nah, bra, its alright

>>7537663
>sorcerer's stone

murika

>>7537702
Is Philosopher too hard to handle?

>>7537663

Keep going until you have finished the series.

>>7537708
americans don't know what philosophy is

>>7537723
Ain't it that that thing with Baby Jesus tell us to be awesome to each other?

>>7537708
Oh Americans...stupid stupid Americans...They're so stupid right guys?

>>7537663
it was all a sunstroke induced dream caused by harry's cruel aunt and uncle forcing him to spread manure on a hot summer day.

when he wakes up he realizes they weren't all that cruel at all and that some family is better than no family at all.

THERE NOW YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ IT.

>>7537663
>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.

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.

>>7537908
Yes

-American

>>7537921
>As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs."
Not as bad as rowlings constant use of "[character] beamed at [other character]" which is seemingly every other line.