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The demise of Western Litterary Tradition: Harry Potter

Sadistic Bastard

Sadistic Bastard

No Mercy
Harry Potter, the series. A children's/young adolescent set of books. Cute...but nothing special. Most of the ideas and characters have concepts and lineage that can be traced to other works. The writing is competent, but not epic.
So why the buzz? Why all of the shy, almost embarrassed admissions from GROWN UP's that they more than LIKE the books.

In order to be popular, to appeal to the masses, are we as a society reduced to a CHILDREN's Book?

What about King's "The Dark Tower" series? Too dark? Or too many characters? Or concepts of extra-dimensional bits and pieces in a non-linear format? Do these make the reader's brain hurt? No...give us unicorns and dark lords who are predictable and mild self-sacrifices that aren't really "bad". Oh...and a happily ever after.

I wish Dickens was allowed to re-write the series. After all, while Harry is our "luck and pluck" stereotype, at least maybe we'd get a real beheading or something out of it.
-SB
 
I've been outspoken against the Potter 'originality' crowd since the series first became popular. Haven't these simpletons read Ovid's Metamorphosis?
 
The first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

Main character's a leper, rapes a girl in the third chapter, and goes on to save the "Land" which he refuses to believe in anyway...and when he "wakes up" in the real world...he's still a leper.

Now THAT is a series worth reading...
-SB
 
There's about a million fantasy novels out there that are 1billion times more interesting than the teen soap opera that is the Potter series.
 
This is one case where I have no desire to read the books, but the films were fun enough to spend a couple of hours on.

;)
mm
 
I assume you guys are trolling someone with this but since I don't know the ins and outs of this place yet I'll just ignore that for the moment.

SB summed it up quite nicely in the first post - cute but nothing special. I was, I dunno, maybe 10 when I read the first book - before they became popular over here. Loved it and loved the second one as well. Then took a bit for the third one to come out. Still loved it. Then took a lot longer for the fourth one to come out - first one I read in English, still liked it a lot. Then V came out and while I think it's probably the best of the series, I started seeing JKR's limitations. Or maybe my tastes just changed. Of course still read VI and VII but they really weren't that impressive anymore.

Why are they popular? Well, since they are popular, it's okay to read them and even more people read them making it even more okay to read them and so on.
No idea why this attracts older people but if I were to guess I'd say they'd like all these other books, too, but society would look at them in a weird way if they were reading them instead of HP.
So yeah, it's society's fault. Plus, they probably don't even know about the other books since there's less hype.
 
We've had shitty, popular literature ever since people started getting good enough at reading that they could do it for fun. Remember learning about Horatio Alger in history class? Have you ever tried to read his stuff? His books may not have been technically children's books, but the plots were incredibly simplistic and childish, and so was his writing. He wrote more than a hundred books, all almost literally re-hashes of the same plot with slightly different characters and settings, and would have died wealthy had he not been repeatedly conned out of his money by street urchins he was determined to turn into real-life examples of his stories.

I could probably pull out a bunch more examples with some research (Disraeli was a shitty popular writer in his spare time, too). Just because only people like Mark Twain and Shakespeare have survived to be read today doesn't mean the past was some kind of literary heyday where everyone read Descartes and discussed the nature of existence while heading to their jobs shoveling the shit people dumped in the gutters into wheelbarrows so they could sell it later.
 
No no, I know stupidity has been around for a long time.

I also know that we aren't any smarter than the human population 5000 years ago.

But you'd think in that time we'd have evolved better taste...

-SB
 
Did you know Barack Obama has read all the "Harry Potter" books? It's true!

It is also the reason bryce voted for him. :bergman:
 
What gets me, after she rips off all these other works of fiction, she turns around and sues the author of a companion volume THAT SHE ADMITTED TO USING!

Not only a plagiarist, but a hypocrite as well.

Classy.
 
Sadistic Bastard said:
I also know that we aren't any smarter than the human population 5000 years ago.
Click to expand...

I tend to think that we're dumber than those who came 2393 years ago.

Extra points to the one who figures out why I picked that number.

That is, if anyone can beat FBI to the punch.
 
Dark Pickle said:
What gets me, after she rips off all these other works of fiction, she turns around and sues the author of a companion volume THAT SHE ADMITTED TO USING!

Not only a plagiarist, but a hypocrite as well.

Classy.
Click to expand...

There's an interesting irony in having a hard-on about Rowling's creative liberties when "adapting" previously penned and/or published material to conventions for her tale, "Harry Potter" when so many, worldwide, still worship at the altar of Skywalker, a now iconographic bit of popular culture whose creator, George Lucas, brazenly borrowed from everyone from Malory to Herbert.

Critics and fans alike still agush over the holy trinity of Episodes IV, V and VI.

That notwithstanding, point taken on Rowling's talent - adequate is not inaccurate. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Potter series isn't it's appeal to many generations of readers insomuch as that it was responsible in it's beginnings, nearly single-handedly, and without the help of sophisticated marketing or films, to put books into the hands of young readers who, for better or worse, couldn't wait to read the next volume. There were four books in the series, IIRC, before the first film, and kids were voracious in their consumption of Potter....and this led to a revitalization of the Children's/Young Adult's book market in the late 90's.

Anything that helped to generate that kind of interest in reading in a world in which kids often needed to be surgically separated from their Gameboys and Playstations couldn't have been a wholly bad thing.
 
Lord John Whorfin said:
There's an interesting irony in having a hard-on about Rowling's creative liberties when "adapting" previously penned and/or published material to conventions for her tale, "Harry Potter" when so many, worldwide, still worship at the altar of Skywalker, a now iconographic bit of popular culture whose creator, George Lucas, brazenly borrowed from everyone from Malory to Herbert.

Critics and fans alike still agush over the holy trinity of Episodes IV, V and VI.
Click to expand...

I've personally always thought Star Wars was overrated.

That notwithstanding, point taken on Rowling's talent - adequate is not inaccurate. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Potter series isn't it's appeal to many generations of readers insomuch as that it was responsible in it's beginnings, nearly single-handedly, and without the help of sophisticated marketing or films, to put books into the hands of young readers who, for better or worse, couldn't wait to read the next volume. There were four books in the series, IIRC, before the first film, and kids were voracious in their consumption of Potter....and this led to a revitalization of the Children's/Young Adult's book market in the late 90's.

Anything that helped to generate that kind of interest in reading in a world in which kids often needed to be surgically separated from their Gameboys and Playstations couldn't have been a wholly bad thing.
Click to expand...

Is it such a good thing that people are reading, if they're reading watered down crap?
 
Dark Pickle said:
Is it such a good thing that people are reading, if they're reading watered down crap?
Click to expand...

Not people in general, per se, but kids, specifically. Children's literature is, by it's nature, watered down so that it is accessible to it's target audience. In this instance, yes, it is a good thing because it wasn't just Rowling's books that sold well. Apparently, the Potter phenomenon was infectious because, at the time, booksellers and educators alike were crediting the series with sparking an interest in reading.

Think of it as a "gateway drug", but in a good way. Harry Potter is innocuous enough...if it leads a kid to an increased interest in reading, I can't say that's a bad thing.
 
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