« Links for the day 08-23-2007 | Main | Harold Crick is ... Jesus? »
August 28, 2007
Back to The Book
Alan Jacobs expands on his earlier semi-review of Harry Potter in Books & Culture. It is insightful and entertaining. For example, he deals with some of the many criticisms of the series, and notes a few I wasn't aware of:
[A]nother and different set of critics has emerged here at the end of the series, for whom the evident traditionalism of the books is their greatest flaw. One of the participants in Slate.com's Book Club thinks that the novel, and its epilogue in particular, "feels awfully bourgeois in its concern with little other than our heroes' marriages and children." (I did not know that concern for marriage and children was the exclusive province of the bourgeoisie; but that's why I read Slate, to learn stuff like that.) And as I scanned the blogs I lost track of the number of people who complained that the epilogue, and indeed the whole series, is defaced by "heteronormativity." Not a gay or lesbian couple in sight—though, if it makes anyone feel better, I have seen that a few readers of the previous book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, think that Harry's obsession with finding out what Draco Malfoy is up to marks a welcome homoerotic interlude.
Overall, Jacobs praises the series, arguing that the underlying meaning and imaginative scope transcends the (many) limitations of Rowling's literary skill. His final conclusion:
What do we choose to imagine, when we choose? The answer is always revelatory, which is one of the reasons Chesterton was right to say that "the simple need for some kind of ideal world in which fictitious persons play an unhampered part is infinitely deeper and older than the rules of good art, and much more important." The Harry Potter books remind us of this, and they can be, if we read them rightly, both a delight in themselves and a school for our own imaginings. They have many flaws, but I have not dwelt on them here because I forgive J. K. Rowling for every one. Her seven books are, and thank God for it, always on the side of life.
But you really should read the entire article, not just the two paragraphs excerpted here.
Technorati Tags: books, chesterton, harry potter, alan jacobs
misc | By maphet | 09:43 AM
Comments
thanks for linking to that article. very good stuff. this part stuck out to me, in light of the tempest over the latest Covenant College events:
"But it is just because Hogwarts is a place which allows young people to take such risks—and therefore to test themselves and grow in capability and confidence—that its students and graduates love it so much."
Posted by: bobw at August 28, 2007 01:52 PM