JKR: Can't write 'cyclopedia, too busy suing online one. Yeah, the Lexicon, the one I've used.
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Q: When is a billion dollars not enough?
A: When someone else might make a couple thousand creating the "patch" for your plotholes.
Maybe it's the fact that Steve Vander Ark, a teacher and librarian, actually had the nerve to locate those plotholes by putting together the HP Lexicon, an index to the objects and characters in HP. Maybe it's just seeing anyone else play in the Harry Potter sandbox.
The New York Times posted this AP story on JKR's testimony in the Lexicon suit. She sounds weepy, indignant, and threatening by turns... like EWE Ginny at her worst. (Or is that canon Ginny? You tell me.)
Story in blue. Running reaction by me, in black. X-posted from my IJ for open discussion here.
And before anyone starts: Yes, I like HP. Yes, I think the books show JKR's enormous creativity and rare, admirable persistence. And yes, I'm all for women making hay off a system set up by and for men. But I can and do enjoy her work and applaud her gutsiness, and also question her understanding of ethical democracy and tolerance as revealed in her books and interviews. And disagree profoundly with her claims about authorial rights, as here. In short, this is meta mainly on the meta level, not about the world inside the text, or the creator's intention, but rather some thoughts on how authors view their work, their role, and the activity of fans, within the broader culture -- in this case a courtroom, which will have reach its own views on them all.
ETA: If you prefer wank, go here.
To simply hurl insults, here's the place.
For gossip, he-said she-said, and other unsubstantiated hyperbole, go here.
Well, that's a novel excuse. ( Read more... )
A: When someone else might make a couple thousand creating the "patch" for your plotholes.
Maybe it's the fact that Steve Vander Ark, a teacher and librarian, actually had the nerve to locate those plotholes by putting together the HP Lexicon, an index to the objects and characters in HP. Maybe it's just seeing anyone else play in the Harry Potter sandbox.
The New York Times posted this AP story on JKR's testimony in the Lexicon suit. She sounds weepy, indignant, and threatening by turns... like EWE Ginny at her worst. (Or is that canon Ginny? You tell me.)
Story in blue. Running reaction by me, in black. X-posted from my IJ for open discussion here.
And before anyone starts: Yes, I like HP. Yes, I think the books show JKR's enormous creativity and rare, admirable persistence. And yes, I'm all for women making hay off a system set up by and for men. But I can and do enjoy her work and applaud her gutsiness, and also question her understanding of ethical democracy and tolerance as revealed in her books and interviews. And disagree profoundly with her claims about authorial rights, as here. In short, this is meta mainly on the meta level, not about the world inside the text, or the creator's intention, but rather some thoughts on how authors view their work, their role, and the activity of fans, within the broader culture -- in this case a courtroom, which will have reach its own views on them all.
ETA: If you prefer wank, go here.
To simply hurl insults, here's the place.
For gossip, he-said she-said, and other unsubstantiated hyperbole, go here.
Harry Potter Author Testifies in Lawsuit
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 14, 2008
Filed at 12:11 p.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) -- J.K. Rowling said Monday that her efforts to halt a publisher's ''Harry Potter'' lexicon have been crushing her creativity.
Rowling said she has stopped work on a new novel because the lawsuit in federal court has ''decimated my creative work over the last month.''
Well, that's a novel excuse. ( Read more... )