Pratchett Unhappy with Rowling

[shipperx]

You know, while I'm sure that it's partly founded in envy, I can understand some of Pratchett's pissiness at Rowling making comments such as:

Pratchett Speaks about Rowling

In a recent interview with Time magazine, Rowling said she was "not a huge fan of fantasy" and was trying to "subvert" the genre.

The magazine also said Rowling reinvented fantasy fiction, which was previously stuck in "an idealised, romanticised, pseudofeudal world, where knights and ladies morris-dance to Greensleeves".

Wha-huh? It's not like she INVENTED wizards in the present or fantasy in the present. I read "Wizard of Seattle" years before Harry Potter. And I know that there are tons of other books that tread those grounds. I suppose Rowling is right, she really isn't a fan of the genre.

Comments

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

There is some evidence that the JKR interview is, at best, badly edited :D

Read Gaiman's blog

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

NG (as with the Anne Rice insanity) seems remarkably sane. Still, the article makes Rowling seem like a prat.

[hazel75.livejournal.com]

Yeah, after I read that article, I pretty much decided I didn't need to read anymore interviews with Rowling if I didn't want to hate her so much that I couldn't read the Harry Potter books. Between her disdain for (and apparent) ignorance of fantasy and C.S. Lewis, the whole thing pretty much just pissed me off.

[wisemack.livejournal.com]

*chuckle* Oh, my. Treading familiar ground, indeed.

I seem to remember that back in the Dark Ages (the 1970s), Lin Carter wrote an entire book explaining (for the wide-eyed first-time Tolkien fans, mostly) that fantasy has been around for a loooooooong time! Heck, I think he went all the way back to Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and then led the gentle neophyte forward in time, by way of Orlando Furioso and medieval romances and The Faerie Queene, all the way up to Morris and Dunsany and Lewis and Walton, et al. Quite a variety, and not one damn rendition of Greensleeves in the lot!

Oh, and for the record? My fave student wizard is and always will be Ged. So there, Ms. Rowling. ;)

[rahirah]

Oh, come ON! Whoever wrote interview that has obviously never read Ursula K LeGuin or Charles De Lint or Steven Brust or Diane Wynne Jones or Barbara Hambly or, well, any decent fantasy at all in the last thirty years. Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick, Rowling hit a nerve in a lot of readers, but she's not the be-all and end-all of modern fantasy, and she hasn't done a damn thing that a dozen writers before her haven't done--she's just done it all over again in a very appealing and engaging way, Which is nothing to sneeze at, but let's not call the Pope for a canonization just yet.

[drujan.livejournal.com]

I find it hilarious how authors in fantasy are ALWAYS spouting about "subverting the genre". From Joss to Rowling to George R.R. Martin, it's the latest trend. Creating kick-ass literary quality fiction is not enough, oh no! It HAS to be all about "subverting". It's the opposite of self-flagellation, really - "Yes, I write fantasy, but looky here, I am so subversive, and hence should be taken seriously!".

Why can't we just admit that most of ANY genre out there is pulp and dreck and shite, so that QUALITY writers can stop being so damn defensive. You can use any genre to create a work of art. Quality does not automatically come from subversion versus following genre convention, there's more to it than that. ::exasperated sigh::