Potty

I just finished reading the 6th Harry Potter book. Now, let me put aside my indignation at the depiction of an evil character who has put part of his soul into a ring so that he's somewhat immortal, let me put that aside, and also the depiction of a doorway in a stone wall that shines out as lines of silver in a certain kind of light and of dead bodies with scary eyes floating just below the surface of stagnant water and even the depiction (SPOILER) of a certain kind of character dying in a certain kind of way, let me put all those fairly unimaginative thefts aside and share with you my theory on the HP phenomenon.

These books are like crack, as Dorrie once put it (even going so far as to describe her small cousin as our dealer). Yes. Okay, the genius of J.K. lies in her ability to combine certain elements of stories in such a way to keep the reader constantly enthralled. Everybody loves an underdog story because we see ourselves that way. Everybody loves a school story because school is a microcosm for the real world in which events are simultaneously world-ending and also insignificant. And we all romanticize our school times of the past, not to mention our so-painful-at-the-time adolesence. Thanks to colonialism, everyone more or less loves stories about the pluck of English children, especially if they refer to jumpers and wellies. And most of all, everyone loves a story in which their are constantly new rules of reality being written to boost our heros to greater and more interesting heights.

And Rowling has also plundered a lot of literary tradition to add compelling details to her tale. Not just Lord of the Rings, but a lot of other major fantasy works, as well as folklore, fairytales, horror movies, and, increasingly, sitcoms.

And she weaves it all with impressive skill.

Why, then, does reading any one of her books, with the possible exception of the first one, leave me cold? Admittedly, I keep reading, kinda voraciously, but I've also noticed I read them very lightly, skipping over paragraphs of description and straight on to dialogue or revealing plot points. Hmmmm, just like reading a ... script? Yep, Rowling's plots are interesting, her gags are pretty delightful, and her characters are well-drawn. But her description is often cliched and coarse and, most importantly of all, her stories have little to no inner life. Like a movie script without actors, director, images, lights, sounds.

This wouldn't bother me so much if it I didn't know about the many many children who polish one of her 600 pagers off in three days and don't read anything else for the rest of the year.

Having recently returned to reading after too long, it's a relief to again be plunged into an art form that requires an investment from me for it to really work. Well-written literature invites me in as an observer and a thinker. Well-written children's literature does the same. Rowling invites me to pick which offhand piece of knowledge from book four will turn the plot in book six, but that's hardly the same thing. A good plot does not necessarily make for a good book, although you will slog through all kinds of bad writing to find out what happens in the end. But a world in which we all escape from dragons (but just barely) and every broken nose can be healed with the swish of a wand and all punches can ultimately be rolled with is just too easy, like the books themselves. And all the magical candy gags in the world can't make it interesting.

I will say that the directors of the third and forth films have improved considerably on their source material.