2 November 2005 - half past eleven o'clock am

Whenever an author, such as J.K. Rowling becomes too successful, editors invariably become too indulgent. They decide that anything he or she writes will turn into mounds of cash. They’re generally right, but there are still things to be said for quality control. Things like a plot, like not rambling through pages of exposition and simply telling the story.

In Rowling’s most recent Harry Potter books, readers have to sift through more and more tedious details. I don't care about the grain of the wood that the desk was made from, or which direction So & So's finger was twirling during this or that conversation. Just give me the general idea, and I can construct the world myself. I have an imagination of my own; I don't need someone else trying to shove theirs down my throat. Give the readers some credit for not being completely stupid, please.

Contrary to this, Rowling has begun to neglect details that are intrinsic to the plot. In Order of the Phoenix, when the title character is struck with the Cruciatus curse, I paraphrase, but Rowling's description was pretty close to "the worst pain Harry ever felt". Do you call that a description? The worst pain, depending on the person, could be stubbing one’s toe. (Which is extremely painful.) After wasting my time on a dozen other pointless, extended descriptions of uninteresting things, she can't get any imagery on what the worst kind of pain a person can feel must be? Not having one’s fingernails ripped out? Not a throbbing sinus headache just behind the eyes? Not having the air crushed out of your lungs? Not a thousand papercuts opening simultaneously all over the body? Not lemon juice in the eyes? The “worst pain ever felt” is amateur, the stuff of teenaged fan fiction.

Another pet peeve of mine for any story in any genre by any author: the main character falls asleep, or is knocked unconscious, wakes up, and then nine-tenths of the story, which of course took place while they were out, has to be explained to them by another character. Worse yet, they’re not unconscious for a few minutes or hours, but usually days or weeks. This is made more absurd by the fact that they don’t wake up hungry, or having to go to the bathroom, or with any diminishment of their physical faculties.

Rowling has crossed the line that separates what everyone experiences from what everyone writes. The longer her books get, the more loaded with trite plot devices they become. Basically, the universal has been supplanted with the cliché. What made me reluctant to read the HP books in the first place was that this problem was exactly what I expected to find, because it seems to appear in every long-running fantasy series in print, from the Dark Tower to the Dragonlance Chronicles. I never bothered with this series until carpooling with a fan: he'd play the audiotapes in the car on the way to work. They turned out to be good for light reading, which is what piqued my interest at first. It was whimsical and fun. When Rowling started asking readers to take the stories seriously, she was asking too much. The whimsy and fun were completely sucked out of the story.

My favorite characters were all the assholes because they were funny. I loved the Dursleys, I loved Professor Snape and Draco Malfoy. And my favorite character of all time was Professor Lockhart. They were presented in a context that wasn't to be taken seriously. We've all been picked on by jerks at school, had mean teachers, been bossed around and made to do chores by our parents. These situations carried a universal appeal by satirizing the overbearing, the unimaginative, the snobs. Post-Prisoner of Azkaban, the universal elements have been stripped away. Now readers are confronted with the particular problems of a character they may not necessarily identify with.

I still give Rowling credit for her first three books, which managed to avoid those pitfalls. The blame, I feel, rests with her editors. After all, a writer will throw words onto a page until their hands fall off -- it's the editor's job to determine which words are worth printing.