Recently, the Wall Street Journal published an article decrying the state of Young Adult fiction, proclaiming that the whole genre has gone to the sewers with the graphic, the gruesome, and the crude. The article has generated a firestorm of response, and some pretty lively email amongst the Professors here and our associates, so we thought it was about time that we got up a post about it so we could continue that conversation here! [Read more…]
We Didn’t Start the Fire: Young Adult Reading Controversy
June 12, 2011 by 16 Comments
Bella Swan and Edward Cullen Go to University: The Scandal of Teaching Twilight as Literature
February 9, 2011 by 10 Comments
Last fall saw the first big surge of Colleges offering classes with Stephenie Meyer’s Forks Saga on the required reading list. Seven schools from Harvard to the University of South Carolina on the East Coast to Occidental on the Left Side and University of Iowa holding down the heartland offered courses about Twilight or with it as an important part of the course’s theme. Note that the reporter in the article makes clear, though, that this must be a function of school’s pandering to Generation Twi-hard:
So is academia responding to a cultural phenomenon or pandering to a powerful market group? That will depend on the course structure. But one thing is certain: the classes are totally going to sell out.
On my Deathly Hallows Speaking Tour last fall, I spoke to the class in South Carolina. Those students were right on board with trying to figure out the artistry and meaning that has caused Twi-mania. They admitted, of course, that it was almost consensus on campus that they couldn’t be serious. Which goes to show once again that what the herd thinks, especially the critical, media, and academic herds, is nearly guaranteed to be off base (and not a little lazy). But it gets better.
TwiHards Finally Find Middle-Aged Guy Critic?
January 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Over at Twilight Lexicon this week, the biggest Twilight fan site, there is in article praising Mark Kermode for his BBC5 radio review of Eclipse, in which he lauds the film, defying the trend of most film critics. Kermode, who makes a pretty good living by writing against the flow, praises the third cinematic installment of the Twilight Saga (which we also reviewed positively here), despite having never read the books.
The readers at Lexicon commenting on the review are, for the most part, tripping over themselves to applaud him. Oddly enough, they seem to think Kermode is (A) the only intellectual-type taking Twilight “seriously” and (B) the only middle-aged guy doing that. Actually, they are wrong on both counts, and he’s not even first.
Let ‘The Deathly Hallows Speaking Tour’ Begin! Ring Composition Book Now Available Online
October 18, 2010 by 12 Comments
In celebration of the release of the first Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows movie on 19 November, I begin my Deathly Hallows Speaking Tour today. With stops as far west as Moline, Illinois, north as Milwaukee, Wisconsin, east as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and south as Columbia, South Carolina, the next four weeks promise great fun that will literally be all over the map!
I’m excited about this trip because of the number and variety of venues, of course, but also because I’ll be sharing for the first time with a larger audience the mind-blowing discovery that Ms. Rowling, as her name suggests, is a Ring Writer. Not only is her series a seven book cycle conforming to the four traditional markers of Ring Composition that we find in ancient, biblical, medieval, and modern works, but all seven books, to include every one of the 198 chapters and epilogue, are shaped by ring formula.
Below the jump you’ll find a list of the twenty stops I’ll be making in the next four weeks and the several topics I’ll be addressing. I hope to see you at one or more! If you cannot make it, say, because you live well west of the Mississippi, I have put together a Harry Potter as Ring Composition and Ring Cycle special limited edition book for this tour that is available either as a paperback book or pdf file to download. It’s an expanded version of my talk to TGTSNBN earlier this month and it will only be available until the much longer version is published early next year. It’s not as much fun as a talk — but it does have all the diagrams and charts detailing Ms. Rowling’s remarkable ring artistry.
Read on for details about The Deathly Hallows Speaking Tour and a brand new Potter pundits publication!
‘Spotlight’ on Twilight a Hit — Overseas!
October 18, 2010 by 6 Comments
Two years post publication, Deathly Hallows Lectures continues to sell better than any of my books, to include those published by major houses and distributed in book stores. Given the several challenging chapters in that book on literary alchemy, Dante, and eye symbolism, this is really quite remarkable — and reassuring to me as I set out on my month long ‘Deathly Hallows Tour’ (see above). The continued sales of Lectures tell me that readers really do want and appreciate a thoughtful and prolonged look at their favorite books.
Perhaps I should say Harry Potter readers? Sales of my Twilight Saga opus, Spotlight: An Up-Close Look at the Artistry and Meaning of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, have never taken off, though readers like James Thomas at Pepperdine have told me it is the best thing I’ve written. Most of the mail I receive about it, though, comes from overseas.
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