And a post by rpeate

[conuly]

Because I don't want to retype anything, I'm linking directly to my reply.

While I disagree with him, his view on criticizing people seems thought out, so I thought I'd link to it here to see what other people say. Say nicely, I mean, I did promise to be respectful and all.

And I have a question, which I didn't think to ask him directly: How does one know if something is "great"? How can you say you recognize greatness if you don't define greatness?

I don't define it at all, so I don't have this problem, do I? I even refer to Alexander the Pretty Good.

Comments

[rpeate.livejournal.com]

I plan to become an English professor, but the fact that you came away from my post with these other reactions is a bad reflection on my part. Everyone should think and say
whatever he or she likes. My main complaint was that Conuly dismissed Rowling as a writer for minor technicalities rather than the totality of her work. I don't care if Rowling uses "waspishly" 100 times. The stories are great, involving deep, likable characters in a rich, complex world. That is far more important, it seems to me. And it pisses me off to see anyone miss the forest for the trees.

My post was not clear because I am still irritated and annoyed by these injustices, as I perceive them to be.

[conuly]

I do hate that expression. Forests are trees! And we can categorize the forest by the types of trees in it. /tangent

As the rest goes, I don't actually dismiss JKR as a writer. If I did, I wouldn't read her work. But those little things... they aren't as little as you think. You might get fully immersed in her world and not see them, but for me, they pull me out of the world, in a jarring break back into reality. It's worse than having to take a pee break. Instead of going "ooooh, good burn", I go "waspishly, waspishly, wait... REALWORLD!REALWORLD! ABORT! ABORT!" and I have to begin getting into the book all over again.

[conuly]

Or, to give an example from my current favorite author, so you know I'm not being biased here :)

In "A Matter of Profit", Bell goes through the effort of creating a believable, multi-species universe. I even suspend my disbelief enough to avoid mentioning how unlikely it is that a UT would work.

And then she ruins it by making a bad commentary on the difference between "T'Chin" and "T'chin", as though any alien would have the same capital and lowercase distinction that very few human alphabets have. I have to skim that page every time I come to it, or I end up spending the next chapter feeling peevish and unable to go back to the story. It's like "let's just pull everyone out of the story and remind them there's a real world out there", and it's annoying, precisely because her world is a compelling one. I wouldn't care if her book sucked in every respect, but it doesn't, so the little thing matters a lot more.

[leora.livejournal.com]

This is why I don't really have an opinion yet... this is supposed to be one story told in 7 books, and I am waiting until I have read all 7 to say how good they are. But book 5 was sloppy. It was just sloppy. I am hoping book 6 will be a significant improvement. I felt that book 4 was done quite well, and it had a lot of potential for interesting development from it. But regardless, I want to see how book seven is, so I can see if the things that seem really poorly done are actually somehow justified or potentially clever. I doubt it, and book 5 is still weak in its own right, but I will wait to see.