I give her credit for writing books that captured the imaginations of children, enticing many to become readers at a young age. Habits formed at a young age tend to stick. However, suggestions about originality are ludicrous. And her style is common-which can’t be hand waved away by saying they’re children’s books. Many authors of children’s fiction are masterful.
Her lack of openness, if not humility, in failing to credit her influences reflects on her character, which has been irrevocably damaged once she told us what she thinks. It’s of a piece.
Le Guin’s comments made me think about the classical music world. My husband used to play in orchestras. Unfailingly, the musicians who were the most arrogant were 2nd or 3rd tier. The most talented and skilled almost always demonstrated humility and generosity. (Yes there are divas. No generalisation is perfect.) They used their spotlight to shine a light on others. If you think you’re the best, you lose nothing by lifting others up. Only someone who’s desperate to prove herself takes all the credit.
I think your anecdote about musicians is generally true across the arts. But also, artists really want to be surrounded by other talented people. Making them your enemy is akin to saying you don't want to be part of their club - which tends to say more about you than them.
Fun fact, I read most of the Harry Potter books in Borders, a large bookshop on Queen St, in Auckland. They were not particularly well written and it was easy to speedread them. I didn't feel inclined to actually own them.
It is risible to consider them as being "incredibly original" as I felt that they were quite derivative of other British books involving groups of children, such as the Famous Five, Secret Seven, just transplanted into the setting of a magical school. All the children were quite stereotyped, and it was no effort at all to just whip through the story sitting in a comfortable chair at Borders.
The only comparison to Le Guin that can be made is that they both describe a school where magic is learned, but beyond that, Le Guin's Earthsea books are in a rarefied level of their own. Impossible to speedread, very possible to linger and reread paragraphs, or even entire books. I must have read A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA about 10 times at this point and Ged's story never ceases to captivate with its many layers of meaning.
Harry Potter ... it puzzled me why it became such a publishing sensation, but I guess it's because it simply was not difficult to read and it hit all the fantasy beats, with this orphan who embraces his family heritage and claims venegance on the man who killed his parents.
Given that Rowling's later books became incredibly bloated with minimal editing and were rolled out as fast as possible in what looks like second drafts at best, she is absolutely a hack.
Yes for sure there was a sense of FOMO about seeing what all the fuss was about, but as I speedread the later books in an effort to finish them before my wrist broke from the weight, I kept thinking to myself, why these books? Why now? As you said, the marketing campaign was so huge it was impossible to get away from the phenomenon.
Makes you wonder what could have happened if the same marketing campaign had been applied to Earthsea ...
This debate touches on the core of Sovereign Narration. Le Guin’s frustration stems from a breach of intellectual lineage; when a writer refuses to acknowledge their ancestors, they aren't just being 'ungenerous,' they are obscuring the map for the readers who follow.
In a world increasingly flooded with derivative, high-speed content, the ability to 'admit influence' is actually a mark of strength. It shows the writer has the security of their own voice. Le Guin understood that the 'School of Magic' isn't just a setting—it's a metaphor for how we pass down agency. If we pretend we invented the fire, we lose the ability to teach others how to keep it burning. Onward.
I take Le Guin's comment about the Harry Potter books being "ethically mean-spirited" to be about the behavior of the adults toward children in her world, in which case I disagree (and I so rarely disagree with Le Guin on anything). I actually found this "mean-spirited"-ness to be a very insightful clue to young readers about how adults can be utter shits and shouldn't be trusted just because they're adults. Kids already know about kid bullies, but there's a tendency to paste over just how bad adults can be _toward_ kids. Dickens knew better, and I always liked that about JKR's world. Still... it's a shame that JKR turned out to be far more of a Dolores Umbridge than a Dumbledore or a McGonagal.
I will accept at face value Le Guin's assertion that Rowling was ungenerous with crediting her influences, as I have no evidence, really, other than Rowling's current behavior which is, let's say, generally ungenerous to. significant portion of the human race. And there is a certain meanness in her books -- the end of the story where they declare all Slyhtherin unable to join the fight because of where a hat decide they should sleep and store their books? Not a good look.
However.
The books did have an overall through-line of being decent, of not discriminating, of standing up for people in need. And they did have enough imagination in them to capture the attention of an entire generation of readers who then basically took that lesson to heart. It might not be great literature, but it clearly was literature good enough to move people. That matters. And, as I said, the books did have some meaner undertones, but I think that for most kids, those were swamped buy the overt messages of decency and non-discrimination. Frankly, some of Le Guin's work has similar problems -- the Lathe of Heaven is morally problematic book, IMO, and the Omelas story is morally vacuous, self-indulgent nonsense. In my opinion.
Rowling the person is not a good influence on the world, much less of a good influence on the world than Le Guin. Le Guin is the better writer, the better story teller. I suspect that much of the good in Rowlings work comes not from her deep convictions (how could I given her recent behavior?) but for the societal values she absorbed and echoed back. But in the end, the work stands on its own. And that work was good enough to entertain a generation of kids, show them the fun in reading, and reinforce some good, if basic, morality. That, I think, matters.
My opinion of Rowling is that she hates people like me even existing at all, since I'm nonbinary, and that has soured me on her, and on the entirety of her book catalog, including Harry Potter. Her lack of human decency and compassion for people different from her is especially ironic when considering the whole allegory of half-bloods being treated as lesser in the Harry Potter series. Like...does she seriously not realize how that comes across. She wrote about discrimination being bad and then proceeded to be a raging bigot. It's just pathetic.
Le Guin made an excellent point when she pointed out that Rowling didn't pay proper credit to the writers that came before her. No artist exists in a vacuum, since we all take inspiration from the world and the art that surrounds us. This happens even subconsciously, when we aren't trying to be inspired by anything specific, but our brains remember and process more ideas than we can consciously hold on to. Though we can always try to seek inspiration consciously too, of course.
Anyway, it's perfectly fine to take ideas like a wizard school and then do your own take on it. But people saying things like HP inventing the idea, or even inventing FANTASY itself, is just ridiculous and untrue. Did book reviewers and critics really lack such basic knowledge of the fantasy genre of literature? Not to mention British kid's literature in general? That's unprofessional, if so. Any decent reviewer or critic should know these basic things by default.
So yeah, I think Le Guin was right on the money with everything she said. Including HP being mean-spirited! That's way more obvious to me now than when I read the books as a kid.
Yes, that's exactly it! I wish she'd just grow some self-awareness and stop being Like That. It would do her, and everyone being materially harmed by her words and deeds, a bunch of good.
Without saying too much about she-who-I-won't-name - if I get started I can't be relied upon to remain polite - she was lucky. Published a couple of decades earlier, when it wasn't so likely that a book would be published outside of the UK right away, or picked up for adapting into a film, I doubt the HP series would have been such a success.
I read them all, picking them up for my child, who I only read the first three books to (having read them myself first and recognised how upsetting the rest of them would be - 3 was bad enough!). They've never shown any interest at all in reading them, or watching any films beyond the first two - though there was a costume and a bit of fancying wand/broomwork went on for a while around the age of 6(is).
The books are ok, though I feel better read around the age the kids in the stories are, so the later ones would be later teens, rather than reading through the series all in one go. Which worked for the staggered way they were originally published, but doesn't really transfer beyond that very well.
As I said, I bought/read them for my child. I've never understood the appeal to an adult (to the point of reissuing the whole series with 'adult' covers etc. And as far as the writer's 'originality', that's just laughable. She didn't use anything original at all, and her writing pales in comparison to other famous British authors!
Ursula K. Le Guin was definitely on the nose with her criticisms, while she herself was a truly remarkable author and fabulously intelligent human being. In contrast to the woman she was talking about, who has certainly shown her true colours more recently (and is a disgraceful bigot - which is about as polite as I can get).
I remember reading Le Guin's 'The Wizard of Earthsea' when I was a kid (in the '70s) and I absolutely adored it. Now that's a classic that will be remembered a lot longer (in my opinion), even though it hasn't had anywhere near the same amount of hype and merchandise produced around it - it's simply a better book, written by a far superior author.
I've always struggled to criticize the novels because so many adults love them. It feels like I'm insulting them when I do so. But when I'm honest, I, too, am mystified why these books could be enjoyed by adults. I didn't even enjoy the films past the first three. They just got increasingly convoluted, derivative, and predictable to me.
When I read the first book, all I could think of was this is Enid Blyton with magic and broomsticks. I read three more of the books, always borrowed from the library as I certainly didn't want to buy them, and stopped after that as I'd had enough.
Give her credit in that she wrote a series that has had a massive impact on popular culture. Kids loved them and it got millions reading which in of itself, is always good.
In the end, all around, she just doesn't seem to be a very nice person. I'd rather consume art from those who at least try to better themselves. Rowling appears to not care about that. I wonder why she writes at all (maybe just money?), but I'm not interested enough to go down that particular rabbit hole.
I recall that Orson Scott Card, of Ender's Game, said similar things - About a school for children, in a place away, teaching skills for battle. And I believe his comment was that he wouldn't call it plagiarism but certainly didn't think it was original. I bought the books abroad on work trips, for my children. For them, they had yet to experience Le Guin, or Card. They did a few years later, and I think they can see the similarities. But the first experience is defining, and that first experience of a mythic arc, however trivially presented, is the touchstone for later variations.
Lon Chaney and Bela Lugosi were not objectively great actors, but for me they defined those genres. (And it was a low bar....).
Rowling is most certainly ungenerous and imo a fairly despicable person all around but I am able to separate that from Harry Potter and, for me personally, I think it is a great series of books. It’s not so much in the way she writes, which is highly readable nonetheless, but the meticulous crafting of the overall plot. There are so many aspects in the early books which seem like fun details to drive the plot forward but which then turn out to be far more significant in the series conclusion. I remember thinking that she really knew from the start where the story was going and I greatly appreciated that. In terms of not acknowledging influences, this is exactly the sort of mean-spiritedness I would expect from her. She’s not a good person and at no point do I expect to see her doing the right thing.
On the same qualification which LeGuin made, that she didn’t invent a wizarding school, Gaiman didn’t invent a young boy wizard wearing glasses and with a magical pet owl, but we have to acknowledge that Tim Hunter—published by DC Comics—came years before Harry Potter
our kids were of the right age when Harry Potter burst upon the scene – peer pressure drew them to the books, but their interest was truly ignited when certain members of the extended family expressed concerns about the books’ links to witchcraft – and so of course we ended up purchasing the entire series
i found them to be a fun, easy read and mostly harmless – i didn’t see the mean spiritedness Le Guin mentions, but by that time i’d been exposed to a lot of YA media, so maybe i’d grown numb to the fictionalised horrors of adolescence
one thing i particularly liked was how the books demonstrated to our kids the ways media subverts the truth in the service of powerful elites – a valuable lesson in Australia where Murdoch’s media empire continues to set the agenda
This is an interesting point, because Rowling, in turn, became a media force with tremendous reach who used her power to subvert the truth whenever she could. She really did become her the villain of her own novels.
I give her credit for writing books that captured the imaginations of children, enticing many to become readers at a young age. Habits formed at a young age tend to stick. However, suggestions about originality are ludicrous. And her style is common-which can’t be hand waved away by saying they’re children’s books. Many authors of children’s fiction are masterful.
Her lack of openness, if not humility, in failing to credit her influences reflects on her character, which has been irrevocably damaged once she told us what she thinks. It’s of a piece.
Le Guin’s comments made me think about the classical music world. My husband used to play in orchestras. Unfailingly, the musicians who were the most arrogant were 2nd or 3rd tier. The most talented and skilled almost always demonstrated humility and generosity. (Yes there are divas. No generalisation is perfect.) They used their spotlight to shine a light on others. If you think you’re the best, you lose nothing by lifting others up. Only someone who’s desperate to prove herself takes all the credit.
I think your anecdote about musicians is generally true across the arts. But also, artists really want to be surrounded by other talented people. Making them your enemy is akin to saying you don't want to be part of their club - which tends to say more about you than them.
Fun fact, I read most of the Harry Potter books in Borders, a large bookshop on Queen St, in Auckland. They were not particularly well written and it was easy to speedread them. I didn't feel inclined to actually own them.
It is risible to consider them as being "incredibly original" as I felt that they were quite derivative of other British books involving groups of children, such as the Famous Five, Secret Seven, just transplanted into the setting of a magical school. All the children were quite stereotyped, and it was no effort at all to just whip through the story sitting in a comfortable chair at Borders.
The only comparison to Le Guin that can be made is that they both describe a school where magic is learned, but beyond that, Le Guin's Earthsea books are in a rarefied level of their own. Impossible to speedread, very possible to linger and reread paragraphs, or even entire books. I must have read A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA about 10 times at this point and Ged's story never ceases to captivate with its many layers of meaning.
Harry Potter ... it puzzled me why it became such a publishing sensation, but I guess it's because it simply was not difficult to read and it hit all the fantasy beats, with this orphan who embraces his family heritage and claims venegance on the man who killed his parents.
Given that Rowling's later books became incredibly bloated with minimal editing and were rolled out as fast as possible in what looks like second drafts at best, she is absolutely a hack.
i'm surprised you are "puzzled why it became such a publishing sensation" ... after all, you did go to a book store and read them all ;•P
maybe it had something to do with the fact that 'Arry was supported by a huge, international marketing campaign backed by a massive media conglomerate
and yeah, they don't come close to Le Guin's *Earthsea* books
Fair, Robert, fair! lol
Yes for sure there was a sense of FOMO about seeing what all the fuss was about, but as I speedread the later books in an effort to finish them before my wrist broke from the weight, I kept thinking to myself, why these books? Why now? As you said, the marketing campaign was so huge it was impossible to get away from the phenomenon.
Makes you wonder what could have happened if the same marketing campaign had been applied to Earthsea ...
This debate touches on the core of Sovereign Narration. Le Guin’s frustration stems from a breach of intellectual lineage; when a writer refuses to acknowledge their ancestors, they aren't just being 'ungenerous,' they are obscuring the map for the readers who follow.
In a world increasingly flooded with derivative, high-speed content, the ability to 'admit influence' is actually a mark of strength. It shows the writer has the security of their own voice. Le Guin understood that the 'School of Magic' isn't just a setting—it's a metaphor for how we pass down agency. If we pretend we invented the fire, we lose the ability to teach others how to keep it burning. Onward.
I'm very grateful you took the time to leave this comment.
I take Le Guin's comment about the Harry Potter books being "ethically mean-spirited" to be about the behavior of the adults toward children in her world, in which case I disagree (and I so rarely disagree with Le Guin on anything). I actually found this "mean-spirited"-ness to be a very insightful clue to young readers about how adults can be utter shits and shouldn't be trusted just because they're adults. Kids already know about kid bullies, but there's a tendency to paste over just how bad adults can be _toward_ kids. Dickens knew better, and I always liked that about JKR's world. Still... it's a shame that JKR turned out to be far more of a Dolores Umbridge than a Dumbledore or a McGonagal.
I appreciate this observation.
This morning I came across Grant Morrison’s latest Substack, where he describes the sadism of British schooling: https://open.substack.com/pub/grantmorrison/p/281-sacred-and-artificial?r=rksu&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
I didn't know Grant was here, so thank you for letting me know they've arrived.
Yes and no?
I will accept at face value Le Guin's assertion that Rowling was ungenerous with crediting her influences, as I have no evidence, really, other than Rowling's current behavior which is, let's say, generally ungenerous to. significant portion of the human race. And there is a certain meanness in her books -- the end of the story where they declare all Slyhtherin unable to join the fight because of where a hat decide they should sleep and store their books? Not a good look.
However.
The books did have an overall through-line of being decent, of not discriminating, of standing up for people in need. And they did have enough imagination in them to capture the attention of an entire generation of readers who then basically took that lesson to heart. It might not be great literature, but it clearly was literature good enough to move people. That matters. And, as I said, the books did have some meaner undertones, but I think that for most kids, those were swamped buy the overt messages of decency and non-discrimination. Frankly, some of Le Guin's work has similar problems -- the Lathe of Heaven is morally problematic book, IMO, and the Omelas story is morally vacuous, self-indulgent nonsense. In my opinion.
Rowling the person is not a good influence on the world, much less of a good influence on the world than Le Guin. Le Guin is the better writer, the better story teller. I suspect that much of the good in Rowlings work comes not from her deep convictions (how could I given her recent behavior?) but for the societal values she absorbed and echoed back. But in the end, the work stands on its own. And that work was good enough to entertain a generation of kids, show them the fun in reading, and reinforce some good, if basic, morality. That, I think, matters.
My opinion of Rowling is that she hates people like me even existing at all, since I'm nonbinary, and that has soured me on her, and on the entirety of her book catalog, including Harry Potter. Her lack of human decency and compassion for people different from her is especially ironic when considering the whole allegory of half-bloods being treated as lesser in the Harry Potter series. Like...does she seriously not realize how that comes across. She wrote about discrimination being bad and then proceeded to be a raging bigot. It's just pathetic.
Le Guin made an excellent point when she pointed out that Rowling didn't pay proper credit to the writers that came before her. No artist exists in a vacuum, since we all take inspiration from the world and the art that surrounds us. This happens even subconsciously, when we aren't trying to be inspired by anything specific, but our brains remember and process more ideas than we can consciously hold on to. Though we can always try to seek inspiration consciously too, of course.
Anyway, it's perfectly fine to take ideas like a wizard school and then do your own take on it. But people saying things like HP inventing the idea, or even inventing FANTASY itself, is just ridiculous and untrue. Did book reviewers and critics really lack such basic knowledge of the fantasy genre of literature? Not to mention British kid's literature in general? That's unprofessional, if so. Any decent reviewer or critic should know these basic things by default.
So yeah, I think Le Guin was right on the money with everything she said. Including HP being mean-spirited! That's way more obvious to me now than when I read the books as a kid.
I think a lot of what you describe is her complete and utter lack of self-awareness about...everything, from her work to her peers to human decency.
Yes, that's exactly it! I wish she'd just grow some self-awareness and stop being Like That. It would do her, and everyone being materially harmed by her words and deeds, a bunch of good.
I’m always predisposed to take Le Guin’s side in any dispute, and I think with good reason.
And I have certainly downgraded my opinion of JKR: no question that her position on trans rights has been mean-spirited, to put it mildly.
And when you look at the books with a critical eye, there are other examples of unkindness, including some conspicuous fat-shaming.
Without saying too much about she-who-I-won't-name - if I get started I can't be relied upon to remain polite - she was lucky. Published a couple of decades earlier, when it wasn't so likely that a book would be published outside of the UK right away, or picked up for adapting into a film, I doubt the HP series would have been such a success.
I read them all, picking them up for my child, who I only read the first three books to (having read them myself first and recognised how upsetting the rest of them would be - 3 was bad enough!). They've never shown any interest at all in reading them, or watching any films beyond the first two - though there was a costume and a bit of fancying wand/broomwork went on for a while around the age of 6(is).
The books are ok, though I feel better read around the age the kids in the stories are, so the later ones would be later teens, rather than reading through the series all in one go. Which worked for the staggered way they were originally published, but doesn't really transfer beyond that very well.
As I said, I bought/read them for my child. I've never understood the appeal to an adult (to the point of reissuing the whole series with 'adult' covers etc. And as far as the writer's 'originality', that's just laughable. She didn't use anything original at all, and her writing pales in comparison to other famous British authors!
Ursula K. Le Guin was definitely on the nose with her criticisms, while she herself was a truly remarkable author and fabulously intelligent human being. In contrast to the woman she was talking about, who has certainly shown her true colours more recently (and is a disgraceful bigot - which is about as polite as I can get).
I remember reading Le Guin's 'The Wizard of Earthsea' when I was a kid (in the '70s) and I absolutely adored it. Now that's a classic that will be remembered a lot longer (in my opinion), even though it hasn't had anywhere near the same amount of hype and merchandise produced around it - it's simply a better book, written by a far superior author.
I've always struggled to criticize the novels because so many adults love them. It feels like I'm insulting them when I do so. But when I'm honest, I, too, am mystified why these books could be enjoyed by adults. I didn't even enjoy the films past the first three. They just got increasingly convoluted, derivative, and predictable to me.
Simple yes - Wizard of Earthsea, Once & Future King, Books of Magic et al
When I read the first book, all I could think of was this is Enid Blyton with magic and broomsticks. I read three more of the books, always borrowed from the library as I certainly didn't want to buy them, and stopped after that as I'd had enough.
Give her credit in that she wrote a series that has had a massive impact on popular culture. Kids loved them and it got millions reading which in of itself, is always good.
She got an entire generation to read, which I appreciate very much.
In the end, all around, she just doesn't seem to be a very nice person. I'd rather consume art from those who at least try to better themselves. Rowling appears to not care about that. I wonder why she writes at all (maybe just money?), but I'm not interested enough to go down that particular rabbit hole.
I recall that Orson Scott Card, of Ender's Game, said similar things - About a school for children, in a place away, teaching skills for battle. And I believe his comment was that he wouldn't call it plagiarism but certainly didn't think it was original. I bought the books abroad on work trips, for my children. For them, they had yet to experience Le Guin, or Card. They did a few years later, and I think they can see the similarities. But the first experience is defining, and that first experience of a mythic arc, however trivially presented, is the touchstone for later variations.
Lon Chaney and Bela Lugosi were not objectively great actors, but for me they defined those genres. (And it was a low bar....).
I appreciate this analysis, thanks.
Rowling is most certainly ungenerous and imo a fairly despicable person all around but I am able to separate that from Harry Potter and, for me personally, I think it is a great series of books. It’s not so much in the way she writes, which is highly readable nonetheless, but the meticulous crafting of the overall plot. There are so many aspects in the early books which seem like fun details to drive the plot forward but which then turn out to be far more significant in the series conclusion. I remember thinking that she really knew from the start where the story was going and I greatly appreciated that. In terms of not acknowledging influences, this is exactly the sort of mean-spiritedness I would expect from her. She’s not a good person and at no point do I expect to see her doing the right thing.
On the same qualification which LeGuin made, that she didn’t invent a wizarding school, Gaiman didn’t invent a young boy wizard wearing glasses and with a magical pet owl, but we have to acknowledge that Tim Hunter—published by DC Comics—came years before Harry Potter
our kids were of the right age when Harry Potter burst upon the scene – peer pressure drew them to the books, but their interest was truly ignited when certain members of the extended family expressed concerns about the books’ links to witchcraft – and so of course we ended up purchasing the entire series
i found them to be a fun, easy read and mostly harmless – i didn’t see the mean spiritedness Le Guin mentions, but by that time i’d been exposed to a lot of YA media, so maybe i’d grown numb to the fictionalised horrors of adolescence
one thing i particularly liked was how the books demonstrated to our kids the ways media subverts the truth in the service of powerful elites – a valuable lesson in Australia where Murdoch’s media empire continues to set the agenda
This is an interesting point, because Rowling, in turn, became a media force with tremendous reach who used her power to subvert the truth whenever she could. She really did become her the villain of her own novels.
yeah – reminds me of that line about "fighting monsters"?