And speaking of Harry Potter …

  • I must be the only dolt in the world who wasn’t count­ing down the min­utes until the new Harry Pot­ter book arrived.

    It was already in gro­cery stores yes­ter­day marked 25%-40% off, which just gives you an idea how ridicu­lously high the retail price must be. So I will go ahead and read this one too — what the heck. Part of that is just self-defense — if you’re going to be besieged with talk about some­thing, you might as well read it or see it your­self if it doesn’t offend you too much. I really do like the books. I’m just way to the rear of the peo­ple who are That Excited over them. I think the first one was worth all the hoopla. The other ones are a mixed bunch — some good moments in there but a lot of pages mis­spent, IMHO.

    That being the case, I’m going into this with fewer expec­ta­tions. If we got a few less chap­ters of Harry YELLING AT PEOPLE IN ALL CAPS, I’d be pretty happy. But then, he was 15 last year. This year he’s 16. Heaven help us if Rowl­ing really does want to tell us what’s in the mind of young men at that age. I don’t think I’m ready for 300+ pages of that.

    It’ll be inter­est­ing to see if my the­ory about what Rowl­ing is get­ting at holds up. If she’s using these as a vehi­cle to tell young peo­ple that the world can be a magic place, but it also needs grown-ups, then I would expect her to con­tinue the pro­gres­sion she has been mak­ing whereby we’ve been slowly find­ing that Magi­cians can be Mug­gles after all, and — and this is the part I think is the most inter­est­ing — Mug­gles can be Magi­cians. That, really, the world of faith, imag­i­na­tion, dis­cov­ery and won­der will be seen as you get older to bor­row more and more from the world of every­day tedium and hard work and some moments of real pain and evil. And that, con­versely, the peo­ple you thought were hum­drum and drab may turn out to know more about faith, imag­i­na­tion and the rest than you do. And that, in any case, you can’t keep the worlds apart — they absolutely depend on one another. So if you want to be a good Magi­cian, you have to also be a good Muggle.

    Now that would be a good point to make. By golly, if Rowl­ing doesn’t make that point, I may have to write a knock-off book just to do it. I’ll bet her lawyers wouldn’t mind too much. (Ha. Right.)


    Related posts:

    1. Poi­son by trifles
    2. The Ortho­dox con­vert list

    July 18th, 2005 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • steven paul 07.18.2005

    Not only am I that, I may be the only per­son on earth who has not laid eyes on a sin­gle sen­tence of a Harry Pot­ter book.…

  • Grace

    Don’t blame you a bit. I started read­ing them because my mother was read­ing them, and since she doesn’t read fic­tion that much, I got intrigued.

    Some of Rowling’s entire world I wish had never been brought to young, impres­sion­able minds — other parts of it seem harm­less or pos­i­tive. In short, if any kid reads the books and puts real energy into occultism or the acqui­si­tion of gno­sis (even assum­ing Rowl­ing meant no such thing to hap­pen), I am very, very sorry and can only hope that the inter­est fails because noth­ing hap­pens. If, on the other hand, a kid looks at the world in a dif­fer­ent way, per­ceives that there is Mys­tery in things and a fight between good and evil that we all par­tic­i­pate in, that may be a very good thing. If Greg and I had chil­dren, we might let one child read Pot­ter and another not, depend­ing on their personality.

    Most adults have already made up their mind about those things, and so I’d think Pot­ter isn’t a big deal one way or the other. I doubt if an adult is going to want to join a Wic­can soci­ety based on Harry Pot­ter, but they prob­a­bly wouldn’t join a church either.

  • steven paul

    I agree. I like Bugs Bunny’s take “What’s all the hub­bub, bub?“
    I think most peo­ple are pre­dis­posed to cer­tain things and if a children’s book pushes them over the edge, then there weren’t a lot of bar­ri­ers up in the first place.

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