Who's excited about J K Rowling's new book?

[YesNo]

I was merely pointing our how you ignored the main points of StLuke's post and decided to be pedantic and choose one little phrase to pick at. StLuke's explanation of why I think it's a silly (I have no clue what your objection to the word "silly" is, btw) analogy sums up my thoughts exactly.

The word "silly" says nothing of value. It is a cliche.

I'm trying to make a point about following authority with meager evidence compared with following evidence in spite of what the authority has to say. That may sound "pedantic", but the issue rests on how critical one is.

I so not know what qualifies as a "fancy" restaurant. In any case, I haven't been to many, and the few I have been to I've all enjoyed. So, no, the analogy doesn't work, for me at least.

Then continue using McDonald's in the analogy.

But I'll play devil's advocate just for the hell of it. If I did dislike a fancy restaurant that Bloom likes, and Bloom somehow knew I'd rather eat at White Castle, and Bloom went on to tell me why I should like the fancy restaurant, and since he did have a larger knowledge of restaurants than me, I'd take his points into consideration.

The opinions of authorities should be considered. However, if there is evidence that conflicts with their opinions, the evidence should be given higher weight.

The problem with your analogy is two. First, you are simply discarding any reasons Bloom puts forth as to why he dislikes the HP series because you disagree with him, and further (and for a reason I still do not understand) discard any authority he has earned and established over the years. You haven't given any evidence as to him not having good reasons to find HP subpar aside from reading the first few pages of his book. Second, and as already mentioned, Bloom knows his audience. He knows who's reading the book probably doesn't like HP, so he doesn't even have to posit that many reasons (I haven't read the book, so maybe he has, maybe he hasn't--you haven't clarified either way, while others, who've read the book, have said he has given reasons). So, if I liked White Castle and not some fancy restaurant, why would I even seek out the advice of Bloom in the first place? I wouldn't.

Here are my comments for each section marked in bold above.

1) What evidence did Bloom give for disliking HP? Maybe we should go over that in detail.

2) If an authority is telling me to accept something when the evidence shows me the authority is wrong, I go with the evidence. Basically that means, anything that an authority says must be backed up with evidence. I don't care whether he went to Yale or not. If he even mentions Yale without providing more evidence, I discredit him for that alone. I want to see the evidence. The evidence Bloom has to counter is the large popularity of the HP books.

3) I think he wrote the article for the Wall Street Journal: http://www.online-literature.com/for...t=71363&page=9 I don't know whether their readership is overall for or against HP. This is one of the few paper publications I look through, so not all of its readership would be anti-HP.

4) I agree. You wouldn't. I'm putting you in a hypothetical situation with the hamburger franchises to illustrate how conflicted one could be when authority tells you something that is against your own experience or known evidence. The conflict is then which do you choose: follow the authority or follow the evidence?

[qimissung]

Robinson Crusoe
Gulliver's Travels
The Tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann
The Tales of Washington Irving
The Grimm Brother's Fairy Tales
A Christmas Carol
The Three Musketeers
Hans Chritian Andersen's Tales
Dvid Copperfield
A Tale of Two Cities
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Treasure Island
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
King Solomon's Mines
The Jungle Book
Just So Stories
The Call of the Wild
White Fang
The Hobbit
To Kill a Mockingbird

While I can see that many of these works have been popular with younger readers, I can't imagine any of them being reduced to being seen merely as "children's books". Hell, if were going to categorize The Arabian Nights, A Tale of Two Cities, and Huckleberry Finn as "children's literature" then we might as well include The Bible, the Mahabharata, Dante's Comedia, Les Miserables, Don Quixote, and Italo Calvino under that term.

Well, the list is called Children's classic books, not just children's books.

And in addition to the one's you pulled out, there is also:

Pollyanna
Heidi
Five Children and It
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
Little Women
The Blue Fairy Book
Peter Pan
The Secret Garden
A Little Princess
Anne of Green Gables
Johnny Tremain
Pippi Longstocking
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
James and the Giant Peach
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
A Wizard of Earthsea
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret



All books that Harry Potter would fit in very comfortably with.


Here's a list of Newberry Award winning books for sixth graders:

http://www.hobbyhorsebooks.com/newberylist6.html


Again, books that I think are on par with the Harry Potter books. This is just the list for sixth grade. There are lists for second, third, fourth and fifth grades, too.


Here's the National Book Awards Children's Book of the Year awards. This is a British literary award given annually to works of children's literature. Notice in particular the winners for 1998 and 1999.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationa...ok_of_the_Year

[stlukesguild]

Ok, so next time we have this debate, we can use this thread to exemplify why reading Harry Potter is going in the "dumbing down" line that Bloom claims?

Contrary to Bloom, I think reading Harry Potter is more of a symptom than a cause.

[qimissung]

I think any discernible goal fluttered away pages ago.

[JBI]

"Look at the periodical he is publishing in. It's a very loose essay about the phenomenon, not a piece of serious academic criticism."
JBI

"The goal wasn't to prove that Harry Potter was "trash" but rather that Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are (unlike the Harry Potter novels) unquestionably "classics"." Stlukesguild

Actually, the goal of the thread was to discuss J.K. Rowlings new book. I'm not sure what the goal of this discussion is. I think Alice in Wonderland is a classic. The Harry Potter Books could be, too, Harold Boom's opinion notwithstanding.

Here's a list of classic children's books from Wikipedia. It lists such disparate books as Ivanhoe to Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Cat in the Hat. I think the Harry Potter books would fit on that list just fine.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._classic_books

I was talking about Bloom's article in response, but sure.

Either way I think we have all already agreed the new book is mediocre at best, and isn't particularly worth reading, even if you loved Harry Potter. That seems to be the general critical consensus too.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I'm finished. You win, YesNo. I don't have enough stamina for this SILLY debate.

[mortalterror]

I really don't see fast food as crap. I see it as fast. You seem to look down on it because it's common and prefer any Italian or Chinese restaurant regardless of their quality for the sheer novelty.

No... I recognize that for the most part fast food tastes like crap. It's a fast and cheap alternative to food that is much better. McDonalds burgers don't taste anywhere near as good as burgers from any number of bars, most sit-down restaurants, or the backyard grill. Taco Bell's cuisine is no where near the same as what I can get in a real Mexican restaurant. Domino's or Marco's or Cici's pizza tastes like cardboard compared to what I can get at a better Italian restaurant or pizza-shop. The Chinese take out at one of those ubiquitous China King shops falls far short of what I can get in the local restaurants in Chinatown. hell... you probably going to tell me that Budweiser and Lite taste as good as Samuel Smith, Chimay, Duvel, or Aventinus or that suggesting that Budweiser is pi**-water is somehow un-American.

Well, I guess we can take your word for it. You are a four star chef who's run a number of restaurants, and you're not known to ever overstate or exaggerate anything. And kick Budweiser all you want. They are a Belgian-Brazilian company. I'm a Jack Daniel's man.

[JCamilo]

please, do not blame Brazil for budweiser. They were bad already before us.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Well, I guess we can take your word for it. You are a four star chef who's run a number of restaurants.

Yeah, because you have to be a four star chef to know that there are places that make better burgers than McDonald's and better Mexican food than Taco Bell.

[mortalterror]

Robinson Crusoe
Gulliver's Travels
The Tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann
The Tales of Washington Irving
The Grimm Brother's Fairy Tales
A Christmas Carol
The Three Musketeers
Hans Chritian Andersen's Tales
Dvid Copperfield
A Tale of Two Cities
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Treasure Island
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
King Solomon's Mines
The Jungle Book
Just So Stories
The Call of the Wild
White Fang
The Hobbit
To Kill a Mockingbird

While I can see that many of these works have been popular with younger readers, I can't imagine any of them being reduced to being seen merely as "children's books". Hell, if were going to categorize The Arabian Nights, A Tale of Two Cities, and Huckleberry Finn as "children's literature" then we might as well include The Bible, the Mahabharata, Dante's Comedia, Les Miserables, Don Quixote, and Italo Calvino under that term.

For the most part a good selection, with one exception. King Solomon's Mines isn't even as well written as Harry Potter. It's shocking that it sold something like 50 million copies back in the 19th century. It's also an adventure novel for adults, though I guess you could read it to children as it's not terribly difficult.

[JCamilo]

In portuguese, it was translated by Eça de Queiroz. I didn't read in english, but as flawed it is, Eça de Queiroz, even just translating, is too much for Rowling to match.

[mortalterror]

Yeah, because you have to be a four star chef to know that there are places that make better burgers than McDonald's and better Mexican food than Taco Bell.

You don't but I thought it would be cogent to point out that Stluke pretends to be an expert in every subject be it art, literature, music, and now cuisine. I'll give him the art, and he knows more than most about literature even without a formal degree. Music, he's kind of old and has a lot of experience on his side. But when it comes to food the extent of his bona fides so far extends only to his preference for German lagers and thinking McDonalds is "crap." He's a teacher in an inner city school who spends all of his money on art supplies, cds, and books. I don't think he's going out to four star restaurants every day to develop a world class palette. He might sample cheeses from France or go to the occasional wine tasting but like he said, he frequently eats at McDonalds, a place he claims to despise.

I don't dispute that there are better places to eat than McDonalds (and there are better books to read than Harry Potter). What I dispute is that McDonalds is one of the worst places (or that Harry Potter is one of the worst books out there). Even in terms of fast food McDonalds isn't the worst offender. Their food still tastes better than Arby's, Taco Bell, Jack in the Box, Carl's Jr., Wendy's, KFC, Dairy Queen, Long John Silvers, Tim Horton's, Taco Del Mar, Taco Time, White Castle, Dicks Drive In, El Pollo Loco, Chick-fil-A, Hardee's, or Orange Julius. McDonald's (and Harry Potter) gets unfairly singled out for being the best and most popular of it's genre, and for being a cheap alternative to better more expensive/intellectually difficult fare.

When someone says that Dominos Pizza tastes like cardboard I would like to know what cardboard they are eating. Dominos Pizza tastes like pizza which is baked dough, tomato sauce, cheese and a topping. It's mass produced and isn't going to be as good as something from a really good local place in Chicago, New York, or Italy, but it's better than Pizza Hut pizza or frozen pizza, and if people didn't like it Dominos would go out of business. There are many examples of it's kind which are greater and lesser and we do a disservice to the truth when we fail to acknowledge that fact. J.K. Rowling is not as great a writer as Shakespeare, but she's not as bad as a lot of Harlequin Romance writers and a lot of the pulp writers of science fiction and fantasy.

There's a lot of 5s out there in the world. It's not just 2s and 10s.

[mona amon]

I have not read Alice? Or Harry Potter? Why it is your base to assume what I have read or not? - JCamillo

I was under the impression that you hadn't read HP. Sorry if I was wrong. But if you are saying that having read the books or not is irrelevant to the question, then I have to disagree, because only a person who's read a book is qualified to make comments about whether that book is rooted in reality or not.

And I was obviously refering to your comment that Harry Potter book are rooted in reality while Alice may not be. This is a ridiculous statment (to use your word), as the strategy to shift from real to fantasy world is the same on both. - JCamillo

This is what I said -

I think Alice in Wonderland is a lot of whimsical crap. When I read it as a kid I liked it at first, till about the mad hatter's tea party, and then gave up because it was just one damn bizzare thing after the other. The Harry potter books, for all their Confundo charms and invisibility cloaks and other flights of fancy, are still firmly rooted in reality.

Of course, this is only me. I'm sure there are lots of kids out there who like Alice (though I haven't met any), and it's been around for more than a hundred years. Well, I'm pretty sure the HP books will also be around for that long - just give it enough time. - mona amon

I haven't read Alice since the time I was a kid, about 40 years ago. I was actually parodying the anti-Potter posts on this thread - people who haven't even read the series making ridiculously extreme negative statements about them. (Sorry, I'm very fond of this word.)

Anyway, based on what I read then and remember, the world of Alice is a bizzarre dream world, something like a drug induced trip, where weird things keep happening one after the other. I got tired of it after a while, and I'm only explaining why I didn't like it. The HP books are nothing like a drug induced trip. Even with the shifting staircases and Whomping Willow, screaming books, talking portraits, magical mirrors, ghosts, trolls and house-elves, Hogwarts is still a school, and people there have to deal with homework, exams, friendships and rivalries, bullying, fear of getting expelled, alienation, prejudice...I could go on and on. I liked the reality of the HP world better than the completely whimsical world of Alice. That's all there is to it. It was not meant as a general statement about the merits of whimsicality vs reality.

Of course the world ridiculous can be used for someone that called Alice "crap" or dismissed its qualities for being just children literature as if serious criticism should not be applied to a book and if Alice merits does not survive this kind of criticism. - JCamillo

Sure.

Lewis Carroll's novels are over 100 years old. Close to 150 years old. Not only have they not ever slipped out of the canon of "classic literature", they have had (as JCamilo pointed out) a clear impact or influence on writers ranging from other books written for children such as The Wizard of Oz, C.S. Lewis' Narnia, Neil Gaiman's Coraline, and J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan; to science-fiction such as Philip José Farmer's Riverworld series; on through serious literature by writers such as James Joyce, Christian Morgenstern, Paul Auster, J.L. Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, etc... There are also quite literally hundreds of adaptions, parodies, or works influenced/inspired by the Lewis Carroll novels to be found in comic books, animations, film, television, theatrical productions, erotica and pornography, video games, painting, sculpture, pop music (the Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit and the Beatles' Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and I am the Walrus to name just a few), music videos, and even opera. When there is this kind of interest and influence 150 years after the fact... after the PR machinery and the marketing and the fads have all dissipated... there is more than a good chance that what you are looking at is a "classic" whether you personally like the work or not. - Stlukesguild

Well, influence only proves that the work was influential. It really does not say anything about its intrinsic literary merit. Genius has this capacity to rip off or absorb lesser works that have some appealing or innovative idea and make it into something of its own, and the same process applies to popular culture.

And just to nitpick one of your points, doesn't practically everything on earth have an impact on erotica and pornography, including Harry Potter?

[Mr.lucifer]

Not say it was well-executed, but a major reason why Harry potter was popular was because it was character-driven. Are there character driven fantasies that you guys would recommend?

[JBI]

I agree with you Mortal, though I would put McDonalds beneath Wendy's (in Canada, Wendy's is crappier in the States for various reasons). As well, I haven't heard of many of those chains, as they do not exist in Canada.

That being said, to enjoy world class food, in the sense of the top of the top, you need the biggest wallet around. To go to one of these places, and drop a few hundred bucks on the meal, and then twice to three times that on the wine, you really need to be a celebrity, a multi-millionaire, or have a very specific occasion in mind. Usually these restaurants are attached to the top hotels, or near the top venues of the top cities like Paris, New York, etc. Still, there are good popular eats. For instance, there are any number of affordable burger joints in Canada that rank higher than McDonalds in their cooking measurements. Likewise, there are tons of affordable bistros and the such all over the world that offer the best home-style cooking around, at super affordable prices.

That being said, there are also books that perform these functions on the same level. Dickens is the classic example - though he is decidedly middle class in outlook and audience, he is still a populist author with the mass popularity behind him. He is not a snobbish author in the sense that James Joyce or T. S. Eliot are, yet he is as great as they are, in some of his works at least.

Food works the same way, and that is why the allusion is fitting to an extent. There is popular food that is affordable and marketable for the masses. I do not know about American chains, since I do not like American-style fast food, but virtually all over Central Asia you can buy skewers of lamb for dirt cheap almost anywhere which are delicious and perfectly cooked. Even Starbucks is an affordable coffee, that though isn't some fine Italian high end coffee, is still quite a reasonable and wholesome beverage, and is almost the same price as the hideously overpraised Tim Hortons junk, which is actually the worst beans around.

Of the past 20 or so years, the documentation and analysis of what is called Street Food has taken off, showing that food can be popular and good, as it can be expensive and good. North America and to an extent most of Europe do not have these traditions, but that does not mean they do not exist elsewhere (as I am no longer living in North America, I do not see myself as foreign-biased, and as I am from Toronto, where East-Asian style and South-Asian style restaurants are numerous beyond belief, I do not particularly consider myself biased for focusing on these foods).

As you put it Pho, or even a wholesome Hotdog are not bad foods (though the hotdogs is an iffy one). North-American culture is still rooted in the 50s mentalities of the homecooked meal, so it has yet to develop, or will not develop these cultures (New York, and other cities, however, have developed these things, I am talking about the masses), but popular foods that are cheap, yet tasty, and sometimes even healthy, exist elsewhere.

That being said, I don't count McDonalds as one of them, and I certainly will not count Pizza Hut, or Taco Bel amongst them. The same way I will not count Dan Brown in the same league as Umberto Eco - both Bestselling authors, with populist followings.

The problem with comparing literature to other art forms is that generally you need money to appreciate other forms directly. For instance, beautiful scenery requires you to leave your home, beautiful artwork in general requires you to go to a museum (you can read it in books as pictures, but it is completely different). Great food, in a sense, may demand a sort of money to experience in full. Great Wine certainly does. Live music requires tickets. High fashion requires dollars.

That being said, 200 years ago a book cost more than most people made in 2 months. Even subscribing to lending libraries was a think for the wealthy, and the top end of the new emerging middle classes. 100 years ago an education was a think restricted to the wealthy, with book learning limited only to those who could afford it - in parts of the world that is still the case, where here in China up until 40 years ago a person from the countryside would probably not be able to read - even today here many people finish education at age 10, with limited literacy.

That being said, in North America, in particular in the United States and Canada, and in almost all of Europe, literacy is virtually universal, and education, especially up until the end of high school, is generally free. University education in these countries, for many, is no longer just a privilege of the wealthy. In Canada we are better off in terms of education than the US, but in continental Europe in many ways education is completely free.

Now, with that in mind, we can say that almost everybody has the tools necessary to read good books at their disposal. We are not talking about the Faerie Queene or Ulysses which are undoubtedly hard books which require more specialised educational backgrounds, but we are talking about the Dickenses and the Philip Roths (another best seller) and even the Michael Chabons of this world. We are talking about Eco, and about Saramago and about even Jin Yong, or Amos Oz, or even a Haruki Murakami.


Now, the question is, does Harry Potter belong in those categories? I don't personally think so. I think, from general consensus, the first book had something, but the style of it never really developed into something more tangible. It probably would have been better if Rowling only wrote three books set at Hogwurts, and actually showed some maturity being developed throughout the series. I do not feel Harry as a character ever learned anything, or developed, and his actions in the last book, from what I can gather from the film, seem completely in keeping with his actions in the first novel.

As such, there is a terrible flaw there in the narratology - it is a bildungsroman without the coming of age - and it is played out in a sequence of year by year.

The problems with subcharacters like Ginny as mentioned are that she herself makes no sense - if the 10 year old Potter is the same as the 20 year old Potter (or whatever), then the romantic development is always going to be flat. It is worse when the little girl Ginny becomes the older-little undeveloped Ginny, who is written through affirmations rather than demonstrations.

As such, the book is like a Dan Brown novel - there is a cliff hanger at the end of every word forcing you to read what is coming next to know how it ends. When the ending does not live up to the expectation though, the text itself becomes a failure.

As such, for me to positively review the books, I would need to see a more mature, more self-reflexive, more interesting Potter at the end of the series, which I don't. Voldemort could have been a more rounded character, as could have the Dumbledore guy, but they too are rather flat, and do not develop.

In certain side-plots you think you will see developments, but ultimately nothing actually changes - Harry has a fling with that Korean? girl, but it doesn't lead to any maturity in regard to relationships and teenage hormones. Hermione never gets out of her self-proud braininess, and the subplots in that regard are neither popular, nor interesting, and still lead to no development.

Ron in book 1 is the same in all of the texts - worships his best friend's fame and money, tries to rebel against it by fighting, later reconciles and acts nobly in defense of right and his friends.

As for Hogwurts itself, well, it never actually matures either. The setting seems rather undeveloping, so that most of the revelations are done in the first book - the world does not develop, so there is no sense of revelation in the sense that we see development in the worlds of Alice, or The Jungle Book. The setting is static, even with the introduction of new concepts - new characters do very little to phase the vision of the school either, so we are left with a rather bland vision of setting to.

Which leaves style - simple literary devices which work to keep people reading - red herrings, suspense, cliff-hanger endings, serialized installments, and overly basic prose. Mass marketing helped too, but lets ignore that. She never sends a person to the dictionary, and never challenges a reader's expectations or thoughts, so in general, she is offering nothing in terms of educational development, but is also finding no real detractors based on difficulty. The prose is no challenging, nor is it beautiful - it is a mix of what we call clear wholesome prose, and mediocre writing which can be sloppy, redundant, cliche, or downright bland.

So we have basically a rather bland book that is super accessible, and super-marketed.

Now, with that in mind, there will always be these books around. This is the first real children's book of globalization keep in mind, so we can see that the sales in terms of scale are at the top of the lists - she is the second largest author I can think of living today. Jin Yong would be a bigger author, who has sold hundreds of millions, despite not writing anything new since the 70s, and despite being virtually impossible to find in translation, and despite being unknown in the West.

There is a difference though - Jin Yong is an author whose sales are consistent, and when his novels slowed down, his adaptations increased. Rowling's sales are slowing, but her adaptations are finished. She is out of steam basically, and is still feeding on the previous sales and reputation as fuel. Which basically means, evaluation is becoming more crucial.

Does Harry Potter have the same allure as it did 15 or even 5 years ago? Does it still have a power in itself to attract, in this age where print culture has been quickly disappearing, and text has become virtually free?

This is the question - does this book have the power to remain fresh. And if it doesn't, that is not wrong, but it basically means we are bored right now. Rowling has put out a disappointment. Her reputation is basically one of a youngish author finished - never to write another work of mass appeal again. She will still maybe get sales for a followup, but she is like the fallout fiction of Star Wars now - still a cult following, but nothing like the hype surrounding the originals.

The difference between Star Wars and Rowling is Star Wars was a newish idea, Rowling is relatively replaceable I would argue, and the capitalist forces of publishing will find a way to create the next Rowling, leaving her behind.