More on Harry Potter Word from: Jake

I have no bones (broomsticks, etc.) to pick with J.K. Rowling. I work for Random House, which publishes all Potter audio books, and their popularity positively echoes on such trivialities as job security, year-end bonus, etc. But other people, they got major bones. For instance, Harold Bloom, one of the leading academics of the day, 300-lb-of-brain lecturer at Yale University had this review in the WSJ a few years back. If anything, it's quite entertaining, like this quote here:

One can reasonably doubt that "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" is going to prove a classic of children's literature, but Rowling, whatever the aesthetic weaknesses of her work, is at least a millennial index to our popular culture. So huge an audience gives her importance akin to rock stars, movie idols, TV anchors, and successful politicians. Her prose style, heavy on cliche, makes no demands upon her readers. In an arbitrarily chosen single page--page 4--of the first Harry Potter book, I count seven cliches, all of the "stretch his legs" variety.

Frankly, I think the essay is a cheap shot. It's a little too easy for the academically trained person to gloat over a little innocent pop-culture crowd-pleaser. What does he expect, Virginia Woolf? But definitely read the review, it's very funny.

Despite his brilliant reputation, by the way, back in the 90's Harold Bloom had a major screw-up with his once-best-selling Book of J. He basically stripped out all of the Breshit & Shmot that uses YKVK (also known as the "J-narrative"), and argued that the whole exract was written by a certain woman in King Solomon's court. Possibly a lover of the guy who wrote the E-narrative ("Elokist"). Cool idea, no? The problem was that the p'sukim he used were badly translated - poeticized in the wrong direction by David Rosenberg, and much of Bloom's analysis was based on the erroneous translation choices. He did not rely on Hebrew whatsoever. Robert Alter in The World of Biblical Literature, mercilessly bashed him for it. And you know something? I'm sure Bloom was much more embarrassed and distressed than J.K. Rowling, when she read Bloom's article in the WSJ.

I'm curious what others think - is Potter really that detrimental? Does it exacerbate the dominance of pop-culture in the lit world?

Photo credit: Globe Photos