I’ll be there too. I like those books.  Wouldn’t it be sweet if someone fucked with me about it;

“Dude, how old are you?”

“Uh.  34, and I’m ABD in English Lit.  Were you about to offer some burning insight about the literary quality of the Harry Potter series?  That’s what I thought.  Now push off. . .  I’m at a good part.”

Damn, that L.A Times guy is an ass on many levels.

So, um, dressing up as someone from the Ministry of Magic to read the first chapter of the book to the assembled throngs at a book store’s midnight HP release party isn’t a good thing? Rats.

I guess I’ll just go kill myself now. ‘cuz Joel Stein says so. That’s why!

Under “grasping for straws” in the dictionary, you’ll now find this quote from Mr. Stein: “...you had your C.S. Lewis and E.B. White and J.R.R. Tolkien. Isn’t it a clue that you should be ashamed of reading these books past puberty when the adults who write them are hiding their first names?”.

Ignore the fuckwit.

One of my favorite quotes from C.S.Lewis is: “Any book worth reading only in childhood isn’t worth reading even then.”

He states he’s desperate for attention twice in his bio.  Guess he’s not getting enough lately. 

He’s a writer who doesn’t like to read?  Well, I have worked with programmers who didn’t own personal computers, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

He seems to be as big a wanker as Jeremy Clarkson, but with less wit.

Idiot!  How can he write on a subject he knows nothing about?  Maybe if he’d read past the first 50 pages of teh FIRST book he’d see why people are so crazy over it.

Les, you weenie pretender. The REAL fans have already ordered their copies of the upcoming Harry Potter book online, and will have it DELIVERED on the critical day.

Interesting. I haven’t read the books (although the kids have dragged me to the movies). Not because I’m afraid someone will out me as an immature boob (because I am) but I’m just not that much into fantasy, magic and sorcery fiction. Give me that straight hard Sci-Fi any day but when you start waving magic wands I start to yawn.

Hank, this is a guest entry by Iolite. My copy was preordered prior to my being laid off. I’m not crazy enough to try and find it in a bookstore the day it’s released. I much prefer to let it come to me!.

Stoic, I’m not a big fiction reader in general these days and when I do read something it’s usually sci-fi, but J.K. Rowling’s books are the exception to the rule and the only fantasy books I make an absolute point to read.

I’ll be waiting for FedEx to deliver my two books.  One for me and the other for my teenaged daughter.  The younger kids don’t want to be bothered.

I’ve seen far more effective trolls on USENET.

And if he really feels that media targeted to a given audience must only be experienced by that target audience...he is obviously in the wrong profession.

-J1

Whatever.  I dig Harry Potter and I’m 33.  As an adult I have also reread the Madeleine L’Engle books and everything by Roald Dahl...and enjoyed the hell out of them.

I like them too.  As well as LOTR.

When I read the title of this post I GASPED and got ready to be pissed off at Stupid Evil Bastard thinking you hated Harry Potter.

Of course, then I read it and realized what you were saying. And of course I agree and can’t believe how much I have loved reading the HP books. Absolutely true what you said about the underlying issues like racism, etc. I secretly believe that J.K. Rowling was talking about politics today in the last book.

Thanks for sticking up for the series. Screw all those muggles, anyways.

I don’t know. For me it’s just that everything I’ve read in the books so far (borrowed them from my siblings) I’ve read in what I feel are other books better.

Mieville and Martin are revolutinizing fantasy but they’re not household names?

Harry Potter isn’t bad, that’s just to say for me it’s not all that and a bag of mustard.

Bring on “Feast” in November!

Harry Potter isn’t bad, that’s just to say for me it’s not all that and a bag of mustard.

I’d say about the same but you wouldn’t have to be an HP fan to get how idiotic that columnist is. 

I read his editorial to my youngest son (age 20) and his response: “If I were that guy’s editor, I’d tell him, ‘There are probably five thousand people in this city who are qualified to do your job and would like to have your job!’”

My favorite kids’ book: “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel”.  Wonder if that would be too juvenile for Mr. Stein?  For that matter, I was recently moving some books and found our copy of Robert McClosky’s Make Way for Ducklings and thoroughly enjoyed his wonderful drawings (along with the memory of reading it to all 3 of our kids.)

The REAL fans have already ordered their copies of the upcoming Harry Potter book online, and will have it DELIVERED on the critical day.

Yeah, but the real SMART fans just go to Walmart (it’s evil, yes, I know) and buy it for $16.99 on the day it’s released.  I did this for OotP, and they had TONS of books piled up wand waiting, and I got a pretty good price to boot.

I apologize for the ramble, but I’m in a mood…

I’m a voracious reader. They are only a few among hundreds over the past years and I don’t remember every detail of each, but I’ve enjoyed reading the Potter books as they’ve come out.  I’ve not been the one who did the buying though… Mr. OB is into the whole ritual of it all so he goes and waits in line with his fellow geeks.

Joel Stein was a bit rabid in his railing against Potter fans, but I almost wonder if the rant wasn’t a device sort of setting up these (rather interesting, IMO) observations:

the next generation has opted for a stunted toddlerhood. Adults see “Finding Nemo” without bothering with the socially accepted ruse of dragging an unwilling 11-year-old nephew along. Grown men play video games and couples go to Disneyworld on their honeymoon, often for reasons other than having sex in Cinderella’s castle with the dwarfs watching. You need a wad of Disney Dollars for that one, by the way, 50th anniversary or no 50th anniversary.

Gotta admit I’m a little bit concerned/annoyed myself by the part entertainment and media is playing in what I see as a dumbing-down and infantilizing of the populace.  Marketing encourages people to act like children, while at the same time there are enemies of free speech pushing hard for all entertainment to be sanitized to the point that it’s appropriate for a 13-year-old, and the media’s wimping out and censoring themselves.  It sucks ASS. 

Sadly, there are a fair number of people who will read this Potter book and NOTHING else until the next one, and even then it’ll mostly be because they got caught up in the hype.  Or because it’s like a secret guilty pleasure that they indulge in, and then they go back to WND or FOX… and church, where they’re further encouraged to be like children or sheep.

(BTW that sex at Disneyland line is pretty damn funny!)

A culture that simplifies its entertainment down to fairy tales is doomed to simplify the world down to good and evil.

That, my friends, is worth worrying about.  More importantly it’s worth ARGUING about - like adults; but it seems there are increasingly fewer people who are able or willing to anymore, prefering instead to see things as good or evil, period.  Or they simply don’t care, because they’d rather be playing a video game.

Hmmm… yet not inconsequentially that same immature culture is being bombarded with the message that a fairy tale should be the basis of civil law and government, and that it really IS a battle between good and evil!

Lastly there’s this… Has Joel Stein perhaps got a bit of an axe to grind?

And a culture in which adults go see the “Harry Potter” movies still won’t be enough to help the useless Time Warner options I got in the ‘90s

Heh.  I hear ya, Joel

Yeah, but the real SMART fans just go to Walmart (it’s evil, yes, I know) and buy it for $16.99 on the day it’s released.

Nope, sorry, if you pre-order, you get the same discount, with guaranteed delivery on the release date. (I’m not counting on the guarantee, but the discount was worth it.)

I hear you about infantile entertainment, OB, but from what I can tell flipping through an HP book, it seems like a pretty sophisticated story.  It doesn’t seem to be driven by marketing research executives, but rather by J.K.Rowling as it should be.  I’m just not a sword/sorcery fan or I’d probably read them.

Sure, some people won’t read anything else and only read HP because of the hype but I doubt that’s a new phenomenon.

Thinking back on television in the ‘60’s, it was a couple good shows but mostly crap, just like today.  With more channels there’s more crap but probably more good stuff too.  As always it’s up to the viewer to be selective.  Ditto for reading.

Is black/white, good/evil thinking really more common than it used to be?

What my insomnia-addled brain is trying to assemble is that 90% of everything is crap and always has been. There’s just more everything now than there used to be. 

On a related note, I have noticed that fantasies which are not about sex are labelled childish.  You could make a good case that the opposite is true. Also fantasies in which the main characters are children are also labelled childish, which is a pity.  A good story in which children have serious problems to solve is a window into the emergence of problem-solving in developmental consciousness.

I hear you about infantile entertainment, OB, but from what I can tell flipping through an HP book, it seems like a pretty sophisticated story.  It doesn’t seem to be driven by marketing research executives, but rather by J.K.Rowling as it should be.

Oh, absolutely true - and Ms. Rowling controls with an iron fist everything to do with the subsequent merchandising of all things Potter.  What I didn’t do a good job of making clear is that it seems to me Joel Stein was using the popularity of Potter, and his rant about adults who read the books, to make the larger point (the new generation of adults are perfectly happy - and encouraged by marketing efforts - to act/think like children, and to see things as good or evil).

Is black/white, good/evil thinking really more common than it used to be?

I’m not sure, but I have noticed the rhetoric and moralizing in popular media that encourages people to see things in black/white, good/evil has been increasing over the past 25 years or so, and is certainly more pervasive now than when I was a teenager.  At the same time the battle cry of, “Protect the children!” is being used as justification for putting more and more restrictions on adult behavior and popular entertainment.

What my insomnia-addled brain is trying to assemble is that 90% of everything is crap and always has been. There’s just more everything now than there used to be.

Can’t argue with ya there!

On a related note, I have noticed that fantasies which are not about sex are labelled childish.  You could make a good case that the opposite is true. Also fantasies in which the main characters are children are also labelled childish, which is a pity.  A good story in which children have serious problems to solve is a window into the emergence of problem-solving in developmental consciousness.

Good points, and again, no argument from me!

Perhaps I’m just being the “elitist” those of us who dare to think for ourselves are always accused of being because we’d like to live in a society where the average person is more than a simpleton happy to be spoon-fed all their opinions and ideas via popular media.  Yes, we should do our best to protect the children, but not at the expense of educating them to become adults who think for themselves or by restricting citizens’ liberties to the point that all people regardless of their chronological age are being treated like children - and worse still, these (IMO carefully and deliberately molded) unsophisticated simpletons are easily manipulated by the fear-mongering that has them looking to the government to provide safety and security in a world they believe is more immoral and less safe than ever.

Re: The idea that people are more infantile today than yesterday.

Guys, look around you. Here we are thousands of years after civilization first got started, and ...

People are starving TO DEATH in the world.
We’re overfishing the oceans.
We’re EATING the gorillas.
We’re screwing up the planet’s actual weather.
George W. Bush is the most powerful man in the world—and great numbers of people think that’s a GOOD thing.

Despite the fact that people ten thousand years ago were every bit as bright as people today, it was only a few hundred years ago that we got a formalized practice of science. And even today, religious/superstitious people are STILL resisting every new advance.

Hate to break it to you, but the vast “intelligence” of humans is just one of those hopeful stories we tell ourselves.

I’m not kidding.

If you’re a deeply thoughtful, open-minded, bright person, there’s a reason you feel misunderstood most of the time by the people around you—it’s because you live among the functional equivalent of shit-throwing monkeys.

You’re an alien being to them, and if you think about it, you’ll realize that you get along with them, you fit in, ONLY BECAUSE YOU HOLD BACK THE BEST WITHIN YOU. Because you know they wouldn’t understand or accept the least little bit of it.

If you started speaking your mind, telling them the facts as you know them, showing them how silly are the things they “believe� or “know,� or living your life as you know it could be lived, they’d eject you from their company, permanently, on the first day. They might even kill you.

Just as a for-instance, you know full well there are places in the world today where you can be killed (if you’re a woman), publicly and with full consent of your neighbors, just for showing too much skin. People crowd around, screaming, hooting and cheering, and they throw rocks at you until they turn you into a bloody corpse. While children watch.

But if you were to even suggest that this practice must be stopped, forever, TODAY, you’d get nothing. Most people wouldn’t even listen. The ones who bothered to listen could give you a thousand reasons why that practice can’t be stopped, why it must be allowed to continue.

Hey, it’s their “culture.� They have a “right� to their religious beliefs. And who’s to say? Maybe the shameless ankle-flaunting bitch deserves it.

Lest you’re dumb enough to think I’m picking on Muslims, the same type of thing happened within a short drive of where I live, here in the U.S., only a brief historic moment ago.

Human beings are CAPABLE of intelligence, and reason, and all sorts of good stuff. But the DEFAULT setting on the human beast is sheeplike stupidity, and occasional violent resistance to change or difference.

All the “human� creativity and technology we see around us, the stuff we pat ourselves on the back about, you could gather up the people REALLY responsible for all that, all the pivotal creative geniuses of all time, and probably fit them into the bleachers of a high school gym.

And every friggin’ one of them could probably tell you a hundred stories of how they had to work like hell to get people even to listen to their brilliant ideas. Some of them lived in fear of death (Galileo comes to mind) – and only because they were a few percent brighter and more honest than their fellows.

So: I agree with you about the dumbing-down effect of certain media. But no, people probably aren’t especially infantile today as compared to yesterday.

They’ve always been like that, and worse. It’s probably just that you yourself are noticing it more, and discovering how frustrating it is.

If you’re a deeply thoughtful, open-minded, bright person, there’s a reason you feel misunderstood most of the time by the people around you—it’s because you live among the functional equivalent of shit-throwing monkeys.

Well then!  I don’t know whether to feel relieved or depressed now

Someone has a superiority complex, and I’ll give you three guesses as to who it is.

Myself aside, since I already know I’m a pompous ass.