Did you explode?
I know someone who’s written a couple. Very interesting racket.
Really? That’s cool. I have often wondered if the real authors feel bad because it is not their name on the book-I would probably resent that!
I would put American Girl stories with Nancy Drew etc.
(Except that Nancy seems to becoming a kind of cult figure.)
Babysitter’s Club, Goosebumps etc–those are crappy children’s stories!(not even literature with a small “l”) HP is leagues beyond them. I see no reason why HP can’t be on par with Mary Poppins or even Little Women-the series.
Has anyone read Little Women recently? I think it is finally culturally dead. Sorry to go OT. I tried to read it to my kids and I had to keep stopping and saying, “women can do more; men are not supreme beings; housekeeping is a valid goal, but there is much more out there; don’t be afraid of expressing your anger appropriately…” I could barely read it.
I don’t see that happening with HP–I see the slang terms dating (but even there, JKR has not gone overboard with them).
Nah. It was just a paycheck. She did say she felt a little whorish about it, but not enough to keep her from cashing the checks.
Please note that Hamish does not make money on being in academia. Quite the contrary; he’s a student. (Note he said “my fellow students.”)
Yeah, graduate students make for great slave labor. It’s a system full of exploitation.
And so is coined the “one-book fallacy,” that people who are reading Harry Potter are ONLY reading Harry Potter. Perhaps, like me, they’ve read Ulysses and have noticed that Joyce, while brilliant, really hasn’t been that productive since he, you know, died several decades ago. So we read Susanna Clarker’s brilliant novel, and we read J. K. Rowling, and when we’re done with that we read Yan Martell, then a Tintin book, some Wodehouse stories, re-read Shoeless Joe, one of Russel Hoban’s books for grown-ups, one of Russel Hoban’s books for children, Michael Chabon’s Sherlock Holmes story, The Canterbury Tales, Harlan Ellison, George Orwell, Raymond Carver, Robert Coover, and Philip Roth. Maybe some Harry Potter fan fiction just to piss off Joel Stein before going back to Ulysses for a re-read.
Yeah, cricetus, you’re a typical American reader.
Personally, I feel that academic analysis of art (whatever you define “art” to be) is akin to dissecting a frog in biology class. It’s challenging and a bit intimidating; you learn a lot by seeing the inner workings and how all the parts relate to one another; it can be either an adventure or an ordeal, depending on your temperament…
…but when you’re done, the frog is dead.
You guys can go poke at Harry Potter’s intestines all you like. I’ll be over here enjoying his company while he’s still alive, thanks.
Some departments aren’t that bad. At my university, they give us fresh bread and water. And once every six months, we’re allowed to take a five-minute break.
Stein is an asshole of the first order.
I read Clifford the Big Red Dog books with my 5 year old. He looks forward to new stories and for that matter so do I.
Here’s hoping Clifford takes a Big Red Dump on Stein’s lawn!
That’s an excerpt from The Pely-Po-Nesian Wars, right?
Crumbs. Not only screwed up the coding, but I thought I was replying to the last post in the thread when I was only at the bottom of a page. Sorry.
I took a few classes on writing fiction, and it was a while before I could read anything but non-fiction again and enjoy it. But after a few years I was back to “normal” again, and could read a novel without picking it apart and analyzing what the author was trying to do.
And what IS the “typical” American reader?
Like cricetus --reading is my avocation(really a religion, but that’s another thread). Bar gardening, I have no other “hobby”. I don’t share his taste in books, excepting Wodehouse and Rowling, but my “list” would be just as varied in other ways.
What is not understood about this?
Is the “typical” American reader one who only reads what Oprah chooses? I seriously doubt it. Scratch the surface of any type of genre fiction and you will find many, many people who not only enjoy the genre, but also enjoy other genres, other types of stories altogether and even <gasp> non-fiction and biographies.
How strange that people would have a taste for variety! Must not be very American… :rolleyes:
Oh, don’t be such a fucking whiner. cricetus’s argument against the “one-book reader” fallacy is not supported by his list of preferred reading material.
Or are you really convinced that most Americans have that kind of reading list? Yeah, uh-huh, most Americans read Ulysses. Yeah, uh-huh, most Americans can spell Ulysses. Right.
The “one book fallacy,” as practiced by Stein is that one reads Harry Potter, or one reads Ulysses. In fact, there are many people who manage to do both. It is something akin to presuming, because the visible side of a die is “5,” that all sides are “5.” I pick up the die and show you that it is multifaceted, with each side a different number. You may have caught it at “2” or “4” and drawn a completely different (but also errant) conclusion. There is wisdom to be gained, but a fool would protest that the die proves nothing, it’s an abberation, and the other cubes you see from one angle will be known at a glance.
Yeah, I just saw a preview for a movie coming out about such people. It’s called The 40 Year-Old Virgin.
Personally, none of the Star Wars/LotR/HPsci-fi/fantasy stuff does shit for me - I got over it after about age 12, when it started seeming formulaic and/or stopped speaking to me on an intellectual or emotional level. I realize that’s my own hang-up - if I’m going to read/watch something for entertainment, I prefer it actually engage me on a more profound level than what I consider to be the literary/film equivalent of staring at a shiny object. I don’t understand the whole “I just want something I don’t have to think too hard about” criterion - when did not thinking become desirable? As if thinking too much is a problem for most people anyway.
I do understand entertainment and escapism, I just like mine to have some depth, and usually resent things that turn out to be all spectacle. Even so, if you dig Harry Potter or whatever, why is it shameful to admit it’s just dumb fun? It seems almost desperate when you start trying to make claims of highbrow art for it. If a university starts teaching a course on J.K. Rowling, it says more about the dumbing down of culture in general than it does about her elevated literary gifts. It’s like those “History of Rock Music” or “Tupac and Biggie: A Critical Analysis of late 20th Century Poets” classes that are there to get the football team through their course requirements.
And though Stein is a loathesome dickfuck, I think he has a point about the nostalgia/returning to childhood angle, too. At least, I hope he does. Because if this stuff actually speaks to your soul as an adult, I’d have to agree that you’re most likely emotionally retarded.
And this shit always cracks me up:
It displays the same kind of snobbishness it’s accusing its target of (I used to hear it a lot from the Deadheads I knew, too). Believe it or not, it’s actually possible to get it and still think it’s crap. If only we “poor souls” could wrap our brains around Terry Brooks or Jerry Garcia’s 20 minute jackoff solo, we’d be able to experience the beauty limited to the elite capable of grasping their essence.
So much for your pretense at having reached intellectual and emotional levels beyond those of sniggering ninth graders. Maybe it would take you 40 years to read two books if you took a vow of celibacy, but I’m quite able to read two books in a week and still have time for my girlfriend.
No, no - the joke was that anybody who read both Harry Potter and Ulysses was most likely a 40 year-old virgin, not that it would take 40 years to read two books. Although I suppose anyone who took 40 years to read two books probably wouldn’t have much time for sex. Or else far too much time.
Still, if you’re able to read Ulysses and another book in a week and still have time for your girlfriend, you’re far speedier at one of those activities than I.