Harry Potter
By Ludmila Rishkova
Last week I finally finished reading the Harry Potter series. I’ve been trying to hunt down a decent paperback edition of The Deathly Hallows for months, but after failing to find one I capitulated and opted for a kids’ version (to give myself a little credit, it was lying around, inconspicuous, in the novel section). It’s been about two years since I had finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and I dug into the Deathly Hallows without a single glance into the preceding book. I had forgotten that Dumbledore was dead, which came as a little shock, and I had absolutely no idea what Horcruxes were but thumbs up to miss Rowling I had figured it out soon enough simply by reading on.
It was an easy read, the kind that sucks you in beginning from page one and keeps you hooked all the way until the end. It was exactly what I needed when it was time to crawl into bed, usually at pre-dawn hours, brain-dead and physically exhausted from a full day’s work. It was also exactly what I needed when I had a half hour to spare between various errands and work hours or while riding the stuffy Montreal subway. Mind you, the colourful cover designed to attract children raised a few eyebrows from the grown-ups around me. One woman, an acquaintance of my mother, even asked me: “Isn’t that a children’s book? I heard that it was way too easy to read.”
To which I replied pretty much what I have just told you, that it was the perfect read after a long day of work.
“I guess,” she said, but I could see that she still wasn’t convinced. I believe that she was afflicted with what I like to think of as a Moderately Smart People Syndrome, let’s call it the MSPS. MSPS leads people to believe that if, for instance, a book or story is too accessible it probably isn’t very good or that the writer’s skill isn’t highly developed. I didn’t feel shy telling her that I had already completed a literary degree of University level (Aced and B’ed my way through it in fact) and hence was completely entitled to read such stories as J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter series. In other words, my intelligence has been somewhat proved by a governmental establishment, thank you very much.
That encounter was brief and not entirely pleasant, but it got me thinking. Why is it, when a book is widely popular, easy to read or brings its author loads of money we’re automatically tempted to label it as an inferior form of art...unless the author in question is dead of course.
I understand if the author in question specifically writes on a subject that he or she knows will bring in the cash, but what about the J.K. Rowlings, Stephen Kings and Dean Koontzes of our generation who write for their children, for the love of a good story, and who write what they write simply because they must? Isn’t it amazing that they can string along words and ideas that not only make sense on a page, but make sense for six hundred pages and keep the readers glued to the book beginning from page one with absolutely no obligation to do so?
Even the great J.R.R. Tolkien couldn’t do what those people did. Mind you, he produced magical creatures and fantastic events that all compiled in a very long trilogy, but ask anyone who actually read the Lord of the Ring how they felt about the reading process itself and eight out of ten will answer that it was long, tedious, overly descriptive and downright boring...but that they enjoyed the movies.
A truly great book will keep its reader invested from beginning to end, as was the case with the Potter series. Mind you, by the time I got to book six I was getting weary of the way every book began and ended with Harry’s domestic troubles in Privet Drive and I was damn happy to see a slightly different take on it in book seven. We were still in Privet Drive, but at least there was one glimpse of humanity in the Dursley’s, and Harry’s decision to quit school simply (okay, it may not have been that simple) because he trusted Dumbledore was a stroke of deviant genius on Rowling’s part. I can imagine all those concerned parents writing angry letters on how the Deathly Hallows is a bad example for teenagers and may promote drop-outs (Parents with free time on their hands dig that kind of stuff) and still Rowling went for it. Why’d she do it, some may ask? My guess would be, merely because that’s the direction the story took her in.
Funnily enough, the next book I picked up was Paolo Coehlo’s The Alchemist. It has been laying around my apartment for at least two years now, a borrowed book I have no intention of giving back. I decided it was about time I read it (It takes only a couple of hours for those who have been putting it on their list of things-to-do-this-summer...it’s not too late).
When I picked up the book I couldn’t not think of my mother’s acquaintance nodding her approval.
“Now we’re talking,” I could almost hear her say. “This is the kind of literature our young ones should be reading,” and she would be right. But, not having read Harry Potter simply because she had put it off limits due to its ‘childishness’ she cannot see a parallel that struck me as obvious. Potter, like the boy Santiago was merely following his Personal Destiny, a concept that I find highly romantic and not inaccessible.
Now, if indeed Coehlo and Rowling are ultimately writing about one and the same thing, why label one as superior than the other – because, let’s face it, most teachers and parents would – when in fact they simply take different paths to achieve the same goal? This I guess will be a question to which each one of you will have a different answer. As to me, the Potter series may indeed be a little childish, but as far as I know it has never hurt anyone to keep in touch with their inner child, if only to keep believing that miracles can and do happen. That indeed we can realize our dreams and maybe even achieve our Personal Destiny, if only we decide to follow it in spite of the hardships it may present.
My final thought would be this: if you have any inclination towards a book you deem too childish for you now that you're all grown, but would still love to get your hands on, go for it. You will definitely learn something new from it.