After taking in Joseph Bottum and me on the decline of the public novel, the journalist Kate Jones tweeted her disagreement. She cited J. K. Rowling’s series of seven Harry Potter novels as counter-evidence.
Coincidentally enough, Richard Davies of the the used-book site AbeBooks reported earlier today on a study of the book-buying habits of Harry Potter readers. As Davies put it, Rowling’s readers made “rather eclectic” choices for their next book after the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last book in the series. Their top choice was The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, followed by Portia de Rossi’s anorexia memoir Unbearable Lightness, and Toni Morrison’s debut novel The Bluest Eye. Or, in other words, there was no pattern.
The second commentator on Davies’s story got it about right:
This wide variation supports a different angle from the original intention. It isn’t about what Harry Potter readers subsequently read, but that ALL (or at least most) readers read Harry Potter. They simply went back to the things they were reading before/during Potter.
This certainly seems to corroborate Jones’s claim that the Harry Potter books were the “public novels” of the decade from 1997 to 2007.
But without descending into the snobbery of Pauline Kael’s wondering how Richard Nixon could possibly have been elected president since nobody she knew had voted for him, I wonder if the near-universal readership for Harry Potter (everyone but me, apparently) doesn’t prove, in fact, the decline of the public novel.
Instead of the socially conscious “message” novels of the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties — Strange Fruit, Gentleman’s Agreement, The Wall, The Caine Mutiny, Andersonville, Atlas Shrugged, Advise and Consent, To Kill a Mockingbird — the novels that “ALL (or at least most) readers read” from 1997 to 2007 were not public novels at all, but a retreat from the public square into a children’s supernatural fantasy of sorcery and wizards.
Harry Potter certainly seemed to bring nearly everybody together in a congregation of enthusiastic readership, but whether the novels provide (in Bottum’s phrase) “deep explanations of the human condition” is more doubtful.
There's something rather irksome about reading a commentary on a literary phenomenon when the writer admits he/she hasn't read the book that caused the phenomenon.
But thatu2019s just the point. I am familiar with the phenomenon without having read (a lot) of the books.
Read the book? That's why I read magazines, so I don't have to read the book. Isn't that why everyone reads magazines?
That’s why some of us write for the magazine.
For the most part the Harry Potter series had a strong anti-bureaucratic (or perhaps libertarian) message. However, I don't know if that meets your "human condition" criterion.
Dear Mr. Myers,r nr nIf you had bothered to read the series before commenting on it, you first of all would not be dismissing it as a children’s book, and secondly you would not be a snob. Or are points one and two redundant?r nr nStop being a snob.
The word snob was originally a colloquialism around Cambridge University to refer to anyone who was not connected with the university — exactly the opposite of your meaning, in other words. As late as the mid-19th century, the word still referred to a person without good breeding or good taste. It wasn’t until the 20th century that it denoted someone who despises those beneath him in rank.
HP is no kiddie lit. There are subtle but consistent socially conscious themes throughout, but they become more patent as Rowling sets up its final battle between good and evil.
I find it amusing that the author (blogger, whatever) feels comfortable making sweeping generalizations about the Harry Potter books, while openly admitting to not having read them. That's always a great basis on which to render judgements (note: that last sentence should be read with sarcasm). n nI also detect the opinion that a novel can be either fantasy or say something meaningful, but not both. This is, of course, absurb; there's no end to counterexamples of science fiction/fantasy tales which at the same time express something meaningful about the human condition. n nI was going to defend the Harry Potter books specifically, but lately I've abandoned trying to convince people of judgements they render without having done even a modicum of research. Instead I will just chastise with perhaps one of the most cliched cliches in existence (which hopefully is reprimand enough in and of itself: "Don't judge a book by it's cover."
I did read Vol. 1, and was admittedly underwhelmed. And then I read no further. But is it really a “sweeping” (synonym alert: false) generalization to describe the series as “children’s supernatural fantasy of sorcery and wizards”? That’s pretty much the standard description, folks. n nAs for my last sentence. What I say is merely that the literary greatness of the Harry Potter books (defined by Joseph Bottum as literary works that offer “deep explorations of the human condition”) is open to doubt. Not really such a far-out suggestion. n nThe discussion on Twitter, especially in the brief defenses of Rowling offered by Sam Schulman and Dan Moore, has persuaded me to take a second look. Snide abuse doesn’t really work, I’ve found. Just a recommendation.