My children WILL read Harry Potter.
fight me /lit/
There are some good characters in Harry Potter and I'm sure they'll enjoy it. I don't really see why not
>>7787470
What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Rowling. I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.
But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now read only J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?
It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."
Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.
>>7787472
>not posting the best part
Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.
>>7787472
Bloom is a poor role-model.
>>7787461
Give me your adress and I'll fuck you up real good, sissy cunt. Fuck Harry Potter.
>>7787478
>poor role model
>contemplates exposing children to non-literature, dulling their minds with cliches
harry potter is child abuse.
>>7787484
I hope someone abused you, or would you have liked to have your cherry popped?
>>7787472
My issue is, she doesn't know how to keep tone, and world build worth a damn. The series first starts off as comedic slapstick fantasy in the vein of children's literature, which gradually turns TOO DARK FOR YOU with the slapstick feeling out of place. She doesn't know how to keep a consistent mood and tone.
Of course, the setting has been discussed to death, so all I'm going to say is, it all falls arpart to even the slightest knit picking.
I only liked the first three tbqhwy familamajam.
>>7787508
the only people who defend harry potter are redditor normies for whom it's the only book they've read on their own volition because it was a meme when they were kids, childhood nostalgia* (the only other things they've read -if they did indeed read them- are a few assigned mid-tier classics in high school, which incidentally they hate as a result and because hurr 2 hard)
*not that it has any redeeming qualities simply the novel media format presented by a book
>>7787472
I suppose then they'll be afforded the benefit of not being a dried up old cunt like Harold Bloom.
>>7787535
truth
>>7787529
Also, the protagonist is a text book definition of a Mary Sue. He was literally born as the Messiah with +30 plot armor, and everybody knows who he is. Are you fucking kidding me? How is any child supposed to relate to him?
>>7787506
>being this triggered
reading harry potter is literally harmful and worse than not reading anything
>that pic
presenting an ostensibly sound mental state, anon.
>>7787553
I mean, he's just a shit character in general, but 'relatability' is, as you should know, a completely worthless criterion, here, in this context.
>>7787508
Right, but this is very intentional. The series grows up with the characters, and the readers.
>>7787553
>Mary Sue
>30+ armour
>>7787954
If disliking Harry Potter is reddit then I guess I am reddit even though I've never been there.
>>7787461
>implying you'll ever get laid
>>7787956
>>>/t/ropes
I agree but I hate when people use those terms.
>>7787472
Is this the same as the Scaruffi Beatles copypasta on /mu/?
>>7787982
No, it's different. One was written by Harold Bloom, the Yale professor and literary critic known for books like The Anxiety of Influence and The Western Canon, and the other was written by Piero Scaruffi, a music critic. But not only are the authors different, the content is different as well. One is about Harry Potter and the decline of public taste and higher learning and the other is about The Beatles' vapidity and rock critics' misguided championing of them. There are perhaps some themes both texts share - they're both by exasperated critics who are upset by the popularity and the occasional critical reverence a piece of pop media receives - but they're not "the same," for the reasons I named: the authors and the content are distinct.
>>7787954
Another hypothesis: he's from /tg/, which path (/tg/ to /lit/) isn't that unlikely
>>7787461
No. Harry Potter is a good children's series. The execution's pretty rough, but there's some genuinely great stuff in there (for children). No, it doesn't have any real deep meaning -- but kids won't get the deep meaning unless you explain it to them, anyway.I didn't, at least -- I could just be retarded, but there's a lot of stuff that I only realised later was meant to be an allegory or carry a message.
>>7787472
I started with Harry Potter, I do read literature. And I've always hated King.
>>7788008
>No, it doesn't have any real deep meaning
If you didn't catch on the the overt christian messiah undertones you must be blind.
>>7788005
But I think an important part of what that anon is referring to is not per se are the pastas similar in content etc. but in how they are used on the board, spamming it around whenever that particular piece of popular media is mentioned, so that effectively after a while it'll just stop. I look forward to no -- wait, why the fuck are we having harry potter threads again, jesus christ, they really are here, aren't they, fuck
>>7788008
>my experience means he's wrong xd
you do not read literature because of harry potter, you would have found it independently. indeed harry potter is not literature so note the disconnect.
>>7787461
>My children WILL be plebs
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, I guess.
>>7787553
>Also, the protagonist is a text book definition of a Mary Sue
No he's not.
A Mary Sue can only be a female character.
Harry is a Gary.
I don't agree with this idea that reading Harry Potter dooms a child to acquiring a taste for airport-fiction later on.
>>7788023
you can be saved by introduction to proper literature
remember most people don't read at all
>>7788013
>real deep
Your standard teen fiction novel has those kinds of messages.
>>7788019
Harry Potter got me to read. I wouldn't read before it. I just thought it was stupid (I was an uberSTEMlord before I actually went to school).
And you know what? I got into a fucktonne of other stuff as a result. I *did* read Kipling because of it. I *did* read Wind in the Willows and Alice because of it. Sure, my parents probably had a far bigger impact than the book alone ever could -- as >>7788026 said, introduction to proper literature helps a lot -- but Harry Potter remained a major help.
--That said, I wasn't 11 or 12.
>>7787508
The readers grew up to a the series progressed.
It's really not that awful. Your children's interest in literature won't be decided by just one book unless you already fuck up by making it the only books they read. Start reading to them early, children's classics, fairy tales. Set a good example with the things you read. I'm sure some light entertainment won't turn them into Stephen King fans.
>>7788023
It's like smoking.
Smoking cigarettes won't 100% guarantee you will die of lung cancer, just greatly increase the risk.
Reading Harry Potter does not mean you are necessarily destined to a life of plebdom, it's just statistically correlated with incidence. Therapy and early intervention >>7788026
may potentially reduce the risk.
>>7788096
You may very well be right, but I think it's contribution to plebdom is far smaller than one would imagine.
>>7788096
I think you're wrong.
It's more like -- if you read Harry Potter, it is likely for unrelated reasons that you will not progress to literature. These unrelated reasons being that most people do not progress to literature (because of lack of time, lack of education, wage-slavery). Harry Potter is popular. So most people read it. Naturally, most of these people do not then go on to read literature because most people in general don't.
The book itself has no direct effect *either way* on whether people read literature. It can have an effect on whether people read *books*, but not literature -- you won't be discouraged from reading literature because you happened to read it (how could you?) and you won't *directly* be encouraged to read it (because there's no list at the back of "books you should totally read, kids"). You will be encouraged to look into other fantasy books, however. This will lead you into good literature, if you're into it.
>>7787461
Don't force them if they don't want to, though. They'll really hate it, then, just like every other person who had those books shoved down their throats by family members or friends, no matter if they're good stories or not. Let them read what they like, and if they don't enjoy the meaningless crap you happen to like, love them anyway.
