While researching this essay about the negative buzz that rings through the Writer’s Community (I use the term Writer’s Community for lack of a better one) every time a new Harry Potter book comes along, inevitably breaking every sales record in publishing history, I came across a piece about the new Pontiff’s take on the insanely popular Boy Wizard. So, I’ve decided to widen the scope a bit. After listing the three top reasons I’ve heard other writers give for their not-so-glowing opinions of J.K. Rowling’s wildly successful Harry Potter series, along with my rebuttals, I’ll stick my other foot solidly in my mouth by telling you exactly why I think folks with a religious objection to Harry Potter would do better to just keep their opinions to themselves.
Top three Harry Potter peccadilloes:
#1 – J.K. Rowling’s Love of the Adverb.
I’ll admit that I tend to favor Professor William Strunk Jr’s rule against adverb use in my own writing (though you might have noticed I’ve thrown a few in here just for giggles). I’ve heard counts of up to fifteen per page in the Harry Potter books; a bit excessive, I admit. However, her use of adverbs has never dampened my enjoyment of the Harry Potter books, and I’ll take it from the almost seven million copies of The Half-Blood Prince that sold the first day, that other readers agree with me.
In his book On Writing, Stephen King makes his point against adverbs, taking special care to tell readers how much he dislikes them in speech tags. King later refers to J.K. Rowling as a “Master of Back-story,” but neglects to mention her love of the adverb. While silence does not necessarily mean consent, he evidently didn’t feel her breaking of the no adverb rule was worth commenting on.
#2 – Weak Writing.
Now, I don’t know about that. Rowling’s writing is certainly simple (and I don’t mean that in a bad way) and straight forward, but a lack of poetic and flowery prose does not equal bad writing. I’ve seen her writing improve with each book, and her stories continue to grab me.
Some folks simply don’t like her writing or stories, and I accept that tastes in both style and subject matter do vary, but I don’t accept that she’s a weak writer.
#3 – Harry Potter is Literary Junk Food.
J.K. Rowling is not Marcel Proust. I see her as more of a modern Charles Dickens, remembering the story of a mob of Dickens fans who overcrowded a dock while waiting for a ship to deliver the final installment of The Old Curiosity Shop. Several unlucky fans fell off the dock and drowned.
J.K. Rowling’s work will probably not be studied by scholars, or taught by Literature Professors in a hundred years (except maybe for the pure economic effect it has had on the publishing world – Harry Potter is a 100 megaton nuclear warhead in a field of bottle rockets and firecrackers).
For me, her work is pure addictive fun, and for me, that’s enough.
Now on to the Pope.
In a letter sent March of 2003 to Gabriele Kuby, author of Harry Potter - gut oder böse (Harry Potter- good or evil?), a German language book accusing J.K. Rowling’s books of “corrupting the hearts of the young,” then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:
“It is good, that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly.” (Notice Ratzinger’s shocking use of adverbs? Tisk, tisk!)
See http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/jul/05071301.html (Pope Opposes Harry Potter Novels) for the full story.
Does this viewpoint surprise me?
Not at all. Religious groups and leaders have stigmatized the Harry Potter books almost from the start.
Does this viewpoint bother me?
Yes, just a little. Harry Potter is, at its core, a story of good vs. evil, and the line between the two is clearly drawn for the most part. Any obscurity can be put down to a Who-Done-It sense of mystery, rather than an attempt at any kind of moral relativism (a recent example of moral relativism being a line from Starwars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, where the newly christened Darth Vader says “from my point of view the Jedi are evil”).
Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter, and The Order of the Phoenix are good guys, Lord Voldemort, the Malfoys, and The Death Eaters are bad guys. There it is, crystal clear. You’d think a discerning religious community would appreciate the absence of a sticky middle ground between the two, but apparently, many don’t.
This viewpoint is not universal among the religious. My wife, Shawna, is a Baptist and loves Harry Potter, but she seems to me to be the exception, rather than the rule.
Is the religious community’s constant condemnation of the Harry Potter books as evil productive to their goal, which I assume is to get people not to read them?
Hell no.
My wife and I took our first step into J.K. Rowling’s world of Wizards, Muggles, and Hogwarts because my son wanted to read one, and Shawna was concerned about all of the squawking coming from religious groups who opposed the series. We took it on, more in the spirit of a chore than anything else.
Need I say we became instant and enduring fans?
Yes, I was among the crowd of “Potterheads” hanging out at the bookstore at midnight on the release day. I was the third to grab a copy (two, as a matter of fact) from a pallet of six-hundred that was probably gone within hours.
Stop laughing. At least I wasn’t dressed in Hogwarts school robes.
Do I resent the new Pope’s opinion of J.K. Rowling’s books?
Nope. It is his opinion to have, and many share it. However, had religious objectors kept this opinion a little closer to their vests (or in Ratzinger’s case, his robe), the fire-storm of controversy that brought Harry Potter to the world’s attention might never have happened, and J.K. Rowling might now be a lowly mid-lister, or Scholastic may have even canceled the series altogether.
I don’t think the controversy gets full credit for Harry Potter’s success though. J.K. Rowling’s sales might have already been good, I don’t remember that far back, and I’m too tired to research that at one o’clock in the damn morning. The bad religious publicity may have put a spotlight on the series, but that spotlight would have burned out quickly if the story itself weren’t so universally loved.
And to clarify, I don’t really think the Pope is a half-wit, but once that line occurred to me, I had to use it.
Brian Knight
18 Comments, Comment or Ping
Susan
Brian,
Fantastic! I agree with every point 100%.
I have a friend in Oklahoma who told her son that the books are “satanic” and “evil”. Makes me sick. When his teacher read one of the books to the class, he chose to sit out in the hall citing that the book went against his religious beliefs. The kids was eight!
I am a fan (although her use of adverbs in the newest had me climbing a wall) and have been since the first one was published. I love these books and will miss them when she’s done.
~Susan Taylor
Jul 23rd, 2005
Matt Schwartz
LOL — terrific essay Brian! I love it.
Jul 23rd, 2005
Brian
Hey Susan. I feel bad for that poor kid. Only eight and already being denied things on the basis of moronic religious predudice.
The adverb thing used to make me shake my head, but they don’t bother me anymore. I just take them as part of her style, which I enjoy
Matt, I thought you might dig that title
Brian
Jul 23rd, 2005
Greg Montague
Last weekend, the first day of Pottermania, I bought some dinning guides at Borders. Before the clerk rang up the sale, she asked “Do you want a Harry Potter?” It was like stepping into the fast food zone and being asked “Do you want fries with that?”
When you buy a hamburger at McDonald’s culture expects you to order fries with that. Perhaps Harry Potter is so wildly popular because there is a pre-existing expectation that everybody wants Harry Potter. The multitudes gobble up Harry Potter like a side order of fries.
Sure, Harry Potter is okay, he is alright. But he isn’t as good as the hype. All this Harry Potter razzmatazz is marketing run amok.
As for the Pope–I’ll care what he has to say when he send fanatical devotees in nice red uniforms bursting through my doorway.
Jul 23rd, 2005
Robert L. Fleck
For me the best news I saw in all of the Potter madness was that Borders, B&N, etc. reported that 40% or more of the people who bought Potter on the first day also bought at least one other book. That’s about 3 to 3.5 million other books being sold in one 24 hour period. I’d say Potter has been good for publishing, and I don’t care if it’s because of Rowling’s sparkling prose, the Pope (and even more so many US evangelicals) decrying its satanic content, or just because people found something that they like.
Harry Potter sells books, and not just Harry Potter books. And that’s a good thing.
–Bob
Jul 23rd, 2005
Janet Berliner
Good essay. Relevant essay. Selling books is definitely a god thing. When I was a kid, poor and ever-hungry for words, I saved empty cereal boxes and reread them. Sure, I’d rather people read =my= books. I’m (semi) human after all.
Remember Marie Antoinette and “Let ‘em eat cake?” I say, thank you J.K. and let ‘em read books.
Jul 23rd, 2005
Tina
I like the books. I don’t think Rowling’s a brilliant writer, but she’s a great storyteller and they’re really enjoyable stories.
And they’re encourging people to read. That’s important. It’s good. The nice thing about hype is that it focusses people’s attention on something, in this case, a book, and then the people say things like “Well, I’m going to have to wait a year until the next one comes out, what else is there like this?” because they enjoyed it.
So it’s worth the hype. For once.
Jul 23rd, 2005
terry
Selling books is definitely a god thing.
I love a good typo…
Jul 23rd, 2005
Janet Berliner
Maybe it’s a Freudian slip. Sorry.
Jul 24th, 2005
Anonymous
Great essay, Brian!
Now when is Hacks coming out?
Take care,
Troy
Jul 24th, 2005
Anonymous
I’m a devout Catholic and one of the “Potterheads.” I hate the things these wingnuts are saying about it. In fact, I gave Dr. Dobson a piece of my mind when I met him a couple years ago.
~Robert Lewis
Jul 24th, 2005
Lou_Sytsma
Timely essay. The HP books are enjoyable and fun. I disagree with the other poster though, its the overkill in media hype that creates most of the negativity associated with the series.
Jul 25th, 2005
Brian
Thanks for the kind feedback, everyone. It was fun to write.
Troy, you can expect HACKS sometimes next yeard
Brian
Jul 25th, 2005
David Niall Wilson
I curious sometimes how people can blame ALL of something like this on “hype.” Not true. Everywhere you go and read posts on the net, letters to the editor, etc, the people are saying they bought the book and had read it by the next morning - or a day and a half. Many of these people have been reading all their lives, others have been caught up in this particular story line and started. ALL of that cannot be put off on hype. These are solid, entertaining stories, and SERIOUSLY folks, if they weren’t good, marketing and hype could still have sold book I, and probably book II - but the furor over THIS book comes from a solid base of fans who read all the others…I’m among them. I don’t care about the adverbs, I don’t care (at all) what the Pope or any other religious icon has to say (I think they have enough problems in their own ranks without spending their valuable time worrying that good clean entertainment might corrupt someone. Never see one of those Priests reading only The Bible with any issues) (lol). Maybe if they read Harry Potter in Vatican City they’d be happier…
I say, more power to Ms. Rowling, and more books for me, please…
DNW
Jul 25th, 2005
Anonymous
Excellent essay!
I read The Exorcist when I was 12. A cousin caught me reading it and threw a fit - ran to my mother telling her that I shouldn’t be reading it. My mother did something unexpectedly supportive and brilliant. She shrugged and told my cousin, “She’s READING. Leave her alone.” When 1 in 5 people in North America are illiterate, certain people really need to think about what it is they are trying to discourage.
Paige
Jul 25th, 2005
Anonymous
Great essay! I definitely agree with everything you said. And the adverbs… they don’t get on my nerves too much, but I do see their excessiveness.
-Kyle
Jul 26th, 2005
Anonymous
For whatever it’s worth, I think King actually did ding Rowling on her adverbial prolixity in the review he did for the NYT a while back.
—Richard
Jul 27th, 2005
jeff resnick
I find it amazing that in this day and age, people can still call these books evil and horrible for kids. Why? Where is the proof? Since the first Harry Potter book was released, have we seen a rise in satanic rituals by 11 year old boys and girls? It’s really sad.
Jul 28th, 2005
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