From the article:
Consider that, with the release of each new volume, Rowling's readers have been driven not only into greater fits of enthusiasm but into more precise synchronization with one another. Through a marvel of modern publishing, advertising and distribution, millions of people will receive or buy "The Deathly Hallows" on a single day. There's something thrilling about that sort of unity, except that it has almost nothing to do with the unique pleasures of reading a novel: that increasingly rare opportunity to step out of sync with the world, to experience something intimate and private, the sense that you and an author are conspiring for a few hours to experience a place by yourselves -- without a movie version or a set of action figures. Through no fault of Rowling's, Potter mania nonetheless trains children and adults to expect the roar of the coliseum, a mass-media experience that no other novel can possibly provide.I mostly think the author is just a cranky old man. But there is a part of me that wishes Harry Potter was just a book, and that his latest tale wasn't timed to coincide with a major motion picture, and I wasn't surrounded by tie-in action figures, cereals and bedsheets.
3 comments:
I read this article and he is a grumpy old man. It's like one of those indie rock people who can't like a Jack Johnson song because too many people like him. Or people who complain about the sopranos because everyone likes it. Sometimes some really good things are appreciated by a lot of people.
That being said it is really scary that over half the people in this country don't read a book a year.
"Grumpy old man" is an ad hominem defense -- he may be a grumpy old man, but that doesn't mean he didn't make some points worth reading.
I don't agree with everything he says either, I just wanted to share a different viewpoint with all the Hogwarts groupies out there.
I kind of agree w/ you about that. Or that the movies came out after all the books were done. Mostly b/c I think about when I read the first books, I had my own images of what people looked like or what hogwarts and other places looked like and now those images are replaced w/ what we've seen in the movies. However, I really do like the movies and I think now that we are moving past the more happy go-lucky books the movies are going to get even better. It was crazy to re-read those books now, how the tone of the books have changed so much.
Post a Comment