This is good, Toby. Like most old stagers I too wince at the sight of superfluous adverbs and advise - er, emphatically - against them. But your analysis is both sharp and just. I was already nearly forty when Harry Potter was flying out of my bookshop, so immune to the charms of Rowling’s prose. My children and grandchildren, however, had never read Hemingway…
Yes. My students who are reluctant or non-readers or struggling readers love these books. They are too embarrassed to continue to read Dork Diaries or Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but love the HP series because they haven’t learned how to infer yet and they can come across as “real” readers in front of classmates.
Additionally, they are then hooked to read and explore other books!
Inferential skills and “seeing the book as a movie in one’s head” are one of the two things reluctant readers beyond a certain age continue to struggle with if they weren’t taught it in the early years.
I'm now thinking of rewriting Plato's Republic with speech tags! I translated HP and The Philosopher's Stone into Ancient Greek (Bloomsbury 2004) - and found her tags constantly infuriating. (Ancient Greek is with Elmore Leonard all the way - never anything but simply "he said".) I now appreciate how they helped me to hear the speech - and made the translation more accurate, so that ideally I could dispense with the adverb altogether.
This is so helpful, thank you. I always tell writers I'm mentoring or tutoring not to put too many adverbs in and quote Stephen King, but then struggle to explain how successful JK Rowling is... I didn't really get her writing until I had children and nieces of my own and then all of a sudden, I GOT it. We have read and listened to all the books together, and they are still re-reading and listening to them, over and over. It's as if this is a comforting world, immersive and easy to read, that they can retreat to when life can often seem overwhelming. As Rowling said when she finished writing the Harry Potter series: ‘I lived a huge amount of my life in that world in a way no one else can. Some of those 17 years had been quite traumatic for me, and this was a place I was escaping into. So the idea I would never be able to escape there again was a bereavement.'
This is an excellent point. I never read any of her work, but what I saw of it (excerpts) looked awful to me. But in the context you describe (which is the only valid context to put it in), it makes sense that it's good writing for its intended audience. You changed my opinion of it.
I'll add to that comment though, that thinking about what you said about her writing, which I agree with, makes me wonder even more than I did why some adults read it. I heard many reasons (excuses), but with all the literature in the world, and so little time, I wonder why on earth an adult would waste their time with it. I'm not criticising anyone, they clearly enjoyed it, I just honestly don't get it. I suppose some can read a lot quicker than me, but even so, there's not enough years in a life to read every book you want to read, so why read that? I'm open to difference in opinion if I sound ignorant, I'm not against changing me mind if someone shows me I'm wrong.
I think it's very easy to speak as the reader you are rather than reflect on how you've evolved into that. I wince now reading the speech tags you've identified, but as someone in their early thirties, I owe Rowling's books a great debt, and I imagine many others of a similar way feel the same way. It's highly possible Harry Potter instilled a love of literature and the curiosity to discover what else is 'out there'. However, without creating a debate into her recent views in the media, this will now be contested depending on an individual's view on separating the art from the artist.
Thank you so much for explaining to me what it is that put me off Rowling's style. I remember reading a lot of Larkin &, while admiring & enjoying it, saying to my brother: I do sometimes think his poems are too tight & perfectly wrought & readable & start to wish for more lushness or, for want of a better word 'difficulty'. He said: What you're saying is not 'he isn't good' but 'he isn't writing the kind of poem I want.' Larkin was superlative at what he did. Rowling ditto. When we start criticising a piece of work, as you show, it's important to work out whether we are looking at what the writer set out to achieve & how well they measured up (in which case, Larkin is unassailable) or whether we are looking at our own desire to read something else entirely - if we want Hemingway & read Rowling, while she succeeds on her own terms, she will never please us - & the problem is us, not her.
Thank you. I think what you say is true. And Larkin himself said he wouldn't necessarily have chosen to be the kind of poet he was. (See his interview with Sir John Betjeman.)
Another endlessly interesting topic - what constitutes a writer's voice or tone. I suspect it is related to the writer's individual, inescapable taste. Larkin might have tried for a hundred years to be a different poet but his own scorn for himself each time he tried to branch off might have prevented him.
Many different characters may arrive with a piece of news but one will deliver that news dolefully while another makes their announcement excitedly or exuberantly, timidly or embarrassedly or whichever feeling is the most appropriate. We are really buying these feelings. These feelings are the goods we really want.
We often forget the exact details of a scene in a book or a movie but we remember the feelings. For my tastes all the best stories are collections of feelings and ideas and the feelings can be neatly delivered to us in the form of adverbs. If it works it works.
On the other question: I honestly don't know which author I've read the most of but if I had total recall there would be long lists of novels and short stories I read from childhood onwards into my 20s by Roger Zelazny, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Frederic Pohl, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Douglas Adams, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, Mervyn Peake, Robert Heinlein, Robert Silverberg, Murray Leinster, Clifford D. Simak, Norman Spinrad, Theodore Sturgeon, Harry Harrison and all those type of writers who explored alternate realities and speculative technologies. Those were the writers I grew up on.
My most-read author is easily Georges Simenon, because over the past few years (dare I say a decade?), I've read all of his Maigret novels as Penguin released each one. They're just wonderful. I don't think anyone has described the weather as evocatively and succinctly as he has. To the point that on a sunny spring day, I now hanker after a glass of French white wine at an outdoor table! I also like reading crime fiction where the detective protagonist is quite content with life and isn't trying to solve a complex mystery while enduring a nervous breakdown.
Regarding JKR's adverbs: I hadn't thought of that usage before - reassuring developing readers, but what you say makes perfect sense. I saw it as emphasising, but that's probably because I write commercial fiction, and they want us to use adverbs to ramp up the emotion!
So glad to read this as I have just read three Maigrets in a row & loved them. He is very unshowy & so evocative & I feel I am being led along by someone wise. I am wondering whether to try his non-Maigret novels, which I believe are very much less comforting.
I have tried his non-Maigrets but haven't really got on with them. I get the impression that with Maigret, he'd sit at his typewriter, after some planning, and the story spooled out. But with his non-Maigrets, I get the impression that he sat at his typewriter thinking to himself, "And now I'm doing *proper* writing!" And he slogged away at it and lost the light touch which makes his Maigrets so readable. His astonishing descriptions in just a paragraph or two are lost within lengthy and overdone descriptions. It's similar to what happened when Conan Doyle tried to write "serious" novels to escape Sherlock Holmes.
Excellent stuff. It’s good to be challenged to reconsider what we can be tempted to dismiss as ‘bad’ writing. For myself, I was an avid reader before Rowling was born. My ‘gateway author’ was Enid Blyton, who has also had plenty of criticism.
I last read Agatha Christie as a teenager, Ollie, and have now returned to her. I'm listening to a fantastic BBC dramatisation on Audible of 15 of her Poirot mysteries. So far, so excellent!
This is an interesting point. I'm not sure if I agree or disagree right now, but I'm going to keep an eye on this as I'm rereading Harry Potter for my blog. Last week, I wrote a post comparing Rowling's writing to Shirley Jackson's; I didn't get into the use of adverbs, but now that I'm thinking about it, I'm noticing that Jackson uses adverbs to the exact opposite effect you're describing. Here's a quote I saved from Ruth Franklin's biography about Shirley Jackson:
“…she has a knack for the unexpected word: tropical fish in a mural swim ‘insanely,’ and the apple trees on Pepper Street produce ‘wry unpalatable fruit.’ In ‘Notes for a Young Writer,’ a lecture on writing fiction composed as advice to her daughter Sarah, Jackson would relish the ‘grotesque effect’ of the ‘absolutely wrong word’: ‘ “I will always love you,” he giggled.’”
Jackson's technique is to unsettle the reader in the same way that you describe Rowling as encouraging the reader.
Sometime, I want to do more writing on my blog comparing Harry Potter to other childhood books. I'll be keeping this post in mind when I do.
This is an excellent essay, he wrote appreciatively.
This is good, Toby. Like most old stagers I too wince at the sight of superfluous adverbs and advise - er, emphatically - against them. But your analysis is both sharp and just. I was already nearly forty when Harry Potter was flying out of my bookshop, so immune to the charms of Rowling’s prose. My children and grandchildren, however, had never read Hemingway…
Exactly. And now they might.
Yes. My students who are reluctant or non-readers or struggling readers love these books. They are too embarrassed to continue to read Dork Diaries or Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but love the HP series because they haven’t learned how to infer yet and they can come across as “real” readers in front of classmates.
Additionally, they are then hooked to read and explore other books!
Inferential skills and “seeing the book as a movie in one’s head” are one of the two things reluctant readers beyond a certain age continue to struggle with if they weren’t taught it in the early years.
Lovely. There's a lot of reasons why the Harry Potter series was so massively successful. JK Rowling is one of my all-time writing heroes.
I'm now thinking of rewriting Plato's Republic with speech tags! I translated HP and The Philosopher's Stone into Ancient Greek (Bloomsbury 2004) - and found her tags constantly infuriating. (Ancient Greek is with Elmore Leonard all the way - never anything but simply "he said".) I now appreciate how they helped me to hear the speech - and made the translation more accurate, so that ideally I could dispense with the adverb altogether.
This is so helpful, thank you. I always tell writers I'm mentoring or tutoring not to put too many adverbs in and quote Stephen King, but then struggle to explain how successful JK Rowling is... I didn't really get her writing until I had children and nieces of my own and then all of a sudden, I GOT it. We have read and listened to all the books together, and they are still re-reading and listening to them, over and over. It's as if this is a comforting world, immersive and easy to read, that they can retreat to when life can often seem overwhelming. As Rowling said when she finished writing the Harry Potter series: ‘I lived a huge amount of my life in that world in a way no one else can. Some of those 17 years had been quite traumatic for me, and this was a place I was escaping into. So the idea I would never be able to escape there again was a bereavement.'
This is an excellent point. I never read any of her work, but what I saw of it (excerpts) looked awful to me. But in the context you describe (which is the only valid context to put it in), it makes sense that it's good writing for its intended audience. You changed my opinion of it.
I'll add to that comment though, that thinking about what you said about her writing, which I agree with, makes me wonder even more than I did why some adults read it. I heard many reasons (excuses), but with all the literature in the world, and so little time, I wonder why on earth an adult would waste their time with it. I'm not criticising anyone, they clearly enjoyed it, I just honestly don't get it. I suppose some can read a lot quicker than me, but even so, there's not enough years in a life to read every book you want to read, so why read that? I'm open to difference in opinion if I sound ignorant, I'm not against changing me mind if someone shows me I'm wrong.
I think it's very easy to speak as the reader you are rather than reflect on how you've evolved into that. I wince now reading the speech tags you've identified, but as someone in their early thirties, I owe Rowling's books a great debt, and I imagine many others of a similar way feel the same way. It's highly possible Harry Potter instilled a love of literature and the curiosity to discover what else is 'out there'. However, without creating a debate into her recent views in the media, this will now be contested depending on an individual's view on separating the art from the artist.
Thank you so much for explaining to me what it is that put me off Rowling's style. I remember reading a lot of Larkin &, while admiring & enjoying it, saying to my brother: I do sometimes think his poems are too tight & perfectly wrought & readable & start to wish for more lushness or, for want of a better word 'difficulty'. He said: What you're saying is not 'he isn't good' but 'he isn't writing the kind of poem I want.' Larkin was superlative at what he did. Rowling ditto. When we start criticising a piece of work, as you show, it's important to work out whether we are looking at what the writer set out to achieve & how well they measured up (in which case, Larkin is unassailable) or whether we are looking at our own desire to read something else entirely - if we want Hemingway & read Rowling, while she succeeds on her own terms, she will never please us - & the problem is us, not her.
Revelatory piece for me, thank you again
Thank you. I think what you say is true. And Larkin himself said he wouldn't necessarily have chosen to be the kind of poet he was. (See his interview with Sir John Betjeman.)
Another endlessly interesting topic - what constitutes a writer's voice or tone. I suspect it is related to the writer's individual, inescapable taste. Larkin might have tried for a hundred years to be a different poet but his own scorn for himself each time he tried to branch off might have prevented him.
J. K. Rowling very cleverly sells us feelings.
Many different characters may arrive with a piece of news but one will deliver that news dolefully while another makes their announcement excitedly or exuberantly, timidly or embarrassedly or whichever feeling is the most appropriate. We are really buying these feelings. These feelings are the goods we really want.
We often forget the exact details of a scene in a book or a movie but we remember the feelings. For my tastes all the best stories are collections of feelings and ideas and the feelings can be neatly delivered to us in the form of adverbs. If it works it works.
On the other question: I honestly don't know which author I've read the most of but if I had total recall there would be long lists of novels and short stories I read from childhood onwards into my 20s by Roger Zelazny, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Frederic Pohl, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Douglas Adams, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, Mervyn Peake, Robert Heinlein, Robert Silverberg, Murray Leinster, Clifford D. Simak, Norman Spinrad, Theodore Sturgeon, Harry Harrison and all those type of writers who explored alternate realities and speculative technologies. Those were the writers I grew up on.
My most-read author is easily Georges Simenon, because over the past few years (dare I say a decade?), I've read all of his Maigret novels as Penguin released each one. They're just wonderful. I don't think anyone has described the weather as evocatively and succinctly as he has. To the point that on a sunny spring day, I now hanker after a glass of French white wine at an outdoor table! I also like reading crime fiction where the detective protagonist is quite content with life and isn't trying to solve a complex mystery while enduring a nervous breakdown.
Regarding JKR's adverbs: I hadn't thought of that usage before - reassuring developing readers, but what you say makes perfect sense. I saw it as emphasising, but that's probably because I write commercial fiction, and they want us to use adverbs to ramp up the emotion!
So glad to read this as I have just read three Maigrets in a row & loved them. He is very unshowy & so evocative & I feel I am being led along by someone wise. I am wondering whether to try his non-Maigret novels, which I believe are very much less comforting.
They're very addictive.
I have tried his non-Maigrets but haven't really got on with them. I get the impression that with Maigret, he'd sit at his typewriter, after some planning, and the story spooled out. But with his non-Maigrets, I get the impression that he sat at his typewriter thinking to himself, "And now I'm doing *proper* writing!" And he slogged away at it and lost the light touch which makes his Maigrets so readable. His astonishing descriptions in just a paragraph or two are lost within lengthy and overdone descriptions. It's similar to what happened when Conan Doyle tried to write "serious" novels to escape Sherlock Holmes.
"Now I'm doing PROPER writing". That's such a wonderful image
Lost in a cloud of pipe smoke
Excellent stuff. It’s good to be challenged to reconsider what we can be tempted to dismiss as ‘bad’ writing. For myself, I was an avid reader before Rowling was born. My ‘gateway author’ was Enid Blyton, who has also had plenty of criticism.
James Joyce, Ulysses for challenge and Alexander McCall Smith for comfort, pleasure and reassurance.
Most read for me is Agatha Christie. She's my comfort blanket with hot cocoa.
Toby, what are your thoughts on dialogues where the verbs come before the pronoun versus after the pronoun?
I last read Agatha Christie as a teenager, Ollie, and have now returned to her. I'm listening to a fantastic BBC dramatisation on Audible of 15 of her Poirot mysteries. So far, so excellent!
Interesting question. I'll try and write something about it. Thanks for the suggestion.
Most read? Either Evelyn Waugh or Haruki Murakami. Strange bedfellows...
Interesting to compare the two. Irrational quests comically pursued, perhaps.
Ironic that "ejaculated" is the most lucid speech tag of the bunch.
This is an interesting point. I'm not sure if I agree or disagree right now, but I'm going to keep an eye on this as I'm rereading Harry Potter for my blog. Last week, I wrote a post comparing Rowling's writing to Shirley Jackson's; I didn't get into the use of adverbs, but now that I'm thinking about it, I'm noticing that Jackson uses adverbs to the exact opposite effect you're describing. Here's a quote I saved from Ruth Franklin's biography about Shirley Jackson:
“…she has a knack for the unexpected word: tropical fish in a mural swim ‘insanely,’ and the apple trees on Pepper Street produce ‘wry unpalatable fruit.’ In ‘Notes for a Young Writer,’ a lecture on writing fiction composed as advice to her daughter Sarah, Jackson would relish the ‘grotesque effect’ of the ‘absolutely wrong word’: ‘ “I will always love you,” he giggled.’”
Jackson's technique is to unsettle the reader in the same way that you describe Rowling as encouraging the reader.
Sometime, I want to do more writing on my blog comparing Harry Potter to other childhood books. I'll be keeping this post in mind when I do.