Harry Potter Makes Me Sad

Nothing will have a better chance of making me shit myself later in life than if people end up regarding J.K. Rowling as one of the greatest authors of the 20th/21st century. I recently had a protracted debate about the legitimacy and general merit of the Harry Potter series where I obviously took the anti-Potter perspective purely in the context that I believe she should not be exalted to the point that she is today. This is not meant to be some mean-spirited libelous attack on Ms. Rowling, she happens to have created and continues to support many charitable causes (don't believe me? Wikipedia it.) What this is meant to do is provide a dose of realism and a different perspective on the legacy of the Harry Potter series so that hopefully twenty years from now people won't speak of Rowling and someone like Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton in the same breath.

The first argument that a lot of people give me about the Harry Potter series is "at least it's getting people to read". I used to buy into this argument as well until I realized it isn't the best idea to accept the bare minimum in terms of intellectual pursuits. I've tried to read Harry Potter, and while it does not particularly agree with me, I can see how people use it as a source of harmless escapism, which is fine and good perhaps if you're still in middle school. First and foremost, it's probably a safe bet that there are scores of fantasy writers out there who are at least as good at writing a story as Rowling, yet because there is no hype machine behind them, they're doomed to languish on the shelves. To be honest, I barely view the Harry Potter series as a step up from those anime graphic novels that people read: entertaining, but surely more worthwhile books are out there that will help you intellectually as well. To my mind, no children's author has surpassed Roald Dahl, yet his estate is not worth more than a billion dollars and Rowling's is; I can only attribute this to the fact that the Harry Potter series is more irrepressible fad than truly substantive literature.

My perspective on the issue is grounded primarily in the idea that reading something, especially when you are young should expand your mind and open you up to new literary horizons. Essentially, you need to get something meaningful out of what you're reading in order to validate your time. When I was younger, I read Calvin and Hobbes comics because in addition to being funny, I deeply identified with Bill Watterson's perspective on life. When I was in middle school, I got my jollies out with science fiction as a bridge to adult fiction from preeminent authors such as Clancy, Grisham and James Clavell. The point here is that after a while, science fiction and fantasy became a phase in the reading I had done, and the best of these books I might take out occasionally to glance over for bathroom reading, but after a point I knew I had to make my way down to the Politics and Government section at Barnes and Noble as well.

Whether due to pervasive anti-intellectualism in American culture (think about it, how many Facebook friends that you have don't like to read?) or the fickle tendency of people to not look beyond the author de jure, the Harry Potter series has become a critical success while entire bookstores across America close. I am not saying that J.K. Rowling does not deserve the success she has had, millions of people can't be wrong; I am saying however, that with the multitude of other competent writers out there, she has been TOO successful. Perhaps if people are willing to wait hours for Harry Potter books, they should also make sure to buy another book from anywhere but the Cooking section; that's how I personally have found the best and most meaningful books I have ever read.