![]() ![]() ![]() The most memorable of these cracks, perhaps, is the piece of prosaic furniture that leads to Narnia in C.S. ![]() Fluffy vs phantasmic series#One of the best things about the Harry Potter series is how it locates cracks in the ordinary, everyday human world familiar to us all (a certain brick in a wall, a pillar between two train platforms) that provide secret portals to the fantasy otherworld. In the best fantasies, however - the short stories of Ursula LeGuin, say, or magic-realist works like Carlos Fuentes’s Aura and Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus - that tension between flights of fancy and magic’s rules is a primary source of power and surprise. It’s hard to enter the lives of creatures who don’t share human experiences or emotions. Browne’s Warriors of Alavna, in which the characters’ lives are so uninterestingly bound up with centaurs and unicorns that empathic engagement is precluded for most of us, making real narrative suspense or excitement almost impossible. Fluffy vs phantasmic full#Most bookstores have a section full of third-rate sword-and-sorcery novels like Laraine Anne Barker’s Quest for Earthlight series and N.M. Many fantasy novels are weakened by internal tensions between the yearning for flights of fancy and the well-defined rule systems that authors impose on their imaginary realms. But this is more easily preached than practiced. In short, magic must have rules, as fantasists from G.K. That elitism reinforces the arcane, hieratic character of a fantasy world whose particular nature readily excludes unimaginative outsiders, who are regularly cast into the roles of worldly earthlings or stupid, gluttonous Muggles who can’t tell an orc from a handsaw. Like avid followers of soap operas and sports teams, fantasy readers are a special group with their own sense of history, their own understanding of the make-believe world, their own knowledge of characters’ limitations and vocabularies, all of which inspire a disdainful clannishness at times. Harry’s battles on behalf of the noble house of Gryffindor against the dubious denizens of Slytherin seem a million miles from planning mortgage payments, keeping track of taxes, and the other mundane problems most of us have to deal with.Įqually compelling is that the fantasy world has its own ontological framework - its own history, rules, and ways of life, baffling to outsiders but second nature to regular readers, who become self-taught cognoscenti of the mythological domain. Also appealing is the escape such fantasies offer from the routine contemporary world and the often mind-numbing details of our everyday lives. If the unlikely underdog turns out to be gifted, with special, supernatural powers, then all the better: At the heart of every dream, Freud tells us, lies a wish. Part of the explanation clearly has to do with the deep-seated human compulsion to immerse ourselves in the lives of others, especially when those others - like Harry Potter - are unlikely underdogs faced with the challenge of overcoming phenomenal obstacles. But if, as seems to be the case, the Harry Potter stories appeal to countless adults as well as children - adults who supposedly know truth from fiction - their spellbinding enchantment takes on more interest. Children of all ages are clearly entranced by this world of dragons, trolls, flying broomsticks, and a three-headed dog monster named Fluffy. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, claims she regularly gets letters from youngsters addressed to Professor Dumbledore - headmaster at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the books’ main setting - begging to be let into the school, convinced that it really exists. In an interview with Newsweek’s Malcolm Jones, J.K. In the age of the Internet and MTV, why do these old-fashioned fantasy realms of wizards, goblins, hobbits, and orcs still manage to pull in such eager crowds? Harry Potter’s enormous popularity and moviegoers’ keen anticipation of The Lord of the Rings reconfirm the enduring desire of both children and adults to immerse themselves in fantasy worlds - a desire that might have swelled further since the events of September 11, given the time-proven power of escapist art in troubled times. ![]()
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