Hogwarts Professor

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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…]

Yogi Berra, inspired American living koan, is supposed to have said (when Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle were hitting back to back home runs repeatedly for the New York Yankees) “this is like deja vu all over again.” I’m no yogi but I confess to understanding what the home plate pundit was thinking. The dismissals of, objections to, and superficial readings of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga are remarkably reminiscent of the critical reception to Joanne Rowling’s Harry Potter novels and persistent beliefs about the Hogwarts adventures. To my surprise, quite a few serious readers of Ms. Rowling’s work are playing the part of Harold Bloom and Michael O’Brien in the update to the Potter wars of years past.

I have read and enjoyed all four and a half of the Twilght books. In that accomplishment and enjoyment I am hardly unique; when I checked several weeks ago, the four books in print held four of the top five slots at Amazon.com and on the New York Times Best Sellers list. But in asserting that the books have literary value and that their popularity is perfectly understandable (without insulting those who love the books by saying they’re morons, have no taste, or belong exclusively to the category of ‘pubescent girls’), I find myself standing alone as literate friends move to the other side of the room rolling their eyeballs and shaking their heads.

I’ve had this experience before, and, like Prof. Berra, I’m startled to be “feeling deja vu all over again.”

Ms. Meyer’s and Ms. Rowling’s debut series have two obvious things in common: they are both wildly popular and they both have been dismissed, as James Thomas said of Potter critics in academia, for being “too current, too popular, and too juvenile.” There’s little to add about how well each of these series is selling but a closer look at what turns critics and culture warriors off about Bella Swann and Harry Potter reveals an ironic twist or two. In this first in a series of posts this week, I want to look at genre and the role it plays in critical acceptance and dismissal. [Read more…]