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[lollardfish]

Christopher Hitchens on Harry Potter 7.

Discussion of the phenomenon. Critical, but not in an ad hominem sort of way. Worth a read even by fans.

Comments

[neogrammarian.livejournal.com]

Lovely, thanks so much for the link.

And thank god (har har) for The repeated tactic of deus ex machina (without a deus) has a deplorable effect on both the plot and the dialogue. - a comment I've made over & over and seems to impress no one but me (& now Hitchens) as poor writing.

[creidylad.livejournal.com]

A thoughtful and intriguing article.

I laughed when he started discussing the Manichean paradigm. Perfect, yet I suspect there were more readers not quite getting his meaning than there were agreeing about his points about the books.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I liked it a lot. It's critical, but it's not just blindly critical, it's really looking at the phenomenon.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

The ban on sexual matters is also observed fairly pedantically, though as time has elapsed Rowling has probably acquired male readers who find themselves having vaguely impure thoughts about Hermione Granger (if not, because the thing seems somehow impossible, about Ginny Weasley).

How OLD is this guy, anyhow?

There were some points on which I agreed with him... and some that just struck me as, "he doesn't get it at all, does he?" The thinly-disguised sniffs of offense that something so unrealistic could nonetheless be so popular misses the fact that his hero Orwell himself wrote dark fantasy -- what else, I ask you, was 1984? Oh, but I forgot, that's LITERATURE and therefore could never be science-fictional, no matter what it contains. And the very question, "who ARE these people?" is... well, never mind, I'm used to it by now.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't know. It reminds me of how many sci-fi fans respond when I'm talking about baseball ...

It's just the cry of someone who doesn't get the inclinations of another group.

I think, however, you're missing the point of his review, which is not to wonder at the popularity of the unrealistic, but at the insane, worldwide, popularity of something that really isn't all that good. At least, that's what I get out of it. Of course, I too wonder at the popularity of something that really isn't all that good.