the Other Students in 6B More than I Will Ever Love a Gryffindor.
(By the way, I'm going to assume anyone reading this post either has already read Witch Week and all four Harry Potter books or doesn't mind spoilers.)
So what with the flu, I've been rereading the Harry Potter books. I should make it clear before I get up a head of steam that I like Rowling very much. I enjoy her books; I enjoy rereading them (which is key); and I'll certainly be snatching up #5 as soon as it comes out.
But.
I was introduced to Diana Wynne Jones's work when I was eight or nine. Witch Week wasn't quite the first book of hers I read, but it was close, and every time I reread Harry Potter, I think of WW (which I have to save rereading for special occasions--more special than being sick--because it's in danger of following Watership Down into the category of Books I've Read So Often--Oh, There's No Bloody Point, Stupid, Just Put The Damn Thing Back On The Shelf).
On the surface, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (stupid American rat-bastard publishers *grumble*) and WW have a lot in common--English kids at boarding school, dysfunctional families, friendships forming, witchcraft, yada yada--enough so that Jones gets a lot of comments along the lines of (from the Crabbes and Goyles of the world), Did you read PS before you wrote WW?, and from the more intelligent, Do you think Rowling ripped you off, and how do you feel about it?
For the record, although stunning originality is not Rowling's strong point, I don't think she ripped off WW. If I were going to be really nasty, I'd say PS would have been a better book if she had, but that's really just rhetoric, which often tries to lead me into saying things I don't really mean, just because they sound so cool. The fact of the matter is that WW and PS come from such fundamentally different mindsets that there's very little influence the one could have had on the other.
PS is written from the perspective that School is Fun. WW is not. In PS characters are neatly and cleanly divided into Those Who Like Harry (As All Right-Thinking People Ought) and Those Who Don't (Shame On Them!). Good and Evil may get a little fuzzy, but Liking Harry and Not Liking Harry remains simple. People who Don't Like Harry are always somehow Up To No Good. (Sorry about all the capitals. Dunno what's up with that.) See, Snape may not be Evil, but he Doesn't Like Harry, and thus he's a hypocritical, petty son of a bitch with lousy personal hygiene. It's very simple. People who Don't Like Harry also always deserve what's coming to them, so we don't have to feel guilty about the schadenfreude of watching Snape be utterly humiliated at the end of The Prisoner of Azkaban or Malfoy be turned into a ferret in The Goblet of Fire. And the people who Don't Like Harry are (a) a minority and (b) safely quarantined in Slytherin except for the ritual Harry As Scapegoat sequence in all four books. Nobody in Gryffindor is ever nasty except as the result of a misunderstanding; it's just those icky Slytherins. Harry's common room and dormitory are bastions of peace and security, and those, much more than classes, are what his world revolves around.
WW, on the other hand, creates a interpersonal dynamic much, much closer to what I remember from being eleven. The kids are all nasty to each other as much as they think they can get away with; the class has a very distinct and carefully observed pecking order (which Nan even writes about); friendships are things to be entered into only with the greatest of caution, particularly friendships across the gender divide. Rowling observes things from the perspective of a boy who is extremely brave (and with the magical powers, yes, I know), but otherwise quite ordinary. Jones observes from the perspective of extremely bright children, and observes with them that being extremely bright is a real handicap when you're eleven. Hermione's brains are for comic relief, advancing the plot, and getting Harry and Ron out of trouble; Rowling's sympathies are always with Harry. Nan and Charles, on the other hand, are just too bright for their own good. I was a lot like both of them as a kid. Jones knows that school isn't fun, and she knows exactly why.
Jones's world is also more complicated than Rowling's. Nobody in WW is entirely evil, although most of the adult characters are petty, blackmailing, scheming, and scared, and nobody except perhaps Chrestomanci (magnificent deus ex machina that he is) is entirely good. The kids come from a terribly dysfunctional society, and they've been warped by it--in some of the ways that Harry should be warped by his upbringing, but isn't. They aren't nice.
Looking back at this, I realize that I'm making WW sound terribly depressing, and it isn't. It's a funny, hopeful, goofily amazing book. But it's built on bedrock. I'm afraid, much as I love Harry Potter, that Rowling's foundations aren't that stable.
(By the way, I'm going to assume anyone reading this post either has already read Witch Week and all four Harry Potter books or doesn't mind spoilers.)
So what with the flu, I've been rereading the Harry Potter books. I should make it clear before I get up a head of steam that I like Rowling very much. I enjoy her books; I enjoy rereading them (which is key); and I'll certainly be snatching up #5 as soon as it comes out.
But.
I was introduced to Diana Wynne Jones's work when I was eight or nine. Witch Week wasn't quite the first book of hers I read, but it was close, and every time I reread Harry Potter, I think of WW (which I have to save rereading for special occasions--more special than being sick--because it's in danger of following Watership Down into the category of Books I've Read So Often--Oh, There's No Bloody Point, Stupid, Just Put The Damn Thing Back On The Shelf).
On the surface, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (stupid American rat-bastard publishers *grumble*) and WW have a lot in common--English kids at boarding school, dysfunctional families, friendships forming, witchcraft, yada yada--enough so that Jones gets a lot of comments along the lines of (from the Crabbes and Goyles of the world), Did you read PS before you wrote WW?, and from the more intelligent, Do you think Rowling ripped you off, and how do you feel about it?
For the record, although stunning originality is not Rowling's strong point, I don't think she ripped off WW. If I were going to be really nasty, I'd say PS would have been a better book if she had, but that's really just rhetoric, which often tries to lead me into saying things I don't really mean, just because they sound so cool. The fact of the matter is that WW and PS come from such fundamentally different mindsets that there's very little influence the one could have had on the other.
PS is written from the perspective that School is Fun. WW is not. In PS characters are neatly and cleanly divided into Those Who Like Harry (As All Right-Thinking People Ought) and Those Who Don't (Shame On Them!). Good and Evil may get a little fuzzy, but Liking Harry and Not Liking Harry remains simple. People who Don't Like Harry are always somehow Up To No Good. (Sorry about all the capitals. Dunno what's up with that.) See, Snape may not be Evil, but he Doesn't Like Harry, and thus he's a hypocritical, petty son of a bitch with lousy personal hygiene. It's very simple. People who Don't Like Harry also always deserve what's coming to them, so we don't have to feel guilty about the schadenfreude of watching Snape be utterly humiliated at the end of The Prisoner of Azkaban or Malfoy be turned into a ferret in The Goblet of Fire. And the people who Don't Like Harry are (a) a minority and (b) safely quarantined in Slytherin except for the ritual Harry As Scapegoat sequence in all four books. Nobody in Gryffindor is ever nasty except as the result of a misunderstanding; it's just those icky Slytherins. Harry's common room and dormitory are bastions of peace and security, and those, much more than classes, are what his world revolves around.
WW, on the other hand, creates a interpersonal dynamic much, much closer to what I remember from being eleven. The kids are all nasty to each other as much as they think they can get away with; the class has a very distinct and carefully observed pecking order (which Nan even writes about); friendships are things to be entered into only with the greatest of caution, particularly friendships across the gender divide. Rowling observes things from the perspective of a boy who is extremely brave (and with the magical powers, yes, I know), but otherwise quite ordinary. Jones observes from the perspective of extremely bright children, and observes with them that being extremely bright is a real handicap when you're eleven. Hermione's brains are for comic relief, advancing the plot, and getting Harry and Ron out of trouble; Rowling's sympathies are always with Harry. Nan and Charles, on the other hand, are just too bright for their own good. I was a lot like both of them as a kid. Jones knows that school isn't fun, and she knows exactly why.
Jones's world is also more complicated than Rowling's. Nobody in WW is entirely evil, although most of the adult characters are petty, blackmailing, scheming, and scared, and nobody except perhaps Chrestomanci (magnificent deus ex machina that he is) is entirely good. The kids come from a terribly dysfunctional society, and they've been warped by it--in some of the ways that Harry should be warped by his upbringing, but isn't. They aren't nice.
Looking back at this, I realize that I'm making WW sound terribly depressing, and it isn't. It's a funny, hopeful, goofily amazing book. But it's built on bedrock. I'm afraid, much as I love Harry Potter, that Rowling's foundations aren't that stable.
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no subject
Date: 2002-12-28 04:45 pm (UTC)Um, no useful content. Just yes. I was meaning to write a big "Why You Should Be Reading Diana Wynne Jones" post a while back, but never got round to it. She writes about the horrors of childhood in a really marvelous way--she doesn't undercut them at all, but she takes them quite matter-of-factly, the way children who don't know anything different do, so she can be very funny and very hopeful and it took me till I read The Time of The Ghost to realize that the families in her books were often really quite awful. When I reread Fire and Hemlock, I couldn't see how I'd missed it.
I envy you finding her at eight. I don't think I read her till I was fifteen or sixteen.
no subject
Date: 2002-12-28 05:45 pm (UTC)But, yes, she's so matter-of-fact about how dreadful being a child can be, and so funny about it, that it makes it feel okay, even though a lot of the time it wasn't.
Sorry, that wasn't very coherent.
There's a whole 'nother post about why Fire and Hemlock is an amazing book, but not right now. It's not the book of hers I've read most often (at a guess, that would be A Tale of Time City), but in my personal ranking system, it's the best.
no subject
Date: 2002-12-28 06:44 pm (UTC)*nods*
Fire and Hemlock isn't one of my favorites (Howl's Moving Castle and The Homeward Bounders claim the top spots), but I do think it's one of her best.
no subject
Date: 2003-03-12 07:34 am (UTC)I only read Fire and Hemlock recently (and must reread it, I wasn't in a good place mentally when I read it and I'm not sure how much went in), but I've always loved Tamlyn and sing it whenever I get a chance so the resonances were strong.
no subject
Date: 2002-12-28 05:36 pm (UTC)Just yes. *g* Would be more helpful, but you already made all the good points, and did it better.
Oh, and if you haven't read Diane Duane, particularly 'So You Want to be a Wizard' and 'Deep Wizardry'. D.W. is one of my all time favorite books.
And Susan Cooper too. Everything by Susan Cooper.
no subject
Date: 2002-12-28 05:53 pm (UTC)But Susan Cooper, lord yes. I drove everyone around me nuts when I was a teenager, trying to find a copy of Greenwitch that I could own instead of having to check out of the library every six months. (And I finally got one, although it's mass market instead of trade, and so doesn't match the other four. *sniffle*) I think Greenwitch has been in print like twice, two minutes each time. It's not as popular as the others; it's short and weird and it's really and truly about women's magic and all the things that Will and Bran and Merriman don't understand, for all their powers and knowledge. It's Jane's book.
(I just realized: Merriman Lyon should be played by Christopher Lee. Probably this is not News to anyone.)
And still, one of the scariest things I've ever read is the Mari Llwyd from Silver on the Tree. Gah. Just thinking about it makes me want to hide under a hawthorn tree.
Well, you wrote this post more than a year ago
Date: 2003-06-10 10:07 pm (UTC)As a devourer of middle grade/YA fiction since age 8 or so, and as someone who ended up working in children’s book publishing, I confess to having reacting with great… snittiness (in private, among friends) about the success of the HP books. “But,” I would wail, “*other* (better) authors deserve this success! What about Margaret Mahy? Diane Wynne Jones? (and many others).”
Because, of course, as someone who has worked in children’s books, I had grown quite used to people staring at me blankly when I talked about my job (“How, er, nice,” the non-media folk would murmur) and suddenly everyone was raving about Harry Potter and I…just couldn’t see it. I mean, sure, the first novel was engaging and all, but I didn’t think it was all that and a bag of chips. I still don’t quite get how the novels, became the sensation they are. It took Alan Rickman as Snape to get me enthusiastic and that says more about me as a sometime slash writer than as a consumer of Rowling’s work. (And that took me until this last year because I was initially deeply, deeply squicked by the idea of writing any fanfiction that sexualized characters from a children’s novel. I’m still somewhat squeamish on occasion.)
But now I’m about to defend JKR:
Although I haven’t read the books as closely as some, I do think she’s moving toward showing that the “mean to Harry/bad person, good to Harry/good person” divide is illusory. I think JKR believes that certain behaviours are wrong, according to some objective standard, regardless of who (Slytherins v. Griffindors) is engaging in what. She’s just letting the reader fall into the same trap that Harry’s fallen into, and plans for them to learn the lesson the hard way, as, I think, will Harry.
The reader’s perspective is constrained by what Harry is able to perceive and understand -- and Harry is both naïve and immature. I don’t think he’s an unreliable narrator in the traditional sense, it’s just that he’s a child who has a limited view of an extremely complicated world.I think Harry will come to realize that the aforementioned paradigm is false, possibly after something tragic occurs (or after ensuring the enmity of a figure who might have been swayed to the side of the good).
So, gradually, I’ve become interested in the morality of the universe that JKR is creating. I’m hoping that she is, in actuality, playing with reader perceptions in this way because it will make the books a hell of a lot more interesting for me.
Oh, and Dogsbody was the first Diane Wynne Jones book I read. And I think I read it in 1977, if that's the year in which it came out. I remember it finding it on the new arrivals shelf at my library.
Just curious -- what did you think of the Dalemark trilogy? Wasn't my favorite. I did enjoy Dark Lord of Derkholm and its sequel very, very much...
Re: Well, you wrote this post more than a year ago
Date: 2003-06-11 05:19 am (UTC)I don't dislike Rowling; I'm actually looking forward to Book 5, in a mild, it-will-keep-me-occupied sort of way. But I agree with you that her stunning success is perfectly baffling. They're nice books, but not really much more than that.
My problem with Rowling springs not so much from her characterization as from her world-building. I hope you're right that the Good-Nice/Bad-Mean dichotomy is going to get shaken up severely (and it certainly CAN, although I hope the effect is wider than just Snape, please), but that won't be enough, without some monstrous retconning, to fix the problems that make the Potterverse fundamentally un-credible. Her magic "system" is nonsense, and playing the Dursleys for laughs undercuts ... well, a lot of things. And--did I say it here or somewhere else?--a child brought up the way Harry was would NOT go on to be well-adjusted and cheerfully popular at school, wizard or no wizard.
The thing that I was talking about in this post, iirc, was the ways in which the children behave towards one another, and the degree to which Rowling has or has not bothered to make Hogwarts credible AS A SCHOOL. Which, mostly, she hasn't, and mostly the children behave like children in a boarding school story à la Enid Blyton, rather than actual children in an actual school. So, morally, she may be doing something more complicated than it first appears, but her world is going to remain 2-dimensional and cardboard, because that's the way she set it up in the first place.
Switching topics, I found Dark Lord of Derkholm tremendously disappointing, myself, although I'm rereading--well, reskimming--Year of the Griffin right now as comfort reading. The Dalemark Quartet isn't my favorite, either (Power of Three, Fire and Hemlock, Charmed Life, The Magicians of Caprona), but I find them more satisfying than many of the conventional fantasies out there. I am especially fond of The Crown of Dalemark for letting the industrial revolution happen.