oh, well there's maybe a touch of sarcasm in some of my posts on this thread. but not the cheerleading part, that was legitimate.
i don't give a shit about whether an author communicates efficiently or writes a long and winding book. i don't give two shits, either. i liked the Celestine Prophecy, which many folks will say is an example of terrible, *terrible* writing. i like Lovecraft, and he basically invented Scooby Doo, writing the exact same fucking story over and over. and i love it.
go ahead an condemn the potter books for teaching kids something about expedience (you still haven't clarified what you were attempting to say with that sentence). and call me deluded. it's all good.
i just wanted to step up and point out that what you're preaching sounds like fancy-pants art-school-student bullshit to me. that's all. i guess i should've said it in fewer words? darn.
and please do lemme know what other specifications you'd like to throw out there as proper course of action for authors, me, whoever.
JK Rowling’s books exist largely because she’s a politically fashionable book-industry construct.
no. NO. her books exist largely because she fucking wrote them, that's why. your whole angle here reeks of "i know better than everyone on the planet". let's see, so her books only exist because more people want to buy them than anyone else's books, and the only reason people want to buy them is because they're fucking stupid and are being goaded into it by a manipulative book-mongering industry that can sell what's fashionable? i'm reading a lot into your statement there. maybe you could clarify that one the same time as you clarify the part about how Rowling's style of authoring a book teaches a kid that expedience is more important than substance.
one thing i'd like to say and make sure it's clear as day. i've been complimented before on my success in lucidly conveying precisely what i'm attempting to convey. i've also been told that in my writing, i have OCD or some other disorder, that i am unable to hold a clear train of thought, that my writing makes little-to-no sense. the fact that there are differing schools of thought on this suggests that it is more a function of subjectivity, a function of what the reader brings to the table in terms of their reading comprehension style.
did that last paragraph make any sense to you, or do you find there to be something wrong with it? did you understand the point i left between the lines? or was it too vague? but you did at least get the extremely focused gist of what i was saying, right?
here's an extension of what i'm trying to elucidate for ya
Writers like JK Rowling do not repay close attention, in fact, they deflect it.
bravo! welcome to critical thinking. the next step would be to move forward rather than stay in that spot and bitch. let's examine this a little. "do not repay close attention, in fact, they deflect it".
first of all, i tend to think that's improper grammar if you wanna be all bitch about it, i think there's a thing called a semicolon that's the proper tool for connecting two related but separate sentences. or maybe use the word "but" in front of "in fact". whatever, that's just what i got outta grammar class. and i'm not the one with a bug up my ass about literary merits here, am i?
but let's focus on the reasoning behind that statement. inherent in that criticism of rowling's work is the assumption that repaying close attention (meaning having a depth that opens the art up even more as it is evaluated in a more than perfunctory fashion) is good, and the opposite (which can be essentially be boiled down to "what you see is what you get") is bad.
this is essentially the same thing as saying "pop music sucks because it's superficial". the thing that's missing from these sort of self-righteous statements is an understanding that not all people want some fancy, super-deep piece of high art in front of them. in fact, MOST people DON'T. i tend to believe that if you took Spiderland (a great example of a work that DOES repay close attention) and pushed it on the masses in the same way that britney spears is pushed on the masses, i'll betcha they wouldn't sell 5 million records or sell out arena tours.
what's absent from this criticism you're quoting, or so it seems to me, is an understanding of human beings. it seems like something a college professor would say, living in his college professor world, thinking and thinking, and not really experiencing real life with real people in it.
my wasn't that an inefficient message. i apologize in advance for any delusion in there. especially the part where i deflect your calling me delusional back onto the jackass you're quoting.
cheers