Ted Hamilton, in “Harry Potter and the End of Literacy,” becomes another apocalyptic voice, citing Harry Potter (and Twilight) as markers of the end of the true art of literature:
It’s not even that books have been abandoned altogether. In fact, there have been some astonishing literary phenomena in recent years that probably represent the largest shared experiences of reading in history. The obvious example is the Harry Potter series, which has sold over 400 million copies in 67 languages. More recently, the Twilight books have gotten a boost from the related movie and are now seen in every teenage girl’s hands. And the seemingly unending hubbub over faux-memoirs and the accountability of authors would seem to suggest that people still care deeply about literature.
But the literature under consideration is of a deeply impoverished sort. Harry Potter and Twilight are good for a quick thrill and an occasional, broad-stroked lesson, but there’s no comparison to true art. At the risk of sounding too high-brow (and my hesitation indicates the extent to which cultural elitism has been discredited), the majority of what people read today is schlock. There’s something to be said for the pleasure of reading Tom Clancy or Dan Brown, I suppose, but their prevalence pushes aside the great authors.
I think Mr. Hamilton is in need of a few reading assignments, perhaps most importantly James W. Thomas’s introduction to Repottting Harry Potter, or his essay by the same name in my forthcoming volume, Hog’s Head Conversations. For a book-length and equally important read, I’d assign him John Granger’s forthcoming book, Harry Potter’s Bookshelf.
The only thing that will contribute to Harry Potter’s being “the end of literacy” is if all the critics like Mr. Hamilton fail to see that rather than detracting from the classics, Ms. Rowling’s novels embrace them, point to them, and make their ideas accessible to postmodern readers.
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In the 1800s, many high-brows similarly complained of readers who favored popular authors of light fiction, such as Dickens. Hmmm….
Eric P., yes! Absolutely. It’s amazing how quickly some critics forget history and pine for some golden age when everybody immediately and infallibly loved and recognized only great art and rejected “light fiction” as having the potential to destroy literacy.
OK, I can’t stand it, really. I clicked on the link to the article by Hamilton, and the guy is so full of himself that he’ll likely explode soon. And the author that he talks about that was fabulous, that wouldn’t it be great if his book were on everyone’s nightstand, was Pynchon, for Gravity’s Rainbow. I’d never heard of it, but when it came out in 1973, I was teaching and my reading mainly consisted of Wind in the Willows, Charlotte’s Web, Winnie the Pooh, and the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, as that’s what interested my students. I was no longer around college students hearing what the latest must-read book was.
I wouldn’t have read it anyway, from the sound of it. But I did take a look at his bio and descriptions of his books and found a link to a guy who met the author and “smoked dope” with him. From the sound of Pynchon’s books, it sounds like he was doing a lot of that. My frustration is more with the era itself, as it was mine. But I stayed in school, communicated often with my mother, didn’t smoke anything, drop anything, or shoot up anything. I was, however, engaged in the politics of the times, but did it with a clear head and my morals mostly still intact. What I hate is all the praise that people like this author get for writing stuff, that critics deemed unreadable, while under the influence of who knows what. And that’s the stuff that this Ted Hamilton thinks is worthy of readers when Rowling’s careful work is not.
The guy’s a first class idiot, IMO.
OK, rant is over, and I’m going to go see a movie and calm down a bit.
Pat
Hamiliton said, “And so we find ourselves in a cultural desert. People read, but they don’t read what’s valuable; or they read what’s valuable, but they just skim the surface.”
My response: “Duh!! What makes him think this is any different than the way it’s always been?” You’re right on the mark, Eric P. & Travis. When & where was this golden age of reading where everyone sat around reading Sophocles?
Now, the critics are right in one sense, in that it is important to consider what is read & of what nature it is. The old saying is true, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” What is read & digested will affect the way people think. And books can also be likened to food. There are books that are just candy, sort of like Turkish Delight. Then there’s books that are like a good solid meal. Then there’s books that are like a rich, royal feast.
And to partake of any one type of food is not bad, unless you focus only on one category. And a steady diet of candy will be worse for you than a steady diet of good solid food or even rich feasts. But candy, in moderation, isn’t bad.
So, the critics are right in this regard. I think where they go off the track is in what they determine to be valuable & invaluable. I would, for instance, stridently disagree with Hamilton’s assessment of Harry Potter, “Harry Potter [is] good for a quick thrill and an occasional, broad-stroked lesson, but there’s no comparison to true art.” Who is defining true art? Him? Or is there some secret cabal of literary critics who determines this?
Travis wrote, “The only thing that will contribute to Harry Potter’s being “the end of literacy” is if all the critics like Mr. Hamilton fail to see that rather than detracting from the classics, Ms. Rowling’s novels embrace them, point to them, and make their ideas accessible to postmodern readers.”
Too right you are, Travis!!
Curiosity awakened, I Googled Gravity’s Rainbow. This is what I found:
In 1974, the three-member Pulitzer Prize jury on fiction supported Gravity’s Rainbow for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. However, the other eleven members of the board overturned this decision, branding the book “unreadable, turgid, overwritten and obscene”. The novel was nominated for the 1973 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and won the National Book Award in 1974. Since its publication, Gravity’s Rainbow has spawned an enormous amount of literary criticism and commentary, including two reader’s guides and several online concordances, and is frequently cited as Pynchon’s magnum opus.
and
The novel is regarded by some as the greatest postmodern work of 20th century literature, while others have declared it unreadable.
Check out the Google article. There’s a neat story about Lisa Simpson’s encounter with a girl who’s reading the book.
I suspect it’s not going to happen to me in this life-tiime. But if there is anyone on these posts who has read Mr. Hamilton’s exemplar of True Art (Dave?) could you please write in and give your opinion?
Mr. Hamilton is no doubt aware that if he did not attack Harry Potter no one would even bother to read his witless opinions on the state of publishing. You have to make a wave just to make a ripple.
As for Gravity’s Rainbow, it is a very good and intelligent book—- and for the same reasons that we think Harry Potter is not just escapist literature. Gravity’s Rainbow is more than a story about people building a rocket. It is about Bigger Things—- mathematics, mysticism and society. There is an exceptional richness of ideas folded into the narrative.
In the end it is perhaps too rich a mixture. It is not enough to simply dump Ideas into a story. There has to be some organization and some synthesis. Pynchon is content to merely subvert narration and let people make what they will of his endless stream of ideas.