Great analysis, very enjoyable to read. As a member of that generation (I am now 35) that read Harry Potter, I have always found it peculiar that it became such a 'cult object' in society in a way that none of its competitors ever did. I read it as a kid, of course, and watched the films, but never became obsessed with it. I may be wrong, but it seems like the HP obsession is especially strong in America, because it taps into two fantasies: that of a magical world, and that of 'Olde England' to which many Americans are so drawn. It is also a 'school mythology', and I notice that Harry Potter fans tend to be women, perhaps because (at least in my experience) women tend to enjoy school more, or have fonder memories of it.
Malinowski distinguished 'science, magic, and religion'; for him, magic was basically primitive technology ( Tolkien would have agreed). This is part of the problem with Potter for me- it rarely moves beyond magic/technology. Everything in the secondary world is just modern, middle-class English life transposed into another dimension, where magic wands (what would Freud say...) replace tools. With Dumbledore and a few others being an exception, a glimpse into something higher... perhaps?
And yet, I am struck by how many people treat it with an attitude approaching the religious. It reminds me a bit how 60's rock bands became part of the 'Boomer' mythology....
One of the unique things about this obsession is precisely that it is not an American phenomenon. Even stranger, it is a mass cultural phenomenon unrelated to the U.S., which is rare these days. This is an interesting point :-) As you say, the books contain many fantasies, but I'm not sure the fantasy element alone is sufficient to explain their mass attraction, which is arguably unprecedented.
As for the Malinowski connection, this scheme ('science, magic and religion') is not uniquely his. Perhaps the most interesting predecessor is Auguste Comte, but arguably even more mandane anthropologists like Frazer solidified it. Either way, Tolkien is definitely not one to view magic and technology as two sides of the same coin; in fact, he's done a good job in characterising magic in On Fairy Stories. Be that as it may, you're right that the 'true magic' or the 'non-middle-class-day-to-day' magic in the books is hidden to some extent, but I tried to do something to bring it out, because it is there.
As for the religion part - well, this is an explicit analogy in what I've written :-) You've hit the nail on the head: people treat it as if it were a religion, almost as if they grew up on a certain mythology.
Excellent piece! This is something I've been thinking about lately -- why some books grab us and hold on even though they are kind of terrible by most measures of literary quality. The series that brought this to mind for me was "Dungeon Crawler Carl," which is likewise totally implausible and clumsily written and generally a mess, and yet I blasted through seven gigantic books at much cost to my sleep, and am impatiently awaiting the eighth.
You've just reminded me that Harry Potter was the same way. They're quite different series, but three common elements stand out for me:
1. Breakneck pace. Both are written with an almost frantic energy, racing on to the next thing without a pause or slowdown. The one place in the Harry Potter books I really struggled with was the final book where there's a long sequence of Harry, Hermione, and Ron just kind of wandering around aimlessly; and that's the one time the pace flags.
2. Vivid, memorable characters. I don't say *deep* characters, they're not particularly, but they have very well-defined personalities that drive their actions and their dialogue.
3. Enthusiastic worldbuilding. Again, I don't say it's *good* or consistent worldbuilding. Tolkien would turn up his nose at it, and he'd be absolutely right. But both writers are brimming with wacky ideas and they throw them out rapid-fire, inviting us to laugh at the silliness even as they tell a serious story.
Iv'e been thinking going into Dungeon Crawler Carl, but it seems that my fantasy list is rather long these days. Good to know it has some similar characteristics. Your comment bumped Carl up the list :-)
I was struck by Byatt's claim that the New York Times did not review Terry Pratchett books. It seems she was almost right - they had reviewed the previous Pratchett novel a few months prior, but then seems to have been the first time, barring a highly negative far-earlier review of his co-authored Good Omens.
I wouldn't call it a correction. As I said, she was almost right. If Pratchett (when we was alive) and others like him are reviewed by the critics now, it probably is because HP paved the way.
This was a lot of fun to read! Good points. Good analysis. Love your prose style. One piece of entirely constructive feedback (since I really like your writing): section titles would really help the pacing of your work; in a long piece like this, everyone needs a break once in a while, and finishing a section comes with a nice little feeling of reward. Just a thought!
Thank you for reading this. Thank you also for the compliments, not sure I deserve all of them, but it is nice to be appreciated from time to time. I know I have a bit of trouble with accessible pieces, and the tip about the sub-headers helps. I'll try to incorporate it in future writing :-)
This is exhausting tbh. It was a fun story. It gripped us. It’s not highbrow literature, because it is a children’s book. But she is, at heart, good at telling mystery/whodunnit stories in very basic accessible prose with a dry humour that appeals to kids because it feels honest. She’s still a bad person.
She is a bad person, and the books walked a generation of child readers through a politically complicated era with an explicitly political message that was rare in children’s literature at the time.
I'm not sure I understand why it is important that she is a "bad person" - because of some Twitter quarrels? - or why is it so important to mention twice, but your point about her character being irrelevant here rather holds. One of the things I've tried to show here is why, even though it is not 'highbrow literature', it might still be of some importance, and also why, specifically, *her* character doesn't have anything to do with the success of the books.
The only pushback I'd offer is that her books were by no means 'unique' even in the aspect of offering a political message in a children's book.
I think in the landscape of children’s literature at that time that they were quite unique in that regard. The books were, like you said too, highly unoriginal in many ways. The worst witch series has a tremendous amount of overlap, and it’s clear she was drawing (overtly) on plenty of existing works. There’s one whose title I can’t remember, but it’s about a boy whose parents disappear on vacation and leave him notes. Even there were parallels! But politically speaking, they were explicit in ways almost no children’s books were without being didactic, and especially for the era (I’m coming at this from a US perspective, but 9/11 and the London tube bombings and the subsequent wars impacted the entire anglophone world).
I put in the qualifiers on her character because people are often quick online to make accusations of latent biases if you have a nuanced point of view on anything lol.
I appreciated the second half of your essay; I am just exhausted by the constant evaluation of Harry Potter’s quality by adult metrics.
Thank you :-) I think you're spot on on several issues here. About the politics in children's books: post-1968, there were probably quite a few children's books that addressed politics. I'm not even talking about Orwell's Animal Farm or other older children's books. But you're also right that I'm not as familiar with the American landscape of that time, so you probably know better what was and wasn't original back then.
Great analysis, very enjoyable to read. As a member of that generation (I am now 35) that read Harry Potter, I have always found it peculiar that it became such a 'cult object' in society in a way that none of its competitors ever did. I read it as a kid, of course, and watched the films, but never became obsessed with it. I may be wrong, but it seems like the HP obsession is especially strong in America, because it taps into two fantasies: that of a magical world, and that of 'Olde England' to which many Americans are so drawn. It is also a 'school mythology', and I notice that Harry Potter fans tend to be women, perhaps because (at least in my experience) women tend to enjoy school more, or have fonder memories of it.
Malinowski distinguished 'science, magic, and religion'; for him, magic was basically primitive technology ( Tolkien would have agreed). This is part of the problem with Potter for me- it rarely moves beyond magic/technology. Everything in the secondary world is just modern, middle-class English life transposed into another dimension, where magic wands (what would Freud say...) replace tools. With Dumbledore and a few others being an exception, a glimpse into something higher... perhaps?
And yet, I am struck by how many people treat it with an attitude approaching the religious. It reminds me a bit how 60's rock bands became part of the 'Boomer' mythology....
One of the unique things about this obsession is precisely that it is not an American phenomenon. Even stranger, it is a mass cultural phenomenon unrelated to the U.S., which is rare these days. This is an interesting point :-) As you say, the books contain many fantasies, but I'm not sure the fantasy element alone is sufficient to explain their mass attraction, which is arguably unprecedented.
As for the Malinowski connection, this scheme ('science, magic and religion') is not uniquely his. Perhaps the most interesting predecessor is Auguste Comte, but arguably even more mandane anthropologists like Frazer solidified it. Either way, Tolkien is definitely not one to view magic and technology as two sides of the same coin; in fact, he's done a good job in characterising magic in On Fairy Stories. Be that as it may, you're right that the 'true magic' or the 'non-middle-class-day-to-day' magic in the books is hidden to some extent, but I tried to do something to bring it out, because it is there.
As for the religion part - well, this is an explicit analogy in what I've written :-) You've hit the nail on the head: people treat it as if it were a religion, almost as if they grew up on a certain mythology.
Excellent piece! This is something I've been thinking about lately -- why some books grab us and hold on even though they are kind of terrible by most measures of literary quality. The series that brought this to mind for me was "Dungeon Crawler Carl," which is likewise totally implausible and clumsily written and generally a mess, and yet I blasted through seven gigantic books at much cost to my sleep, and am impatiently awaiting the eighth.
You've just reminded me that Harry Potter was the same way. They're quite different series, but three common elements stand out for me:
1. Breakneck pace. Both are written with an almost frantic energy, racing on to the next thing without a pause or slowdown. The one place in the Harry Potter books I really struggled with was the final book where there's a long sequence of Harry, Hermione, and Ron just kind of wandering around aimlessly; and that's the one time the pace flags.
2. Vivid, memorable characters. I don't say *deep* characters, they're not particularly, but they have very well-defined personalities that drive their actions and their dialogue.
3. Enthusiastic worldbuilding. Again, I don't say it's *good* or consistent worldbuilding. Tolkien would turn up his nose at it, and he'd be absolutely right. But both writers are brimming with wacky ideas and they throw them out rapid-fire, inviting us to laugh at the silliness even as they tell a serious story.
Iv'e been thinking going into Dungeon Crawler Carl, but it seems that my fantasy list is rather long these days. Good to know it has some similar characteristics. Your comment bumped Carl up the list :-)
I was struck by Byatt's claim that the New York Times did not review Terry Pratchett books. It seems she was almost right - they had reviewed the previous Pratchett novel a few months prior, but then seems to have been the first time, barring a highly negative far-earlier review of his co-authored Good Omens.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/books/books-in-brief-fiction-poetry-259047.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/07/books/the-four-bikers-of-the-apocalypse.html
Ok, to be fair, I just assumed she is right as well, and to be honest, Good Omens is not the best of his works :-) Thanks for the correction.
I wouldn't call it a correction. As I said, she was almost right. If Pratchett (when we was alive) and others like him are reviewed by the critics now, it probably is because HP paved the way.
This was a lot of fun to read! Good points. Good analysis. Love your prose style. One piece of entirely constructive feedback (since I really like your writing): section titles would really help the pacing of your work; in a long piece like this, everyone needs a break once in a while, and finishing a section comes with a nice little feeling of reward. Just a thought!
Thank you for reading this. Thank you also for the compliments, not sure I deserve all of them, but it is nice to be appreciated from time to time. I know I have a bit of trouble with accessible pieces, and the tip about the sub-headers helps. I'll try to incorporate it in future writing :-)
This is exhausting tbh. It was a fun story. It gripped us. It’s not highbrow literature, because it is a children’s book. But she is, at heart, good at telling mystery/whodunnit stories in very basic accessible prose with a dry humour that appeals to kids because it feels honest. She’s still a bad person.
She is a bad person, and the books walked a generation of child readers through a politically complicated era with an explicitly political message that was rare in children’s literature at the time.
Many things can be true at once.
I'm not sure I understand why it is important that she is a "bad person" - because of some Twitter quarrels? - or why is it so important to mention twice, but your point about her character being irrelevant here rather holds. One of the things I've tried to show here is why, even though it is not 'highbrow literature', it might still be of some importance, and also why, specifically, *her* character doesn't have anything to do with the success of the books.
The only pushback I'd offer is that her books were by no means 'unique' even in the aspect of offering a political message in a children's book.
I think in the landscape of children’s literature at that time that they were quite unique in that regard. The books were, like you said too, highly unoriginal in many ways. The worst witch series has a tremendous amount of overlap, and it’s clear she was drawing (overtly) on plenty of existing works. There’s one whose title I can’t remember, but it’s about a boy whose parents disappear on vacation and leave him notes. Even there were parallels! But politically speaking, they were explicit in ways almost no children’s books were without being didactic, and especially for the era (I’m coming at this from a US perspective, but 9/11 and the London tube bombings and the subsequent wars impacted the entire anglophone world).
I put in the qualifiers on her character because people are often quick online to make accusations of latent biases if you have a nuanced point of view on anything lol.
I appreciated the second half of your essay; I am just exhausted by the constant evaluation of Harry Potter’s quality by adult metrics.
Thank you :-) I think you're spot on on several issues here. About the politics in children's books: post-1968, there were probably quite a few children's books that addressed politics. I'm not even talking about Orwell's Animal Farm or other older children's books. But you're also right that I'm not as familiar with the American landscape of that time, so you probably know better what was and wasn't original back then.
Complaining that the world of Harry Potter is illogical seems like seriously missing the point.
I'm not sure who the object of this comment is - Me? Bloom? Byatt? Someone in the comments section? I don't think anybody was making that argument.