More on Prof. Harold Bloom's HP-bashing

[eggplant107]

What are the cliches he mentions? Where does he mention it?

Harold Bloom said:

"I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author
wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking
on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I
stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I
was incredulous."

However if you actually look in the book you will find Rowling used
the phrase "stretch his legs" once, exactly once, not too numerous to
keep count at Bloom alleges. Pretty shoddy literary commentary for
someone who thinks he's a scholar.

Eggplant

[Daniel Speyer]

Post by eggplant107

What are the cliches he mentions? Where does he mention it?

"I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author
wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking
on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I
stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I
was incredulous."
However if you actually look in the book you will find Rowling used
the phrase "stretch his legs" once, exactly once, not too numerous to
keep count at Bloom alleges. Pretty shoddy literary commentary for
someone who thinks he's a scholar.

To be totally honest, in addition to Uncle Vernon deciding to "stretch
his legs" in PS, Aragog desires to "stretch his many legs" in CoS
(actually, Harry assumes Hagrid assumes this, but, whatever), and a
"Mad-eye" forces a spider to "stretch out its legs" in GoF, though
this is meant literally.

Where Bloom gets his "several dozen" figure I have no idea, nor does
this phrase strike me as particularly cliched. In fact, that's not
what a cliche is in the first place!

I guess the dreaded brain eater effects literary critics too.
Fairwell Bloom, we hardly knew ye.

Post by eggplant107
Eggplant

[Bojan Bugarin]

'Hem, hem,' said Daniel Speyer, in such a good imitation of Professor
Umbridge that several people in alt.fan.harry-potter looked around in

Post by Daniel Speyer
To be totally honest, in addition to Uncle Vernon deciding to "stretch
his legs" in PS, Aragog desires to "stretch his many legs" in CoS
(actually, Harry assumes Hagrid assumes this, but, whatever), and a
"Mad-eye" forces a spider to "stretch out its legs" in GoF, though
this is meant literally.

Ah, but Prof. Bloom didn't even bother to read the rest of the books.
He was referring only to PS.

Here's the original article posted here in September:

<http://groups.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=20030927145644.06279.00000
352%40mb-m18.aol.com>

if the link breaks click here: <http://snurl.com/hbloom>

[Troels Forchhammer]

Daniel Speyer wrote:
<snip>

Post by Daniel Speyer
To be totally honest, in addition to Uncle Vernon deciding to "stretch
his legs" in PS, Aragog desires to "stretch his many legs" in CoS
(actually, Harry assumes Hagrid assumes this, but, whatever),

And the very beautiful thing about that is that it is completely
appropriate to use a cliché in these to situations (whether "stretching
one's legs" is indeed a cliché in English I will leave for others to
fight out - the similar Danish phrase has at least some of the
characteristics of a cliché).

Uncle Vernon is so concerned about his own standing in his neighbours
eyes that he, apart from taking in Harry, has made his whole life a
cliché - he is, IMO, the kind of person who's likely to speak in
clichés precisely because they are clichés.

And In the case of Harry imagining how Hagrid would think of a monster,
the use of a human cliché is again very appropriate. Hagrid does have
an uncanny way of looking at monsters as being as good as the next man,
and when speaking to or about dangerous monsters he does use phrases or
clichés normally used for humans or cute pets. See e.g. Norbert.

Post by Daniel Speyer
and a "Mad-eye" forces a spider to "stretch out its legs" in GoF,
though this is meant literally.

Which of course defies any clichéd use of the phrase.

Post by Daniel Speyer
Where Bloom gets his "several dozen" figure I have no idea,

Neither can he as it is evidently false.

Post by Daniel Speyer
nor does this phrase strike me as particularly cliched. In fact,
that's not what a cliche is in the first place!

Once more I have to recourse to the dictionaries - there might be some
differences in connotation between the English "cliché" and the Danish
"Kliche"

"A trite or overused expression or idea:"
<http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=clich%E9>

"a comment that is very often made and is therefore not original and
not interesting:"
<http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=14140&dict=CALD>

"A much used expression that has lost its freshness and descriptive power"
<http://www.bartleby.com/59/7/cliche.html>

I will not attempt to judge whether this particular phrase is a cliché
under any of these definitions (the middle one seems to me the broadest),
but it is hardly important. In these particular cases (except the spider)
I would argue that this phrase is more correct the more commonplace it is -
the really good writer should, IMO, know /when/ to use a cliché - not
necessarily avoid them altogether.

Post by Daniel Speyer
I guess the dreaded brain eater effects literary critics too.
Fairwell Bloom, we hardly knew ye.

I have only read the one article by him in which he criticises one of my
favourite authors; something that obviously didn't endear him in my eyes ;-)
However, based on that one article, I'd say that he has a grievance against
successful authors - if their books are liked by millions, then it /must/
(according to the Bloom I imagine) be because they are catering to the
lowest common denominator, and that isn't real "Literature" (again: that's
my impression of his view).

That is, however, not my main problem with the article - if he wants to
remain an academic snob, then he can do that peace for my sake. What I
find truly alarming is that he is using false claims to argue his point of
view, and that is, IMO, utterly unscholarly. A physicist who did the same
about any point in physics (whether his speciality or not) would quickly
find himself ostracised in the physics society and ultimately out of a job
(a timely retraction would probably save him, though).

That someone who poses as a scholar can do this is, in my biased opinion,
contemptible.

[Lenona321]

Post by Troels Forchhammer
What I
find truly alarming is that he is using false claims to argue his point of
view, and that is, IMO, utterly unscholarly. A physicist who did the same
about any point in physics (whether his speciality or not) would quickly
find himself ostracised in the physics society and ultimately out of a job
(a timely retraction would probably save him, though).
That someone who poses as a scholar can do this is, in my biased opinion,
contemptible.
--
Troels Forchhammer

Since I'm feeling charitable, I will suggest that it was simply
absent-mindedness on Bloom's part. That is, in the July 2000 article, he said:
"Her prose style, heavy on cliche, makes no demands upon her readers. In an
arbitrarily chosen single page--page 4--of the first Harry Potter book, I count
seven cliches, all of the "stretch his legs" variety." Since he presumably has
not glanced at any of the books since then, he may have forgotten to include
the word "variety" in the Sept. 2003 article. Even so, of course, he should
have been more careful.

When he was here two years ago to read from the new anthology he'd edited -
"Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages," (mostly
pre-WWI lit) I do wish I had gone just to ask him why he thought the book would
appeal to, say, an inner-city teen who hadn't picked up any heavier reading
than a fan mag in 10 years, but I didn't. However, the bookstore clerk who was
working that night told me there certainly weren't any children in the
audience!

Lenona.

[Daniel Speyer]

Post by Daniel Speyer

Post by eggplant107

What are the cliches he mentions? Where does he mention it?

"I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author
wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking
on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I
stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I
was incredulous."
However if you actually look in the book you will find Rowling used
the phrase "stretch his legs" once, exactly once, not too numerous to
keep count at Bloom alleges. Pretty shoddy literary commentary for
someone who thinks he's a scholar.

To be totally honest, in addition to Uncle Vernon deciding to "stretch
his legs" in PS, Aragog desires to "stretch his many legs" in CoS
(actually, Harry assumes Hagrid assumes this, but, whatever), and a
"Mad-eye" forces a spider to "stretch out its legs" in GoF, though
this is meant literally.

Because I have a higher comitment to scholarly accuracy than does
Mister Bloom, I feel obligated to correct myself. In GoF, Fred
Weasely engages in the act of "stretching out his legs on the table",
which is meant literally, and in OotP, Sirius compares his position at
Grimmauld Place to Harry's at the Dursleys by pointing out that Harry
at least can "stretch his legs, get into a few fights". This adds one
more to the count of "stretch legs"=="walk" to three (counting
Aragog), but again it is appropriately used -- Sirius isn't talking
about going anywhere; he's talking about moving around.

The first error is because I forgot participles in my original search.
The second must be some sort of google error. I did this search on
my local machine, using grep, so I'm reasonably confident there are no
more errors.

Full disclosure, books 1-4 were American edition, book 5 was British.
Probably irrelevant, but thought I should say it.

Post by Daniel Speyer
Where Bloom gets his "several dozen" figure I have no idea, nor does
this phrase strike me as particularly cliched. In fact, that's not
what a cliche is in the first place!

I'm starting to have a guess where Bloom is coming from. I think he
only read the first chapter or two of PS and extrapolated. The very
opening of Harry Potter does indeed suffer from the flaws he sited:
simplistic characters, aparent arbitrariness, and overall exageration.
If Bloom had *finished* the first book, he would have seen a
substantial increase in depth (as we come to understand (or not)
Snape, for example). He would also have noticed, though I can't
understand why he cares, that many characters do speak differently
(try putting Dumbledore's lines in anyone else's mouth). He would
have seen that the phrase "stretch his legs", which is used in the
first chapter, does not recur in the book.

Had he read to OotP, like a responcible critic, he would have have
seen that some of the apparent weaknesses in PS are in fact clues to
more subtle things happening.

Perhaps, though, this is simply a legacy of his environment. He is
not accustomed to reading books with plots, or (especially not)
settings. He's not really even interested in characters (though he
idolizes Shakespeare, whose *real* strength is in the characters).
He's purely concerned with the *style* of writing, the poetic aspects
of it. JKR's writing is not poetic, except for a very few points.
Even her poetry is pretty weak (though maybe this is intentional, as
it does seem to match the circumstance). Bloom is simply not
accustomed to looking for structure above the sentence level. Maybe
in most of the modern books he reads, there isn't any.

And that might be the saddest thing of all.

Post by Daniel Speyer
I guess the dreaded brain eater effects literary critics too.
Fairwell Bloom, we hardly knew ye.

Post by eggplant107
Eggplant