There is a depressing article over at the Washington Post. Before you read anymore of this I think it best that you click over there and read it. I’ll wait, semi-patiently, if you are lucky by the time you get back, I won’t have have become bored and wandered off to play video games… …. …. *bleeping and blooping noises can be heard in the background*. I’m back hopefully you are as well. So where do you stand on the whole Harry Potter thing? Do you agree with Mr. Charles? If you disagree can you say why? Can you point out the thriving reading culture in the United States that he happens to be missing (I’m missing it to). That might be to hard of a question, so here is any easy one for you: point out where in the Harry Potter books there is an instance of greatness, great writing, great characters, great plot line, great anything? What, that might be the harder question. I’m grateful I won’t be working this Friday when all the over boils all over my store. Regardless of whether the book deserves such attention and praise, it will receive it, people don’t invest that type of energy into something without it delivering, even if the delivery is largely delusional. I do hope that Mr. Charles is wrong though and that some of the people when they are done with Harry Potter will stand up, look around, and walk out of the cave into the light.
Here’s the thing, & I meant to say this when I originally read it on the face, this isn’t new. Go back a decade, as the author points out, you’ll see the top selling book wasn’t a literary masterpiece. For pete’s sake, Jackie Collins was a best selling author! The woman can barely string together a paragraph without words fainting from embarrassment at her prose. JK Rowling is much better than the average awful of popular fiction. As far as reading is concerned, we act as if only that is a barometer of cultural intellectual strength. Oh, please. Seen our television lately? That’s a dustbowl of quality. The music landscape is similarly barren. Frankly, so it has been, throughout human history. The creative genius’ of now were often overlooked in their time. Not bad, not good, just a fact of how people work. We’re doomed to loving banality right away.
Yes, but it provides pedants and intellectual snobs the oppurtunity to wail from our ivory towers (in my case the tower is wholly imaginary
I despair of you ever being truly low culture. After all you missed the perfect opportunity to say, “in my case the tower is…IN MY PANTS!”
Join us, Jonathon, you’ll never miss quality with all that quantity out there.