Assorted Comments on Recent Readings.
Jul. 24th, 2007 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sechan19Warning: Spoiler Follows.
The seventh and final Harry Potter novel put me in mind of a Tanith Lee quote that I have posted before. "The love a man feels only for one other in all the world will teach him, at length, love of all others, of all the world." This is an exact description of what happened to Severus Snape. I know many people had problems with a number of things in The Deathly Hallows (chief among them the deaths of Fred, Lupin, and Tonks and the frustratingly short epilogue set nineteen years into the future for some arbitrary reason), but all in all I was happy with it. The only thing I cared about was whether or not Snape, one of the most fascinating characters to emerge recently in the fictional world, was good. If he had been bad the novels would have plunged themselves into the realm of tawdry, two-dimensional trite, not worth a decent man's time. But he was good, and his transformation and actions will stand, I think, as a testament to, and lesson of, the wonderful power of redemption.
Additionally, I'm delighted almost beyond words to finally be able to say to any and all naysayers, "I fucking well told you so."
On an unrelated note, the following quote from Said's Orientalism struck me as remarkably bizarre:
"Leaving aside the fact that Western armies, consular corps, merchants, and scientific and archaeological expeditions were always going East, the number of travelers from the Islamic East to Europe between 1800 and 19000 is minuscule when compared with the number in the other direction. Moreover, the Eastern travels in the West were there to learn from and to gape at an advanced culture; the purposes of the Western travelers in the Orient were, as we have seen, of quite a different order." (204). (emphasis added).
I can't help feeling that by characterizing Eastern travelers as "gaping" at our so-called "advanced" culture Said has effectively demonstrated the ingrained Orientalist racism that he himself spent 200 pages railing at. Super dumb or remarkably tongue-in-cheek and brilliant? You make the call.
I would really like to finish this book, but it seems like every time I pick it up Said manages to say something completely bone-headed.
The seventh and final Harry Potter novel put me in mind of a Tanith Lee quote that I have posted before. "The love a man feels only for one other in all the world will teach him, at length, love of all others, of all the world." This is an exact description of what happened to Severus Snape. I know many people had problems with a number of things in The Deathly Hallows (chief among them the deaths of Fred, Lupin, and Tonks and the frustratingly short epilogue set nineteen years into the future for some arbitrary reason), but all in all I was happy with it. The only thing I cared about was whether or not Snape, one of the most fascinating characters to emerge recently in the fictional world, was good. If he had been bad the novels would have plunged themselves into the realm of tawdry, two-dimensional trite, not worth a decent man's time. But he was good, and his transformation and actions will stand, I think, as a testament to, and lesson of, the wonderful power of redemption.
Additionally, I'm delighted almost beyond words to finally be able to say to any and all naysayers, "I fucking well told you so."
On an unrelated note, the following quote from Said's Orientalism struck me as remarkably bizarre:
"Leaving aside the fact that Western armies, consular corps, merchants, and scientific and archaeological expeditions were always going East, the number of travelers from the Islamic East to Europe between 1800 and 19000 is minuscule when compared with the number in the other direction. Moreover, the Eastern travels in the West were there to learn from and to gape at an advanced culture; the purposes of the Western travelers in the Orient were, as we have seen, of quite a different order." (204). (emphasis added).
I can't help feeling that by characterizing Eastern travelers as "gaping" at our so-called "advanced" culture Said has effectively demonstrated the ingrained Orientalist racism that he himself spent 200 pages railing at. Super dumb or remarkably tongue-in-cheek and brilliant? You make the call.
I would really like to finish this book, but it seems like every time I pick it up Said manages to say something completely bone-headed.
