Good essay - you make some very interesting points here. I don't have very much to say, but a couple of things that occurred to me:
Re-reading the Narnia books as an adult, I am struck by how little extraneous information we are given about the children. We are told quite a bit about Eustace at the beginning of 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader', mostly in order to establish him as a rather unpleasant know-it-all (before he changes for the better), but we learn very little about the others: Jill, in 'The Silver Chair' is simply introduced in the words 'It was a dull autumn day and Jill Pole was crying behind the gym'. We hear something about Jill's school and why she is crying, but very little about her: we are not told whether she prefers maths or English, whether she is sporty or academic, what sort of family she has, or even what she looks like. And the same goes for the others, most of the time. The only children whose physical appearance is described are Shasta and Aravis, in 'The Horse and His Boy' - and this is mostly because Shasta's un-Calormene appearance is a vital clue to his real identity. Most of what we learn is in the context of the stories, and we tend to learn only what is necessary. This does (for me) give the characters a slightly 'flat' quality, but also focusses attention on what Lewis wants us to look at, their moral dilemmas and development. And, because these dilemmas were sympathetically described, it did make them easier for me (as a child) to identify with: I could sympathise with Jill or Lucy better because I hadn't been told in advance that Jill and Lucy were good at all the things I was bad at, and despised everything I most liked. The children in the Harry Potter books, on the other hand, have much more sharply-defined characters - which can make them either attractive or off-putting. They can also be rather stereotypical, but that's another matter . . .
My other point is that C.S. Lewis was a lecturer in English, and therefore had to think professionally about what works in a book and why: and that must have been a help to him when it came to writing his own. As Hope says above, he knows what he wants to say, and how he wants to say it. He also had a group of friends with whom he discussed fantasy literature: I don't know to what extent he read these books to them, but he must at least have discussed the general principles of what he was doing. Whereas I think that J.K. Rowling's fatal weakness is that she seems to be very secretive when writing, and to write very quickly, without revising or re-reading - and this is made worse by the pressure under which the last books were produced. Leaving aside the inconsistencies, a gap tends to open up between the character she thinks she is describing and the one the reader sees. Harry in particular does read rather like a fanfic 'Mary-Sue' in places: she clearly finds him attractive and admirable, and she hasn't had to think hard enough about how to make him attractive to other people. If she had only discussed the books with her husband or sister, or if Bloomsbury had been less frightened of leaks and less hopelessly in awe of her, these would have been much better novels.
Sorry, this is a small essay in a comment. I didn't mean it to be like that. It's late, it's Friday, I'm very tired, and I'm waffling dreadfully . . .
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Date: 2009-05-15 11:49 pm (UTC)Re-reading the Narnia books as an adult, I am struck by how little extraneous information we are given about the children. We are told quite a bit about Eustace at the beginning of 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader', mostly in order to establish him as a rather unpleasant know-it-all (before he changes for the better), but we learn very little about the others: Jill, in 'The Silver Chair' is simply introduced in the words 'It was a dull autumn day and Jill Pole was crying behind the gym'. We hear something about Jill's school and why she is crying, but very little about her: we are not told whether she prefers maths or English, whether she is sporty or academic, what sort of family she has, or even what she looks like. And the same goes for the others, most of the time. The only children whose physical appearance is described are Shasta and Aravis, in 'The Horse and His Boy' - and this is mostly because Shasta's un-Calormene appearance is a vital clue to his real identity. Most of what we learn is in the context of the stories, and we tend to learn only what is necessary. This does (for me) give the characters a slightly 'flat' quality, but also focusses attention on what Lewis wants us to look at, their moral dilemmas and development. And, because these dilemmas were sympathetically described, it did make them easier for me (as a child) to identify with: I could sympathise with Jill or Lucy better because I hadn't been told in advance that Jill and Lucy were good at all the things I was bad at, and despised everything I most liked. The children in the Harry Potter books, on the other hand, have much more sharply-defined characters - which can make them either attractive or off-putting. They can also be rather stereotypical, but that's another matter . . .
My other point is that C.S. Lewis was a lecturer in English, and therefore had to think professionally about what works in a book and why: and that must have been a help to him when it came to writing his own. As Hope says above, he knows what he wants to say, and how he wants to say it. He also had a group of friends with whom he discussed fantasy literature: I don't know to what extent he read these books to them, but he must at least have discussed the general principles of what he was doing. Whereas I think that J.K. Rowling's fatal weakness is that she seems to be very secretive when writing, and to write very quickly, without revising or re-reading - and this is made worse by the pressure under which the last books were produced. Leaving aside the inconsistencies, a gap tends to open up between the character she thinks she is describing and the one the reader sees. Harry in particular does read rather like a fanfic 'Mary-Sue' in places: she clearly finds him attractive and admirable, and she hasn't had to think hard enough about how to make him attractive to other people. If she had only discussed the books with her husband or sister, or if Bloomsbury had been less frightened of leaks and less hopelessly in awe of her, these would have been much better novels.
Sorry, this is a small essay in a comment. I didn't mean it to be like that. It's late, it's Friday, I'm very tired, and I'm waffling dreadfully . . .