An Author and Her Story; Did Rowling borrow from LeGuin?; L’Engle: “Obey the Story”
You can subscribe to the Hog’s Head PubCast through iTunes; you can also write a review there. Vote for the Hog’s Head PubCast at Podcast Alley! (See the VOTE link on the left side). Let’s get this podcast much higher on the rankings.
Update: I just looked in iTunes and found that several more people have written very kind things about the pubcast. In just two weeks, we’ve gone from #131 to #20 in Harry Potter podcasts! Thank you! For any who haven’t done so yet – please write a review soon; let’s see if we can bump the pubcast into the top 10! Update Again: I mixed up the searches. HHPC is the 20th if you’re just searching podcasts, but we’re still 131st in all Harry Potter things in iTunes. I think we can do better! More pubcasts soon.
Pub Menu
- Madeleine L’Engle: Walking on Water
- Ursula K. LeGuin books
- Madeleine L’Engle books
- Portus 2008
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Another great podcast, Travis. Yes, I can imagine L’engle’s comments will rile some people up. But there’s more that could be said on that. I think I’ll comment more on the next pubcast when you deal with the theme of all good literature is essentially Christian literature. Should be a fairly tame debate after that one.
Oh, I also wanted to comment on your assertion, with which I agree, that Rowling did not necessarily have to read LeGuin to get the idea of a wizard school. From what I understand Rowling’s writing more from the long tradition of boarding school stories. The fact that it’s a magic school in her work is, in this case, ancillary to the point of where the schooling’s going on.
Thanks for the podcast, Travis. Lots of stuff to digest, I had never thought of art the way that L’engle described it before. In the last LeGuin post, I asked if LeGuin influenced Rowling. I just thought maybe there was a comment that Rowling had made about LeGuin out there. I have to agree with revgeorge about his commments on boarding schools, I just thought in a magical world just like how we study math and english that wizards would study magic, and it was just a coincedence that both stories featured wizarding schools.
I also found the link that Amy left in the last post on LeGuin very interesting. LeGuin is a very bright and talented person just from what I read on her website, but her distaste for everything Harry Potter is very evident.
revgeorge, well, I am hoping that there won’t be too much “debate,” at least of a negative nature. I’m more interested in seeing where the theory (L’Engle’s and Tolkien’s and Lewis’s, who I’m basically mimicking) is weak (if at all), and of course to provide a sort of overarching vision for how Christians believe the story works in the world practically.
I forgot to include in my podcast the quote where Rowling says she doesn’t really read much fantasy (which leads me to think that it’s less likely she’s read LeGuin).
What an excellent episode. I was fascinated by the topic and can’t wait for the next one!
I wonder something about iTunes, maybe someone can help me out. I don’t have a mac or iPod or any Apple device. I signed up for iTunes and my email address is my userID. I have used this account to buy songs, though I get podcasts in a different application (Juice). I didn’t see a problem with using the email address as my userID until I went and tried to write a review of a podcast. I tried to do this several months ago for Travis’ podcast, but it seemed to me that my userID, therefore my entire email address, would become part of the post. I don’t want that. Does anyone know — can I change my userID or is there some other way to write a review without my email address getting onto the page where people see the reviews?
I’m not really sure there’s a way around that. I plan to write a review or two later, so I’ll take a look then.
Oh, I just remembered what else I’d been wondering — are you sure of the pronunciation of Technorati?
Not sure at all! How is it pronounced?
I googled it – teck-nor-AH-tee. So yeah, I totally mispronounced it. I love sounding like a moron on a recording downloaded an average of 1,000 times per episode.
Travis, I’m listening right now, and I definitely loved the way you prounced Technorati. I wish it was.
Also, I just finished listening to the SPU lecture, by Jeff Overstreet (“‘We Gotta Get Outta Here…’”). It’s wonderful. Thanks for the pointer!
Great podcast. I am really enjoing this intellectual/Christian views of HP. Am I right that the ‘good literature is Christian literature’ will explore Tolkien’s eucatastrophe idea?
I know what you meant about the authors not understanding things they themselves wrote. It reminds me of the line in the movie ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’ when the character of Julian II says something to the effect of another hand drew the lines of the art.
Professor L, thanks for your kind comments. I’ll be addressing Tolkien’s euchatastrophe in-depth in my forthcoming book. This upcoming podcast will be a little more broad in its focus.