Harry Potter News and Commentary
A website called “Literacy News” poses the following question:
Anyone think that the generation raise on Harry Potter will eventual segue into real literature, or is the written word as we know it doomed as lightening scarred step-child of the internet?
The comments are just as good. Or bad. However you’re looking at it.
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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
So, they can spell the word ’segue’ right but not get the right tense for “raise(d)?”
Anyway here’s my answers to their questions: HARRY POTTER IS REAL LITERATURE!!! Second question: No, ’cause last time I looked people were still using a fair amount of words on the Internet. The more accurate question would be, is the printed word doomed, etc, as the step child of the cyber or electronic word? As one who’s switching over to a lot of ebooks read on a portable ebook reader, I would tend to think the printed word is going to certainly be less prevalent in the future.
It’s hard to take them seriously. I laughed at the sheer number of grammatical errors in that quote, and the ensuing comments.
Uh…what is there to say? And on a literacy site! Aberforth, I’ll have a Double Irony on ice, please. Thanks for my laugh of the day.
As for printed books, you can take them away from me when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
That said, I’m reading a book on my iTouch and am interested in the Kindle. But I much prefer printed books, and always will, I believe. Call me a Literary Luddite.
Well, I’m certainly not using the spelling and grammar checker they advertised, if that’s the best it can do! It takes some doing to put that many errors into a single sentence.
The written word isn’t going anywhere, as revgeorge pointed out. As for the printed word, my husband and I just bought more bookshelves the other day. My goal is to be like my friend’s dad, with books lining every wall of the main rooms in the house and spilling off onto the coffee tables and sometimes even the couches.
But I admit I haven’t tried the Kindle yet.
I always get offended when I hear comparisons between “real literature” and Harry Potter…. and most people I know who are HP fans are also big readers of other literature as well…. as for the “printed” word…. I think HOW we get our literature may change — (Computer, iPhones, e-readers, etc will force that change. I am an owner of a Kindle and LOVE it; I have found that I read much more now, since I can have many books with me at once and have also found I am buying/borrowing more “printed” books as well…) — I don’t think our need for reading and literature will lessen. We all need great stories for many reasons — that will never change.
Shannon
What cracks me up, and completely invalidates this person’s statement, is their seeming inability to compose a sentence without glaring typos and proofread. Bemoaning the “decline of the written word” in a sentence full of errors is pretty priceless. Oh physician, heal thyself!
I really can’t believe anyone on a literacy website is complaining about a series that’s done so much for literacy.
Another post on their site asked this: “Are Computers Really Hazardous To This Generations Literacy?”
Now, if the title doesn’t make you laugh, maybe this gem of a response will:
Sorry for the multiple post, but I hit POST instead of PREVIEW. Oops… 8B
As for the primacy of the printed word, I think there are several fallacies that tend to underlie this argument. For one, language and linguistic conventions are not static artifact. The evolve, drift, and change over time — sometimes quite radically. It’s why Shakespeare is brain-splitting work to make sense of until you’ve worked your way through some of it multiple times. It’s only natural that technological contexts will constrain the ways we use language.
Yes, I lament some of it, as well — particularly the use of text-speak in formal writing spaces. Or the mathematically calculated processes that we sometimes teach students. I once had a student stop writing a paper mid-sentence simply because she reached a page limit. And she learned this from a former teacher because the page limit was a hard and fast rule. Another once stretched a five-paragraph essay over nearly ten pages.
But, the platforms and networks that make up modern communication also change our relationships to language in more subtle ways. There is a lot of work in the fields of communication design and interaction design trying to figure out how, when, and why users relate to and use online spaces. Researchers track the eye movements of users to figure how readers trace written text in a web browser. They also track how users sometimes find the placement of certain features in a web page more usable than any labeling scheme. We’re finding out that users often spatially orient themselves with respect to internet pages by relying on certain design conventions they’ve become accustomed to. For instance, it wouldn’t make much sense to most of us if the POST button were placed anywhere other than below the comment box in which I’m currently typing.
Text isn’t going to go away, but how we work with it and make use of it is shifting all around us.
Still chuckling. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried!
Dave, I certainly wouldn’t argue for the primacy of the printed word as we know it in our times (vs. other times when papyrus was preferred). But it is what I prefer. The tactile pleasure; the look and feel of a cover; turning the pages; the solid feeling of ownership; bookshelves of colorful bindings.
But I can see the value of the Kindle experience–lightweight, holds many books; convenience. I expect to have something like it someday. But I’m still hanging on to my books!
You know what? The comments here on this one really bug me and if you would be so kind as to let me tell you why. I volunteer for a group that helps adults who are illiterate, learn how to read and write. These people are extremely smart but were never offered the opportunity to learn due to poverty or other circumstances. I am not sure but I suspect this is a site for people who are trying to learn how to read and write. Many of the people who have come to that site and posted may not be fully literate. Perhaps they speak a foreign language – or are learning for the first time. I think we should back off on this one. Lest this site seems like a bully.
One last comment. I am new to this site, (only a couple weeks) so really I don’t know it that well. I just hope this site doesn’t use it’s intellectual prowess to belittle others. I don’t mean to offend, but I am just a tad disappointed.
Joivre, while I can understand your concern, I noticed you haven’t made the same kind of comment at that site. Surely, a site that has just insulted the intelligence of literally hundreds of millions of readers – many first time readers who are finally starting to love books, only to be told it’s not “real” literature – is deserving of the same disapproval?
Or perhaps it’s really just ironic that a post lamenting the inevitable word-destroying results of Harry Potter is filled with words that have been misused on the *ahem* internet.
Rock carvings, clay tablets, papyrus, scrolls, hand sewn bindings, glued bindings, newsprint, hand writing, printing press, laser printing, computer screens, Blackberry, PDA, Kindle … The times they are a changing. Can’t even make a case for the primacy of text, what with fyi, btw, BFF and TTN, not to mention emoticons. And there’s an article I read recently which says how you spell a word doesn’t make a difference to comprehension, as long as the first and last letters are correct (and all the in-between letters are there). Those of us who value printed text, correct spelling and punctuation and a bit of grammer thrown in, are going the way of the dinosaur, the dodo bird and the polar bear.
Rock carvings, clay tablets, papyrus, scrolls, hand sewn bindings, glued bindings, newsprint, hand writing, printing press, laser printing, computer screens, Blackberry, PDA, Kindle … The times they are a changing. Can’t even make a case for the primacy of text, what with fyi, btw, BFF and TTN, not to mention emoticons. And there’s an article I read recently which says how you spell a word doesn’t make a difference to comprehension, as long as the first and last letters are correct (and all the in-between letters are there). Those of us who value printed text, correct spelling and punctuation with a bit of grammer thrown in, are going the way of the dinosaur, the dodo bird and the polar bear.
Well, on many other things I would be considered a dinosaur or dodo bird.
As for the polar bear there’s still some debate on whether its numbers are increasing or decreasing.
As for the site in question, it states at the top of the site that it is for helping people learn how to read. Technically that is not the same as helping them learn spelling & grammar. But one kind of goes with the other. It’s hard enough to learn English spelling & grammar without introducing an infinite number of personal variations.
Anyway, I wasn’t as concerned with the grammar & spelling as I was with the implication that Harry Potter isn’t real literature.
Joivre, I just went back to this site and read under another subject, http://www.literacynews.com/2009/09/how-important-do-you-thinks-books-are-among-humans-and-literacy-as-well/. The comments under that subject are well-thought out and cogently presented by people quite at home with English. I don’t know what to make of this site.
I would never scorn those struggling with literacy, and I can’t imagine anyone here doing that either. I greatly admire those who work to overcome such a critical handicap. It seems to be only the Potter post and comments that reads this way, i.e. hostile to Potter as literature. See Stella’s comment at the end of the Potter thread there regarding the previous comments.
I think I might be over-protective of those not afforded opportunities like the rest of us. I sincerely apologize if I offended this site. And yes Travis, Harry Potter is literature. I don’t think we need anymore to debate this. Ms. JK Rowling spoke beautifully at Harvard and was completely accepted. (with the exclusion of a certain professor there whom we all know is daft.)
Joivre, I probably reacted too strongly as well. I understand what you’re getting at, and in my circles, I’m usually the one who reacts strongly to the exact same sort of thing (privileged people not recognizing their privilege and looking down on people who don’t have the same opportunities).
I just didn’t see any evidence that that site was there for that reason (none of the categories mention it), and I thought that the post was stand-alone funny.
Travis, no worries on anything. We move on gracefully. And thank you.
Sweet. And I’m glad to see you’ve jumped in on conversations here.