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leaky__cauldron (a Harry Potter news site) has an interview with Edmund Kern, author of the book The Wisdom of Harry Potter: What our favorite hero teaches us about moral choices. Kern's view of the Harry Potter books is very similar to mine: I'll concede, the series is written for children. But in my opinion, Rowling's true genius lies in the authorial voice she adapts for each book, which matures right along with Harry. This really is amazing to me, and I don't see how the likes of Harold Bloom or A. S. Byatt can so obviously miss this aspect of the tales.I'm not even sure I would concede, though, that they're written for children. Clearly the first book is a children's book, and doesn't have much depth or even all that much originality (although it's still well-written, I think, and doesn't talk down to its audience). But the rest of the series stands in relation to the first book very much as The Lord of the Rings stands to The Hobbit; you could even compare the second Harry Potter book, which is still somewhat episodic, to the adventures in the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring that don't have much to do with the rest of the storyline, but were relics from the earlier stages of Tolkien's writing when he still thought he was just writing a sequel. But from the third book on, it's clear that Rowling has an overarching epic tale to tell, and not necessarily just to children. Or perhaps the point is that her audience isn't just children, it's a particular generation who happen to be children now but who will have grown up by the time the seventh book is finished.
I also see little reason to denounce adults interested in Harry's adventures. They might be reading for escapism, but is that really so bad? Adults—like children—desire to overcome life's difficulties and uncertainties. We can, if we like, label, denounce, and dismiss these desires as "retrograde childhood fantasies," or the like. But those of us who see the value of such flights of fancy are unlikely to be converted to reading Shakespeare, Goethe, Proust, and Joyce because Bloom and Byatt are telling us we're stupid.
Kern's thesis is that the Harry Potter books present the ideals of ancient Stoicism: "constancy, endurance, perseverance, self-discipline, reason, solidarity, empathy, and sacrifice." Throughout the story, Harry and his classmates learn that these are the skills they will need to handle adversity and the crises that are developing in their world. To me, this message is strikingly similar to that of William Strauss and Neil Howe in their books Millennials Rising, The Fourth Turning, and Generations: "Learn to work in teams, do good deeds for your community, and apply peer pressure to positive advantage. Understand that older people will come to expect greatness from you." Their theory is that generations follow a cyclical pattern of four archetypes, and that the current generation of kids born after 1981 is in the same position as the "Greatest Generation", who were born in the first quarter of the 20th century, grew up in the Depression, and became adults as World War II was starting. More importantly than their position in history, their temperament is similar: civic-minded, practical, positive and courageous, willing to make the necessary sacrifices for the common good. (There are some more detailed descriptions of Strauss & Howe's ideas on the web site of their consulting company, Life Course Associates, although you may have to do some clicking around to piece it all together.)
Kern also talks about how the books don't sugar-coat the danger and violence of the world, but that this is appropriate for a post-9/11 atmosphere:
I think kids like adventure along with a good scare. As Rowling has shown, these can coexist quite easily with a thoughtful approach to morality. She clearly thinks the world is tough, but she also clearly thinks kids can handle it. Plenty of good literature goes in entirely different directions, but some of the best stuff read by adolescents (Twain, Tolkien, Lewis, Pullman) sounds similar themes about moral resolve in uncertain and troubled times.I find this list of authors very interesting: Twain, Tolkien, Lewis, and Rowling are all from the same generational archetype—Twain from the Gilded Generation, Tolkien & Lewis from the Lost Generation, and Rowling from Generation X (born in 1965). Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials series, is the odd one out, part of the Boom Generation (born in 1946). I've only read the first book of this series so far, The Golden Compass, but it does seem like a different sort of story from the others: Lyra is an orphan growing up alone in a dirty, chaotic environment with treacherous and uncaring adults; the main message seems to be to trust no one but yourself, and develop your own abilities (represented by daemon familiars and her mastery over the alethiometer) to get by in the difficult world. In other words, it seems much more directed at Generation X. On the contrary, Harry Potter has his schoolmates to rely on, just like Tom Sawyer has his gang of friends, Frodo has his fellow hobbits, and the four sibling Pevensies travel together through the wardrobe; all are coming from a protected and secure childhood into times of trouble and danger to actually meet the world head-on and change it for the better. Pullman's writing tone is different too, which is remarked upon by Kern:
I think Pullman is brilliant, but as I point out in the book, the language he employs is finely tuned to please well-schooled adults, and therefore adult critics of children’s literature. My seven-year-old son had no trouble following the first three Potter stories, as I read them to him and explained some difficult passages, but he found the fourth very taxing and finally lost interest in the fifth. The books had become too mature. I can’t even imagine reading His Dark Materials to him. Harry is capable of drawing, and holding, a younger audience.The comparison of Rowling to Tolkien and Lewis doesn't totally hold up, though; for one thing, The Lord of the Rings and the Narnia books were written much later in the generational timeline, i.e. after World War II. This might be attributable to the fact that Tolkien and Lewis were born near the end of their generation, while Rowling was born near the beginning of Gen X. Also, Strauss & Howe's generational studies concentrate primarily on American history, so it's not clear that British generations match up the same way; although both shared the same 17th century generational configuration, the Civil War caused a one-time skip in the American generational cycle (it came too early, forcing generations into different roles than they would have otherwise filled), and I don't think there was a similar skip in British history. It's still an interesting thing to think about, though.
By the way, Melissa Anelli (editor of
leaky__cauldron) has a thoughtful review of the Prisoner of Azkaban movie on her personal journal. It's a good analysis of what the movie got right and wrong.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Like old Warner Brothers cartoons, I think Rowling is particularly good at appealing to a range of ages, and I very much enjoy how her writing changes as the characters get older. Their observations become more astute; things that would be absurd from an 11 year old POV are perfectly valid from a 15 year old. Pullman's audience is definitely a fair bit older, at least 11-12 for most things except perhaps I Was a Rat! His Sally Lockhart books, which I vaguely recall are suggested for age 11 and up, include premarital sex which results in a pregnancy (and then the young man dying in a fire not long after). His sense of "children's book" is clearly not quite the same as a lot of other people's.
(Seems like pretty much all I read these days is "young adult fiction.")
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From:
Harold Blume
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is 435 pages. Blume can read a single page in 6 seconds. It would take him 43 minutes and 30 seconds to finish Azkaban. He has excellent reading comprehension, but given the time spent (and dwarfing it with the other dozens of books he'd read in the same week), no wonder he misses out on some details.
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Re: Harold Blume