Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: Harold Bloom about Harry Potter

Take it as a reading excercise.
QUOTE
*Can 35 Million Book Buyers Be Wrong? Yes.*
*By Harold Bloom*
*Wall Street Journal, 7-11-2000*
Taking arms against Harry Potter, at this moment, is to emulate Hamlet
taking arms against a sea of troubles. By opposing the sea, you won't end
it. The Harry Potter epiphenomenon will go on, doubtless for some time, as
J. R. R. Tolkien did, and then wane.
The official newspaper of our dominant counter-culture, The New York Times,
has been startled by the Potter books into establishing a new policy for
its not very literate book review. Rather than crowd out the Grishams,
Clancys, Crichtons, Kings, and other vastly popular prose fictions on its
fiction bestseller list, the Potter volumes will now lead a separate
children's list. J. K. Rowling, the chronicler of Harry Potter, thus has an
unusual distinction: She has changed the policy of the policy-maker.
*Imaginative Vision* 
I read new children's literature, when I can find some of any value, but
had not tried Rowling until now. I have just concluded the 300 pages of the
first book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,"
purportedly the best of the lot. Though the book is not well written, that
is not in itself a crucial liability. It is much better to see the movie,
"The Wizard of Oz," than to read the book upon which it was based, but even
the book possessed an authentic imaginative vision. "Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone" does not, so that one needs to look elsewhere for the
book's (and its sequels') remarkable success. Such speculation should
follow an account of how and why Harry Potter asks to be read.
The ultimate model for Harry Potter is "Tom Brown's School Days" by Thomas
Hughes, published in 1857. The book depicts the Rugby School presided over
by the formidable Thomas Arnold, remembered now primarily as the father of
Matthew Arnold, the Victorian critic-poet. But Hughes' book, still quite
readable, was realism, not fantasy. Rowling has taken "Tom Brown's School
Days" and re-seen it in the magical mirror of Tolkein. The resultant blend
of a schoolboy ethos with a liberation from the constraints of
reality-testing may read oddly to me, but is exactly what millions of
children and their parents desire and welcome at this time.
In what follows, I may at times indicate some of the inadequacies of "Harry
Potter." But I will keep in mind that a host are reading it who simply will
not read superior fare, such as Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows"
or the "Alice" books of Lewis Carroll. Is it better that they read Rowling
than not read at all? Will they advance from Rowling to more difficult
pleasures?
Rowling presents two Englands, mundane and magical, divided not by social
classes, but by the distinction between the "perfectly normal" (mean and
selfish) and the adherents of sorcery. The sorcerers indeed seem as
middle-class as the Muggles, the name the witches and wizards give to the
common sort, since those addicted to magic send their sons and daughters
off to Hogwarts, a Rugby school where only witchcraft and wizardry are
taught. Hogwarts is presided over by Albus Dumbeldore as Headmaster, he
being Rowling's version of Tolkein's Gandalf. The young future sorcerers
are just like any other budding Britons, only more so, sports and food
being primary preoccupations. (Sex barely enters into Rowling's cosmos, at
least in the first volume.)
Harry Potter, now the hero of so many millions of children and adults, is
raised by dreadful Muggle relatives after his sorcerer parents are murdered
by the wicked Voldemort, a wizard gone trollish and, finally, post-human.
Precisely why poor Harry is handed over by the sorcerer elders to his
priggish aunt and uncle is never clarified by Rowling, but it is a nice
touch, suggesting again how conventional the alternative Britain truly is.
They consign their potential hero-wizard to his nasty blood-kin, rather
than let him be reared by amiable warlocks and witches, who would know him
for one of their own.
The child Harry thus suffers the hateful ill treatment of the Dursleys,
Muggles of the most Muggleworthy sort, and of their sadistic son, his
cousin Dudley. For some early pages we might be in Ken Russell's film of
"Tommy," the rock-opera by The Who, except that the prematurely wise Harry
is much healthier than Tommy. A born survivor, Harry holds on until the
sorcerers rescue him and send him off to Hogwarts, to enter upon the glory
of his schooldays.
Hogwarts enchants many of Harry's fans, perhaps because it is much livelier
than the schools they attend, but it seems to me an academy more tiresome
than grotesque. When the future witches and wizards of Great Britain are
not studying how to cast a spell, they preoccupy themselves with bizarre
intramural sports. it is rather a relief when Harry heroically suffers the
ordeal of a confrontation with Voldemort, which the youth handles
admirably.
One can reasonably doubt that "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" is
going to prove a classic of children's literature, but Rowling, whatever
the aesthetic weaknesses of her work, is at least a millennial index to our
popular culture. So huge an audience gives her importance akin to rock
stars, movie idols, TV anchors, and successful politicians. Her prose
style, heavy on cliche, makes no demands upon her readers. In an
arbitrarily chosen single page--page 4--of the first Harry Potter book, I
count seven cliches, all of the "stretch his legs" variety.
How to read"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"? Why, very quickly, to
begin with, perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you
cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do. is
there any redeeming education use to Rowling? Is there any to Stephen King?
Why read, if what you read will not enrich mind or spirit or personality?
For all I know, the actual wizards and witches of Britain, or America, may
provide an alternative culture for more people than is commonly realized.
Perhaps Rowling appeals to millions of reader non-readers because they
sense her wistful sincerity, and want to join her world, imaginary or not.
She feeds a vast hunger for unreality; can that be bad? At least her fans
are momentarily emancipated from their screens, and so may not forget
wholly the sensation of turning the pages of a book, any book. 
*Intelligent Children* 
And yet I feel a discomfort with the Harry Potter mania, and I hope that my
discontent is not merely a highbrow snobbery, or a nostalgia for a more
literate fantasy to beguile (shall we say) intelligent children of all
ages. Can more than 35 million book buyers, and their offspring, be wrong?
yes, they have been, and will continue to be for as long as they persevere
with Potter.
A vast concourse of inadequate works, for adults and for children, crams
the dustbins of the ages. At a time when public judgment is no better and
no worse than what is proclaimed by the ideological cheerleaders who have
so destroyed humanistic study, anything goes. The cultural critics will,
soon enough, introduce Harry Potter into their college curriculum, and The
New York Times will go on celebrating another confirmation of the
dumbing-down it leads and exemplifies.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Bloom is a professor at Yale. His most recent book is "How to Read and
Why" (Scribner 2000). 
UNQUOTE
Bye, FB
-- 
"Oh oh... Oh my God. My parents are having an affair."
(Gilmore Girls - 512)

 Mr. Bloom is a professor at Yale.
I'm glad Rory quit Yale, then!
This man just doesn't have a clue... brilliant!
Besides... he just read the first book, right? Shouldn't really talk 
about the whole series.
-- 
Laz - [
http://www.dimensionedelta.net
]
"It's a little bit funny this feeling inside" 

 escape everyday reality.
I like best every other day reality ;)
-- 
Enrico C
...still legal tender...