Remember when Ursula K. Le Guin called JK Rowling a nasty basic bitch back in like, 2004? We should have listened
βThis last is the situation, as I see it, between my A Wizard of Earthsea and J.K.Rowlingβs Harry Potter. I didnβt originate the idea of a school for wizards β if anybody did it was T.H.White, though he did it in single throwaway line and didnβt develop it. I was the first to do that. Years later, Rowling took the idea and developed it along other lines. She didnβt plagiarize. She didnβt copy anything. Her book, in fact, could hardly be more different from mine, in style, spirit, everything. The only thing that rankles me is her apparent reluctance to admit that she ever learned anything from other writers. When ignorant critics praised her wonderful originality in inventing the idea of a wizardsβ school, and some of them even seemed to believe that she had invented fantasy, she let them do so. This, I think, was ungenerous, and in the long run unwise.β
i found the specific quote i was thinking of x
Q: Nicholas Lezard has written βRowling can type, but Le Guin can write.β What do you make of this comment in the light of the phenomenal success of the Potter books? Iβd like to hear your opinion of JK Rowlingβs writing style
UKL: I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the βincredible originalityβ of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kidβs fantasy crossed with a βschool novelβ, good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.
damn gurl :β]
βIn the same way, critics who set out to talk about a fantasy novel without having read any fantasy since they were eight, and in ignorance of the history and extensive theory of fantasy literature, will make fools of themselves because they donβt know how to read the book. They have no contextual information to tell them what its tradition is, where itβs coming from, what itβs trying to do, what it does. This was liberally proved when the first Harry Potter book came out and a lot of literary reviewers ran around shrieking about the incredible originality of the book. This originality was an artifact of the reviewersβ blank ignorance of its genres (childrenβs fantasy and the British boarding-school story), plus the fact that they hadnβt read a fantasy since they were eight. It was pitiful. It was like watching some TV gourmet chef eat a piece of buttered toast and squeal, βBut this is delicious! Unheard of! Where has it been all my life?ββ
From βGenre: A Word Only a Frenchman Could Loveβ
