forgiving your younger self and understanding that books can be good in different ways
You can imply whatever you want about me, if it makes you feel better about losing an argument, but I read a lot of stuff that I don’t think is particularly good. That’s the present tense of read, by the way. As you get older, one thing you’ll realize is that you can acknowledge that something being entertaining and something meeting some set criteria of artistic merit are different things. I like a lot of things that I don’t think are executed with a great degree of skill or which have a great degree of literary merit. I acknowledge those things as enjoyable (which I’ve already done for Harry Potter), but I also acknowledge them as flawed in specific ways.
You’re nearly there yourself in your original comment. No one is comparing Harry Potter to Gravity’s Rainbow or Wuthering Heights here.
No, but you can compare it to other, superior works of fiction for that targeted age range. Many of the works of Ursula K. Leguin and Terry Pratchett that were intended for people in the similar age range as Harry Potter put Rowling’s work to shame.
I’m surprised you didn’t link to Wikipedia…but that’s not really the argument here.
I would say I’m surprised you’re complaining about things I haven’t done and arguments I haven’t made, but as I’ve been on the internet for more than five minutes and have engaged in arguments with people like you more than I would ever realistically care to, I can’t say that I am. But that’s not really the argument here, either.
And if you had been more reasonable - not called them “shit” perhaps - it would have been a different story. And I see you skirt the issue, but the reason people go on and on about the failings of Harry Potter these days is very obvious, and it has little to do with literary value.
I think they are shit, though. From the perspective of the entire thing, if you want a more nuanced analysis, the first novel is a masterpiece of world building. The second and third do good jobs of expanding the internal mythology of Harry Potter and his relationship to Voldemort. But that’s all they do. The last four novels become overburderend with meandering, often pointless content and are just hilariously overindulgent.
I think the core issue I have with the novels is that the main characters of the series experience comparatively little in the way of real character development and growth over the course of the series. They are essentially the same people at the end of the seventh novel as they are at the beginning of the first. Hermione is a little bit less insufferable, Ron is a little bit less of a walking inferiority complex. And Harry is a little…angrier? It’s hard to say. They have such little character development because the novels aren’t really focused on the complexities of growing up or the way in which your understanding of the world radically shifts from childhood to adulthood. These things, if they exist in the novels at all, are even less than tertiary to the core focus. The novels themselves are more concerned with action and worldbuilding, which…I get it. It’s accessible. It’s engaging for children. Things like difficult feelings and interpersonal drama are stereotypically boring for kids. Having a lot of stuff going on, a lot of fantasy and mythology and all the other bullshit Harry Potter is known for is part of its core appeal. But it’s also shallow. You don’t like the fact that I think those qualities makes the series “shit,” but I do. If you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with my criteria. And if you have a problem with my criteria, then I guess…too bad? There’s not really any point in trying to have any more of a discussion after that, because in order to talk about “good” and “bad” art you have to have some semblance of a shared definition, and the simple reality is that we probably don’t. You have your criteria for what you think makes a work of fiction good, and Harry Potter meets it enough for you to think it’s good, and I have my criteria and it simply doesn’t.
“accessible” is a weird thing to criticize in a work geared towards children, btw
It’s not a criticism. It’s an, at worst, neutral observation. It’s not like a children’s novel written from the perspective of a child in a concentration camp during the Holocaust and it’s not a children’s novel about a person growing up transgender. These things are comparatively less accessible because they require a degree of abstraction and empathy of which your average child, who likely doesn’t have similar experiences, is almost certainly psychologically incapable. That’s not a knock against kids. It’s just the psychological nature of being a child. Accessibility makes sense and is important for works looking to act as mainstream entertainment. And that’s what Harry Potter succeeds at being: entertaining. There’s nothing wrong with entertainment, but entertaining and artistically rich are different things.
You can imply whatever you want about me, if it makes you feel better about losing an argument, but I read a lot of stuff that I don’t think is particularly good. That’s the present tense of read, by the way. As you get older, one thing you’ll realize is that you can acknowledge that something being entertaining and something meeting some set criteria of artistic merit are different things. I like a lot of things that I don’t think are executed with a great degree of skill or which have a great degree of literary merit. I acknowledge those things as enjoyable (which I’ve already done for Harry Potter), but I also acknowledge them as flawed in specific ways.
No, but you can compare it to other, superior works of fiction for that targeted age range. Many of the works of Ursula K. Leguin and Terry Pratchett that were intended for people in the similar age range as Harry Potter put Rowling’s work to shame.
I would say I’m surprised you’re complaining about things I haven’t done and arguments I haven’t made, but as I’ve been on the internet for more than five minutes and have engaged in arguments with people like you more than I would ever realistically care to, I can’t say that I am. But that’s not really the argument here, either.
I think they are shit, though. From the perspective of the entire thing, if you want a more nuanced analysis, the first novel is a masterpiece of world building. The second and third do good jobs of expanding the internal mythology of Harry Potter and his relationship to Voldemort. But that’s all they do. The last four novels become overburderend with meandering, often pointless content and are just hilariously overindulgent.
I think the core issue I have with the novels is that the main characters of the series experience comparatively little in the way of real character development and growth over the course of the series. They are essentially the same people at the end of the seventh novel as they are at the beginning of the first. Hermione is a little bit less insufferable, Ron is a little bit less of a walking inferiority complex. And Harry is a little…angrier? It’s hard to say. They have such little character development because the novels aren’t really focused on the complexities of growing up or the way in which your understanding of the world radically shifts from childhood to adulthood. These things, if they exist in the novels at all, are even less than tertiary to the core focus. The novels themselves are more concerned with action and worldbuilding, which…I get it. It’s accessible. It’s engaging for children. Things like difficult feelings and interpersonal drama are stereotypically boring for kids. Having a lot of stuff going on, a lot of fantasy and mythology and all the other bullshit Harry Potter is known for is part of its core appeal. But it’s also shallow. You don’t like the fact that I think those qualities makes the series “shit,” but I do. If you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with my criteria. And if you have a problem with my criteria, then I guess…too bad? There’s not really any point in trying to have any more of a discussion after that, because in order to talk about “good” and “bad” art you have to have some semblance of a shared definition, and the simple reality is that we probably don’t. You have your criteria for what you think makes a work of fiction good, and Harry Potter meets it enough for you to think it’s good, and I have my criteria and it simply doesn’t.
It’s not a criticism. It’s an, at worst, neutral observation. It’s not like a children’s novel written from the perspective of a child in a concentration camp during the Holocaust and it’s not a children’s novel about a person growing up transgender. These things are comparatively less accessible because they require a degree of abstraction and empathy of which your average child, who likely doesn’t have similar experiences, is almost certainly psychologically incapable. That’s not a knock against kids. It’s just the psychological nature of being a child. Accessibility makes sense and is important for works looking to act as mainstream entertainment. And that’s what Harry Potter succeeds at being: entertaining. There’s nothing wrong with entertainment, but entertaining and artistically rich are different things.