No, I Haven't Started Reading The Deadly Hallows Yet

[dr_pretentious]

After Dan and I got home from seeing The Order of the Phoenix, I decided to reread volumes 5 and 6 before starting in on 7. Here I am, still mired in 5, so Dan's reading our copy of 7 first, under strict instructions to say nothing at all about it. I don't want to hear even one sentence in advance of reading it for myself.

(The current Harry Potter film is the best so far, which surprised me, because that book in the series was my least favorite on first reading. It's that the Hollywood-kid-movie sentimentality that marred the early films is finally gone. It always baffled me when the various directors lapsed into mawkishness, since the story doesn't need it. So hooray for David Yates, the first director in the bunch who really got it right.)

I'm zipping past all the Rowling-related posts on lj as fast as I can. Please, don't tell me a thing.

And yet, some of the non-spoiler comments on the book have caught my eye.

elphaba_of_oz says, There are many small moments of comfort in the book.

And I think that's one of the main virtues in the previous volumes that makes it possible for readers to go on, even very young readers, despite the relentlessly increasing bleakness. It's also one of the main virtues I think of when I see writing advice about tension. Tension is the big fetish these days, and as usual, fetishization is an indication that people have stopped thinking. Is your book not yet sold? That can only be because there's not enough tension in it. Do you have even one moment when the tension lets up? Expunge that moment, quick!

Right.

Well.

There's nothing on earth more boring to watch than a too-long car chase scene. And there's nothing on earth more tedious to read than a book whose primary virtue is tension. I say that having read literally thousands of freshman composition papers, so I know what boring looks like. There are fantasy series for adult readers that have lost me, after four or five volumes of avid reading, because the author's attempts to raise the stakes resulted in a string of calamities that turned just plain monotonous. If the outcome of every step for the protagonist is increasingly tense misery and failure no matter what s/he tries to do, fast pacing isn't going to be enough to restore suspense.

Books in which terrible things happen need to be leavened by small moments of comfort. Anybody who wants to know why J.K. Rowling's readers have been willing to follow her across thousands of pages from that first children's book about an 11-year-old all the way to the Deathly Hallows needs look no further than that.

Comments

[jasminewind.livejournal.com]

First a question - What is mawkishness? Can you give me an example of how it was present in a previous HP movie but lacking in OoPh?

I agree, too long car chases are dull - I appreciate the explanation here of why that is so.

I think it is a good idea to be re-reading the prior books first, I did that with the last 2 HP movies before seeing the latest. I didn't do so with the book and had that annoying moment of "What, oh yeah! I remember" several times. I will probably go back and re read the lot of them now, at least the last few (I really disliked Chamber of Secrets, I find it hard to picture reading it again.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Mawkishness is sentimentality so thick it causes a visceral recoiling reaction. The last several minutes of the second HP film, with its long, lingering close-ups on the major characters while they grin at each other in the Great Hall, are mawkish. It's as if the director doesn't trust the audience to get it that this is a happy ending and the heroes like each other unless he drags it out and cranks up the schmaltz in the music.

A lot of sentimentality seems to arise from either not trusting the audience to have the desired emotional response (and so bludgeoning the audience with instructions on how to feel), or not trusting the core elements of the story to elicit the desired emotional response (and so piling on peripheral elements and frilly techniques, to compensate for lack of confidence in characters or plotting).

The weirdest thing is when films and books that are working beautifully on their own terms and on the audience suddenly lapse into sentimentality. Remember that scene in Casablanca when Rick rigs the roulette game so the young Bulgarian couple will be able to escape the country? The camera keeps cutting to the most easily likable of the minor characters, Carl (played by S.Z. Sakall, one of my favorite character actors of all time), to show us that Carl approves. As if the audience wouldn't know to approve of Rick's rigging the game to save the lives and innocence of those kids. One cut to Carl is plenty, but several cuts to Carl, while he mugs more and more outrageously to demonstrate how pleased he is, just in case we are insufficiently moved on our own--that's mawkishness.