Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Pop Culture Commentary: Harry Potter and the Death of Reading

This is an interesting take, even if I'm not really on board for all of it.

The writer in part laments how many adults like to read Potter and calls this "cultural infantilism." Well, OK, maybe, but it is actually possible to read both Potter and "acceptable" (according to this writer) books. I'm looking at my bookshelf now, and I wonder how much of it is "acceptable" to the writer of that article. A random selection of fiction authors include J.K. Rowling, William Shakespeare, Jasper Fforde, Robert A. Heinlein, Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Virgil, Dante, Vince Flynn, Daniel Silva, Ovid, Homer, Lindsey Davis, Ayn Rand, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis (Space Trilogy!), and Jim Butcher. They can all write rollicking good yarns, and isn't that that we want? I don't see why we have to constantly muck up the pursuit of a good story with snooty-sounding elitist fretting about how we're all mush-brained idiots with low sloping foreheads for liking pop culture along with the great unwashed masses. Or whatever.

Part of me is thinking that the article singles out Potter because he's just such an easy target. Nowadays anything popular and successful invites attack simply by dint of being popular and successful. The attacks usually come from the snobbish self-proclaimed egotistical intellectual elite. You know, folks who use terms like "cultural infantilism." (Did I say that out loud?) From the way he starts off, you'd think we were all heading for "Fahrenheit 451" territory or something. Get real. (You know, during the Dark Ages, literacy plummeted all over Europe, but somehow everyone all muddled through and came out the other side -- and even created some glorious bits of cultural magnificence along the way. We're currently living in the most literate period ever in the Western world. Think about that for a minute. And think about the sheer power of LITERACY, being able to read and write. And more people can do this now than ever.) Besides, is reading/books/writing alone the standard of measurement for "cultural infantilism" or even cultural vitality? Hardly.

And the really weird thing is the complaint that because a ton of people young and old read the Potter books, reading is in decline. It seems kind of, oh, oxymoronic somehow. Isn't it a good thing that a bunch of people discovered (or rediscovered) the pleasures of reading a rollicking good yarn? Apparently not, since it was the "wrong" kind of book?

Anyhoo, if I may engage in a little hypocritical digression: In all honesty, adults loving to read Potter is nowhere near as alarming as adults -- OK, let's say it, adult WOMEN -- loving to read the "Twilight" books and mooning over the execrable Edward Cullen character. I tried the first book to see what the media fuss was about, and (curiosity killed the nerd!) I wanted to gouge my eyes out afterwards. Rowling at least has a good STORY. All I'm going to say is: the Battle of Hogwarts.

My advice for everybody: read what you like and enjoy yourself, for goodness sake. Life is short. Don't let "cultural critics" dictate to you what you should or shouldn't read. They can offer their opinions, and that's it. Your choices are our own. Read with your friends and talk about what you read -- one of life's great pleasures (add coffee and cake, natch). I would also suggest reading the classics both (A) because they're fabulous in themselves and (B) you need them so you can appreciate delightful riffs on them such as Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" novels or "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies."

Yes, yes, we should all read more good books, etc. etc., blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda, und so weiter. But I'm not going to get into a big argument about what books are good ones (according to WHOM?). I can only tell you about books that I personally like and recommend. I'm going say, Go and have fun reading what you want to read, OK? If you have good books to suggest, please do so!

(You can also apply all this to movies too.)

Oh, and I owe you lot a "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" movie review, don't I? Oops. I've been too busy gushing over "Moon" and the information overload in the aftermath of Comic-Con. (In a nutshell, HP 6 was adequate, even good, but it wasn't anywhere near "Moon" or "Star Trek" for sheer delightful movie-going.)

4 comments:

lp said...

Reminds me of our kamikaze editor's observations. Silly people do not understand that many classics were once pop culture. One day our unacceptable literature could be the subject of research papers.

Mad Minerva said...

Yep. The Kamikaze Editor is a wise woman. Plus she reads both "acceptable" and "unacceptable" literature -- which is really the best way to go!

lumpy said...

Ip, I assure you our unacceptable literature, as well as our pornography, etc., are already the subjects of scholarly research.

My favorite example at the moment:
Sex and the Slayer: a gender studies primer for the Buffy fan by Dr. Lorna Jowett, senior lecturer at Northampton U.

Anonymous said...

Minerva, you hit it right on the nail. It’s not this writer’s mere dislike of the book series that I take issue with. It’s this idea of “cultural infantilism” that is pretentious and arrogant – like everyone who enjoys Harry Potter is a brainwashed idiot and it’s his job to decide what books other people should consider valuable. Like when I see Twilight selling millions of copies, sometimes I can’t help thinking “Oh my god! How can people actually like this crap?!!!!” But I don’t act like it’s an indication of “the dumbing down of America” or anything like that. What it means is that that’s what happens to be popular right now. There are always going to be crappy books/theatre/music that people will like, and there always have been – book critics should just learn to get over it. Writing whiny, highfalutin’ newspaper articles isn’t going to make people stop reading Harry Potter.