Comments | saffronlie: Harry Potter: An elegy

saffronlie

Harry Potter: An elegy

Jul 19, 2011 01:08

Harry Potter and I go back some way, as the earlier years of this journal attest. I wasn’t quite in the throes of pubescent adolescence when I discovered the books, as I was when I discovered Hanson, the first of my three great teenage obsessions (Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles being the third, and, perhaps, the most enduring). There was a time ( Read more... )

books, film, harry potter

Comments 6

anonymous July 18 2011, 21:00:43 UTC

Loved this.

Frogdancer

laviniaspeaks July 19 2011, 02:15:34 UTC

Love what you've written here.

Also, I love The Thirteenth Tale (I have lovely memories of listening to Lynne Redgrave reading it) and LOVE that quote.

And that quote you've cited captures it all completely. It truly does. It's all rather bittersweet, isn't it?

ukashi_goshi July 19 2011, 03:20:09 UTC

What a beautiful post. Thank you for writing that.

I have a quote for you from Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (wonderful book, btw ( ... )

saffronlie July 19 2011, 04:45:43 UTC

That's a lovely quote. I think there's something to be said for such a belief, or at least, for a belief in cyclicality. I mean, I'm Catholic, so not really into reincarnation or anything, but Christianity's sense of time is at once linear (Creation ----> Apocalypse) and very very circular, based as it is on the concept of resurrection. Anyway! Yes, the impossibility of return is something we can't ever truly confront as it's too devastating.

I've struggled a bit with nostalgia studies because I want to adhere so fully to the word's roots. If it wasn't home, or wasn't your time, then can you truly feel nostalgic about it? For example, someone who obsesses about the 19th-century and wishes they could live there: are they nostalgic, or something else? Unfortunately I'm not sure there's another word for that something else, so it has to be nostalgia nonetheless.

Oh, Dawn Treader! I watched the movie on a plane trip a few weeks ago and considered writing about it. I loved Narnia also, but I've consistently reread them, the last time ( ... )

phfa July 20 2011, 09:13:12 UTC

I agree with so much of this, especially about the passion of obsession and how powerful it is. I saw the last movie last night and the nostalgia was just incredible, I don't think I've been thrown so firmly back into the past in... I don't even know how long. I re read some old fanfictions before going to see the movie, ones I would get up before school to write, which was some serious dedication. This whole book and movie fanchise has been about SO much more than a book and a movie.

pandorasblog July 22 2011, 11:22:28 UTC

This is such a wonderful post. You've reached into the heart of what our engagement with storytelling means to us.

I don't think it's an accident that I fell for the VC during that weird down-time I had between GCSEs and Forming An Adult Relationship. It made me start reading history again, and added a dimension to my questioning about various things, but most importantly it drew out an atmosphere in my head (which was inherently nostalgic) which had already been there, and deepened it.

I'm not saying it wouldn't have become a full-on obsession had I read them later, when I was busier, but I do know that my periods of deepest obsession with anything have coincided with free time.

When I saw X-Men: First Class last month, I was all OMG WHAT IS THIS; YOU GUYS, YOU GUYS; I HAD NOT KNOWN HOW MUCH I MISSED YOU!. I'd been very fannish about X-Men in my teens, pre-internet, and suddenly there was this character > effects film with all the slashy potential of the canon (which I hadn't known was a thing back then) gloriously unfurled and ( ... )