Matt and Atrios have both come to the defense of Harry Potter in the face of some cheap literary snobbery being shot at the books. What I find interesting about the phenomenon is that taking shots at Harry Potter is far more trite than anything Rowling put to paper, except maybe the scene of Harry yelling at Dumbledore. If you’re going to try to be a literary snob, please aim higher than, “I can read big kid books.” Which is what Ron Charles does with his cheap shot snobbery.
But all around me, I see adults reading J.K. Rowling’s books to themselves: perfectly intelligent, mature people, poring over “Harry Potter” with nary a child in sight. Waterstone’s, a British book chain, predicts that the seventh and (supposedly) final volume, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” may be read by more adults than children. Rowling’s U.K. publisher has even been releasing “adult editions.” That has an alarmingly illicit sound to it, but don’t worry. They’re the same books dressed up with more sophisticated dust jackets — Cap’n Crunch in a Gucci bag.
I pity the adult who, in a misguided attempt to feel better about himself, squelches the child inside. Surely there are better methods of feeling like a grown-up than forsaking all childish pleasures like breakfast cereals, fantasy novels, comic books, and masturbation, right? Maybe you could buy a mutual fund or learn to drive a car.
Most of Charles’ op-ed is about the decline of reading, which he kind of sort of blames Harry Potter for, amongst a bevy of bad guys, including other light fiction and distractions like computers, video games, and TV. It does make sense that people with more entertainment options are going to be more diverse in their tastes, which isn’t, to my mind, such a bad thing. But, as Charles notes, it’s not just that people read fewer novels than before, but that they don’t dig at all and learn what they like, instead sticking religiously to the bestseller list. For which he blames mega-marketing like the kind behind Harry Potter.
According to a study by Alan Sorensen at Stanford University, “In 1994, over 70 percent of total fiction sales were accounted for by a mere five authors.” There’s not much reason to think that things have changed. As Albert Greco of the Institute for Publishing Research puts it: “People who read fiction want to read hits written by known authors who are there year after year.”
You know, it’s just far too easy to pick on people for being weak and stupid, as if a society collectively says to itself one day, “You know, I think we should quit caring,” for no good reason. But I think there’s something else going on besides Harry Potter and The Mediocrity Parade. Charles admits that reading deeper, more intellectual fiction is time-consuming and takes up a lot of brainspace, which is the pleasure of it. Keep that in mind when you read this:
Whenever I confess to people who work for a living that I’m a book critic, I inevitably get the same response: “Imagine being able to sit around all day just reading novels!” Then they turn to each other and shake their heads, amazed that anything so effete should pass for a profession. (I can see it in their eyes: the little tufted pillow, the box of bonbons nearby.) “I don’t read fiction,” they say, suddenly serious. “I have so little time nowadays that when I read, I like to learn something.” But before I can suggest what one might learn from reading a good novel, they pop the question about The Boy Who Lived: “How do you like ‘Harry Potter’?”
Well, aren’t they tacitly admitting that the Harry Potter books are potboilers, and not Serious Fiction of the sort they don’t read, then? But what I find more interesting about this passage is that his friends say they simply don’t have time to read and contemplate Serious Fiction. I say to take them at their word—Americans work more hours and have less leisure and make money than we have in the past, which leaves very little time for the leisurely reading of novels. An 800 page book of Serious Fiction—which I love, mind you, so I’m not picking on the pleasures of it—takes much, much longer to read than it takes to breeze through a Harry Potter book. If people are turning to Harry Potter, it’s because they want to have the joys of reading a narrative within the time that’s been allotted to them in our capitalist society to read. Nor do we have the allotted brainspace to set aside work worries and devote our entire minds to more thoughtful literature. Plus, the American tendency to be puritanical and suspicious of any serious devotion to pleasure seems to be on the rise; from abstinence-only education to the fear that many Americans have of taking more than two or three days vacation at a time, there’s a growing sense that pleasure is only acceptable doled out in small, manageable amounts. Potboilers, movies, and TV shows don’t threaten the balance in the way that a long, leisurely, pleasurable novel reading does. You’re permitted your 15 minutes of copulation within the marital bed at night, but everyone’s scared to death of the day-long sexual adventures of college kids. Why should our attitudes about reading be much different? It’s so private, so leisurely, so many things that make Americans increasingly squirmy in our workaholic society.
Basically, if you want people to read more, start pushing for the labor liberal agenda of more economic equality. Otherwise, people simply will be worrying too much and working too hard to take time to read intricate novels.
Speaking of Harry Potter, I did see the latest movie Order of the Phoenix. After that, I agree with the commenter who said that after all is said and done with the Potter books, it would be nice to see them remade into a mini-series. The movie was pretty good, and it certainly got closer to the general tone of the books, echoing the WWII British aesthetic a little more than the odd Victorian vibe of the first two movies, but there were some serious pacing issues in the movie. Considering how much got cut for time reasons, I see no reason they had to keep the giant subplot in. I would have loved to see more of the actual Order of the Phoenix in a movie about the Order of the Phoenix, particularly since the whole resistance-fighter vibe to the scenes inside Sirius’s house is just so filmable.
What I did like a lot was the way that the newspaper headlines were used to move the plot ahead. That particular cliche usually bothers me, but it’s good for reminding the audience of the larger importance of the events in the books when the setting of Hogwarts feels so claustrophobic. And I thought that the whole plot about the Ministry of Magic and Dolores Umbridge was played perfectly. When I read the original book, I remember feeling that it read as a rather scathing commentary on the way so many people got invested in this bullshit story about WMDs in Iraq, and basically stuck their fingers in their ears and screamed, “I can’t hear you!” when presented with some ugly truths about the situation. I don’t know if it was intended to read that way, but it did read that way, and the movie captured the whole banality-of-evil (right down to the way that torture suddenly seems justified overnight) theme to a T.
180 Responses to “Harry Potter And The Quickly Receding Leisure Time”
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When I read the original book, I remember feeling that it read as a rather scathing commentary on the way so many people got invested in this bullshit story about WMDs in Iraq, and basically stuck their fingers in their ears and screamed, “I can’t hear you!â€? when presented with some ugly truths about the situation. I don’t know if it was intended to read that way, but it did read that way…
I don’t know how much of it Rowling did intentionally, but the War on Terra reverberates through the series. The false arrests, the hysterical, unhelpful advice on how to spot death eaters, the use of torture (ie dementors), the propoganda, and restrictions of civil liberties in the name of “security”. And interwoven with it all the existence of a real threat that makes one wonder if some of it isn’t justified. It all sounds quite familiar.
Well, I think a lot of this is the way that the masses as a society use content. We use it as a shared experience, that we all talk about afterwards and discuss. Something to bring us together. Pop-Culture does this. We’re lucky we have pop culture as well done as Harry Potter. (Even though I don’t like it. I’m a stickler for tone, and the tone of the story feels wrong for the dread underneath. But I admit that I’m the one who’s strange in that regard).
Reading “Serious Fiction” #213 isn’t going to bring us together, if you and your friends have all read different books, then it’s very hard to discuss or share them. Along the same lines, we can all discuss the latest episode of Lost, Heroes, or Grey’s Anatomy, or what have you. We can talk about the latest movies (either in theatre or on DVD), so we want to partake of the content ASAP so we can join in the conversation.
The other thing is that it’s easy to share concise facts/factoids, even without knowledge of a bigger text, which is behind the popularity of non-fiction. It’s something that can start a conversation even WITHOUT anybody else reading the actual work. Which makes it very useful.
Yes. It is all about us, as a culture seeking shared experiences. this is without a doubt a good thing.
I think it’s sadly indicative of society in general to see wanktards like Ron Charles write articles like these. “Maturity” is vastly overrated and intelligence is vastly underrated.
This quote jumped out at me and I got to thinking about that digging-and-learning-what-you-like process. I am a reader. I got five and a half hours sleep last night because I didn’t feel like putting down the Mercedes Lackey book I was working on. I read science fiction, fantasy, some “serious” fiction, history, and politics/current events. Oh, and when I’m feeling down, nothing cheers me up like raiding the juvenile fiction section at the library.
But I realize that most of my tastes, as far as genres and favorite authors and so forth, I picked up in high school! My high school had a rather smallish library, but of course it was heavy on Good Books. I read my way through their science fiction section at a rapid pace - they had lots of Isaac Asimov, which made me happy (at least at the time). But when I felt like something else, I’d go to the librarians and just ask them to give me something, anything good. Thus I was introduced to H. Rider Haggard, I read “Of Human Bondage” and I don’t remember most of the other stuff they gave me, but I had a personal relationship with those two women and they got to know my reading tastes and they were happy to give me suggestions of books that everyone should read AND books they thought I’d particularly like - and they were usually right. (The English teacher who gave me Ayn Rand was another story.)
Well, who has that kind of leisure time now, to sample everything and see if you like it? Who has time to develop a personal relationship with their librarian? People want to read something they know they’ll enjoy, so using the best-seller list as a shortcut - who can blame them?
The other thing that makes it more difficult is that it’s not quite as easy to browse. One of the best ways to find good books is to hang out in the section where you found stuff you already liked. But most “grown-up” libraries aren’t as browse-friendly as primary and secondary school libraries. The bigger bookstores, like Barnes & Noble, are good, but the smaller ones tend to have a very limited selection. And a lot of people buy their books online, where browsing is really unwieldy. Despite Amazon.com’s Suggestions and Look Inside featuers, it’s just not quite the same as picking up a book off the shelf and thumbing through it.
So my conclusion is that if I hadn’t spent all that time when I was younger reading and exploring everything and figuring out what I liked - well, I’d probably be chained to the best-seller list too. Because of the time crunch Amanda mentions, and for all these other reasons that make it harder to explore books in other than a random and haphazard way.
I met some friends this past weekend to see OotP and discuss all things Potter, and I think Charles would be surprised to have heard the depths to which the series can be taken. We got into a heated discussion of Hermione’s SPEW group, which ended up being a debate about if and when it’s appropriate to impose one’s views on another’s culture (I know there’s a word for that and I can’t remember it). We started by discussing the treatment of magical creatures and ended up arguing about foot binding and FGM. It was, to say the least, interesting.
Sounds to me like Charles read book one and stopped, which is a shame since the series really grows with the characters. And I am all for working less if it means I can read more!
That also explains the huge uproar over video games, particularly the RPGs like World of Warcraft. They require a fairly significant time investment.
Uh, not that I know from personal experience, or anything…….
I’ve had several long conversations with my husband about my gaming time (I’m a WoW geek). He is convinced I spend far too much time gaming, and he probably has a bit of a point, but in my defense, I didn’t take the time from “family” time or from work time (in fact, I bought my husband and one of my sons each their own WoW account to ensure that WoW time was family time as much as possible), but from TV time, and to some extent, from book time.
The way I look at it is this: Both books and video games (especially multiplayer games) are interactive, active pastimes. Watching television or a movie is a passive pastime. I prefer that I, and my children, spend the bulk of our leisure time doing active things. My oldest son spends the bulk of his leisure time doing graphic design on the computer, my youngest splits his time between reading and playing video games, and my husband is the movie watcher in the family. Oddly, in my family, even movie watching is pretty interactive. We talk back to the screen, mock or praise the actors, director, and set design, etc., often in the middle of the movie.
I fully agree that we don’t have enough leisure time in our society. I’m working as hard as I can to change that… while continuing to read, and level my characters in WoW.
There’s a lot of theorizing about why gaming cultures tend to be so male-heavy, and while I think internal sexism is a big part of it, I also think that women on the whole tend to feel guiltier about the significant amounts of leisure time it takes to play games. It really is too much trouble; you have to be twice as good to be taken half as seriously by your male peers but you have half as much time to devote to it, since you have twice as many chores at home.
While I agree that our leisure time is less now, and that we take our work home (although teachers always have), it is also a matter of how we apportion our time.
How many times do we hear people saying “you have to make time for yourself” I heard it a lot and it took many years to sink through the first 7 layers. It is far easier to sink your butt in chair in front of the tv (or computer) and either be entertained by mind numbing silliness or lost in a fantasy.
Like everything else you do for yourself, working out, a hobby, etc. you have to make time to read - (which is why I think the DEAR program is very good in getting that message across to kids and promoting good habits when kids grow up)
The lack of leisure time and the rise of passive medium I think has a direct correlation. People laugh at classes that teach about how to use or get the most out of leisure time, but it’s obvious that we don’t know.
I would echo the conclusion about why we trust bestseller lists - I don’t like wasting my time (and money) on dreck, or something uninvolving. While the reasoning isn’t perfect, if something is on the bestseller list, there’s likely to be some sort of universal appeal to the book that increases the likelihood that I’ll enjoy it.
(Which, is why the Harry Potter books are so successful. Most of us wished we could live in a magical world, and go to a school where we could learn to change teacups into toads, and levitate feathers into the air. The characters are (largely) likeable and engaging, clearly filled-out archetypes that we can relate to and enjoy. There’s both a quest motif and the plotting of a mystery novel, both within the individual books, and along the series at large. Good versus evil. Complicated and interweaving plotlines. All wrapped up in charming prose. There is something for everyone, and most people can enjoy almost of these elements - and that is why they are so popular. )
Well, it’s a brainspace issue, too. People have enough mental energy to watch TV, but even if they have time to read novels, they don’t have the mental energy.
I agree with the labor-leisure critique, in what partially prohibits a willingness to invest in reading Serious Fiction, but also at work in our culture is a tendency to see any leisure-art-culture activity as meaningless throwaway, compared with spending one’s time reading or learning about Important Real things (i.e., non-fiction anything); to not consider the pursuit of art (via production or interaction) as something not only valuable but critical to the health of both individuals and culture. So that in turn, traditionally understood pop-culture elements are underestimated and viewed as acceptably frivolous (i’m going to watch this TV show because it will help me relax tonight, but the show doesn’t really have meaningful value); and traditionally understood “high” art, like the Serious Novel, are dismissed as unacceptably frivolous (its still just fantasy escapism, but this version requires a more elaborate viewer/reader/audience investment to experience, but how dare it, as it is just silly art at the end of the day!). And then ultimately both components of the dichotomy are written off as secondary to Important Serious non-fiction/documentary/news/work–as though the refusal to consider culture through creative, imaginative pursuit (that has the potential to recognize and express cultural tenors “non-fiction” is less equipped to access) isn’t a huge fricken reason a culture might be so off balance in the first place.
I hate the snobbish, worn out high-low art divide Ron Charles trots out, but he does hit on something, regarding the dismissal of art & the imaginary, for “the real.”
Well, at risk of agreeing with Ron Charles, I will say he’s not completely wrong.
I mean, sure, he is an insufferable prig, and he is about as far off-base with his commentary on Harry Potter as you can be and still remain in this realm of existence.
However, I too DO wish that more people would read, and read fiction that they would discuss … not something to just take them away for the moment in the sense of a summer blockbuster movie, but something that moves them, and makes them see the world in a different way than they would have previously, to look up from the pages for a moment and look around where they are, and see things that they didn’t a few moments ago in the same scene.
And really, I don’t think 99% of film, nor digit media, can do that. If that makes me a snob, then so be it.
I will admit, being in academia means I am up to my eyeballs in texts that strain the braincells on a regular basis. So, what I read on my hour commute each way each day on public trans tends to be purposefully not quite such a stretch. I read scifi and fantasy, and tons of it. (though the thing about scifi and fantasy is that in order to even be written in mediocrity it HAS to be written with complexity, or it is just painful). And I too do really enjoy Harry Potter.
But, I do wish people would read further than what is on Opraph’s booklist *shudder* or ‘Border’s Recommends’ . I know this runs the risk of me being labelled an elitist, and again, if so, then okay. But there is a reason depth of cultural investigation in fiction is considered on a higher level than much else of the dreck out there. And I do think it cheapens us to try to ignore that.
The bonding aspect is critical, I think, too. People definitely don’t have time to visit with friends and family and have private time to read. In the few hours you have in the day for leisure, you want to multi-task, be entertained and bond with others. People treate TV like it’s just this passive thing, but it’s largely a communal experience. When I lived alone, I had almost no use for TV and didn’t have one. But now that I live with my boyfriend, TV gives us a chance to hang out, shoot the shit a little, share something, all without cutting into time set aside to take in narratives and be entertained. God knows I marvel sometimes at our multi-tasking: lunch on a Saturday means a chance to watch TV with Marc, but I still have the laptop open and I’m doing some minor maintenance stuff that leaves enough mental space to eat, watch the show, and pay attention to him. I read books while I walk and listen to music when I bicycle. At all points in time, you’re looking for ways to be more efficient with your time. I’m sort of a master at it, but I suspect I’m not alone in this.
One thing that would help is to move more people out of cars and onto public transportation, I think. Then they have more brainspace to devote to reading during their commute time. Most people can only listen to the radio now.
People have enough mental energy to watch TV, but even if they have time to read novels, they don’t have the mental energy.
Right, and if you are going to use time and energy to read for pleasure, it has to be worth a lot to you. Certainly a large part of the “added value” gained by reading the HP books is that so many of your friends of read them, giving you something additional to talk about and enjoy a shared experience with. For “random book X,” even if the text itself provides the same level of enjoyment, the social benefits aren’t going to be there.
At all points in time, you’re looking for ways to be more efficient with your time. I’m sort of a master at it, but I suspect I’m not alone in this.
I’ll agree with this, often in the evening when I get home from university, you’ll find me eating dinner, with the telli on, my laptop open in front of me, a book off to the side, and catching up with my roommate, who will be doing something similar.
Amanda, the feeling guilty about gaming time is soooo real. Fortunately, I was able to work out a fairly decent solution by making it also family time, but yeah, my husband and kids are far more jealous of my time on the computer than my time reading, and it’s much easier to stick a bookmark in a book and come back later than to leave a raid without warning.
I read everything from Serious Fiction to Serious Non Fiction, to trashy vampire novels to books I originally bought for my kids, to the phone book if I’m desperate. It always amazes me when I walk into peoples’ homes and they have NO books. I can’t imagine it. It feels like a wasteland to me.
I have found that taking the time to input my library into Amazon in order to refine my recommendations has helped lead me to books I would otherwise never have known about, and I find out about a lot more from various blogs, including this one.
If we’re only allowed to read and like “serious” fiction, then I guess we have to consign Dumas, Conan Doyle, Twain, Stevenson, Verne, and a great many others to the rubbish heap.
The only reliable way to tell transient pop culture from high art is to wait a century or so . . .
Amanda:I’ve read most of that theorizing, some of it makes sense, some of it doesn’t. The idea that women have less leisure time certainly is valid. Quite a few women do play games, they just have to squeeze it into smalle rtime chunks. Those that choose to make gaming their primary entertainment source (and there’s quite a few), in my experience tend to be VERY heavy into community based gaming, and they game for the community/friendship/comradeship/whatever.
Masturbation? A childish pleasure? You take that back! From an economic standpoint, do you know how much it saves me in tranquilizers? Sound, mature financial planning, I calls it… with orgasms.
O’Danu did a great post for feminist gamers a while back on being a WoW geek with adult responsibilities. Just a little plug there. http://www.mightyponygirl.com/feminist_gamers/?p=88 (I don’t know if the links are just wonky in preview, is anyone else having trouble?)
The wapo writer is an absolute bore.
Repetitive plots: How is that? Because Voldemort is a more difficult Villian to beat and finds ways to come back? But we’ve seen Harry looking for the philosopher’s stone, fighting off a basilisk, being hunted by an escaped convict, trying to win a wizard contest, fighting political corruption while joining a secret Voldie-hunting society, and attempting to track down the vessels that are keeping Volemort alive. Yeah, so repetitive.
Static characters: He has to be kidding. Apart from the relational tension between Harry, Ron and Hermione, we have Harry’s relationships changing throughout the series with everyone he deals with: Dumbledore, Luna, Cho, Ginny, Snape, even Draco.
Pedestrian Prose: Rowling isn’t going for any flowery form, but you have to allow that she’s writing books for younger readers who are devoting whole weeks of their education to puzzling out what the difference between a simile and a metaphore is. Cut her a break.
Wit-free tone: I suppose the books don’t have any rim-shot jokes, but the wit is there, it is dry and British, and I love it. Even in the very first chapter of the first book: “Mr. Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the ninth floor. If he hadn’t, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning. He didn’t see the owls swoop ing past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open- mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime. Mr. Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunchtime, when he thought he’d stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the bakery.” That’s called wit. I’m sorry if it isn’t “mature enough” for this sad sack.
Derivative themes: Dude, it’s a series that’s written for kids. What do you want, Harry Potter and the Lingering Ennui? Harry Potter and the Sexual Confliction? This guy needs to get over himself and just admit that he was too tired to read the book, started droning, and bored his kid until she lost interest in the novel. It’s not the book’s fault.
I’m struggling to find time for reading myself - though I’ll certainly be able to make an exception when Harry Potter comes out. What I’ve been doing lately is downloading audiobooks from audible.com/checking them out from the library and listening to them while I do the dishes and other work around the house. It makes it a lot easier to do the mind-numbing work that has to be done, and I don’t have to feel guilty for reading when there’s something nagging me that I should be doing. My commute’s not really long enough for me to do much listening, but when I have to drive more than 10 minutes or so I break out the audiobooks then, too.
Considering how much got cut for time reasons, I see no reason they had to keep the giant subplot in.
According to report, they kept the giant subplot because J. K. Rowling (who retains authorial control over all the movies) told them that they had to. (Seriously. Apparently, she wouldn’t sign any movie contract unless she had final say on what went in and what was left out. And Warner Brothers were desperate to grab their Harry Potter loot, so she got it.)
“Isn’t the point of literature to show us the world from a different point of view? We come out of a good novel saying ‘I see why you feel that way; I see what it would feel like to feel like that. I now live in a larger world because it contains your world view as well as my own.’” –Andrew Rilstone
This worries the hell out of me. I used to read a lot of Serious Nonfiction–I’m a big fan of Douglas Hofstadter–but since I finished school and started working I’ve barely managed to finish any more of those, which bothers me to no end, since I think reading each of them made me at the very least a better conversationalist, and probably a more interesting person. (Also, Le Ton Beau de Marot is incredibly sad, but uplifting. I’m getting through an average of five pages a night; it’s shameful.)
On the broader note of children’s literature, upon finding out that His Dark Materials is going to be butcheredadapted this coming winter, I took it upon myself to read them, even though they’re kids’ books. (Currently halfway through The Amber Spyglass.) Man, would I have been missing out if I skipped the series just because it’s written to be accessible to teenagers. Accessible doesn’t have to mean shallow, darn it.
(Also, did anyone else read HDM and wonder at how unlike what we think of a childrens’ stories it is? Authority figures who turn out to not be nice people, heroes whose chief talents are lying and brutality, not to mention the sort of violence that’s very hard to squeeze a PG rating out of.)
I don’t really care one way or the other about the HP books — if adults enjoy them, cool, it’s just not my personal cuppa — but it would be interesting to draw the Venn diagram of Insufferable Music Snobbery and Insufferable Literary Snobbery. What do you all think it looks like? My personal guess is that IMS’s contain a disproportionate amount of HP lovers, but that’s just a hunch.
I have to take a slightly different issue with “they don’t dig at all and learn what they like”. Most people don’t know how to dig in and learn what they like.
If you don’t have the time to read every book that your friends recommend, or every book that your local paper reviews or every book that is featured on Oprah’s book club or Good Morning America, then most people just don’t try. And forget even being able to FIND books that are not promoted all to hell with thousand dollar marketing plans, reviews in People, or spots on the morning shows.
If you go to your public library, look for a fiction desk or reference desk and ask for a reader’s adviser. It is this whole subfield of librarianship devoted to matching people with the right fiction books. If you tell me you want funny lesbian historical romances, I can probably find it. Do you like Dan Brown’s books and want more with that subject and pacing, cuz I can do it. I have access to huge databases and know where to look for reviews, we have our own nationwide email list where we swap book suggestions and post topical lists. I am confident that you could bring most fiction librarians and readers advisor’s the most off-beat unusual tastes (or having no real idea what you like), and we could find you new books you have never read. But most people don’t even know these services exist because 1) we have done a bad job of promoting ourselves 2) in a budget cut fiction services is usually the first to go and 3) publishing companies want you to forget that libraries exist to offer you a plethora of free books from all sorts of companies (even gasp! alternative and small presses) so you will buy the latest bestseller at your supermarket and shut up. And who has time now-a-days to go to the library now that Americans put in more work hours then almost any other country?
[…] The Norton Anthology of Harry Potter Due to some public handwringing over Harry Potter by some literary mavens, there’s been some discussion at various blogs about the so-called “death” of reading in our culture. The response started with Matt Yglesias, moved over to Atrios, and then Amanda jumped in. […]
It can be if you have one or two communal TVs. But I can’t tell you how many homes (and it was the majority of homes) we looked at when we were ready to buy where every bedroom had it’s own tv. This include bedrooms inhabited by one child aged 5 and over.
One 4 bedroom home, and a tv room, inhabited by a husband, wife and young daughter had 7 televisions.
Also counselors says that a TV in the marital (or like relationship) bedroom helps doom the relationship because instead of using the time before going to sleep for talking and reconnection people are watching tv.
TVs are only a communal experience when the family or group of roomates encourage it to be, or their “culture” encourages it to be. For many years we had only one tv, even though the kids protested and their friends thought we were weird, because we wanted to encourage that communal aspect.
“One thing that would help is to move more people out of cars and onto public transportation, I think. Then they have more brainspace to devote to reading during their commute time. Most people can only listen to the radio now.”
You scooped me! That’s exactly what I was going to say - as much moaning as I do about my commute, I have 30-45 minutes on the train every morning and evening to read or listen to my ipod or otherwise pass the time. It’s really “me” time, and I can’t imagine how much more stressed out I’d be if I had to spend that time in the car, fighting traffic. Which isn’t to say that the chronically underfunded yet still extensive public transportation system here (Philly!) doesn’t occasionally drive me absolutely nuts, but once I’m on the train, I essentially have leisure time.
I don’t know if it was intended to read that way, but it did read that way,
Of course it was intended to read that way. The most popular and best-selling author in the world wrote a transparent analogy of government response to 9/11: ignoring the actual terrorists and promoting hysteria for its own ends. In 2003. For millions and millions of children to read. And, of course, the Word is Now Out in the media that Rowling and the Potter books have to be destroyed as trash. It’s all been so predictable.
What is it people don’t understand about the timeline of these books? They started being released when I was TEN YEARS OLD. TEN. A child. Still allowed to read children’s literature. I am now an adult of 22 years. Are people who were CHILDREN when the first books were released not permitted to find out how a beloved childhood book ends because we crossed the magical adult barrier? Are we not entitled to enjoy a good fantasy novel? Why do people have to be such jerks about everything?
Furthermore, WTF is wrong with people for bitching about something that gets people - adults and children alike - to not only read, but thoroughly enjoy and anticipate reading. What kind of book snobs are you people?
According to report, they kept the giant subplot because J. K. Rowling (who retains authorial control over all the movies) told them that they had to.
Cool. That means she is going somewhere with it. I was afraid she was going to drop the whole unjust treatment of non-humans subplot.
I tend to read nonserious fiction (mostly detective, some science fiction) precisely because I don’t want to stretch my brain. I read “serious”, hard-to-understand stuff often enough for work that when I can put my brain in neutral, I do. (Heck, I even stopped watching Galactica on a regular basis because it took too much emotional and cognitive energy.)
There’s also the not-so-minor issue that so much current “serious” fiction, at least, isn’t particularly fun to read (there seems to be a bunch of authors to whom my enduring reaction comes out as, “OK, you’re a brilliant writer, your prose is lambent, your organization marvelously intricate, your themes both timely and everlasting. Now STFU.”). In self-defense I’ve turned to Project Gutenberg, which may be exactly the wrong thing to do — one of the benefits of the old culture of material scarcity was that people took their time reading books and reread their favorites any number of times until they became old friends. Now we consume in volume.
“This guy needs to get over himself and just admit that he was too tired to read the book, started droning, and bored his kid until she lost interest in the novel. It’s not the book’s fault.”
I can understand reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to your seven-year-old. Once you get past Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the book is long enough that it’s going to be way more of a slog than it’s worth to read the damn things aloud to a child who can make it through for themselves, and once you’re slogging through and zoning out and losing your voice, any added benefit the ten-year-old sees from you reading it to her is going to be torpedoed by the fact that she’s more than old enough to realize that you’re just not into it and you’re not really paying any attention. She’s also old enough to realize that she can read it more quickly herself–and without the discomfort of trying to tell a parent that it’s okay if they don’t go through the motions of a parent-childing bonding session that’s become mechanical and tedious. I know it was more flavor-text than anything else, but it seemed like the worst sort of anecdote he could have started out with.
I can take Harry Potter or leave him, but it’s well known that a good “children’s” book or movie will often be quite enjoyable for adults, also. Intelligence is the key. Good children’s authors use intelligence and don’t talk down to children, and adults—at least those who don’t mask their intellectual insecurity with condescension—respond to that intelligence as well.
Sarah in Chicago: I’d argue that 99% of the material in any medium can’t do that. The vast majority of the books that are published are utter crap. They are. I’ll take a film like Rashomon over, say, “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” any day, thanks. Film and literature aren’t the same, and they’re not meant to be consumed in the same way, but a great film certainly has the power to change the way you look at the world, and can absolutely stick with you. The majority of films are crap, for sure… but the majority of the books published are crap too. It’s a matter of how willing you are to invest the time into finding the really good ones. I think that the same thing is true of any art form. Most music, photography, sculpture, paintings, etc are going to be crap. You have to be willing to invest the time into finding the diamonds, and to invest the time in really appreciating what they do- to understand what you’re consuming.
I met some friends this past weekend to see OotP and discuss all things Potter, and I think Charles would be surprised to have heard the depths to which the series can be taken.
and
There’s both a quest motif and the plotting of a mystery novel, both within the individual books, and along the series at large. Good versus evil. Complicated and interweaving plotlines. All wrapped up in charming prose. There is something for everyone, and most people can enjoy almost of these elements - and that is why they are so popular.
I picked up a book this weekend called Everything Bad is Good For You that talks about something similar- it’s an argument against the idea that our entertainment is dumbed down. I haven’t gotten very far into it, but the argument the author is laying out is basically this: For all that people complain that television and video games are being dumbed down, they actually seem to be getting more and more complicated. If you compare some of the highest rated shows today to the highest rated shows from a few decades ago, you find that there are more characters, more complicated plots, fewer blatant attempts to cue the viewer into plot points, and more complicated relationships between characters. A show like Lost or the Sopranos might have dozens of characters involved in multiple layers of deception and with complex and convoluted relationships to other characters, but the viewer is expected to learn and remember those relationships- characters are not reintroduced every episode. Shows in the past tended to focus on more episodic content with a much smaller cast of characters. I’m not completely sure how I feel about it yet, but, then, I just started the book.
(First, insert snarky comment about critics’ failed writing ambitions here.)
I think you make a good point about the immaturity of people who throw cheap insults at the HP series. There’s a lot of adult peer pressure, as it were, to scorn them, and while some people genuinely don’t like the books, others read them one after another and then condescend to them to keep up a veneer of snobbery. As for me, Rowling has managed to keep me engaged since I was 10, when I read the first book a bit before they exploded. I’m going to appreciate her for what she’s done. I also refuse to legitimize my appreciation for HP by trying to construe the books as historical/current-events commentary; it exists in the books, but it is only one element, and saying that you like it for the commentary is another facet of the news-over-fiction bias.
Besides, Rowling is one of the few contemporary authors I’m reading, along with Haruki Murakami. Sometimes I think I should follow the best-seller lists more closely so I actually know who’s writing now. I started off the summer with Chekhov, Wittgenstein, and Merleau-Ponty, and have a tradition of reading a Faulkner novel every summer for the past few years, so sometimes I feel out of touch with contemporary names. Recommendations wanted!
Darn it, this is why I need to read the article before I comment. I hadn’t realized that HDM was mentioned there, because I don’t understand why the critic would hate Harry Potter and love His Dark Materials. It doesn’t make any darn sense to complain about a “vampire love saga” on one page and extol the virtues of magical shapeshifting pets and talking bears in armor on the next, but I suppose making sense isn’t the point of the rant.
Oprah’s Book Club recommendations have included some bloody good books, actually. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Anna Karenina, Middlesex…
To be fair, Grendel, just below the shapeshifting and armored bears, HDM is a pretty complicated and scathing attack on organized religion, and has some very adult subplots. I think the difference between HP and HDM is pretty evident. Which isn’t to say that I don’t adore HP. In fact, I’ve threatened to skip work on Monday if I haven’t finished Book 7 yet. But I think that HDM is much more adult than HP. I was surprised they were considered children’s books after I read them.
I do have time to read “serious” literature, and I do spend a fair amount of time reading it. However, I have very little patience with people who think that they’re too good for HP. I’ve found that 90% of the time, they’ve never bothered to pick up any of the books.
I’m ambivalent on the whole giants thing, but where’s the Order, again? And how about that locket they found at 12 Grimmauld Place?
I don’t read Serious Literature™ because I find it tedious. Blah blah metaphorical blah, Ennui, blah. I’ve read Books By Serious Authors, approved by LitSnobs, even, and found them interesting, but I’m not going to go slog through The Great Serious Novels just because someone thinks I’m immature for reading spec fic.
Meh.
It’s a shame that Ron Charles has a certain mindset when it comes to books. This does not mean that he has an elevated, artistic mindset. If anything, he needs to do more research before letting something be published with his name on it.
Ron Charles seems to be a man of particular tastes even if it runs counter to mine (I love the Harry Potter books and I’m attending a release party on Saturday). I hate being condescended to as a reader and Rowling’s writing style is neither condescending, heavy-handed or overly literary. She also feeds information at a good enough pace that I understand the story.
Before I gush praise like a geyser, I also know quite a few people who lack the level of Pottermania that I do. Harry Potter is not for everyone. But then again, neither is Phillip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” nor Jonathan Strange & Mrs. Norrell. All three sets of books consistently possess large masses of critics who give rave reviews as well as the few requisite naysayers like Ron Charles himself who position any one or more of the three sets as “poppycock” and “easy to dismiss.” I’m a person who calls a spade a spade and I think all of these naysayers just don’t fundamentally understand what could possibly draw a person to a particular fiction novel, which leads the naysayer to metaphorically take that novel, chuck it in a grave and deliver a “stirring” eulogy for art in general. I love art and painting, but I don’t fundamentally understand why people like Picasso’s art. That doesn’t mean that I think his paintings are less important than Dali’s nor would I chuck any of Picasso’s weird paintings into a metaphorical grave and give it a eulogy.
I think Ron Charles brought up one good point: novels are becoming less popular in America. I don’t agree with all of the reasoning behind his argument, and frankly, I’m ashamed that he didn’t do more research. I think he ignored three important arenas: literacy, cost and the internet.
I don’t think that people are becoming dumber or less willing to read, literacy rates have been pretty much the same since the 90s. All of my coworkers and my family members read for pleasure. When I board a bus, over half of the people on it are reading something and most often, its fiction. War & Peace is a real favorite. I don’t see a lot of new novels, though. I do see a lot of secondhand copies with used tags on them.
Books are becoming more expensive as trees and other natural resources become depleted. I remember when I could buy a cheap new book for $1. Now the cheapest book I can get is about $3. New novels fall into the range of $6-30! If I can barely afford my rent or house payments, how am I supposed to justify buying more than one new, hard-cover novel a year? If I’m gonna throw down money on a new, hard-cover novel, it damn well better teach me something useful as well.
Ron Charles also ignored the internet. I read all of the classics in my childhood school programs for free. I didn’t need to buy the shiny “new” novels, I just used my internet connection. Amazing poetry and novels that used to be available only at select libraries with tattered copies are now posted on the internet for all to enjoy. A few writers are posting their work online, as well and slowly work to make their sites money-makers instead of free forums.
It’s pretty obvious that Ron Charles is not a reporter, nor should he be paid as one. He could have tied into his main arguments quite a lot of facts to make his writing more entertaining. I count myself lucky that he is not a writer of fiction, just a critic.
But, I do wish people would read further than what is on Opraph’s booklist *shudder* or ‘Border’s Recommends’ . I know this runs the risk of me being labelled an elitist, and again, if so, then okay.
Fernmonkey kinda beat me to it, but, yes, if you’re sneering at the idea of Middle-Americans reading Jeffrey Eugenides, Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner, Leo Tolstoy, Carson McCullers, Toni Morrison, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, then you really are a hopeless snob.
Pansy P -
I have very little time and patience for anyone who thinks they are too good for any book. If you don’t like it, fine. No interest, hey I never read Da Vinci Code because I wasn’t that interested. But what I hate hate hate is this pretentious crap that some people spew to make others (usually fans of non-serious gneres like mystery, romance, sci fi, fantasy, and graphic novels) feel bad for what they like to read. I love serious books, especially nonfiction on historical, feminist, and queer issues, but I also love Ursula K. LeGuin and Rita Mae Brown and if anyone has a problem with that they can bite my ass.
I’m seriously tempted to tattoo “Never apologize for your reading tastes” from Betty Rosenberg on my body in some place.
An asshole coworker of mine just told me that he read some type of leaked information on the web about what happens at the end of HPaDH, and then proceeded to share it with me like the asshole he is. And I have to say, if it’s true, I’m even more pissed. GAH!
This brings up one of my betes noire.
‘Serious’ literature is not necessarily good.
‘Popular’ literature is not necessarily shallow.
The reason why “Despite their enthusiasm for books in grade school, by high school, most kids are not reading for pleasure at all,” as Novak put it, is that by high school kids are being forced to read a lot of stuff that is inaccessible-by-reason-of-being-archaic and wasn’t that good to begin with, while their teachers tell them it’s the greatest literature in the world. Naturally they give up on reading.
A lot of the ’serious, high-art literature’ I’ve tried has comprised unsympathetic characters passively approaching their preordained doom. Who wants to read that?
A lot of ‘popular fiction’ contains serious themes. Order of the Phoenix is a broad allegory of Nazi-ism and scapegoating. Terry Pratchett’s “Small Gods” addresses religious extremism, humanism, and why ‘God says so’ isn’t enough reason to do something. These books are entertaining at the same time they deal with deep issues.
Good writing is easy to read. Symbolism, allegory, and other literary devices can still be present, but when well used they become transparent: you are swept up in the flow of the story, and don’t consciously notice the narrative mechanics until you finish.
And yeah, book snobs kind of piss me off, but I figure if you have to be a snob about the books that other people read, you’re hiding some major insecurities, so I mainly just ignore.
Now that I’ve gotten the bile out of my system, I can finally leave actual replies!
Roy, that book sounds really interesting. Thank you for mentioning it.
Jasmine, I join in with your WTF to book snobs. Grr.
Clytemenestra, TV is fairly communal in my five-person household. Most of us only watch TV on our computers via DVD or internet connection. Some of the best parts of watching TV to me include the ability to make small talk as well as write some interesting things on online forums.
I’ll second for “Everything Bad is Good For You”, it’s an interesting read, especially if you think you’d disagree with it, because it makes a really persuasive argument for the quality of pop culture. (I actually agree with it)
I think there’s one final thing…reading just isn’t that important anymore. What I mean by that, is that 20 years go, most people worked in environments where they might not have to read a word. Now, most people work in environments where they are constantly reading. This is a huge difference I think. Reading for pleasure used to be needed as reading as a skill, and like any other skill, as you get practice you improve at it, within reason. These days, most of us get tons of practice, and it’s not so m uch needed.
When thinking about book critics like Ron Charles, I think it can help to know a little bit about the history of the novel. When novels in English first appeared in the eighteenth century, the taste-makers decried them as things that were destroying young men and women’s minds.
Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela came out in the middle of the eighteenth century with a a level of marketing that was not unlike the marketing of HP - including fans with illustrations from the novel. Richardson, due to the popularity of his book, wrote a sequel. Henry Fielding - a literary rival - wrote two parodies of the book. It was huge, and it was pop culture, and now we understand it as an important moment in English literature (for a relatively easy academic read on this, check out Ian Watt’s The Rise of the Novel; for a more theory-heavy, but ultimately better argument about the novel in the eighteenth century, check out Michael McKeon’s The Origins of the English Novel).
The literati have often complained about these things - Philip Sidney (an important writer in his own right) was disgusted by a great deal of what was happening in the drama of his era. And some of what he complained about is precisely what we now recognize as important in Marlowe, Jonson, and Shakespeare.
As rea said earlier in this thread, if we’re going to toss “popular” fiction writers out, then we’re going to have to get rid of an awful lot of authors who we now revere.
And for the record, yes I’m an academic, and yes I’m up-to-date on the Harry Potter books. I think I’m driving my husband crazy with my speculations about the final book.
Amanda - I really had never connected reading time and labor issues before, despite my love of reading and of Marx, so I thank you for this article as well as all the fabulous analysis in the comments. For my two cents, I think there is also a connection between social sharing of media (books, tv, plays, movies) and how much one is willing to invest precious time in the pursuit of that particular media. I just finished reading the first of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. If my peers were also reading the series, and if I had a place to talk to other people about passages, characters, etc., I would be much more inclined to start the second book. Stories, regardless of their high art/low art status, regardless of the medium they are told with, provide ways for people to see themselves in other worlds and other people while at the same time seeing other worlds and other people inside themselves. Having others to talk through that process, to share revelations and excitement is a valuable and fun experience.
I would argue that the ubiquity of television and movies as a story telling mediums offers the easiest access to the social experience of story and/or art. We don’t just read Harry Potter by ourselves (as evidence of the HP parties that will go on later this week, as well as the fan clubs, lines in front of the theatres, and bands that write and perform “wizard rock”), we experience Harry Potter within a social network of friends and strangers. We create, if only momentarily, a large, well-meaning, excited, extended family.
I do understand the pleasure of the text, as Barthes would call it, that unique and solitary joy spent within the pages of a novel, or a story, or a poem. But in a world as fragmented, and solitary as ours, perhaps the social joy of talking about Harry Potter, Battlestar Galactica, or sharing experiences within gaming are far more necessary.
To borrow Mighty Ponygirl’s example for a moment:
“Mr. Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the ninth floor. If he hadn’t, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning. He didn’t see the owls swooping past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open- mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime. Mr. Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunchtime, when he thought he’d stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the bakery.â€?
There is a lot of characterization packed into these few sentences.
Mr. Dursley always turns his back to one of the primary pleasures in his office life. He doesn’t perceive the marvels taking place all around him. He has a habit of shouting and yelling at people, and feels good about that. And he thinks in cliches.
For the purposes of total disclosure: I’m a professional freelance writer for tabletop roleplaying games, both game supplements and game fiction, and so my opinions on the industry cannot be construed as neutral or unbiased.
You wanna see something that’ll make your eyes fall out?
http://www.rpg.net/columns/list-column.phtml?colname=vecna
The Head of Vecna, Women in Gaming and Other Myths column was written for RPG.net by one Hilary Doda, back when she was one of the few female game developers working in the field of tabletop game development, for a company called Dream Pod 9. To say that a feminist gaming column was not greeted with cries of pleasure is to put it mildly, as you will see in the comments threads of even her mildest article — many regular posters went out of their way to construe insults to men out of everything she wrote, no matter what the actual subject was. My personal feeling, as a writing professional in the field of gaming, is that a level of inherent sexism on the professional side — i.e., from the predominantly male development level — has significantly declined over the years. Individual male freelancers with whom a female freelancer must, perforce, collaborate may still be sexist assholes but having them dealt with swiftly and decisively by one’s developer, and having one’s complaints taken seriously by said developer, is not really an ordeal.
Tabletop fans, however, have proved themselves to be knuckledraggers when faced with a female GM that I’m extremely leery of running open-admission con games.
Oprah’s Book Club recommendations have included some bloody good books, actually. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Anna Karenina, Middlesex…
But they aren’t picked for how good they are, they are picked for popularity and publishers power. I’m sorry, but I just don’t think how that operates to be a good thing.
I have read a number of the books that are recommended by Oprah, and some of them are good, but to be honest, thanks to the crap that is also thrown in, the quality of a book doesn’t really seem to impact the concerns therein too much.
But IMHO, YMMV
I’d argue that 99% of the material in any medium can’t do that. The vast majority of the books that are published are utter crap. They are. I’ll take a film like Rashomon over, say, “The Five People You Meet in Heaven� any day, thanks. Film and literature aren’t the same, and they’re not meant to be consumed in the same way, but a great film certainly has the power to change the way you look at the world, and can absolutely stick with you.
I’ll agree with you on that, but I don’t think books and film are equatable like that. The very nature of the medium of each mean that the way it impacts a person will be different. A book requires that you submerge yourself actively into the text in order to actually experience the story, a film doesn’t. Sure, there are films that can do this, but they are a minority when compared to the ability of a book to do so.
I’ve read the leaked book and if it’s the true version then JK has laid a stinky rotten egg on us, kiddie book or no. It’s *awful!
*This is in no way a biased opinion based on my two favorite characters getting whacked in it, either. Well, mostly it isn’t.
“‘Oedipus Rex’ is about as interesting as watching a hooked fish thrash futilely at the end of a line.” –David Brin, “Star Wars” despots vs. “Star Trek” populists
It’s not a new thing; plenty of supposedly great literature consists of banging over and over again on the message that if you mess with the gods, you’ll get what’s coming to you, and don’t you ever try to escape your destiny or rise above your station in life. Say what you will about Disney movies (and I’ve got quite a long list of complaints myself), but at least it’s a change of pace.
It’s not just leisure time, it’s energy, as has been pointed out. When I was in high school I would lose myself in novels, but I stopped halfway through college because I was so busy with other things (other kinds of books and work and friendS). That continued until a few years ago, when I rediscovered the pleasure of novels and also discovered that reading something like Moby Dick could actually be surprising and entertaining, not merely Edifying. (Men squeezing each other’s slippery hands in big buckets of sperm, anyone?) But even when it’s fun, it takes energy. I can’t read something like that when I’m exhausted physically or emotionally, which most of us are at the end of the day. And TV has the benefit that you can talk to another person while you watch it, so it’s not just entertainment; it’s spending time with a loved one that you might not have enough time with during the day. With reading, though you can cozy up together in the same room (which I love doing, don’t get me wrong!), you can’t really talk in the same way. It’s a more solitary experience.
Can I sneer at the idea of anyone reading Cormac McCarthy? I’d like to see Mr. Charles tackle him if the “derivative themes” of Harry Potter bother him so much. Except that McCarthy has been anointed as a “serious” author and Rowling hasn’t. (Heh-heh. Imagine a Harry Potter flamewar –> a Cormac McCarthy flamewar.)
That said,
Well, it could be a criticism that it’s derivative of other children’s material that covered the ground better. From the highly subjective viewpoint of someone who’s read speculative fiction for decades, “HP” does compare unfavorably in some ways to similar works. And the fact that Hermione is the smartest and most learned, but Harry’s the hero just because, still bothers me. Nevertheless, if they’re fun to read, then what’s the real harm? And I suspect that HP has been acting as a gateway drug for further reading. Kids demanding 800-page texts? Rejoice!
This kind of high-art snobbishness tends to put me off of Serious Art & Literature. Going in with the pre-concieved notion that what you’re reading is Good and Edifying leaves no pleasure in just reading it.
And you don’t become a good and critical reader by isolating yourself, you do it by reading and examining what you read, which is exactly what HP fans are doing.
It’s like The Macbeth Murder Mystery. If you’re an idiot, reading Shakespeare isn’t going to make you smart.
And having worked in a bookstore, I can tell you, these Serious Literature snobs are some of the dreariest, most miserable bunch of sourpusses you’ll ever encounter.
SarahS, LeGuin is a Serious Writer™, despite working largely in the SF ghetto. Her Hainish Cycle books cast a strong light on various aspects of society and human nature, and what the light reveals is not always pretty. She’s fucking *brilliant.*
She was my first favorite author, when I read Earthsea at 10, then Left Hand of Darkness shortly thereafter (no, much of it went right over my head.)
What burns me is the YA designation the NYT bestseller list implemented so that snobby “mature” writers didn’t have to compete with a children’s book that was hogging the number one bestseller spot.
That, and most of what we consider “high literature” is just an aged romance novel. As someone who has really dedicated herself to reading the classics, I actually had a moment of doubt while picking out my next selection. When Tolstoy said that All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, I didn’t expect each unhappy family to be the result of a poor marriage; which is what most classic literature is about (that, or the trials of someone trying to win the love of someone who isn’t interested). It really gets repetitive after a while.
Myranda -
It’s not just female GMs its also any female in the game, whether pc or npc. One of the most common complaints I hear from girl gamers is that the knuckle dragging element insist on being real sexist, misogynistic, rapist power pigs during a table top rpgs (I think LARPers are probably more balanced). Many have stopped playing for that reason.
Anna Karenina is public domain. No one publisher is going to be doing all that well out of it.
I only recently discovered one new author who’s work I loved, only to find that she’d only ever written the one novel (The Fortunate Fall, by Rafael Carter… the only cyberpunk novel I’ve ever read that I actually liked).
The entire Harry Potter series I’ve read aloud to my wife, and as soon as I get that book number 7 I’ll be reading that one to her. I can hardly wait til my daughter is old enough. Also the Series of Unfortunate Events. It’s a nice thing to cuddle up in bed and share a book.
And I don’t get tired of reading a long book aloud, it just takes longer. And I might forget which voice belongs to which character, so they might mutate over time.
I’ll agree with you on that, but I don’t think books and film are equatable like that. The very nature of the medium of each mean that the way it impacts a person will be different. A book requires that you submerge yourself actively into the text in order to actually experience the story, a film doesn’t. Sure, there are films that can do this, but they are a minority when compared to the ability of a book to do so.
Well, that’s sort of what I was driving at when I said Film and literature aren’t the same, and they’re not meant to be consumed in the same way. I disagree with the implication that literature is somehow a superior artistic medium to film, just because the ways that you experience them are different. There are things that can be accomplished in literature that can’t on film, for sure. But there are also things that can be accomplished on film that don’t work well in literature.
You’re trying to make a direct comparison between film and literature and claim that literature is better when it’s like trying to compare, say, an apple and an automobile while coming to the conclusion that apples are better because you can make pie out of them.
The comparison doesn’t make sense.
Would you further suggest that literature is better than photography because literature requires you to submerge yourself in the text in ways that photography typically does not? Painting? Sculpture? What about theater or dance? Music?
Literature is very important and I love books, but I don’t think that literature is somehow the highest form of art before which all other forms of entertainment or recreational medium pales.
And if we really want to talk about engaging actively with the story: what about video games? I should think that video games win out over almost anything else in that case- after all, no medium that I can think of involves as much direct and active participation between the story and the consumer as video games. Does that mean that video games are the pinnacle of all artistic achievement? =P
We should have a thread dedicated to what kinda books various people would reccommend that are Harry Potter-esque in how light they are. Personally, I was thrilled to pieces when I was introduced to Christopher Moore’s writing (although he’s not the most feminist of author). Lamb, even after reading ten times, still makes me giggle.
One of my highschool friends pisses me off at times with his RPG nonesense. He tends to have a low opinion of women who play RPGs; thinks they don’t know the rules as well and that kind of thing.
I don’t know how he reconciles that with the fact that in my usual gaming group games have a lifespan of maybe a month or two, while my wife kept her campaign going and her players interested for like… 3 years or so.
And then there is the ex-girlfriend that I’m still friends with. Two guys in my usual group respect her a lot more now, not because she is the daughter of a single mother on welfare who worked two jobs and went to school, got herself a computer science degree and a good job, second degree black belt in karate, top scorer on one of her hockey teams, founder of another and goalie for a third. No, those things didn’t earn their respect. That she’s also good at board games earned their respect.
Why yes, my friends are assholes sometimes.
I wouldn’t say everything pales, but my opinion is that literature IS the pinnacle of human acheivement. You think differently *shrug* I disagree with you, but hey, it’s my opinion, YMMV.
One one of my email accounts is the sig:
“The more complex the mind, the more the need for the simplicity of play.”
or the corolary
“All work and no play makes jack/jean/ron charles a dull person.”
Including in the play time is reading. Personally I try to alternated between serious heavy lit (whether fiction or non fiction) and what I call mind candy (HP - Katherine Coulter [but I’ve grown tired of her], etc.)
notl33t -
One of our fun things to do is see who can get everyone laughing with some snarky comment over one of the reality TV shows we watch (which is not big brother or survivor)
Wah? Wait…. just WAIT A MINUTE!
Cap’n Crunch is for KIDS????
….. I’m… shocked, my world has been turned upside down. When I was a kid the Cap’n Crunch was for Dad - none of us were allowed to touch “his” cereal.
Antigone -
The MythAdventures series by Robert Asprin
Well Cap’n Crunch IS the offical food of Blue Man Group
I wonder if things like Tivo will ultimately make watching TV more like reading, as far as the social aspect goes. People who have the machines will still watch certain show in “real time”, just so that they can have the experience of watching it with their fellow aficionados, but otherwise “Did you see Blah Blah last night” is becoming an empty question.
It also strikes me that another reason for people to eschew complex multilayered fiction in “literature” is that they’re getting more than enough of it in their daily news. Pretty much regardless of what ideological stripe you may be, figuring out what’s going on in the world these days seems to involve huge amounts of context, analysis of metaphors and hidden meanings, weighing of multiple unreliable narrators…
There will always be a divide between hardcore culture enthusiasts and the kind of people who buy two or three books/CDs a year or so because most of the best stuff is buried underneath and you have to dig deep to find it. Since most of the big film/book/record companies just release copies of whatever happens to sell, or what’s bland enough not to turn anyone off, nothing really changes.
Having said that, a lot of the supposed ‘highbrow’ stuff being released by the large publishers is very generic too, upper-middle class angst about patricarchal patricians or second generation immigrants. And don’t even get me started on Safran Foer, Foster Wallace and the rest.
What Tom said. I know there is much Mainstream Fiction out there that I would probably enjoy, but “this work has been given the blessing of a bunch of tight-assed snotbags who refuse to admit that Wicked is tarted-up fanfic” is, what you say, not much of a selling point for me.
My 48 year old husband eats one box of Cap’n Crunch a year- the girls and I can’t quite get into it.
As we tell our daughters, one of the great parts of being an adult is deciding how and when to be a kid.
I have to admit, I tend to use the bestseller lists as a guide, too. If it’s on the bestseller list, and it’s not by a “known good” author (that is, an author whose work I know I wholeheartedly enjoy) I avoid it like the plague. Part of this is because the majority of books which hit the bestseller lists here in Australia tend to be the sort of novels I can’t stand - all romance, family sagas, or poorly written thrillers. I’m more a science-fiction and fantasy type, with a certain leaning toward horror and urban fantasy, as well as detective fiction. There are very few writers from those genres which actually make it onto the bestseller lists and actually deserve to (in my opinion) - off the top of my head, I can only think of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
As far as Harry Potter goes, I can take the books or leave them. I think I spent a few too many years reading Enid Blyton in primary school, and Harry still strikes me as “Upper Sixth at Hogwarts” more than anything else. I plan on spending the weekend of Potterdammerung doing whatever the internet equivalent of hiding under the table with my hands over my ears and my mouth open is, until the online Potter fandom has finished imploding, exploding, and manifesting all their best batsh*t qualities.
On the thread about using leisure time - I’m a text junkie, and have been since approximately age two. I read constantly (and at least part of my internet habit is purely because it’s a cheap and easy source of new and different text). I always have at least one book on the go (often more than one, in various stages of completion) and if I’m bored, I’ll reach for a book first, rather than turning on the television. It’s a family habit - family gatherings for my family tend to turn into group reading sessions on a reasonably regular basis, with each of us reading our particular book of choice. Of course, this does influence my working habits, and my commuting habits - I actually *prefer* taking public transport, because I know I’ll be able to get some reading done. I’m also one of those fortunate people who can re-read books repeatedly and still find something new.
Hmmm… now, what to do this weekend? Oh yes, move that third bookshelf into my bedroom and start unpacking some of the ten boxes of books still waiting to be shelved. *grin*
I really like the whole historical fiction genre, from Caleb Carr (”The Alienist” and “The Angel of Darkness” ) to Jeanne Kalogridis (”The Borgia Bride” etc.) it actually spurs me on to do research on the people, time and place I’m reading about.
Well, speaking of great so-called Young Adult fantasy, has anyone read the Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud? It’s very witty and clever, and deals with many Important Themes that infuse the fun with a mature flavor without overwhelming the story. And the world is a great invention, a dizzying mix of the Dickensian and modern. Great stuff.
“I wonder if things like Tivo will ultimately make watching TV more like reading, as far as the social aspect goes.”
I doubt it. We’ve had VCRs for how long now? Granted, TiVo is a bit more convenient than VCRs have traditionally been, but people have had the ability to record programs cheaply and easily for some time now without it significantly affecting the way the average person treats television. If someone is really wrapped up in a series, they tend to want to see the next episode sooner rather than recording it with the idea of getting around to it later.
The popularity of the tv-to-dvd model does seem to be shifting cohesively-plotted series closer towards movies in the way they’re treated, though there’s no real knowing how far it will go.
SarahS, LeGuin is a Serious Writer™, despite working largely in the SF ghetto. Her Hainish Cycle books cast a strong light on various aspects of society and human nature, and what the light reveals is not always pretty. She’s fucking *brilliant.*
C. Diane, have you been to her website lately? (Or Ansible, which is where I saw it first.)
Not that I’m proud or smug or anything…even if I did have to get more bandwidth to cope with the influx… [/Snoopy Dance]
Also counselors says that a TV in the marital (or like relationship) bedroom helps doom the relationship because instead of using the time before going to sleep for talking and reconnection people are watching tv.
Yeah, I’m hostile to the TV-in-bedroom thing, even though I often take my laptop to bed. It just seems like the death knell of your sex life.
Potterdammerung
That’s awesome.
Bellatrys, that’s awesome!
I loved her story, too. The hand-wringing over “Literature™” vs “genre” is so ridiculous and leads to this Ron Charles tongue-clucking nonsense.
I have read more crap ’serious fiction’ than I care to think about. there’s so much navel-gazing flatly-written (’finely honed prose style’ my ass), irony-shackled pieces of litrary Ry-Krisp that I’m leery of anybody writing literary reviews for a living–or anything in the Litrtature section–without a second opinion from those I trust.
It’s the same reason I don’t go to film festivals: Dearly though I love adventuresome artistic films, There are ponderous senseless dismal meandering art films that have made me want to gnaw my own foot off to escape the theater.
The two problems for me are a) there are no reviewers of serious books who go against the Canon. It’s just flat out impossible to read all the serious fiction out there, but it all seems to get the imprimatur. Was there no one, no one at all to tell me Jane Smiley’s ‘A Thousand Acres’ was flat, banal and tedious?
and b)there’s also nobody who reviews serious fiction who is even aware of some of the wonderful stuff published inside the SF Ghetto. They’ve nver even heard of Avram Davidson, R.A. Laffery, Cordwainer Smith, Gene Wolfe, Jack Vance, David R. Bunch, Alfred Bester, John Crowley…They don’t even have that stuff as referents, and it’s some of the greatest 20th Century writing around. I’ve read more than a couple of magical realist/surrealist ‘delights’ to finsd them tepid warmed-over Gene Wolfe.
I think it is true that HP is of the sort of novel people have abandoned: the big middlebrow epic. John O’Hara, Edna Ferber, Allen Drury, Taylor Caldwell–written with assurance, a well-crafted tale, neither trashy nor aspiring to be transcendent. Rowling is convincing, ’serious’ in that other sense. I’ve read all the HP books, and am looking forward to this one, because she always delivers. She’s no Thomas Mann–but neither is most serious fiction. Thank God, she’s no Jane Smiley, either.
Potterdammerung. Meg Thornton, you win the Internets.
Mythago, I happened to like that tarted-up fanfic, thank you very much. I don’t know why fanfic has such a bad rap anyway: yes, most of it is crap, but sometimes it’s better than the originial story. I’ll take “Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister” over Cinderella any day. Of for that matter, I’ll take “Right Behind” fanfic over “Left Behind” garbage.
Hmmm . . . upon reflection, some of the lit-snob hating going on here reminds me of this pretty smart post by Steve Hyden at The Onion:
http://www.avclub.com/content/blog/white_noise_superficial
Replace “annoying hipster” with “pinch faced lit snob” and you get the idea. The snobbing may be annoying, but true hardcore literature followers don’t exercise much in the real world at all, so they don’t really piss me off that much. I read/listen/participate in all forms of media at all brow levels, and it’s not hard to shift your appreciation between High and Low Art, not if you try.
Darn. I meant, true hardcore literature followers don’t exercise much POWER in the real world.
I just finished a book on teens and technologies (for librarians and educators) and it quoted some guy who studies video games and he made the point that if people really were in a race to dumb ourselves down, video games would have gotten easier over the last decade, not harder and more complex.
Seriously. Someone put together a conference at a nearby college the fall after HBP came out, and it was hardly shallow or uncritical.
Plus, what Jasmine said.
dwight
I think the reasoning was stupid too, but one thing it has done is given YA/Children’s authors in general more publicity. Not many of them are going to beat Danielle Steele’s latest, but there’s a lot of them that deserve at least as much recognition as she does. I’m not happy that I suspect Stefanie Meyer’s Eclipse will deserve to be on the same bestseller lists that Harry was once on, but won’t be. But if the result is that Scott Westerfeld and Tamora Pierce now get to say that they have several NYT bestsellers, I think in the end it’s a good thing.
I’m with Myth on this one. I really don’t see the appeal of Wicked. At least Harry Potter is an original work of fiction instead of the author leaning heavily on a previously-successful book to do all the heavy-lifting. Gregory Maguire is the Puff Daddy of the literary world, IMNSOHO.
Fanfic is fine when done in the privacy of one’s own home. :p
Chalk the narrowing of book sales to the “bestseller list” to the decline of the independent bookstore. No one says, “hey, you might like X if you liked Y”, or,” try X, because you are always looking for new writers in this genre”, because noone recognises repeat customers at big box stores. And you can’t expect to get any knowledgeable opinion from the big box store clerks, assuming you can locate one. Plus, big box stores get money for prominently displaying particular books, as well as the display material, from the publisher.
For those who are trying to read more: try www.dailylit.com. It’s all public domain works, so heavy on the classics. I just read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and now I’m working on The Picture of Dorian Gray.
I read all the time. Seriously. Cannot eat a meal without a book propped in front of me. Cannot be on public transportation without a book. I actually buy handbags only if I can fit a decent sized book in them. Kids (or, ahem, grown-up kids like myself) could do worse than reading the HP series, if they’re only going to read one thing this year (summer, whatever).
Of course I would prefer that people just plain read more. I think it’s a rare book indeed that doesn’t open your mind in SOME way, shape or form, even just a little bit. I mean, I’m not going to go around recommending the Left Behind series… but better to read something than to sit in front of the television (in most cases).
I read across a lot (but not all) genres, including sci-fi and fantasy, though not as much as I used to. I don’t read much or any horror, though that’s probably as much due to my overactive imagination as anything else — I don’t see horror movies, either, not because I have any particular problem with the genre but because I know that I will not sleep for weeks, and, well, I like sleep.
I like the HP books. I LOVED His Dark Materials (read all three in a weekend) but didn’t care for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
I am particularly alarmed at the trend of banning HP from children’s libraries. I mean, what the hell? Is it so scary that kids should learn to, perhaps, consider the world around them and think for themselves? Argh.
“I am particularly alarmed at the trend of banning HP from children’s libraries.”
Banning? Seriously? I can see opting not to carry them because they get stolen right off the bat or trashed in a week or patrons’ parents get into fist-fights over which child got to the book first and it’s just not worth the cost, time, and effort, but…banning?
It encourages teh satanism!
Preying Mantis,
Oh yeah, I was in Alamogordo (actually, a forced member of the church) when they were burning those books.
Usually libraries have far more sense than that, though–especially when it comes to wildly popular books that get people in the door and checking things out. Wasn’t it just making the news last year when nosy fundies were trying to get libraries to ban them, and having to sue in order to even get heard?
The HP alarmists are so ridiculous–the idea that enjoying one particular type of book makes you constitutionally unable to enjoy/seek out/delve into a different type of book is absurd. I’m in an English PhD program at a fancy-pants university, and I can tell you what every single one of my classmates will be doing this weekend. Hint: it won’t involve Henry James. I know HP fans who study medieval religious writing, John Donne, Reconstruction-era short stories, modernist novels, and contemporary poetry. IME, people who love books really love books and won’t be put off by having to go to a different section of the library to get a good one.
Been re-reading the Pullman trilogy myself recently (also in the middle of the Amber Spyglass, funny that). I look forward to when my son, who’s nearly 2 now, is old enough to read those books. Pullman is a master of grey, which is something a lot of kids’ shows leave out completely. The good guys aren’t 100% good, betrayal of one principle may be necessary to preserve others, and everyone doesn’t live happily ever after. It might be billed as fantasy, but it more closely resembles reality than many “grown-up” books I’ve read.
I agree completely on the public transit/reading time connection. I read waaay more when I lived in NYC and spent nearly two hours every day on the train. Much as I like listening to NPR (and miss Dallas’ late Air America station), I miss getting my time to get through China Mieville, David Mitchell, Voltaire, Steinbeck, what have you. And even my junk reads. I feel a lot less guilty about picking up a Star Wars sequel if it’s in between Chomsky and Orwell.
Short Reply: Mr. Charles and the Reading Police are one of the main reasons people DON’T read more “serious fiction”. That, and the time pressures issue mentioned in the post.
Long Reply: Most people don’t feel very sure of their ability to read and “get” serious lit. They don’t know what is really “good”, because other than a classics course or two in school, most people have NO educational background in contemporary lit. So, they mistakenly think all of the “good” stuff was written before 1950, and everything since is just “stuff”. Add to that the constant scoffing of the Reading Police that only muddies the waters and further undermines the confidence of the Average Josaphine, and it’s no wonder these busy people who didn’t really like the “classics” much anyway, default to the Best Seller ™ because it is easy, implies some level of “goodness”, and ensures at least someone somewhere down the line will be willing to have polite conversation about it.
And reading childeren’s books? Well, I think it actually shows an extrordinary ammount of moxie on behalf of those people who picked up Potter despite the fact there were no kids around to justify the act. We beat down the impulse for joy so rigerously in this society, being “childish” is one of the gravest insults a person can lob at someone else.
The whole anti-Potter movement astounds me. First, it was the nutties telling us it was EVIL (mwouahhahahaha!). Now the lit critics are telling us its… a children’s book, and not “serious” literature! Wow! Who’d a thunk it? And as much as I hate ANYTHING that has been over hyped, over processed, and over packaged, I don’t think you can claim the books themselves are to blame for this. That is just what Late Capitalism does to anything that falls into the mill. Society has commercialied the hell out of Shakespeare, but I don’t see the Ron Charlses’ of the world beating up on the Bard as the cause of the “end of serious reading”.
If you want to see my take on the “Potter Is EVIL” goofiness, please go to my blog and read my post. And leave me comments, as I’m fairly new to the blogosphere, and I like feedback. Also, if you LIKE my little corner o’ the tubes, please think about linking, or spreading the word. Thanks!
http://nekoonna.blogspot.com/
C. Diane, thanks! You may be amused to learn that *several* Serious Literary Fiction Authors have been selected for Thog’s Masterclass of “differently-good prose” including both Cormac McCarthy and Jonathan Franzen…
And the Potterdammerung made me snarf my tea when I first encountered it, shortly after going to B&N and seeing on every table, standups that asked “Who will live and who will die?” “Snape - Good or Evil?” and the most important, “Who Will End Up Together?”
Oh yeah, B&N’s inhouse marketing dept reads the internets…
Neko-Onna - there was all this around Sherlock Holmes when he was new, too. Tie-ins, fanzines, and when he “died” , before public demand forced Doyle to bring him back, starting a tradition of Superhero seeeming-deaths that lasts to this day - readers went out *wearing mourning* in Victorian London.
Of course, nobody (that I know of) dressed up like Holmes and threw themselves off a cliff, unlike what happened in the earlier “Sorrows of Young Werther” fancraze, where eighteenth-century emo boys dressed up like the hero and mooned around, and some of them went so far as to shoot themselves in scenarios staged like the suicide in the book…
preying mantis: You mean you haven’t heard of the Mallory case in Georgia?
I’m in Jasmine’s position - I was eight when the first book came out. Now I’m supposed to immediately lose interest once I get the right to vote? Trade in Harry for Moby Dick? Because I can’t read and enjoy both, right?
I had a great English 101 professor who wasn’t a big Potter fan but knew that we all were. So she kept tying her lessons into the Potter books. We once spent an entire class comparing Snape to Young Goodman Brown. It all goes back to those shared cultural experiences. They can be used as starting points to great effect.
I drag books around with me everywhere I go; one of my criteria for purses is whether or not I can comfortably fit a paperback book into it. The only way I got through my physics degree was by having one of Austen’s novels (usually either Sense and Sensibility or Northanger Abbey) stuffed into my backpack at all times.
I think part of the problem is that we have a hard time perceiving reading as anything one would do for pleasure or voluntarily. I once saw a fellow student with a copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and asked him if he liked it; he replied that he was reading it for class.
For my own part, I quite like the Harry Potter books, even though I wanted to box Harry’s ears in Order of the Phoenix. While Ms. Rowling is not perhaps the most inventive or the most talented writer, I find that she evokes Harry’s world with a vividness and an attention to detail that I just love. Most of my favorite books evoke another world just on the other side of the one in which we live: Tam Lin by Pamela Dean, American Gods and Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll. Being able to step through the walls at King’s Cross Station to get on Platform 9 3/4 has the same effect.
me, i’m a reader. if my legs bend, i read, anything, everything. it’s a quirk, and i get teased about it on occasion. usually that teasing is good humored, but there have been times when a few folks at work have decided that reading is some kind of challenge to their right to not read, and they enjoy belittling others for doing so. i found that pretty odd. i don’t seem to fit in easily. but i’m a science nerd at heart and most of the medical profession is now staffed by the lowest denominator in a need to meet the bottom line. in the end, i cost to much for that employer.
time for a novel? i read faster than i breathe. i’m lucky, it’s a personal oddity. now i write. and the dumbing down of bush’s ‘murika continues. if they keep throwing “reality” TV at folks, keep raising gas prices and making life impossible, people give up the pleasures in life of vacation, an evening meal, reading aloud to the kids at night with the latest HP, and better yet if the kids are too into video games or makeup to want to read, if school discourages curiosity and individuality… those kids only want mom and dad gone so they can consume… which works well so mom and dad can work those extra hours or that second job so they can afford to drive the 45 miles to work tomorrow…
no kid starts by reading tolstoy. they read seusse, and rawlings and stuff most adults wouldn’t recognize (like those anime books that make my eyes roll back in my head and encourage drooling) because they’re kids… but their reading, and if your lucky, they’re reading with or to you because they want you to share their world, and you’re doing the same for them.
isn’t that what books are about? engaging the readers to discuss and thus share their lives, insights and humor?
sorry, got really wordy here. i apologize.
squelches the child inside
I will almost certainly never read a Potter book, but I LOVE the Powerpuff Girls, and even have a wallet with their picture on it.
Cartoon Network, bring back the Powerpuff Girls!
Clearly people need to read more medieval literature. I’ve seen a bunch of commentators complain about the tediousness/ennui/angst of the Great Books and say they love fantasy and escapism. Well, with medieval literature, you get the best of both worlds! On the one hand, you have vitally important Great works of fiction/religion that speak to the human condition and are complex and intricate; on the other, you have some really fucked up stories involving familiar fantasy motifs (elves, fairies, witches, enchantment, other worlds, battles, heroes, etc.) No one in their right mind can say that Beowulf is boring or immature. Same goes for the Tain Bo Cualnge, the Divine Comedy, History of the Kings of Britain, Song of Roland, or Le Morte D’Arthur. Heck, Chaucer has some of the most biting wit out there, and the Canterbury tales is broken up into dozens of short chunks for easy reading. Even better, many of the great and easily accessible works of medieval literature are printed in abundance and Really Cheap! The really weird stuff, like The Book of Margery Kempe, is a bit harder to find (chapter 58, I think, she has sex with God).
All in all, and interesting discussion. I personally haven’t read HP because I’m not interested and the fandom scares me. Perhaps someday, when people are less obsessed, and I’m in the mood for something light. But these days, my idea of escapist fiction is Jane Austen.
Pointless and OT, but:
Someone commented in another HP thread here that James was an Asshole and Snape was a Nice Guy. I thought about that, and I disagree. James was the Nice Guy - he was the one pointing to Snape and saying, “At least I’m not him! I would never call you a Mudblood!”
I’ve introduced many of my friends to feminism through Harry Potter.
re: banning. Sorry, I should have been more specific — the books have been one of the most challenged: http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=pressreleases&template=/contentmanagement/contentdisplay.cfm&ContentID=138540
Sorry for the confusion.
My parents were both voracious readers and read to us a lot. When I was little, my father ate really quickly and would fidget waiting for the rest of us to finish. To keep him from rushing us to finish dinner, my mother suggested that he read to us when he had finished his meal. He read us The Hobbit and the LOTR series before getting shipped off to Viet Nam. I know that my parents’ love of reading is what makes me such a big reader in spite of being borderline dyslexic and reading very slowly.
I heartily endorse several of the suggestions above (Aspirin, Pratchett, Gaiman, LeGuin, eitc.) and have been taking copious notes about other things that I should be reading. If I paid any attention at all to the bestseller list I would have missed out on such gems like Iain Pears’s An Instance of the Fingerpost and Adam Johnson’s Parasites Like Us. The former was a bonding experience for me when I gave a copy of it to my favorite musician. He remembered me several months later because he had enjoyed it. He also referred to the latter as “the novel I wish I’d written.”
I discovered the Pullman series last Friday. I’ve finished the first two and need to get the third
I’m going to have to take up a life of crime to pay for my book habit. I’ve been known to spend $150 at the $2 table.
Clytemnestra:
On the quotes concerning play and intelligence, I’ve always liked this one from Montaigne, though this translation is a little creaky:
“If any one shall tell me that it is to undervalue the Muses to make use of them only for sport and to pass away the time, I shall tell him, that he does not know so well as I the value of the sport, the pleasure, and the pastime; I can hardly forbear to add that all other end is ridiculous. “
Well, that depends on where you are talking about as well. I know of several private schools that won’t allow them on campus and I have parents asking me for christian fantasy all the time “you know, like Narnia, not like Harry Potter.” It’s certainly not the same as banning them from public libraries, but it also means there’s a lot of kids that won’t get to read them.
I was an English major and I had a Gothiky, drawling prof, who loved Faulkner and Welty, per equal parts Dixie allegience and righteous sensibility.
Here’s what he said about Joyce’s “Ulysses”: “There are about 5 people in the world who can read it and deeply understand it. Nearly every who says that they can is a liar. I lie about many things, but I won’t lie about understanding ‘Ulysses.’”
I think a lot of people read serious books because they want to be seen as serious people. Like writers who write in Starbucks, who are then seen as not just writing, but WRITERS, people read serious books and leave them lying about, as they once did with Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time,” which was a bestseller and coffee table frosting that was understood by 5 people.
SarahS, I won’t be biting your ass as I love LeGuin too and I loved her even more when I visited her website, which is black font on a white background. I love that she considers her words enough…and they are.
“re: banning. Sorry, I should have been more specific — the books have been one of the most challenged”
Ah. Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me. The more popular something is, the more likely somebody is to get a bug up their ass about it and take the time to write to the local librarian about how it’s filthy/heathen/liable to cause their child to sit up late at night with a flashlight under the covers. Of course, the more popular something is, the more likely the librarian who gets the letter is to say “Nuts to you, buddy! Circulation’s up 15% in juvenile!”, so it’s almost always the stray copy of something obscure that happened to offend a lone nutbag on the one occasion in which it was checked out in a decade that actually gets withdrawn from the collection.
And even that, fortunately, tends to get a “Nuts to you, buddy!” response, because as crazy as people get about Harry Potter (and, apparently, the good Cap. Underpants), the righteous indignation of the anti-banning-anything crowd is like the fire of a thousand suns. I mean, sure, the anti-Potter folks have God on their side, but the anti-banning crowd fought wars and lost limbs and is willing to Godwin anybody over shit like this.
Knowing mythago, “tarted-up fanfic” is probably a compliment.
I’m sure she’s mocking the way people have to put a pretentious gloss on some things to enjoy them, like calling comic books “graphic novels”.
Well I found the Song of Roland boring, but then again I also fail to get into Pratchett
Kate217 - we spend over $100 every 2 months at Borders. We’ve never been able to make the library part of our routine, But that could be due in part to it’s weird schedule — for instance it’s not open on Sundays
El Mocho - I like it
Augh, bellatrys, I just spent hours clicking the random thog-o-matic when I should have been working on an 8-page paper due next week.
feral, plenty of adults read “those anime books … that cause drooling.” They’re not all insipid tripe, you know.
hehehehe. Just cuz she’s joking don’t mean she’s wrong. :p
:P Fanfic is brilliant: it gives people the oppurtunity to suck in a brilliant way.
I will almost certainly never read a Potter book, but I LOVE the Powerpuff Girls, and even have a wallet with their picture on it.
I have a Powerpuff Girls wallet too! I always get smiled at when I bust it out, too.
It’s falling apart though, but I can’t bring myself to replace it.
Amanda, expect the problem you described to get worse, not better, with time. Schools (and particularly those in Texas, right in your backyard) are actively discouraging kids from reading in their leisure time because — are you ready for this? — it doesn’t burn enough calories. I wish I was kidding about this; I’m not. From Harriet Brown’s blog, on the new Texas “FITNESSGRAM” that all public schoolchildren in Texas now receive:
Headdesk, anyone?
The one argument against HP I cannot stand is that they’re “unoriginal.” Whenever I hear it I think of one of my mum’s favorite quotes, from Cervantes: “There is nothing new under the sun.” Mmhmm. And I think if that was true back when the first Western novel was being written, it’s certainly true today. I have a friend who gets irritated at HP because he thinks they’re ripping off Star Wars, which, besides being pretty ridiculous on its face, requires that one assumes Star Wars is completely original. Uh huh. (note: I love the original Star Wars, don’t get me wrong).
I read HP the same reason I read books by Kazuo Ishiguro, or Edith Wharton, or Dickens–they have characters that make me care. I can’t stand books intended for purely intellectual value (unless they’re nonfiction, I guess); to me, literature is art, and art is an emotional experience first and foremost, or at least that’s how I experience it. So I hated Pride and Prejudice the same reason I hated Da Vinci Code–I really didn’t care what happened. But I cried at the end of House of Mirth and I cried when Sirius died for the same reason–I’d become emotionally invested. And to me, I don’t care how light the writing is, or how cutesy some of the aspects are, if you can make me care, you’re a good writer, period.
(way, way down here at the bottom…)
1. One main reason why books have gotten so much more expensive is all the distributors are now clamouring for Amazon-level (55% off) discounts or even higher (60% off). Publishers (remember them? The people putting out these in the first place?) have to hike prices just to be able to make the same amount of profit they used to when books were priced cheaper and the distributors got only a 30-40% discount.
2. Too much Grrrreeeaat Litehachoor has, in my opinion, been labeled as such because it is complex, verbose, “hard to understand” and requires the “wise and benevolent” assistance of an English teacher to explain the bloody stuff to the supposedly clueless students. Witness the passion that English teachers have for Joyce. (There’s a very funny parody of Ulysses–and interpretations of it–in one of Stanislaw Lem’s books: A Perfect Vacuum. I especially liked the “commas in Chapter 6 deliniating a street map of Rome.” )
3. Some stuff got labeled “Great” simply because it was there at the time and had an effect…if only on English teachers. I can’t be the only person who thinks Moby Dick is one of the most boring pieces of “literature” around (one of my friends, who is a voracious reader, struggled through 9/10ths of it then gave up.) Another example: Lorna Doone. Snore. Give me Vanity Fair instead.
4. Remember that a lot of these authors were, indeed, paid by the word. In a world where people who were literate also were the upper-class with more leisure time on their hands AND no television, much of stuff churned out by Dumas, Dickens, etc. was the literary equivalent of soap operas and fit the same niche.
5. Another writer I recommend (sadly, she just died recently) is Joan Aiken, noted for her “Wolves of Willowby Chase” series. Wonderful characters and dialog, set in a dotty alternate history, great baddies and sympathetic heroines….
I have two Powerpuff Girls wallets. One is enshrined with my Powerpuff Girls tops I received free from some cookie promotion, which also included a top of Mojo Jojo, my favorite villian, the other is with me at all times.
Faulkner is the greatest, by the way. Light In August explains a lot about the American character.
Meowser, I’m not sure that’s quite true of ’schools’, since an even bigger trend is to get rid of recess entirely. You know, because we have No Child Left Behind scores to keep up.
Mythago, I happened to like that tarted-up fanfic, thank you very much.
Did I say fanfic (tarted up or otherwise) is Bad and Should Not Be Read? No. I’m just deeply amused at the way Literary Persons pretzel themselves around to pretend that genre fiction isn’t genre because, well, they like it and anyway it was written by a big, important author.
That’s why you get this hilarous pretense that Vox is not straight-up porn, The Handmaid’s Tale is not SF and The Red Tent is not fanfic. Because admitting that something other than mainstream-literary-setting fiction or classics are worth reading would cause the sky to fall, I guess.
Oh, and on HP: yes, James Potter was kind of an asshole when he was at school. That’s part of the point of the later books, I think; that Harry learns to see the adults in his life, including his parents, as people rather than Heroic or Villainous Figures.
Mythago, I’m not saying that the FITNESSGRAM isn’t ridiculously hypocritical given all the NCLB nonsense out there that keeps kids sitting squarely on their butts for six hours a day. But it does exist, I promise you. The link I posted shows a picture of it.
I just don’t understand how they could have passed a bill (even in Texas) that equivocates sleeping, homework, schoolwork and reading with television and video games as slothful activities that kids should be told to do as little of as possible. Makes me wonder why they don’t just cancel school entirely and just have the kids run around and play tag all day. (And they’d better not catch you reading.)
My mistake - I left off the ever-important trademark. James Potter was a Nice Guy(TM), which makes him an asshole of the thinly-veiled variety, as opposed to an Asshole(TM). He tried to get a date with Lily by pointing out that, “At least I would never call you a Mudblood like that other guy.” This is the sign of a Nice Guy(TM), is it not?
The trademark sign worked in the preview! Your software hates me, Amanda. This saddens me.
“Isabel
The one argument against HP I cannot stand is that they’re “unoriginal.� Whenever I hear it I think of one of my mum’s favorite quotes, from Cervantes: “There is nothing new under the sun.�
Actually, that’s Ecclesiastes. It wasn’t even new when Cervantes said it.
Correction to my post that’s in the mod queue: The FITNESSGRAM photo I mentioned is not from the link to Harriet Brown’s blog, but from Junkfood Science, which also did a piece on it. This is the photo:
http://bp1.blogger.com/_DjrlSOJqAn0/RnmTHmLUa9I/AAAAAAAABgQ/l_TftmwOkX4/s1600-h/fitnessreport.jpg
I belong to the Ebert school of criticizing practically everything, to wit: Does it do a good job at what it is trying to do?
I had no use for The Da Vinci Code because I thought it sucked at being a mystery/thriller, which was what it tried to be. The dialogue and plot were so laughable that I couldn’t get into it, even on a popcorn level.
I enjoy Harry Potter because it’s generally quite good at classic fantasy themes. Not every word of it is genius — but it’s pretty solid. She’s got a sense of humor, a sense of plotting, a sense of timing, and a sense of character.
(It might be a little easier to understand when applied to movies. I love “Independence Day” because it delivers everything you want from an alien invasion film. I love “Legend of Drunken Master” because, while I still don’t think I could explain the plot, it’s got some absolutely fantastically beautiful martial arts. I love “Lost in Translation” because it develops its mood and characters so perfectly, even though it’s one of those plotless wanky short stories I tend to hate when they’re written down. That kind of thing.)
And I seriously don’t understand the people who think Potter fans don’t read. You should see my bookshelves. It’s ridiculous. It would satisfy a “literature” snob for sure. And yes, I’ve read everything in the house, most of it several times over.
But I have no use for Rick Moody, for example. That’s apparently what passes for serious literature these days. Pretension and wankery. Harry Potter’s better than that, because it doesn’t insult me.
Meowser: I solve this problem by walking and reading at the same time. When I take public transit to work, I unfortunately have about forty-five minutes total of walking and only twenty of the bus, but in the evenings I’ve always got a book in my hands when I’m walking down the sidewalk.
One thing that would help is to move more people out of cars and onto public transportation, I think. Then they have more brainspace to devote to reading during their commute time. Most people can only listen to the radio now.
Audiobooks might not do anything for global warming, but they opened up all kinds of reading time for me. I can’t sit down with a book anymore. I have to be read to while I’m doing something else.
Wait, did Atwood say that the “Handmaiden’s Tale” WASN’T sci fi/ dystopian? Huh, that makes my oppinion of her go down a little. Still an awesome book, however.
“Wait, did Atwood say that the “Handmaiden’s Taleâ€? WASN’T sci fi/ dystopian?”
I don’t know if Atwood has said it, but it’s like people who discuss her work in a scholarly or debate setting develop a sudden allergy to the term.
Atwood said it, at least in the one radio interview of hers I ever heard. Handmaid’s Tale wasn’t science fiction, it was Serious Literature.
(And thinking about people who talk about Serious Literature (with caps) makes me want to lolcatz parody them.)
How many people actually read Ron Charles original piece? It made a lot of good points - about how books are marketed like summer event movies, and about how reading is supposed to be about personal time and personal tastes.
That is why Harry Potter and Oprah annoy snobs like me so. I don’t care about your peculiar personal tastes. The problem is that HP and Oprah approved books are *not* your personal tastes.
When people choose books because they are on a best-seller list, or because Oprah hawked them or to be part of some cultural event, have something to talk about and go to release parties, they aren’t participating in the main value of art: personal experience.
Ideally you discover authors, genres and subjects that you find personally interesting. That is why snobs hate mega-popular things. Not because the masses have poor taste, but because the masses don’t demonstrate personal tastes at all but rather an interest in the lowerst common denominator. A few mega-popular things are good of course, but for the most part they are bland and highly impersonal. “P is for Petit Larceny” doesn’t speak to anybody.
There is a certain joy of discovery in finding something off the beaten path that appeals to you personally. Both in the pride of discovery and in the superior experience itself.
The choice is not between Harry Potter and Don Dillieo. (Or whatever his name is) It’s not a matter of liking “literary” stuff or having “refined” tastes. Someone who reads only agreed-upong great works is no better than someone going off the best-seller list. It’s a matter of personal exploration and tastes and understanding that different art speaks to different people.
Well, it’s not really science fiction, at least not in the way that I think of science fiction. It’s certainly speculative fiction, which has science fiction, fantasy, retold mythology/Shakespeare/whatever (also known as fanfic, sure) dystopian/utopian fiction and historical fiction all under its wing as far as I’m concerned. But it’s on the line for me.
I read and at least liked, if not loved, every other book we were required to read in school - until Moby Dick. There are no words for how much I hate that book. They were right the first time; when America became desperate for Great American Authors a couple decades later, they should have just encouraged better writing among the current writers, not changed their mind about Moby Dick.
a way i like to slack at work is use google books. obviously it’s all older stuff, but it was great when i was in a heavy victorian trash phase this spring. read the book on the train, sneak a few chapters at work online, read book at lunch, sneak a chapter, read book on train….
which doesn’t, of course, solve the issue that we are working too much. my boyfriend is jealous that i get two hours a day to read, but i’m commuting those two hours. i’d happily read an hour less a day if i were doing it in bed.
Um, Bizzaro, do you see the contradiction in this statement? Perhaps release parties and dinner table conversations aren’t the reasons you read, but they may very well be the “personal experience” others are looking for. And books as conversation fodder/cultural events is a time-honored practice, not some invention of Oprah et al. And I don’t think you see a lot of people saying, “Yay, media circus!”. I think what you see a lot of people saying is, “Harry Potter= the end of ’serious’ reading? WTF?” Yes, HP is a kid’s story. Yes HP has been uber-hyped. No, that doesn’t make HP bad, or the act of reading HP some sort of insult to literacy.
And, to get back to Amanda’s original point- when are the majority of people gong to find time to: 1.) hunt down quirky, original prose tht speaks directly to them; 2.) read and engage with such material; and 3.) repeat the above process? Especially when most people have scant background in literature, are faced with massive Big Box booksellers that are about as personable as an interstate highway, and entire industries dedicated to selling you what they want you to read. Oh, and then these same folks are supposed to ignore the eye rolls and titters from the Reading Police when they choose something “obvious” or “agreed upon”. And your reading better not interfere with the one thing you are really here to do- make money.
I think it is a frickin’ miracle anybody reads anything at all.
I sense this Charles dude would really hate my collection of X-Men graphic novels, especially since they, and our friendly neighborhood boy wizard, are BETTER WRITTEN AND PLOTTED than the crap that passes in some circles for ’serious literature’. History will determine what is art and what is crap, not dipshit critics.
c.diane, i guess i should explain that anime induces drooling in me in particular… i have a son who is autistic and for 21 yrs i’ve listened to him read me bits from graphics and anime that he thinks are hilarious. i personally just don’t get it cause i’m wired differently ( i didn’t get cheech and chong or jim carey either, everyone else will be laughing and i’m scratching my head. ) i believe my condition is called being a dork…he’ll get hooked on one thing and work it til he’s worn ya down into a nub. nothing wrong with them, i just don’t dig em any more than i get into herman wouke. just my tastes.
serious literature… that is such a pretentious title. i despised ‘moby dick’, and loved ‘the flounder.’ again, personal tastes.
i get a personal kick out of some fanfic, because i just plain do. and i love a good techno thriller: my personal form of guilty pleasure, like preston and child, Long, and pavlou. and if you want a good scare, try some richard laymon. it’s simply my taste, and despite it, there are bookshelves groaning with anime i’ve picked up for that kid. i wouldn’t trade a second of those long painful discourses of his for anything…
Oh, and a book I highly highly recommend if you are interested in the history of American literature is “The Mauve Decade” by Thomas Beer. Written in the 1920s about the literature/culture/politics/whatever of the 1890s. Very well written and very witty–I find myself quoting lines from it every day: “The [politicians] invoked Christ with the freedom of medieval kings in a brawl over the border.” And what he does to Roscoe Conklin and the “Free Silver” movement….
Actually, some of the best stuff out there is the genre material of ages past. I love Wilkie Collins, LeFanu, Stevenson…heck, everyone still loves reading Sherlock Holmes–why? Because they’re damn good stories. And even if it’s long, heck, I love the Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo and similar. Now to track down some Sabatini…..
Good writers of any age worry less about writing The Great Novel and worry more about writing a damn good story. Holds from Murasaki Shikibu down all the way to modern times.
Adding to the HATED Moby Dick crowd. Melville’s short stories weren’t bad, but Moby Dick was the only book that I felt like ripping my eyeballs out instead of reading it.
Don’t be so sure that it’s the intended end result of all this crapola. Back during the Clinton administration I had one of those Republican power players tell me that they/he didn’t think government should educate it’s people (keep in mind that one of the topics touched on in this discussion was Pakistans illiteracy rate. And that two he’d like to see the Dept of Education abolished.
NCLB as orginally purposed by Kennedy may have been an excellent idea. . . but now I fear, as many teachers do, that it is the very tool being used to end universal free public education in this country.
Oh on a different note:
Recently we have had many articles in our newspaper about the rising rate of childhood obesity. And along with that some very laudible and some stupid suggestions on how to counter it.
My next letter to the editor will point out that with both parents needing to work long hours to put food on the table in this economy, and our long winters, it is only natural that children will lead a more sedintary life style. So instead of purposing new nutrition classes for kids, why not do something proven to work and counter the effects of sitting in front of tv or computer when they get home. . . .
At least a half and hour of gym class every day, not the one day a week they now get (unless they have two “specials” and then they get two gym classes a week).
For crying out fucking loud, get the kids moving!
BizzaroSuperman -
You missed Amanda’s point about time. Finding an author that speaks to you takes time. Bothered as you might be by Oprah’s selections they are opening the door to authors who may speak to someone.
Now I didn’t read Morrison’s “Beloved” because she was on Oprah’s reading list (I read it because I like ghost stories and I ended up getting a ton more out of it). But how many people discovered her as an author and went on to read more of her books because she was?
You also said
That takes a lot of time and a lot of hit or miss - and I have a lot of “miss” books by my bedside. And some people might give up (and probably have given up) on being a reader because they can’t find something they like in their time limited forays. Book clubs like Oprah’s are a necessary short cut to finding those authors and those genres that hold you.
One size does not fit all.
Those events may be part of the personal experience of the book that makes it valuable to them. We already now that there are people who used reading as an escape but what is so wrong with them using it as the vehicle to “belong” if even for just a little while.
When I was growing up many summers were spent as member of Junior Great Books. Many of the stories we read and discussed I still remember and sometimes include in my own teaching. This was part of my experience with the joy of literature. As was the competition I had to read more books than anyone in my class during the summer and to see how many times I could get my name on the wall of the local libraries reading program. That was also part of my personal experience with reading/literature/art.
You are devaluing others personal experience with reading just because it doesn’t fit into your own, narrow, constructs.
It may make you feel superior, but it doesn’t make you (or Ron Charles) right.
I do want to echo that not reading books =/= not reading period. Between books online, online original fiction, and yes even fanfiction, spending time reading no longer requires having a physical book. Moreover, reading things online, especially less “mainstream” things, may make more people more likely to talk about them in online forums rather than in Real Life, cutting down on the amount of RL chatting about reading. Both of these things probably conspire to create the illusion that there’s a lot less reading happening than there actually is.
As far as other mediums go I have to say, most people who go to see films do go for “mindless” entertainment. I base this on two things. One is personal experience. I’ve worked in a movie theater for more than 6 years, the amount of negative comments from patrons when ever we show a foreign English-subtitled movie. The amount of hostility words the concept of OMG having to read while watching a movie is downright ridiculous. Cashiers typically have to “warn” patrons buying tickets that they’re buying tickets to a subbed movie (because god forbid they know this information themselves) and if they don’t if not it’s not uncommon for people to leave the movie once they realize it’s not in English and demand their money back. (Another good place to observe this attitude is Anime fandom. It’ll come up in most Sub vs Dub debates). What’s worse, our theater makes use of Rear Window Captioning and many patrons will ask what, say, “1408 RWC” means and misunderstand the explanation and get all horrified at the idea of (gasp) English subtitles on their English movie.
The other thing I base this one is the number of DVD commentaries I’ve heard in which the writers/directors/producers/actors refer to and exposition as this awful thing you need to get through before you can get back to the action. So many DVD’s have this that if there was widespread disagreement with this attitude, you’d think more people would say something about it.
As for TV, for me it’s not really a social medium (I watch TV alone and don’t really talk about it with others, mostly because most people I know don’t share my tastes), but it’s not a passive form of entertainment either. The only shows I currently watch are reruns of Star Trek (TNG, DS9, and Voy) and CSI on Spike TV, of all places), other show I’ve really been into were X-files, Pretender, and Profiler. In other words, I like shows wiht some kind of central mystery that I actively try to figure out before it’s reveled. Having other people around tends to be a distraction.
As for video games, I agree with what was said above, about the difficulty and the interactive narrative part. I think some of the attitides about vieo games can be summed up by an older subway commercial. Some kid siting there playing some weird ass, 70’s-esq packman like game. I really think some people haven’t realize that games have advance significantly in the last few decades. I’d really like to stick some of these people in front of Twilight Princess or something and see how well thy do. Even Pokemon would probably be too difficult for most of them. And video games are very active entertainment. To use my previous example, you’re not watching Link and Midna struggle t restore the 4 Light Spirits to save Hyrule from the Twilight. You are Link struggling to save Hyrule. If it’s saved, it’s because you worked to save it. That’s very different from other “mindless” entertainment.
There’s another thing too, about the decline of reading that doesn’t get mentioned much. Someone above mentioned literacy rates, which I think is part of it. Not just that people can’t read, but that they can’t read well, for a variety of reasons. I know a lot of people who are considered literate, but struggle with reading, and make little effort to do so and derive little to no joy from it.
Now, as for myself (I’m going somewhere with this) I love to read (though mostly stuff online) and I’m quite good at it. I’ve always preferred to read books in one-shot and can finish pretty much any book in less than a day. This includes all the HP books so far and, although my copy of DH is coming from Amazon and therefore probably won’t be here until Saturday afternoon, I have little doubt I’ll be done with it before I have to work Sunday morning.
However, when I was in first grade, I struggled with reading (I was one of the worst readers in my class), had atrocious spelling, and had horrid handwriting. My teacher immediately picked up on this and after personal intervention didn’t work, sent me to the school’s reading tutor (during class time, so I didn’t have to come early/stay after). My reading rapidly improved (by the second semester I was at the top of the class, reading at a 2nd semester third grade level). I still had problems with spelling and handwriting and it was eventually determined that I was Dyslexic. This was dealt with by simply sending my to the school’s LD (learning disability) tutor. As a side note, may kids were sent to the tutors and it was just accepted by the student body that it was just something some kids did. There was no stigma attached or anything like that. Obviously all of this helped me become good enough at reading to enjoy it. More obviously I went to a private school. One that charged a $2,000 a year tuition and when you charge $2,000 a year you DO NOT turn out kids that can’t read well. Fortunately when you get $2,000 per child per year you can actually afford to implement policies that make sure every student is able to read well.
The people I mentioned above, who can’t read well and don’t like to? Mostly dyslexic family members who went to our city’s disgustingly underfunded public schools. My ability to read well enough to enjoy it despite having a “learning disability”, something that should be a right, is a privilege, bought with my mother’s ability to scrape together $2,000 a year to pay for me to go to a private school. And one denied to many “learning disabled” children who’s parent(s) can’t.
Ruby -
It’s nice to know I’m not the only dyslexic who loves to read.
Two of my children are dyslexic as well and I get angry as hell when an educator would write off them as readers because they are dyslexic. . . I’s promptly and probably with great vibrato disabused them of the idea that dyslexics can’t love reading and be good readers.
(Oh and btw you read faster than I do)
For the past two summers we have sent our two dyslexic children to a summer reading program sponsered by UMASS Amherst. They have inturn become better, faster and more engaged readers.
Reading is actually enjoyable for them. But it comes with a price tag that averages $400 a piece. We can do this now, a few years ago we could not. It is my hope that in the future (hopefully not to distant) for a few summers at least, I will be able to sponser some children whose families aren’t so well off for this program.
For those who haven’t tried “Wicked”– this tarted up fanfic is about Elphebe (the “wicked” witch of the west) and how she got her reputation– as a college student, seeing fascism taking over her civilization, she disappeared into an underground movement against the Wizard. It’s about how the people in power define good and evil, and history gets written by the winners. Subplots include exploitation of indigenous peoples, disabled people and their relationship to the community, single motherhood… it’s fanfic written by someone with a serious progressive agenda. On the other hand, it is slow and it is downbeat… not a light, fun read.
As for Christopher Moore, mentioned above, I think he *is* feminist– he definitely tries to be. His vampire stories have a female vampire who refuses to be turned human again, even when a process is discovered. She used to be afraid to walk alone at night; now she can defend herself effortlessly. He gets that we live in a rape culture and being able to live without fear might be a great temptation for a woman.
His female characters are aware of sexism– even the antagonists may be a way to point out how bad women have it in a patriarchal society, like Blue.
That sounds like a wonderful charity. How does one go about sponsoring children? Is there some sort of formal program? (My google-fu is weak)
Dr. Locrian, I have read the Bartimaeus Trilogy and thoroughly enjoyed it. It has great plots and it was fun to see the character development from book to book. It is more challenging than the Potter books and has great humor. The final book was really an accomplishment. It has as good a description of a sort of “heaven” called “the Other Place” as you are likely to find.
I can’t recommend it highly enough. Let’s say that it is serious fun and seriously funny.
http://www.bartimaeustrilogy.com/about.html
I have given it to friends and they have bought for their family and friends. I think that kids who liked Potter will like this as well, or even better.
As can be seen in a recent series on CBS news about the rise of video game addiction, which gave serious* credence to the Chinese idea that if you spend more than 2 hours a day playing video games or on the internet you’re addicted and should probably be sent off to camp to break the addiction.
Now admittedly the internet, and internet based games, can be highly addicting. Now I’m not contradicting the people who say that someone who spends every waking minute playing some random MMO instead of taking care of things they really should (bills, children, personal nutrition and higene and work to name a few of the more ), actually I agree they need some serious time away from the computer (actually one of the issues I have with MMOs in general is how much time and effort you have to put in to get the best stuff, gamers turn to games to escape the real world, not be reminded that their dreams require them to give up any semblance of healthy social relationships). Getting back on topic though, if Katie Couric were to suggest that anyone who spends more than 2 hours watching TV was addicted and needed a few weeks away from the boob toob she’d not only be laughed at but her TV selling bosses might fire her. But video games? They’re the new kid in school who it’s safe to pick on. Now what if someone were to suggest that reading a book for more than two hours at a time can cause eyestrain that leads to blindness? Or listening to music for more than two hours at a time can cause loss of hearing (this is actually true, if you’re using headphones, the maximum time limit is longer for just listening to stuff transmitted through air at a reasonable volume)? Suddenly people wouldn’t be quite so happy.
I forget where I first saw the idea, but it’s an irony that the more efficient our technology becomes at cutting transportation time the less free time we actually have.
*well, serious enough that they actually gave it air time.
Bizzaro - Don’t you dare try to tell me what my personal taste is. I’ve discovered through bonking my head repeatedly against the media that my personal taste is quite often different than other people’s. Superman? Boring as hell, I can’t see why anyone can stand it. 1984 - boring over-hyped novel about the end of free civilization as we know it, condense it into an essay and let me read that, I’ll skip the boring, shallow characters that I wanted to kill two pages into the story, the obsession with the dictator’s hidden smile, the way the book takes forever to get anywhere and is totally predictable (I mean come on, was anyone actually surprised when the main character’s hero turns out to be a secret service agent?) and the pounding into the skull that “yes this could happen”. Oliver Twist - Boring boring boring story about an orphan. I mean the problem with great literature is that most of it is terribly boring stuff, I’m pretty sure the only pleasure literary snobs get out of reading it is the ability to dangle that fact over the heads of everyone else.
It took me forever to discover that I like supernatural stories, but can’t tolerate ones that are really scary. Actually revise that, I knew it quickly enough, but have had a terrible time finding stuff that fits the bill and yet is also unpredictable enough not to bore me to tears, with characters engaging enough that I don’t want to drop them off a cliff, and with a story mature enough that I didn’t feel like I might as well be watching the latest “kid meets cute monster” movie (somehow lately they all have the same story but with different characters, kid meets monster, monster turns out to be friendly, other people come to exploit monster, kid saves monster). Fortunately Matsuri Akino’s Pet Shop of Horrors fit the bill nicely, and while Genju no Seiza isn’t quite as enjoyable it is still good. The Twelve Kingdoms is an absolute gem, combining both fantasy and history into a novel about another world. I like manga, partly because I can gage right away whether it’s going to be good or a turkey, and partly because the exotic flavor makes a nice break from the bore of American fare. I also started out as a slow reader (although I’m nowhere near as slow as my high school classmates, some of whom couldn’t get through a novel at all, partly due to spending kindergarten-6th grade in private school), I was praised in school for my handwriting (even as a child I was good at copying patterns, although they might be reversed as I have difficulty telling left from right, and enjoyed embellishing my letters), but had difficulty reading, atrocious spelling and a speech impediment that made it difficult to formulate long sentences. Actually, I couldn’t say that out loud without loosing the sentence midway through, or maybe forgetting what the word for sentence is. I’m not dumb, there’s just a limit to the length of speech I can keep in short term memory before I no longer have the resources to draw from long term memory. Actually when it comes to remembering the plot from books I’m tops (much to my public school teacher’s dismay, I never felt the need to use the journals they had us keep because I didn’t need help remembering events in books and none of the events were at all surprising). Shakespeare always took so much effort for me (and many of my peers) to translate into our version of English that there was no enjoyment in reading it (although when we read the “English translation” it was decent, not great literature and not terribly poetic but readable, personally I enjoy Julius Caesar best of the ones I’ve read this way, Romeo and Juliet is just boring, Hamlet is too annoying to be good, Much Adu About Nothing is just that, Midsummer Night’s Dream is good, but it’s also a borderline bore).
Bizarro, I’m rapidly closing in on 20,000 books read in my lifetime (actually, I might have passed that point in my life, thanks to several times when I have had the time and inclination to read upwards of three books a day for weeks at a time). To claim that Harry Potter is “not actually my taste” because I haven’t explored the literary arena enough is incredibly condescending of you (and, I might add, to the average Pandagonian, as I suspect there are a lot of avid readers in here).
Several others have pointed out to you that some of us have the privilege and luxury of spending a great deal of time digging for books we’ll enjoy, while most other people have to take the word of friends or trusted “experts”. Sometimes, Oprah highlights very readable, excellent books. Sometimes she doesn’t. That’s the nature of a book club. That she has brought the book club concept to millions of people who had never experienced one before is to her credit, not her detriment.
As for tastes in literature: Wicked I didn’t find nearly as enjoyable as I’d hoped I’d might, but I never really minded Moby Dick. It was Lord of the Flies that sends me screaming into the night and refusing to touch the book. I agree that the X-Man comics are well written and plotted, though their treatment of Jean Grey has always pissed me off (the fear of a powerful woman is palpable). I read trashy romances when recovering from colds or emotional setbacks, and vampire fiction with lots of R and NC-17 scenes just because I can.
When I was young, I used to love the John Norman “Gor” books. Fortunately, I’ve grown up, though I still love the Boris Vallejo cover art on many of them. I’m still a Heinlein fan, and a Spider Robinson fan as well. Asimov I didn’t like or understand when I was younger, but appreciate as I’m getting older. I am just now beginning to appreciate the novels written in the late 19th century by the Brontes and Jane Austin, having passed them up when I was younger. I’ve been reading Shakespeare and enjoying it since my early teens. Ditto various medieval and classical Greek authors. I used to think Ayn Rand wrote great literature. And I always did love 1984, Brave New World, and similar dystopian novels.
My point is that literary tastes are idiosyncratic and change over time. It doesn’t matter how a person comes to her love of books, just that she does. My oldest son started on Animorphs, and my youngest on the Final Fantasy video games. Both are avid readers. One’s an HP reader, the other isn’t. Stop placing your personal taste as an arbiter of what is right and good, and you might discover that many, many paths lead to good things.
BizzaroSuperman -
Later today I will post a link. I have a class to teach later this morning. . . so I will go look for it when I get back.
Clymestra:
Don’t feel stupid: nay-sayers aside, it’s actually (I think) a pretty good book. Yeah, it cribs of Baum’s work, but it’s not really about Dorthy, or the Scarecrow et al: it’s about the villianess, and her world. This gives Oz a more detailed background. And I really like that, because if you’re a good writer, you create a rich, vibrant world where there should be thousands of stories that come out of it.
I feel that I should mention, in any discussion of literature, Project Gutenberg, wherein people use their free time to OCR, proof and mark up books so you don’t have to. Due to some vagaries of American copyright law (in short, copyright had to be renewed for works published before 1964, and a lot of pulp and SF authors didn’t bother to do so), you can read a ton of classic SF (plus a smattering of newer stuff, like Cory Doctorow’s books) in convenient, downloadable formats. They’re not dead-tree, but for people who don’t mind reading off a monitor, they’re great stuff. (A side note: there are about a hundred more SF short stories waiting to make it through the system, but there’s one large nonfiction book backing everything up at Distributed Proofreaders. I really should agitate for a specialized SF queue.)
They also have most major works of literature published before 1923. If anyone can think of something that’s not in there and should be, let me know; I do work as a content provider there, and I’m always on the lookout for suggestions.
I find it very weird that the prevailing critical aesthetic seems to be, “Oh, it sold millions of copies? Loads of people like it? Must be rubbish.” It’s the same fate that befell Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Peyton Place, and Gone With the Wind – all ’sentimental’ books with female authors and a primarily female readership. There’s some very strong historical precedents of bestsellers being written and read by women and then being panned and ignored by the (historically male) critics who make the canon – I can’t help but feel there’s something similar going on here.
Someone once told me that popular literature is a culture talking to itself, playing out prevailing cultural anxieties and resolving them in non-threatening ways. Through that lens, Harry Potter is absolutely fascinating.
I hadn’t read the series so I really wasn’t sure what everyone was talking about.
Well, Antigone seems to have read my amusement at the IT R NOT FANFIC IT ARE LITRATURE!!!111!! reaction of the Literary World to books like Wicked as some kind of judgment on Wicked on its merits, or as a condemnation of fanfic.
It is fanfic. Nothing wrong with that, any more than there’s anything wrong with Vox being porn. What’s wrong, in a bitterly funny kind of way, is the pretense (fortunately absent here) that genre is a marker of quality, and that if a book is of good quality, it can’t possibly belong to any genre. Along with the pretense that “mainstream literary fiction” is not, itself, a genre like any other, and anyway is a genre better than all the others.
That is why snobs hate mega-popular things. Not because the masses have poor taste, but because the masses don’t demonstrate personal tastes at all but rather an interest in the lowerst common denominator.
Oh, nonsense. Snobs hate mega-popular things because there is no status in being one of the crowd and agreeing with everyone else. Snobbery is about status–I found this novel none of you know about, I have refined tastes and the rest of you don’t.
Buying books because the New York Review of Books said it was good, or because your MFA professor recommends it, or because it’s the In Thing at your coffeeklatsch is no different than buying a book because Oprah liked it.
Go over and try posting the pro-snob agenda at Making Light and see what kind of reaction you get from people who are professional writers, editors and generally consider themselves to be interested in quality rather than the lowest common denominator. I’ll bring popcorn.
I’d really like to stick some of these people in front of Twilight Princess or something and see how well thy do..
Or just about any game in the Zelda series. I’ve been playing Twilight Princess with my almost 6 yr. old son (it must be easier to play the songs of the golden wolf on a Wii controller than on our gamecube). He is so obsessed with Ocarina of Time that he still runs around the house singing, “Down, right left, down, right left…,” or whatever the button sequence is to play Zelda’s lullaby on the ocarina/game controller. When he learned how to play the songs on water pipes in the bathtub, we got him an electric piano. His mother printed the controller button arrows on post-it notes and stuck them on the keys at first, but he soon found the melodies in the guide book printed in standard musical notation and needed to know about that. Motivated to learn how to read music (just another code for puzzle solving) he’s learning how to play other melodies from printed music, since his genius mother is writing the note names next to the notes and he’s matching them to the keys. But he’s motivated to learn how to read the notes without their names, and tackling sight-reading other melodies on the piano, even if they don’t come from video games.
He’ll need more practice though, if he’s ever to learn how to play Super Mario on the piano. But, “Video games are bay-ad, mmm-kay?”
Mythago, even the literary snobs can’t get it right.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2129738,00.html
“So, styling himself Alison Laydee - a play on Austen’s nom de plume A Lady - he typed up chapters from three of her most famous books. First he sent off Northanger Abbey, calling it “Susan” - a title Austen had used for an early draft - and changing the name of the heroine from Catherine Morland to Susan Maldorn.
Mr Lassman expected to be branded a fraud. But he was surprised when publishers and agents failed to spot they had been sent the work of Austen. Bloomsbury, publisher of the Harry Potter books, for instance, suggested the chapters had been read “with interest” but were not “suited to our list”.
Still, Northanger Abbey is not seen as one of Austen’s great books, so next he sent off Persuasion, under the title The Watsons. Again the letters of rejection flooded in. JK Rowling’s agents, Christopher Little, were among those who turned it down, saying they were “not confident” of being able to place it.
Then he played his trump card, sending off Pride and Prejudice, calling it First Impressions, again an early title Austen had used for it. The names of the main characters and places were changed, but with no great guile.
Mr Bennet became Mr Barnett while the estate Netherfield becomes Weatherfield, the fictional setting for the TV soap Coronation Street.
And he did not change the opening line, one of the most famous in world literature: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
Still the deception was not spotted and the rejection letters thudded on to Mr Lassman’s doormat, most notably one from Penguin. Its letter read: “Thank you for your recent letter and chapters from your book First Impressions. It seems like a really original and interesting read.”
Only one person appeared to have spotted the deception, Alex Bowler, of Jonathan Cape. é
What is the definition of fanfic? Anything using the same characters as an earlier work? (Is West Side Story fanfic?) I’m not objecting to the terminology, just curious what does or doesn’t count as such. Is Laurie King’s Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series fanfic? Are all contemporary retellings of fairy tales or bible stories or mythologies fanfic? What about Jeanette Winterson’s ‘The Passion”? If you mix characters from multiple early works, is that the same fanfic? What if it’s same setting, different characters? Is Jasper Fforde’s work fanfic, really?
I like genre fiction. I make fun of my mother, who likes some of it, but pretends she likes non-SFF only because the stuff she likes is not called fantasy, like ‘The Time-Traveller’s Wife’.
I’m sorry if I misunderstood you Mythago. I just like deravitive work (the “tarted up”
word for fanfic), and I’m so very used to people badmouthing it just BECAUSE it’s fanfic.
I agree, and in fact I already said just that. (Although the recommendation case is a bit different)
Thanks.
What is the definition of fanfic? Anything using the same characters as an earlier work?
If it’s a Respected Literary Work and sells professionally, it’s a ‘reinterpretation’. If it’s about popular characters and/or written by amateurs, it’s ‘fanfic’.
Re the Jane Austen thing, that’s not as astonishing a tale as one might think.
Mythago, I note that they trash the Jane Austin trick quite a bit and claim it doesn’t prove anything–a large number of the rejecting publishing companies have have indeed identified the books, but decided to simply reject the manuscript rather than make any further explanation.
(Of course, this arguement may also be one generated by editors too embarrassed to admit they didn’t recognize the books.)
Sorry, Austen, not Austin. Curse you, Amanda!
“Of course, this arguement may also be one generated by editors too embarrassed to admit they didn’t recognize the books.”
I imagine that if I was a likely-overworked editor’s assistant scanning unsolicited manuscripts for items of interest to forward up the food chain, and I came across a submission called “Doby Mick” which started out with “Call me Ishmael.” and continued in the same vein, I’d either be grateful that I could print a form letter and be done with it after a mere minute or be so peeved with the submitter for having wasted my time with a prank that printing out a form letter would be my least unprofessional impulse.
As a lifelong reader of children’s fantasy who didn’t get why so many people loved the first book, but loves OotP, can second^infinity that?
Plus, um, it was kids that made this book popular. You know, those little people that don’t watch the news and generally don’t read stuff on the recommendation of adults (unless they read a lot anyway)?
And they liked it mostly because it was fun and a page turner. And I don’t see why that’s a bad thing.
Mythago, I meant in the larger sense of what is fanfic. Yes, of course I know what is generally considered fanfic, but the reinterpreted fairy tales or retellings of bible stories never struck me as fanfic. (Doesn’t mean they’re not, mostly it means I never think about fanfic as a category.) It really was a serious question — I liked Wicked, I liked many of the books I mentioned up there, and that won’t change if I start calling them fanfic. I just don’t know what kinds of works are considered fanfic, even if they’re respected literary works etc.
“If it’s a Respected Literary Work and sells professionally, it’s a ‘reinterpretation’. If it’s about popular characters and/or written by amateurs, it’s ‘fanfic’.”
I think it’s a little more complicated than that.
Wicked, like a lot of works of its ilk, is a postmodern deconstruction of a worldview usinga particular work or genre. I know that’s a term that’ll get the eyes rolling, but there’s a world of difference between it and most fanfiction.
A good deconstruction looks at the unstated assumptions present in a genre or work and, as the Doctoral dissertations say, “interrogate” them. Wicked uses the point of view of the Wicked Witch to question why, in fairy tale stories, the good are always pretty and the “wicked” ugly. Along the way, it also pokes its finger at the sexism, racism and colonialism present and unquestioned in Baum’s worldview and asks whether there might be a problem with this.
Fanfiction, beyond being written by fans, usually doesn’t aim to do more than rewrite a work in a way that amuses the author and audience. Sometimes this involves creating romantic relationships between characters that the author didn’t explore. Sometimes it’s about inserting the reader, or a thinly veiled surrogate, into the story. Sometimese its simply a matter of the reader rewriting the author’s work to match the reader’s preferences in how the story should have gone.
I’m sure there are works of fanfiction that rise above this. There’s certainly a good amount of research that shows that fanfiction create communities and reveal a lot about the relationships between author and audience. There’s also a ton of bad deconstructions.
Still, they are different endeavors with different goals.
A lot of authors don’t have specific goals, and evaluating literature based on the (often unknown) goals of authors is folly. Even when authors have specific intentions, the finished works often reflect those in very odd ways. (Or not at all)
Are the Conan stories written by L. Sprague de Camp fan-fiction? They were published professionally but were not reinterpretations, merely continuations. I’m pretty sure L. Sprague de Camp was a Conan fan and he wrote fiction…
Labels are mostly a distraction. I never really understand why people care to debate if something is fan fiction, or SF vs. science fiction vs. speculative fiction vs. sci-fi; what you call something doesn’t change what it is.
The difference between a professional and an amateur is whether or not you get paid for what you do. If Wicked is literature because it deconstructs (with postmodernism(TM) inside!) a Respected Literary Work (yes, I know, I’m munging two separate posts) and the unstated assumptions present in a genre or work, there is some fine derivative published work that expands upon and continues the ideas of the original. Is a Ben Edlund (of The Tick! fame) script for Buffy or Angel literature because he deconstructs Joss Whedon’s creation, or is it only fanfic because Buffy and Angel are neither respected nor literary? Or are they just differentier with academia(TM) inside? Is a story featuring young boys finding that they are actually princes in Oz, written by Ruth Plumly Thompson, fanfic, because she continued the Oz series at the age of 21 upon Baum’s death? Or is the point moot because Oz was never literature because it was merely a series for children? What? You didn’t know there was more than one book published about Oz? What? You didn’t know Oz was a book, as well as several silent movies?
As for Maguire and Wicked, I must give him credit for having skimmed Baum’s novel at least once or twice, and for having noticed that one or two historical contemporaries of Baum’s created Theosophy, before writing a prequel to the 1939 movie, which some insufferable literary snobs know is actually distinguishable from Baum’s book. As far as Baum being a sexist and racist because he had the misfortune of having a descendant willing to capitalize on his last name (no, I’m not talking about Roger S. Baum and his godawful fanfic like The Silly Ozbuls of Oz– wait, somebody actually published it, based on his name alone, and completist collectors of Oziana bought copies), the argument reported on NPR about his racism is debatable, but assuming it for sake of argument does not automatically make Baum a sexist.
Baum’s sexism is a very difficult assertion to defend in light of his published work, and his personal background, considering his mother-in-law was the (less famous than she should be) feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage, many of whose ideas about the matriarchate found their expression in the fantasy world Baum created, Oz, ruled by wise women like Glinda (not the ditz expertly portrayed by Billy Burke on whom Maguire based his Glinda), and the trans-gendered Ozma of Oz (who has been portrayed properly in the trouser role, by Shirley Temple). Matilda Joslyn who? Who says Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is respected literary work? Who says Matilda Joslyn Gage is an important feminist? Anthony and Stanton wanted nothing to do with Gage when she couldn’t abide the notion of the suffrage movement aligning itself with Carrie Nation and the Women’s Christian etc., after publishing statements like, every Christian Church is the enemy of liberty and progress and the chief means of enslaving woman’s conscience and reason, and, therefore, as the first and most necessary step toward her emancipation, we should free her from the bondage of the Church.
I’m just trying to put a stop to such nonsense, before somebody posts with all earnestness and every bit as much scholarship, that TWWoO was a treatise on Populism and the gold standard.
I’m going to stay away from the internets tubes today because it is increasingly hard to keep away from spoliers. Any way . . . .
Amanda - I hope you feel better
BizzaroSuperman -
The program I was speaking of is here.
http://readingprograms.org/
The charity to get poorer kids into the program is, as far as I know, still in my head and will be brought to existence when I get a project done.