Tolkien’s LOTR was a real literary work and it had mixed reviews. As he commented in the forward regarding haters, “I can’t object to their statements, since I have similar opinions of their works…” or something like that.
In the review lisiate linked to, Bloom complained there was no full explanation as to why Harry was left with his Muggle family rather than be raised in the wizarding world.
Said explanation was in the first chapter of the first book.
I read that the Galbraith good pretty good reviews before she was “outed,” which suggests that she’s probably pretty decent.
If Mieville doesn’t like it I’d say that’s a point in her favor. I read one of his books and then stopped.
Stephen King is a fan (and hates the Twilight author). He isn’t known for his literary merit but I think most will agree that he is good for his genre, at least when sufficiently sober?
Rowling’s plot is derivative of many things but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s cliched at times but so is Star Wars. Tolkien borrowed heavily from Nordic mythology (intentionally). I guess Bloom doesn’t like either but he’s famously cantankerous.
Here’s a comparison of HP, Hunger Games, and Twilight by vocabulary. No comparison outside of these, but it’s illuminating.
ETA: Alan Moore as well!? Well I really do enjoy his work, but he is also a crank.
I think that Rowling’s main point of success is her sense of humor. I’ve read things which are better written, have more action, have more depth, etc. but there’s not a lot of works with a good sense of humor to them and none for children.
If Douglas Adams or Robert Asprin had written for a slightly younger crowd, perhaps they could have paved the way for humorous YA fiction.
Personally, I didn’t find Rowling’s humor to be strong enough to carry me through to other books in the series, since it was all quite derivative. But I’ll respect that it is probably an aspect of literature that is under utilized, particularly as compared to what the readership enjoys.
I think you’re right that her humor is one advantage she has over many of the other writers she’s foten compared to. And what impresses me is that her humor for the most part doesn’t sacrifice believability. That is, unlike Adams or Asprin, when there’s something funny, it’s usually the characters within the story trying to amuse each other (the way real people do) rather than the author trying to amuse the reader.
A couple of the other reasons for Harry Potter’s popularity (that don’t really say anything one way or the other about her literary quality):
(1) They are, in some sense, mysteries. They keep their readers guessing by giving them big questions to wonder about (e.g. Who keeps trying to kill Harry? Who is the “Half-Blood Prince”?) and are sprinkled with hints, clues, red herrings, and big reveals and the end. So it didn’t really surprise me when she later turned to writing “actual” mysteries.
(2) People want to go to Hogwarts (at least vicariously). The local newspaper sometimes publishes Q&A interviews with local teens, asking (among other things), “If you could live in a book, which would you choose?” and Harry Potter seems to be the most common answer. I’m convinced that a large part of Rowling’s success is that she’s created a world that readers want to spend time in.
There’s a lot more free pie and loose sex in Xanth. It never had the immense popularity as the Potter Universe.
I remember hearing somewhere that the New York Times was pressured into dividing its Best Seller lists into ones for adults and YA/Children because “literary authors” were furious that the Harry Potter novels were “clogging up” their list.
Nicely said.
Some of LeGuin’s (for example) books are brilliant (The Dispossessed especially–I’d put it on a “Top Ten Books That Every SF Fan Must Read” list) but let’s face it. The woman’s writing, even at her best, is dour. The few glimmers of anything remotely resembling fun in any of the her works are, at best, rare, kind of wry comments.
It’s not surprising LeGuin doesn’t enjoy Rowling. LeGuin writes bloodless, thoughtful books with little passion beyond language and ideas (but not plot or character) and Rowling does the exact opposite. The only real “message” she trys to get across is “Racism=BAD” and even then, she weenies out on one of the two attempts to deal with it (the House Elves who end up being happy being slaves, so Hermione is kind of a moron for trying to free them) and the “Mudblood/Pureblood” thing which just kind of dribbles off without any real resolution.
I’d be interested to have seen what LeGuin’s take on early Pratchett (say, around Reaper Man or Guards! Guards! was at the time they were written–I suspect she’d have hated them too.
According to the Harold Bloom piece linked to above, yes.
Obviously, Harold Bloom only reads literature, so it’s to expect he’d find gaping plot holes in works he’s deemed non-literary. It’s one of the primary flaws in the non-literary genre, and one he is continually surprised about, I’m sure.
As for Moore’s condemnation, well, I suppose the old baboon only likes popular culture at least sixty years old. I am a bit disappointed in him, and I hope he doesn’t bang on about it in very much of his work.
Rowling’s literary value is hugely inflated by her fans. A great example was her tweet about Trump the other day. She said, “How horrible. Voldemort was nowhere near as bad.”
The internet is now awash with posts about how Rowling has “destroyed/slammed/burned” the Trump campaign with her incisive and timely humor.
I think Rowling is a fine storyteller, but as a **writer **I’ve always thought of her as lackluster and unimaginative.
This will no doubt be received with shock and dismay by her millions of loyal fans. I’m sorry I had to call her out like this.
Except he didn’t. running coach’s point is that the problem Bloom claims does not exist, and that if he remembered the first chapter of the first book he’d know that.
I think you were whooshed by Derleth’s sarcasm.
I’d expect that it wasn’t gritty enough for him.
I agree. The last volume of League is set in the 20th Century, and suffers enormously from Moore having run out of characters not protected by copyright: about all he can dredge up is Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, whom I’d never heard of either. Apart from that, the best he can muster is thin, sour parodies of Bond and The Avengers, and a mean-spirited Mick Jagger clone. And yeah, his oh-so-clever “deconstruction” of Harry Potter. I’ve loved Moore’s stuff from his earliest 2000AD days, but it might be time for a parting of the ways.
Stephen King likes her.
She didn’t win any literary prizes. And my personal view is, that’s fair: popularity is orthogonal to “literary” quality, or there wouldn’t be any point in having literary prizes.
Personally, I would rather re-read any Newbery Prize winner than any of Rowlings stuff, and I’d rather read Rowling than almost any Booker Prize winner, and I don’t mean that as in insult to any of it, or to any other reader: I don’t think that it’s necessary that we all like the same thing.
I wouldcompare them favourably with Diane Duane’s So You Want To Be A Wizard, or Diana Wynne Jones’s various series, Chrestomanci et al, in that they’re easily digestible, but with an epic undertone. Though Harry Potter’s epicness really is its overtone.
So if the literary world like books of that nature (and I don’t know if they do), there’s no reason they shouldn’t also like Harry Potter too.
Her plotting is also underrated. It has real depth, particularly in the later books. The early books have simple children’s plots that are nicely self contained, but she also wrote them so they would tie in with the far deeper stuff later on.
No I think her handling of these subjects exceeds the depth of understanding of these subjects you display here.
Her message isn’t just racism=bad. It’s more nuanced (as IRL it tends to be). The bad guys are also fascists and believe they should use the power they have to advantage without regard. Other lesser bad guys are not directly evil but are petty and tedious bureaucrats who put order above justice.
The house elves thing is a common ethical dilemma of which one can think of many examples IRL: the oppressed person who doesn’t want to be saved. Should they be “rescued” against their will? IMO weenying out would have involved the house elves miraculously realising they were oppressed and cheering Hermione as their clear saviour (that’s what would happen in yer basic Hollywood crapola). As to the mudblood/pureblood thing what are you saying? That in real life racism is resolved finally and that tying that bow up neatly is a failure? On which literary planet?
Agree wholeheartedly. After HP this book is like a sudden encounter with gravity; it brings you down to Earth real quick. I found it dispiriting but of undoubted quality for just the reasons you state.
I read The Silkworm without knowing that RG was a pseudonym for Rowling and found it much better than your usual airport fare. The majority of the misteries I get in airports are best used to hold up wobbly tables.
Then again, I got prompted to read Harry Potter by praise from Pérez-Reverte (“she’s making children read! She’s making boys read!”), whose own books I started reading after a critique which compared his Alatriste to The Three Musketeers as if resembling The Three Musketeers was a bad thing…