Thoughts on Harry Potter

I haven't read the book yet, nor am I planning to. In fact, I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books, even though I started the first one. It just didn't hold my interest. Not that it wasn't well written, clever, and all that. I just found it tedious and, well, boring. I've enjoyed the two movies I've seen, but not loved them. What I'm trying to say is, I'm not a Harry Potter fan.

My sense is that the Harry Potter books are to great imaginative fiction what mass-produced sugary confections are to really tasty, homemade cakes--a bit more, and a whole lot less. If you take my meaning. I've talked to a number of people with relatively similar tastes to my own, people who usually have a good memory for the books they read. And the same pattern, again and again. They can't remember key details of the books; they can't remember which things happen in which book; they can't recall very much at all. The books, in other words, don't stick with them the way other things have. It's not that they aren't fun while they last; but when it's over, it's just over.

Now, I know a few people who really know these books the way some people know others, like Lord of the Rings or A Wrinkle in Time. But these people are really exceptions; moreover, they tend, in my experience, to have children to whom they've read the books aloud (and probably explained parts to).

This isn't a dig at the Harry Potter series. It's a publishing phenomenon. But in my view, not really a literary phenomenon. In other words, Harry Potter is almost perfect for this time, when we have the means to reproduce almost anything we want to, in almost any medium, but when we have little purpose in doing so.