Dichroic Reflections

refuting

This article
by Jenny Bristow on Harry-Potter-as-phenomenon is kind of funny. I can only
conclude that the author has only scanned the HP books and has read no other
children's lit except for te Enid Blyton books she keeps mentioning. (Disclaimer:
Nothing against Blyton, but I haven't read her. Her books seem to be out of print
at the moment. * Later Disclaimer: I was wrong, there's plenty of Blyton available
at Amazon. But as far as I can tell, they're simple adventure books: the word
reviewers keep using is "enjoyable". There doesn't seem to be anything with an
actual Theme.) It's probably better to just ignore this sort of thing, but I'm in
an argumentative mood so I'll tackle her points.

1) Just because
parents and teachers didn't put Blyton in libraries, doesn't mean they should also
omit Rowling, even if they were on the same level. I happen to think they were
wrong in banning Blyton, and that reading trashy books is far more likely to lead
to reading good literature than is not reading even trashy books. It's quite
possible to go from Encyclopedia Brown to Agatha Christie to Dorothy Sayers (I
did, though somewhat more indirectly -- and I challenge anyone who claims Sayers
is not literature) or from Harlequins to Heyer to Austen.

2)
Complaining that Goblet of Fire was too long is not necessarily the same
thing as lowering expectations for children. Seven hundred and some pages is a
scale approaching Tom Clancy. Bigger does not equal better, literarily -- often in
fact, bigger is more boring. It's to Rowling's credit that she doesn't get as
tediously verbose as Clancy, but still, a little pruning might not be entirely out
of order. And it's not unreasonable to expect a children's book to be one children
can actually lift.

3) I don't read children's books because I'm
"aspiring to be infantile"> I quite like being grown up and the privileges that go
with it, and I'm willing to accept the accompanying responsibilities. I read
classic (and future-classic) children's books because they're good books,
plain and simple. There are not so many wonderful books in the worl dhtat I am
willing to miss out on some because of an arbitrary age limit. Furthermore, an
appallingly large fraction of current literary fiction is flat-out boring, and I
don't expect a lot of it to survive a hundred years. In the past, some boring
books passed as exciting because no one else was writing that sort of thing in
language in better quality than penny-dreadfuls, as witness The Last of the
Mohicans. There's too much competition for that mode of survival to work
today. (By the way, that's not just my opinion on Fenimore COoper; Mark Twain
agreed.)

5) "The 'crossover' appeal of Harry Potter to a grown-up
audience fuelled the conceit that there was something special, and more
challenging, about these books compared with other children's novels." Um, yeah.
Clearly the author is not familiar with the thriving online groups of adults
discussing L.M. Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lewis's Narnia groups, and on
and on.

6) "Harry Potter is not social commentary at all." This can't
have been written after reading Book 5, clearly. Or even after a careful reading
of Book 4; see my next point for details.

7) "There are few gray
areas and no difficult issues -- except death -- in the Potter books at all."
Well, if the principle that the end does not justify the means, that fighting a
great evil does not justify cracking down on individual liberties -- see Barty
Crouch in Book 4 for one instance, and most of Book 5 -- if those are not subtle
ideas, then why is it that so many in the American government have such trouble
understanding them?

I'm certainly not saying the HP books are unique
in literary quality among the mass of children's lit; it's only with the last two
that I've thought could be
compared at all to The Dark is Rising and the Narnia books. It's
probably better to read them before criticizing, however, as with most
things.

In other news and as I keep reminding
myself, I am OFF all next week, due to our annual July 4 plant shutdown. Once we
get back from this weekend's race in Marina del Rey, I have almost no fixed plans.
Rudder's not off except for July 4 itself and anyway, we're trying to save money
as a result of being between the Ireland trip and the Antarctica trip. (Did I
mention we're going to Antarctica this Christmas? Well, we are.) I want to do some
beading, since it's been a long time since I have and I'm going to treat myself to
some ridiculous pampering at a day spa, courtesy of a small bonus last
week.