For Part 1 of this post, click here. for Part 2, click here, for part 3, click here, or just scroll down the home page.

Good news and bad news today. The bad news is that neither of my cars was up to the trip to Connecticut this morning: no Jim Dale reading Goblet, no business lunch at Zossima Press, no conversation with Prof. Tumminio and the Eli Bulldogs about Christology and Harry Potter. Major downer. The only upside, besides not driving seven hours today, is I can forge ahead with the effort here in comparing the critical reception Ms. Rowling’s Hogwarts Adventures received with reviews of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga.

Today is my last note about critics per se before detailing in four steps what I think they missed in both series, namely, why readers love these stories as much as they do. I’ve touched on dismissals and criticism according to core genre and to Culture War transgressions in terms of both religious touchstones and political correctness. Today let’s look at how some readers have attempted to diminish the significance of Harry and Bella by suggesting they are not originals, i.e., that the value and importance of the books about their adventures are derived from other and better sources that inspired and influenced Ms. Rowling and Ms. Meyer. [Read more…]

For Part 1 of this post, click here or just scroll down on the home page.

I’m going to return to the “academic elites” like Harold Bloom and drive-by mavens like Stephen King the day after tomorrow when I hope to detail the literary artistry and levels of meaning they neglect in their dismissal of the Twilight books as Harlequin romances. This morning’s echo of aspects of Pottermania in Ms. Meyer’s critical reception is less academic and aesthetic than cultural, as in ‘Culture War.’ The ever vigilant puritan arbiters of what is acceptable and edifying reading and, more to the point, what is not uplifting for young readers are on the march to link Bella and Edward’s love story with the occult as they did Harry’s Hogwarts Adventures.

This was predictable to the point of seeming inevitable. It remains, nonetheless, a sad confirmation of the pathetic state of critical thinking in our times. The academic mavens cannot get their heads around a book’s genre and popularity because of hoi polloi associations, which is to be expected from folks posturing as certified elites or ‘vigilants’ in matters of taste and literature. Much sadder to me is the inability of many thoughtful Christian readers to read a novel at any level other than its surface meaning and seeming moral message because of their social agendas.

I don’t need to review at any depth the history of ‘The Controversy’ for serious readers of Harry Potter. We all remember too well the years in which carrying Ms. Rowling’s books in public meant the strong possibility that friends and even strangers would feel obliged to ask whether we were aware the novels had an occult message and that faithful Christians avoided them. In many faith communities, it became a touchstone or litmus strip of biblical orthodoxy and orthopraxis to disparage the books as “gateways to the occult.” [Read more…]