Who finds the success of Harry Potter depressing?

Cafe Society
141

I wasn’t depressed by HP before reading this thread, but now that I have, I’m a bit down.

None of my favorite authors would generate this sort of response. People have admitted that Rowling isn’t all that great of an author but can still discuss, er, whatever it is you’re talking about.

Just pulling a couple names out here: Tom Holt and Robert Asprin. Both have written light fantasy, and Asprin’s Myth series was aimed at kids. Nice, amusing reads, just as good as HP IMO. Funnier, at any rate.

I wrote a quiz on Tom Holt for FunTrivia.com. It was still listed as new a year later because nobody took it.

Man, I bet I could start a discussion thread here on this board or on Amazon or Shelfari on my all time favorite, Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and get maybe 2 responses. Yet everybody has something to say about, well, whatever it is you guys were talking about.

I keep reading that kids love HP. Yeah, I remember that happening. It was 2002, right? The neighbor kid had a HP party, it was cute. I think he’s moved on since.

You know what’s not cute? The dork in the next cubicle bringing the latest HP book with him so he can read it in the freaking elevator. Why not wear a Hello Kitty raincoat while you’re at it, there, champ? It’ll go nicely with the Transformers lunchbox.

Notice that he doesn’t qualify as a geek. If he brought in a model trainset and built a little town on his desk? Cool. Stupid but cool. Being publicly interested in kiddie lit is just stupid. Dorky and stupid. So yeah, now that you mention it, I do feel a little depressed. Thanks for asking. I’ll be over here writing quizzes. YOU BASTARDS!

142

I don’t like the movies but I think the books are great. They are feel-good kiddy fantasy. The hero is the hero because he is pure of heart, and he will always be okay. The plots aren’t great but the characters are memorable. I wouldn’t want it every day, but I think it’s great fun. Gets better as it goes along, too.

For me, judging a thing’s ultimate ‘quality’ or level of artistry has little to do with enjoying it, and nothing to do with other people’s feelings about it. To each their own, and I second the posters who say it’s nice to see kids reading something… anything!

143

The last couple of books can be accused of being many things, “kiddY” and for children however are not one of them. In truth thats true of all the latter books.
Agree with you on the movies though.

144

Ding ding ding, and wish they had not spent so much time of the SFX for this in the movies.

Always a huge problem. JKR is clearly no true sports fan, doesn’t understand how a sport might work, her invented “sport” makes less sense well even than soccer.

Deal with a sport-centric series written by a welfare mum. Wodehouse would at least get the cricket or golf dead right.

JKR, crudely, might do as well with the interpersonal stuff as PGW or P.O’B, but holds no candle to either of them on sport. Actually, she certainly could not hold a candle to the latter in any realm – but who of us could? She did okay on junior high school crushes.

But sports? No. She should have figured this out and backed off.

145

Her writing definitely progressed a significant amount – as witness the sometimes-too-multifaarious subplots – but it never became as effortless as the great writers of mystery/suspense. She definitely understood the lure of the red herring, the double double twist, and the employment of what Frank Herbert called PRESSURE (as a plot driver) (albeit she betrayed the latter from time to time in her latter and overly expansive volumes). I can imagine a world in which JKR goes on to write fairly effective non-magical suspense, mystery, thriller, whodunit novels – she understands the basic vocabulary, she’s reasonably (???) fair in not f’ing with her readers’ built-in expectations, and she has figured out how to kinda sorta manage a sprawling fact pattern.

146

I wonder to what extent the popularity is due to the things that make them seem so bad to so many. I get the feeling that what you read is what you get, and although there are something that turn out to be deceptions, you were not really supposed to get it ahead of time. Some people I know don’t like books because they feel that they are missing something and feel that people like them are being sneered at by the author, and with Harry Potter, it just isn’t the case, it is a fairly WYSIWYG series without being deliberately low brow.

And Deus Ex Machina, well, I like it in Forever Free, so I won’t condemn it universally.

147

One more time:

So… something like this.

148

I have always thought that the incomprehensible nature of Quidditch was intentional. The magical world follows a sport that makes absolutely no sense to muggles. Of course, JKR comes from England where the national sport is Cricket, which to the uninitiated makes almost as little sense as Quidditch…

149

Makes more scence than Baseball or any other Yank sport (ducks).

Her writing improved a lot over time, however it was never any thing extradinary and thats okay. My point is that the books became more and more “adult” in theme as Harry grew older so that by the last two books (and especially in the death parade that is Deathly Hallows) you can no longer call it a childrens or even young teens books. This is actually in contrast with what you find in most British boarding school novels, Enid Blyton’s characters acted the same at 18 as they did at 10.

I think that the huge differnce in style, setting and theme that the Harry Potter scene has between the early and later novels, will hurt it in the future, adults will not want to read the early books while the later books are often difficult to follow sans knowledge of the earlier ones.

150

Friend AK84,

Baseball doesn’t make any more sense to me than cricket.