So . . . what are we going to read now?
I was one of the people who got their copy of the last Harry Potter book at midnight on Saturday. The Borders on State and Randolph was packed with people of all ages, including quite a few that I would have placed in their early twenties. The bookstore had had a few hours of events leading up to the sale, so there were a lot of employees and little kids dressed in various costumes based on characters in the books. We were classed according to whether we'd pre-ordered a copy and how early we'd gotten to the store and given colored wristbands to assign our places in line. There was the usual amount of pushing and jostling that happens when you get a lot of people in one place, but in general the mood was pretty amiable. I was in the green wristband group, the second last, but the actual distribution of books was handled pretty efficiently. I got out of there about 12:45, jogged home, and cracked it open.
I'd been thinking about a blog entry I'd read a few days ago, written by a woman who describes herself as a Harry Potter skeptic. She doesn't understand the fuss, she says; the series may be entertaining to read, but it's not exactly full of literary merit, and J.K. Rowling needed a much better editor. It wasn't the first time that I'd heard that sort of thing from people, but it had me thinking as I was picking up the new tome two nights ago.
Specifically, I was thinking of something I'd read in a commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost by Samuel Johnson:
But original deficiency cannot be supplied. The want of human interest is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.
And there are probably a lot of Milton scholars, and Milton readers, who would find this judgment excessively harsh. But I read it, when I was reading PL in a class a year ago (and taking a break to read some criticism, never a good thing), thinking, right on, Johnson. I found it a cold book, difficult to really get into.
So I'm going to commit some philological heresy here and compare PL and HP. Is Paradise Lost better written? Philologically denser? Will it endure longer than HP? Yes, of course it is and it will. I don't think the HP books are great literary works or deserving of hero worship. I like them because they remind me what wonderful chemistry certain books can have, how they make you care deeply about the characters and what happens to them. I admired Milton's epic, but I wouldn't have stayed up in the small hours of the morning, fortified by a pot of coffee and the crumbs at the bottom of a bag of tortilla chips, to finish it. And I certainly didn't feel sad when I was finished with it, like I used to feel on December 26th when I was a little kid and knew that all that nice fuzzy anticipation was over.
As for what I thought of it - and I'm going to be really vague here, in case you haven't read the book yet - I'm not really sure yet. I think I'm going to have to read it again, just to pick up some of the smaller details. The first time through, the plot struck me a pretty unwieldy. That is sort of understandable, given that there were so many compelling characters and plot lines that needed resolution, but it felt a little rushed, as all sorts of elements from the first six books got dusted off for one last hurrah. There are also a few really talky passages at the end as lingering mysteries are revealed, and they're placed a little awkwardly, right in the middle of the last showdown.
But there were also parts I really liked, moments that I found really touching. So, we'll see the second reading feels like.
And one last thing. There was one authorial decision that pretty much everyone thought J.K. Rowling was going to have to make, and I thought that she sort of tried to have her cake and eat it too. I was a little annoyed by it. On the other hand, as I was falling asleep at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning, it occured to me that this part of the book might - at least on some level - have been the author's last thumbing of her nose to the Christian fundamentalists who have made such a fuss about Harry promoting Satanism and witchcraft.
In which case, Ms. Rowling, I am so in your corner.
I'd been thinking about a blog entry I'd read a few days ago, written by a woman who describes herself as a Harry Potter skeptic. She doesn't understand the fuss, she says; the series may be entertaining to read, but it's not exactly full of literary merit, and J.K. Rowling needed a much better editor. It wasn't the first time that I'd heard that sort of thing from people, but it had me thinking as I was picking up the new tome two nights ago.
Specifically, I was thinking of something I'd read in a commentary on Milton's Paradise Lost by Samuel Johnson:
But original deficiency cannot be supplied. The want of human interest is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.
And there are probably a lot of Milton scholars, and Milton readers, who would find this judgment excessively harsh. But I read it, when I was reading PL in a class a year ago (and taking a break to read some criticism, never a good thing), thinking, right on, Johnson. I found it a cold book, difficult to really get into.
So I'm going to commit some philological heresy here and compare PL and HP. Is Paradise Lost better written? Philologically denser? Will it endure longer than HP? Yes, of course it is and it will. I don't think the HP books are great literary works or deserving of hero worship. I like them because they remind me what wonderful chemistry certain books can have, how they make you care deeply about the characters and what happens to them. I admired Milton's epic, but I wouldn't have stayed up in the small hours of the morning, fortified by a pot of coffee and the crumbs at the bottom of a bag of tortilla chips, to finish it. And I certainly didn't feel sad when I was finished with it, like I used to feel on December 26th when I was a little kid and knew that all that nice fuzzy anticipation was over.
As for what I thought of it - and I'm going to be really vague here, in case you haven't read the book yet - I'm not really sure yet. I think I'm going to have to read it again, just to pick up some of the smaller details. The first time through, the plot struck me a pretty unwieldy. That is sort of understandable, given that there were so many compelling characters and plot lines that needed resolution, but it felt a little rushed, as all sorts of elements from the first six books got dusted off for one last hurrah. There are also a few really talky passages at the end as lingering mysteries are revealed, and they're placed a little awkwardly, right in the middle of the last showdown.
But there were also parts I really liked, moments that I found really touching. So, we'll see the second reading feels like.
And one last thing. There was one authorial decision that pretty much everyone thought J.K. Rowling was going to have to make, and I thought that she sort of tried to have her cake and eat it too. I was a little annoyed by it. On the other hand, as I was falling asleep at 6 a.m. on Saturday morning, it occured to me that this part of the book might - at least on some level - have been the author's last thumbing of her nose to the Christian fundamentalists who have made such a fuss about Harry promoting Satanism and witchcraft.
In which case, Ms. Rowling, I am so in your corner.
posted by Q at
5:05 AM
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