Culture Watch
In this issue:
Books:Julia
Sneden asks What Makes Harry Sell? More sophisticated adults
may interpret this very long coming-of-age series as metaphor, but
the children simply enjoy the rattling good adventure.
And
Consider This:
Getting Along (almost) With Your Adult Kids, a handy manual
for anyone with grown children. A sampling of chapter headings:
The Terrible Twenties" and "The Questing Forties."
Clueless in Academe
attacks the
American curriculum's "sheer cognitive overload" for obscuring
the culture of argument that underlies all intellectual life.
Books
WHAT MAKES HARRY SELL?
Is there anyone out there
who hasn't heard of the Harry Potter phenomenon? This best-best-best
seller of a children's book has made its author richer than the Queen
of England, and its publishers (Scholastic Books, in America) the envy
of the publishing world. It has enticed children to put down their video
games and read, and not just children, either. I know of adults ranging
from my 20-year-old neighbor to the members of book clubs in a couple
of retirement homes who are all fans of Harry. The release of each new
book in the series now means a mega-event, with parties at bookstores
that last until midnight on the night before the sale date, and climax
with the first sale of the books at one minute past the witching hour.
Children arrive dressed Potteresque for the event, i.e. wearing black
robes and pointed hats, with dark-framed glasses mended with tape on
the nose piece, and wands in their hands. There are plenty of grownups
in line at the cash register on those nights, too.
The influence of the books
is so pervasive that a couple of children I know have begun to mimic
British phrases such as "queuing up" for standing in line. One child
has even begun referring to her sweater as a "jumper." There is also
quite a bit of made-up lingo in the books that has become part of our
kids' vocabulary, and it's not only the children: the other day I heard
an annoyed mother tell her 10-year-old: "You are behaving like the worst
kind of muggle!" (Muggles, for those of you who have somehow escaped
the books, are what the magical world calls people who have no magical
ability).
I first discovered Harry
when I bought Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone as a gift for my
granddaughter, back in 1997. I decided to read a chapter or two before
sending it on
to her, just to see what all the fuss was about. Some three hundred
pages later, I finished the book. I had been so engrossed (well,
the
better word might be entrapped) that I hadn't even noticed the day
flying by. From then on, I was hooked.
Lately, some major criticism
has come Harry's way, and I have found myself wondering just what it
is that draws me (and millions of others) to the books.
The writing itself is at
best pedestrian, heavy on the adverbs, occasionally awkward, and excessively
wordy. Rowling could use a good editor who knows how to wield a blue
pencil. While the first two books were of a good length for middle school
children, the fourth book jumped to a huge 734 pages, and the latest,
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is a true whopper at 870.
Granted, the lines of print are widely spaced, but the book itself is
at times redundant and weighted with unnecessary trivia. It would have
benefited from judicious cutting.
So what keeps me coming back
to the series?
For one thing, Rowling tells
a rousing good story, aimed at kids but lively enough to engage adults.
Her protagonist (Harry) is an orphan who has been reared in a household
that didn't want him. A classic underdog, he has suffered all kinds
of indignities and oppressions, but somehow has retained his bright
spirit. He is small for his age; he wears glasses; he is skinny and
often beaten up by bullies; his mop of black hair is unmanageable; and
he is frequently in trouble through no fault of his own.
But at the age of ten, wonderful
things begin to happen to him. He is rescued from his unhappy childhood
and sent to Hogwarts, a school for young wizards and witches, where
he discovers that his name is famous in the wizarding world, having
as an infant survived a deathly attack by the utterly evil Lord Voldemort.
Voldemort first murdered Harry's parents, and then was nearly killed
himself when the curse he hurled at the infant Harry mysteriously rebounded.
Harry was unharmed but was left with a lightning-shaped scar on his
forehead. He was rescued by Albus Dumbledore, a great and good wizard,
and hidden away in the home of his aunt and uncle, the muggles who reared
him so harshly.
When the books take up the
tale, we learn that Voldemort survived, although for the ensuing ten
years he was bodiless. In each of the books, Voldemort is slowly gathering
more strength and rallying his evil minions around him. He is bent on
destroying Harry Potter, although thus far Harry has survived every
confrontation. This running battle between the forces of evil and good
will last throughout the series.
Page
Two, What Makes
Harry Sell?
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