>>8016098
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.

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.

>>8016123
Well said, Anon.

>>8016123
>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
The word "stretched" appears only seven times in the book, and none of them refers to any character's legs.

I mean, I agree with Bloom on the Harry Potter series, but this was a big fat lie.

>>8016142
p. 4

>>8016123
I received some words from my brother the day before he died of cancer, "You have to play the game.", I knew what he meant. I am still young, fresh out of high school, I will eventually have to play the game and if I win I will have worked through these "Walt Whitman was racist" seminars. I will try to be a positive change. Its all I can work for with my miserable life.

>>8016142
He should have mentioned the infite "muttered Harry" "murmured Ron" "Malfoy sneered" etc.

>>8016172
"ejaculated Slughorn" is the best one desu

>>8016098
no

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professor quidditch is my favorite hogwards school of watchcraft and wizardy professor in all of hogwards school for witchrafting wizardry in all the hogwarst school books written by j.k. granger

its a shame hermione turned black though whats up with that lol.

>>8016677
>its a shame hermione turned black though whats up with that lol.
Her body, her choice.

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>>8016677
btw japs often draw hermiona as a catgirl

Predictions:

- Hermione is described for the first time as Black.
- Harry Potter is actually gay. And Ron.
- Hogwarts apologizes for the mudblooders that weren't allowed to join the school 200 years ago.