Kev-

Unless you're a LOT older than you look, I bet you mean "Tom Swift, Jr."

Matthew Yglesias had a very interesting discussion on this very subject yesterday. It's just literary snobs being insufferably, well, snobbish. They also sniff and snort at Stephen King, Tom Clancy, and any other author who captures the imagination of the unwashed masses.

I did my heavy reading in school (I was a philosophy major, so I'll go book-for-book against these guys!), and don't feel in the least unwashed because I enjoy the Potter series. They can bite me.

It's the same insufferable mixture of pompous instruction and baseless certainty...

And Goddammit, Wieseltier wrote the book on "insufferable" and "pompous"

If people are reading a pop novel, it follows that they must be disengaged from the social and intellectual and political life around them

What a fucking buffoon. That's exactly why I read a novel - otherwise I'd read the newspaper.

Ahem Kevin! The Potter books may not be great works of literature, but they're so fun, who the hell cares.

It's interesting that Wieseltier takes his shots at fiction aimed at women and children. I'm not about to argue that most chicklit has significant intellectual or social value (although I think Harry Potter does, on several fronts), but has Wieseltier read any popular fiction aimed at men lately? James Patterson has to be the worst writer who ever lived, and David Baldacci and some of the other thriller writers aren't much better.

Kevin,

I have no problem with people reading the Harry Potter stuff. My wife is an avid fan of the books (not so much the movies).

However, I still think The Red Badge of Courage should be required reading of everyone.

I have never exercized editorial control over the books my children read, with one exception. I did not allow my children to read the Left Behind series. I don't mind books with a little sex and violence, but I object to pornography, and that's what Left Behind is. If we are going to ban anything, Left Behind should be banned.

Insufferable is definitely the word. Not to mention arrogance. But I guess folks like that feel some sort of imperative to dictate their tastes to others, and feel empowered to look down upon all those whose tastes to do match their own.

Frankly, I think the only appropriate punishment for people like that is to spend eternity locked in a room with Joan Collins and a perpetual subscription to The Weekly World News.

Children are so eagerly awaiting the publication of a 600 page novel that they'll be queuing at 12am to buy it, and some people think it's a bad thing. It boggles the mind, it really does.

"I just want to know what happens to Snape."

Me too Kevin! Do you think that Dick Cheney's pacemaker is one of Voldemort's Horcruxes?

It should be noted that the most popular piece of writing during the late 60's and 70's was Lord of the Rings.
Remember the "Frodo Lives!" t-shirts?
Red Badge of Courage was what we were forced to read in grade school, but when we got home...oh yeah, bust out LOTR and find out whats happening with the Hobbits!
As for the snobs...give em a box of kleenex to cry into.

It may not mean much in terms of “what were people reading during WWII,” but on of my treasured possessions is an Army provided paperback book my father brought back from North Africa in 1943. It was a collection of short James Thurber pieces. I don’t think the Old Man spent much time with Steven Crane.

Leon Wieseltier is absolutely correct. If it weren't for the novelist James Joyce, we might not have emerged as the victors in WWII. Who can forget the daring night raid on Hamburg, in which American and British bombers dropped nearly 1,500 copies of Ulysses - a payload amounting to nearly 2,200 tonnes! - on an unsuspecting and war-weary German population. Those who were not immediately killed by the weight descending on their heads sufferred from debilitating insomnia as they plowed through to the end. The Teutonic war machine soon ground to a complete halt, the Allies marched boldly across the Rhine, and siezed victory by the forelock.

Rather than The Red Badge of Courage, I would recommend The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell or Generation Kill - more applicable, by FAR, to today's war (written by people that were there).

I found the Potter books to be reasonably entertaining but annoyingly formulaic, and lost interest about halfway through the fourth book. But Christ, why there would there be a "backlash" other than from the lunatic religious right? These people need to get a life.

Ah, the poor snobs and their impotent rage...

I've had about as many college literature classes as anyone I know without a PhD, and I've also read all the Potter books in one or two sittings. Bloom can kiss my Ivy League ass. "Page turner" is not a derogatory term.

(Although yes, Red Badge of Courage is one of the hundred books every literate adult should have read; still, if it's war books we should be reading now, I might recommend All Quite on the Western Front, Good Soldier Schweik, and the short stories of Ambrose Bierce before it.)

I first heard about the Potter book (not then yet a series) on an email listserv for parents of gifted children when my son (now 16) was in about the second grade. The parents on the list were all giddy about finding a novel their little geniuses would like.

I predict:

-- Voldemort and Harry will both die

-- Snape will die doing something heroic (conceivably saving Harry, in which case Harry would live).

--My son thinks Malfoy Draco will line up with the bad guys but will, at the last minute, throw a paralysis spell on one of the bad guys. I think he'll die or go to prison with his father.

Let's see, we have a long book that will get the kids away from the TV for a good while, a generally good thing and we have Wieseltier complaining that it is the wrong book.

Reading is reading, a less popular option for the wrong in this era of TV and, ahem, computers. If 600 pages of Rowling improves a kid's reading speed, reading comprehension and vocabulary, I'm all for it. If the parents read it too, it provides an upbeat topic of discussion between parents and kids, which is also not a bad thing.

Leon Wieseltier hangs out with Maureen Dowd, and he wants to tell us about good writing? Maureen Dowd sucks.

As to the Happy Hollisters --- yeah, I read them. I read a lot of them. And the Danny Dunn books, the Three Investigators, Encyclopedia Brown, the Trick books ("The Lemonade Trick," etc), Edward Eager's books (midcentury American updatings of E. Nesbit), Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books.

No real point here, I just like remembering. Some of the books above were quite good, many weren't. But Maureen Dowd? She writes baby talk for grownups.

An honest boy can get along quite nicely with "Huck Finn" and the Holy Bible. Everything else is pornography.

Lampwick has a point. James Joyce was a goddamn killing machine.

... an honest boy can read Washington Monthly too, I suppose.

It's simple contrarianism. It always looks more intellectually rigorous, even if it is dead wrong. Like being a bear on the market (most of the time). They have no clue at all about ordinary people. If kids read anything now its a victory.

I was right with you until you dissed Tom Swift.

I can't imagine J.K. Rowling even dreaming of anything like "Tom Swift and His Polar-Ray Dynasphere"!

If we'd listened to Tom, there would be no problem of Global Warming. His "Space Solartron" would have ended the need for all carbon energy production. And his "Megascope Space Prober" would have dealt those Creationists a deathblow.

I haven't read any of the Potter books. I have however read many other authors that would probably be considered "pop culture" writers.

I've read all the works of Irving Wallace, Robert Ludlum-up to "The Bourne Identity", James Clavell, and much of Steven King just to name a few. Someone that I'm sure Bloom would praise as a "literary genius" I find completely impenetrable-William Faulkner-I mean christ his prose just can not be understood. I almost failed an English course in college 'cause I just could not get through the Faulkner novel we were supposed to read.

One of King's best sellers has probably outsold Faulkner's entire catalog.

So that begs the question-"If a writer produces a novel an no one reads it, has it in fact been written?"

All this Potter talk has me intrigued and I may have to buy the first novel and see what all the fuss is.

Kyle wrote:

Leon Wieseltier hangs out with Maureen Dowd, and he wants to tell us about good writing? Maureen Dowd sucks.

I'm thinking Wieseltier is hoping she does also:)

The literati are so perfectly condescending towards us lower class Potterites.

My daughter was, at best, an indifferent reader, at age 8 when she discovered Harry Potter. Her obsession with the Potter books led her to try other things that she never would have countenanced. Now, at age 15, full of her adolescent obsession with self exploration, I can slip her a copy of Herman Hesse's Damian and have her quickly scan the back cover to make sure it isn't some bogus attempt on my part to get her reading "school" stuff, and she says, "cool" as she closes the door to her room and disappears into another's voyage of self discovery.

Bless you J.K. Rowling.

You have to learn how to crawl before you walk, walk before you run. I always figured that Harry Potter was up to a nice brisk walk myself. But I don't know that my daughter would have made it to running without him.

Forget Rawlings. Pullman is much, much better. On the other hand, children should be encouraged to read whatever they want.
In any event, to hell with stream-of-consciousness, magical realism and wacky comedy. If one wants these, try a Bush press conference

As a rule, I try to stay away form conservative art criticism and conservative art.

Generally, these people have no concept of what art, in general, is, let alone what constitutes good art.

Look at Arno Breker.

Just think what kind of "art" Dick Cheney or Orin Hatch or David Duke have up on their walls?

The whole Harry Potter backlash continues to mystify me.

I believe the author of the Potter books is female.

Right. I read the Albert Payson Terhune dog books when I was a kiddie, but I was reading I, Claudius by the time I was in eighth grade notwithstanding. And Classic Comics didn't spoil me for The Odyssey, either.

It's a simpel equation for me in this age of 300 channel tv, dvd players in cars, and the internet:

Kid's reading books = good
Kid's not reading books = bad

Anything more complex than that and it becomes about the adult's need to be pompous, and not the kid's need to learn to love books.

Kyle is right.

We'll fight a better war when we put good reporting and analysis in our newspapers instead of Maureen Dowd.

Yeah, it's a real thing to worry about, people reading Harry Potter books. I've never read one, but obviously Rowling must produce something that people enjoy. Maybe somebody should follow Wielseltier, ready to pounce, if he actually enjoys something deemed insufficiently refined.

I've read a couple of Stephen King novels in the past, and he ain't great, but he has his moments. The chapter in "pet semetary" in which the death of the protagonist's child is foreshadowed, was really quite well done, in a heartbreaking, yet nonsentimental fashion. "The Stand" had some interesting stuff which dealt with authoritarianism.

I also like Elmore Leonard's books, because the dialogue is funny. Wouldn't want to have people reading just for fun, though, nosiree.

Michael Berube's piece about the influence Harry Potter has had on his son (who has Down Syndrome):
http://www.thecommonreview.org/fileadmin/template/tcr/pdf/berube61.pdf
is well worth reading.

I cut my teeth with science fiction, but over the last 20-30 years have moved more and more to fantasy.....and I wouldn't give Rowling more than a C+ or maybe a B-. Her work has a chewing gum aspect, for all that's she's quite clever with here devices and some of the plot twists. What is annoying to those of us who've read other, much better fantasists is the way the world latched onto Rowling (and, with more justification, to Tolkien); both of whose works are so lacking in character development that they want a movie with people inhabiting the characters to bring them to life.
Suggested reading for fantasy with real people and real challenges in them:
= Diane Duane's "So you want to be a wizard" series and her adult Door series (the first two books are in Tale Of The Five: The Sword And The Dragon)
= Lois Bujold's Chalion and Sharing Knife books
= Nina Kiriki Hoffman
= Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series
= For real heavy duty adult fantasy, there's the esoteric Christian novels of Charles Williams who died young, but was the equal of Tolkien and friend and associate of Yeats and Eliot, the spiritual inspirer of Auden...

I only wish I could read them all again for the first time.........

Everyone should read the Iliad. (In the original Greek, of course.) Skip the Odyssey which is mere Classical Chick-lit what with Penelope and all that. ;-)

But if kids never start reading, they'll never get that far. So what the f*ck is wrong with books that kids actually like? I'm with the commenters above who believe that anything that encourages reading is an unqualified good.

Oh please, it's the Potterites who are insufferable about their mass hysteria over these entertaining but highly derivative tomes. I will read the back of a cereal box if it's the only thing going, and list both high- and low- brow authors among my favorites, but suddenly it's not O.K. to just say, "Um, I tried to read the first HP and, uh, couldn't get through it, I didn't like it that much" without being called a killjoy, a snob, or a contrarian. Suddenly it's not OK to just have different taste when it comes to Harry Potter, you must worship at the shrine or else! We who don't love Harry are not the ones inflicting movies, games, toys, mass-market hysteria, or anything else on the rest of the populace. We're just sick of it and want it to go away, but if it's your thing, go, read, enjoy. Just stop calling us names because we dont' like it.

Sorry, in my previous post that should have read:
"with people inHobbiting the characters"....

I picked up Huck Finn a year or so ago. It was, alas, unreadable. The racist language that we used to laugh about people objecting to is so far from acceptable now that it destroys the story.

When did you last look at Sax Rohmer? Another old timer who would make David Duke blush.

We don't know how long these books will last, or why Phoenix is the worst book & best movie, while Goblet of Fire is the opposite extremes. (Order of the Phoenix is still a much better book than The Godfather)

This thread's prize for most asinine comment goes to Brojo, for stating that the backlash is due to misogyny!

"The whole Harry Potter backlash continues to mystify me."

I believe the author of the Potter books is female.
Posted by: Brojo on July 18, 2007 at 12:43 PM | PERMALINK

Congratulations Brojo, you may pick your prize up in the lobby of Pandagon.

Since Cabbage Patch dolls brought us the Republican era and the fiascos thereof, I think it's correct to bemoan the undue attention being paid to Harry Potter.

Two years ago, when the last Potter book came out, Kevin had a post that generated a huge and very thoughtful comment list. I was struck, in the first instance, that the highly literate readers of this blog would be so complimentary of Rowling's plotlines and her never taking the easy road. In the second, how intensely curious most commenters were about how it would all turn out. That anyone in the "book business" would not see this penomenon as an unmitigated good is simply beyond me. Two years ago, I printed the whole thread out and mailed it to my daughter who was at a wilderness camp in Wyoming for the month. I understand it was a hit.

"Leon Wieseltier, of the New Republic, mused that [...] when we're at war and the country is under threat, they seem a little insular."

What is with these TNR war loons? Is it just Muslims, Arabs, war, threats, terrorism, Israel 24 hours a day?

"insufferable mixture of pompous instruction and baseless certainty"

I think that ends the discussion of Wieseltier

Tom Ames on July 18, 2007 at 12:57 PM |

You're right. Thank you.

Let's see. Bush the Lesser lies us into a nation-destroying war (we're that nation by the way) and women are insufficiently serious because they are not reading Civil War novels. The library is the home front!

(On the other hand, people who can't read Mark Twain have zero sense of perspective.)

I picked up Huck Finn a year or so ago. It was, alas, unreadable. Downpuppy on July 18, 2007 at 1:08 PM

Strange. I find it a real masterpiece, up there with Tolstoy.

I'm waiting for the ultra-religious woman I work with to say she "doesn't believe in Harry Potter," the way she "doesn't believe in Halloween." (I also suspect she got rid of her cats because someone at her church told her they were agents of the devil).

Ignorance comes in many shades.

Amen. "What happens to Snape" (vs. what happens to Harry) will determine much of the value of the entire series, in that it will provide an answer to the question: can true evil be truly redeemed? (I'm thinking of a news story I saw last night on an Al Qaeda 're-education camp' in Saudi Arabia).

Remember Snape's Unbreakable Vow... and remember Rowling went out of her way in Half-Blood Prince to inform us of the consequences of breaking such a vow. There are a lot of potential lessons for both kids and adults here. It remains to be seen whether Rowling goes for the 'right' answers, or dramatic effect (the easy way out). Until I read those last 200 pages, I'll reserve judgment.

See you on Sunday.

When I went back to college in 1990, I was dismayed to learn I would be turning the world over to people whose cultural touchstones were Scoobie Doo and The Brady Bunch. I can't blame today's problems on that, however.

The Potter/Apocalypse crew looking at my library records or Amazon reviews would probably have their heads explode since it is packed with romance novels, some very formulaic; religous/spritual books, histories, especially biographies; and policy and political books

To quote from My Fair Lady...

"Why can't a woman, be more like a man?"

Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden.

I remember reading Harold Bloom's op-ed when it first came out. It was apparent that he had not actually read "The Sorcerer's Stone" and was just making it up to get to his pre-determined point.

Dear Opossum,

I, like you, will read anything in sight and have from the age of 4--comic books, DeLilo, cereal boxes, Jame Lee Burke, Chaucer, whatever's handy. I am constitutionally unable to go to the bathroom without a book or magazine in hand, and not for wiping. I haven't read the Potter books, though my wife, a college librarian, is a devotee. But I think the point against Bloom was the snobbery, the implication that only the hoi polloi read those mere entertainments. I haven't noticed any of the reverse from Potter fans; no one has accused me of being too high brow because I haven't cracked one open.

Oh, and Downpuppy--anyone who reads Huck Finn and is so blinded by the use of words now understood to be racist that they miss the point that Twain makes Jim a far better person than anyone else, white or black, in the book needs a remedial reading course. And merely to read and enjoy Fu Manchu does not make the reader an anti-Asian bigot, anymore than a lover of Heinlein is necessarily a militaristic libertarian.

"Everyone should read the Iliad. (In the original Greek, of course.) Skip the Odyssey which is mere Classical Chick-lit what with Penelope and all that."

I blame Dante for writing in the vernacular rather than Latin like proper educated folk.

Yglesias noted this snobbery yesterday, pointing to an article by Ron Charles in the WaPo.

Funnily enough, Ron Charles lamented that readers of HP wouldn't go on to read better fantasy, like Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell": apparently the fact that a good chunk of Clarke's novel is a caustic pisstake of the occupation of the critic flew right over his head.

Yeah, I get the point about Twain's intent. And Chaucer was a pretty good writer too. But reading either one now is a slog, because the language has moved on. (& really, how long has it been since you waded into that dialect that may seem so classic in dim memory?)

& anybody who loves Farnhams Freehold in a non-ironic way is indeed, a militaristic libertarian, if not a militant librarian. Grok?

or:

"I got hurt a little, en couldn't swim fas', so I wuz a considable ways behine you towards de las'; when you landed I reck'ned I could ketch up wid you on de lan' 'dout havin' to shout at you, but when I see dat house I begin to go slow. I 'uz off too fur to hear what dey say to you -- I wuz 'fraid o' de dogs; but when it 'uz all quiet agin I knowed you's in de house, so I struck out for de woods to wait for day. Early in de mawnin' some er de niggers come along, gwyne to de fields, en dey tuk me en showed me dis place, whah de dogs can't track me on accounts o' de water, en dey brings me truck to eat every night, en tells me how you's a-gitt'n along."

Hem. Hem.

I love the books. And I hate fantasy and sci-fi, generally. Knowing I'd've been crazy about the books as a kid is half the fun!

Well, that and wondering 'bout Snape.

Developed reading-too-long-into-the-night-and-at-every-free-moment neck this week prepping for the last book. Only 300 pages to go on Book 5!

Shame that 4 and 5 are a bit flabby, but there are some great bits, aren't there? Delores Umbrage is a brilliant character.

KEVIN, YOU'RE GONNA HAVE A POST-MORTEM, RIGHT?

-- Snape will die doing something heroic (conceivably saving Harry, in which case Harry would live).

--My son thinks Malfoy Draco will line up with the bad guys but will, at the last minute, throw a paralysis spell on one of the bad guys. I think he'll die or go to prison with his father.

Posted by: anandine

I always thought that Dumbledor (sp?) would come back. That the reason Snape killed him was to get in good with Voldemort and he in fact did not really kill him. Maybe that was just wishful thinking.

As to Cooper, I had severe dyslexia and could not read until I was in third grade. I never read a Dick and Jane book. But when I picked up 'Last of the Mohicans', I had to learn to read to find out what was going to happen next. Of course that was an edited for third grade version so I did not have to deal the language. I recently re-read the original and still think James Fenimore Cooper is one of the best authors ever, especially for action oriented young boys.

Dano: Twain makes Jim a far better person than anyone else, white or black

Except Huck, when he says, "All right, then, I'll go to hell."

Huck Finn would have been a better book if it had stopped when they got to the end of the river and had never kept Jim hiding in that shack.

bushburner: I always thought that Dumbledor (sp?) would come back. That the reason Snape killed him was to get in good with Voldemort and he in fact did not really kill him. Maybe that was just wishful thinking.

Yup, wishful thinking. Dumbledore is quite sincerely dead. It will turn out that Snape killed him at his request so he wouldn't be captured by Voldemort.

What made the Tom Swift books so unbelievable is that he would have had to have been involved in some kind of massive international criminal enterprise to FUND all of that hardware. I mean, I never once read a single chapter about the months he spent writing up a proposal for NSF funding. . .

All of this complaining reminds me of the punk music fans back when Green Day (first) became popular. And, as far as I'm concerned, is worthy of about the same amount of concern.

Not that that was the first case. Seriously, how often do niche fans have to go through this before they get the point?

I have nothing to add in this discussion. I love Harry Potter, I have seen it inspire great conversation among kids, between kids and parents, and even between adults. Not just "what will happen with Snape," but questions of morality, good versus evil, and the finality of death. Good stuff and the backlash authors are giving a huge tip of the hat to Rowling by spilling so much ink over it. Hate is not opposite of love, indifference is. They know they will never do anything in their lives which will inspire so much passion as Rowling did and it kills them.

I did want to ask people this. Some of you have mentioned "His Dark Materials" by Pullman, which I love and will be reading again soon.

Is anyone but me looking forward to the first movie, "The Golden Compass?" I mean it is ant-religious, anti-church, anti-government, pro-science, pro-evolution, pro-teen sex, heaven is a desolation run by harpies, God is a tyrant deserving of being deposed, and the lead villain (Nicole Kidman) is experimenting with ways to physical separate children from their souls and her name is, wait for it....

Mrs. Coulter!!!

And this anti-establishment, anti-American (America does not even exist, there is a country called Texas) screed opens not just in time for this year's War on Xmas but on Pearl Harbor Day to boot.

The Right Wing, Chirstianist Hysteria practically writes itself!

Well I'd rather have my kids read Harry Potter than some cheap pornographic Scooter Libby novel.

I agree that poor Snape's a goner--he's Dumbledore's mole and will turn on Voldemort at the climactic moment, but not quite pull it off (Harry's job, after all, is do to Voldemort in).

My personal prediction is that Snape's last words, choked out looking at Harry, will be "You have her eyes."

still think James Fenimore Cooper is one of the best authors ever, especially for action oriented young boys

I'm afraid Mark Twain spoiled Cooper for me:

http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/learnmore/writings_fenimore.html

Kevin says, "do the anti-Potter hordes really think the alternative is James Fenimore Cooper...?"

Jeez, I hope not. For the lowdown on JFC, run -- don't walk -- to the library and find a Mark Twain collection that includes "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," possibly the funniest literary essay ever written.

Lewis Carroll is interesting, but "The Wind in the Willows" is a waste of reading time for anyone who has mastered the works of Dr. Seuss.

Leon Wieselter should talk to some people who have actually been in a country at war for its survival.

I have not, but a friend's mother, now in her 80s, lived through all of World War II in London.

Her favorite reading during the war and blitz? Mystery novels, and the Beatrix Potter books she'd read as a child. She couldn't stand to read anything heavy or serious during those years because the actual events around her were all the seriousness she could take and she wanted to escape once in a while.

There has been a federal study showing that the Harry Potter series has made little or no difference in number of children reading books.

"According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a series of federal tests administered every few years to a sample of students in grades 4, 8 and 12, the percentage of kids who said they read for fun almost every day dropped from 43 percent in fourth grade to 19 percent in eighth grade in 1998, the year ''Sorcerer's Stone'' was published in the United States. In 2005, when ''Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,'' the sixth book, was published, the results were identical. "

I found this to be surprising and disappointing.

See the New York Times, 7/11/07

I just want to know what happens to Snape.

He dies. How's that for "baseless certainly?"

Weiseltier's brains got blown out through a straw while he was doing coke with Aaron Sorkin off MoDo's gigantic wrinkled ass.

So, if we read Harry Potter, the terrorists win?

Fifty years ago, Raymond Chandler did a very nice takedown of Wieseltier's ilk in his essay The Simple Art of Murder. He demolishes the alleged differences between high and popular art. The only distinction in books is between good and bad writing.

When I was in grade school, I avidly read the Bobsey Twins. In my adulthood, I've read both the Potter novels, and Joyce's Ulysses; both Steven King and Marcel Proust. I'll have to reread the "Bobsey Twins" to recheck, but the writing in the rest is all good.

You go, you man of the people.

I mean, I never once read a single chapter about the months he spent writing up a proposal for NSF funding. . .

Dear Mr. Tom Swift, Jr.,

I regret to inform you that the National Science Foundation is unable to support your proposal to build a megascope space prober.

Your proposal was reviewed in accordance with the general merit review criteria established by the National Science Board that address the intellectual merit of the proposed activity and its broader impacts. The panel of reviewers finds that the concept of the anti-inverse-square-wave, on which the success of the project depends, defies almost all known physical laws. Further, the team you have assembled, Bud Barclay and "Chow" Winkler, appears to have no relevant technical expertise.

Although we are unable to support this proposal, we would be pleased to consider any future proposal you may wish to submit.

Yup, wishful thinking. Dumbledore is quite sincerely dead.

You sound quite sure of yourself. I was wondering whether Dumbledore could make use of a horcrux to come back?

do the anti-Potter hordes really think the alternative is James Fenimore Cooper

Ironic that the supposedly highbrow Cooper could be considered the J.K. Rowling of his day -- except that Rowling is a FAR better writer.

(Google what Mark Twain had to say about Cooper. Hilarious.)

I'll read a Potter book when Harry and friends decide to test the effects of automatic weapons on those damn Hobbits.

"You sound quite sure of yourself. I was wondering whether Dumbledore could make use of a horcrux to come back?"

I hate to sound like a Harry Potter geek (I don't think I am) but I could not let this pass. As stated clearly in Half Blood Prince, horcruxes are the darkest of the dark arts and require a murder to create. The use of one by Dumbledore is utterly ridiculous. (And IIRC, he tells Harry that most would prefer death to the half alive existence offered by a horcrux.)

Kevin,

I agree completely with "Anyway, who cares?", but to place Harold Bloom's criticism in context, his initial harsh reaction was a result of Rowling being nominated for a literary prize based on the first three Harry Potter stories. That is, some award committee (for whatever reasons) wanted to drag her into the "canon". And his WSJ review was based on reading just the first book.

Now, I'm an admirer of the Harry Potter series, and looking forward to "Deathly Hallows" but the first three books though enjoyable are unremarkable. The three following books are at a different level altogether, and I venture to say that had that not been the case, Harry Potter would have lost a number of avid adult readers. As children's literature the books were recognized early (e.g. a review by Alison Lurie in the NY Review of Books, also after book 3).

The LA times article is awful - no references, no context, and not even any real understanding of the worth of the Harry Potter books. I'll take Harold Bloom over Charles Taylor any day, thank you.

Brojo, is partially right about the reaction to the Harry Potter books. Joanne Rowling was advised to write under the name JK Rowling precisely because that would make her sound like a man.

I think what people also forget is that the first Harry Potter book became a childrens best seller in the UK with absolutely no advertising budget. It literally was word of mouth from child to child, often in many cases children who would not read at home because it was too much like homework. For this simple fact alone, Joanne Rowling deserves many prizes in the literary field.

Authors like Philip Pullman may allow adult reviewers to be more precious and are therefore welcomed with open arms and promited mercilessly at others expense.

But authors such as Jaqueline Wilson, Roald Dahl, Terry Prachett, Tom Holt, Robert Rankin have been delighting a wider audience with no such pretensions as the high-lit crowd for years longer.

On behalf of the poor beleaguered snobs out there, I'll just say that the reason we attack Rowling, if we do, is just that she's not a very good writer. That says nothing about whether she should be enjoyed by millions or not, just that the author is simply not very good at dialogue, plotting, description, or imaginative novelty. She's not bad, just not very good. CS Lewis, Philip Pullman, Diana Wynne Jones -- good writers of children's literature. Rowling, not so much. Not a big issue, but that's the snob position. (I guess some say she doesn't deserve the success, shouldn't be read, etc, etc; but most bookish types who accuse the Potter books of anything accuse them mainly in the manner above.)

Isn't Anita Brookner just glorified "Chick Lit"? Snobs like these can never accurately judge things on their merits because they need the "correct" bells and whistles that tell them they're judging an item of quality...just as people turn up their noses at people who wear the "wrong" clothes...just as people will refuse to acknowledge that a secretary or other "lowly" worker might be a person of intelligence and education.

L. Frank Baum was a terrible writer when it comes to being a literary stylist, but his books are masterpieces when it comes to the imaginative world they created.

Since no one can read all of the "great" books, and a lot of the "great" books are boring, boring, boring, why not just acknowledge that the art, books, and music that you enjoy in life will be a mixture of high and low culture, and are simply the background to your own study and appreciation of life?

The Potter books and most of the currently popular children's series are formula books, and so what? They're well crafted and they tell a story. That's all they're meant to do.

At least it's not like reading John Le Carre--some huge book in which every page telegraphs "if you just keep turning the pages it's going to be good...oooh, if you just keep reading there's going to be a HUGE payoff...it's not coming yet, but, gosh, it's going to be fantastic." And then you get to the end and there's never any payoff. Thanks, John, you big, empty-headed tease.

AnnieCat: "...a friend's mother, now in her 80s, lived through all of World War II in London....Her favorite reading during the war and blitz? Mystery novels, and the Beatrix Potter books she'd read as a child."

Evidently, during WW1, British soldiers read Jane Austen to keep themselves sane, to remind them of what they were fighting for. The Janites, they called themselves. By that standard, we should all be reading "Little Women" and "Huck Finn" except that both were written about that mid-19th century WASP world long since immigrantized, diversified and industrialized out of existence.

Maybe Henry James or Edith Wharton? Thurber? My favorite might be Archie and Mehitabel, which, being poetry, is brief:

"boss i am disappointed in
some of your readers they
are always asking how does
archy work the shift so as to get a
new line or how does archy do
this or do that they
are always interested in technical
details when the main question is
whether the stuff is
literature or not

The thing about Harry Potter. The world she creates is very imaginative yet it is inhabited by people whom I understand, the story is imbued with virtue, and I'm genuinely interested to see how it all turns out. I am especially curious to know what will happen to Snapes. He is turning out to be the most interesting character in the book.

I am also confident that at the end, I will feel happy; Love will triumph. The good will be rewarded and the wicked vanquished. All of these things--clever world, virtue-based story, characters I care about, a page-turning plot, and a happy ending--are often disdained by the modern literary establishment, who have yet to come to grips with the idea that mass literacy dilutes their authority.

"To understand a man, you must read his fanfic."

Harold Bloom's fanfic was a quasi-sequel to David Lindsay's A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS, a fantasy novel that is A) cryptically high-style to the point it's difficult to tell how well it is written and B) about pain (torment and romance = Tormance).

HP is insufficiently decryptable to sustain Bloom's interest and is not about pain (although there's a fair bit of it in there). Ergo, it's rubbish.

I've read a lot of crappy techno-thrillers while camped out at the airport. Perhaps that's proper war-time reading.

I don't particularly like the Potter books, but let's not slap someone down for READING!

Me too. A 49 year old who can't wait to find out about Snape. I love the Harry Potter books and don;t give a rats ass about their not meeeting some higher standard of literature . I have to think that Dumbledore needed Snape to kill him for a higher purpose. Snape a good guy in the end..my running bet with my daughter who thinks otherwise. Harold Bloom can go suck on a broomstick.

I have to agree with Will Allen (at 12:55) re: King and Leonard. And, as it turns out, Bloom had a hissy fit when King got the PEN award a couple of years back.

I don't know if kids will be reading the Potter novels 50 years from now. They are pretty well crafted, and have improved as the series has gone on, but they are not all that well written (not that that's a major drawback for kid's lit).

I'll be very surprised, however, if people aren't reading The Stand in the mid- to late 21st century; it's actually a pretty amazing epic. King's writing didn't have a lot of grace at the time, but he has a gift for set pieces and wrote some amazing scenes, and the whole thing has an absolutely undeniable momentum, despite the too-numerous shifts in perspective.

As for the "it doesn't matter what they read, as long as they're reading" argument, that seems kind dangerous to me. Yeah, we want kids to learn to read and write, and the best way to develop those skills is... to read and write. But what you read does matter. No one but the craziest crazies are claiming that the Potter books are "dangerous," but if The Turner Diaries had generated six sequels, earned its author a billion dollars, sold tens of millions of copies, and sent millions of kids flocking to RAHOWA sites, would most of us shrug our shoulders and say: "well, at least they're reading"?