When people ask me if I’m into Harry Potter, I say “No, I’m not a fan of fantasy.” Which is absolutely true, but a more complete truth would be “No, I’m too much of a snob. I consider indiscriminate mass-marketing to have a high correlation with crap quality. Media sensations tend to be juvenile, intellectually unstimulating, and devoid of anything offensive. It’s just not interesting to me.” But I can’t say that, because I’m really, really trying to be less of a prick.
I read one Harry Potter book and saw one Harry Potter movie. Coincidentally, it was the same one : Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. When I went to go see the movie, I didn’t realize at first that it was the same book I had read. Oh, yeah. The Quidditch World Cup. The Triwizard Tournament. Heh.
Since my experience with Harry Potter is limited, I’ll take it on faith that it’s a worthwhile pursuit. Faith, and the New York Times, who in a generally positive pre-release review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows called the series a “monumental, spellbinding epic… deeply rooted in traditional literature and Hollywood sagas”. (I’ll suppress the urge to snidely remind adult fans that it’s a children book written on a fifth-grade reading level.)
But regardless of any literary merits, it’s obvious that what fans love most is the ritualistic hooplah surrounding each book’s release. The anticipation. The speculation. The late-night release. The frenzied, sleepless devouring of its pages. When you’re a Harry Potter fan, you’re not just some nerd with a book. You’re apart of a huge community of nerds with the same book.
It’s difficult for me to reconcile this public frenzy with the solitary act of reading. When I read a Washington Post article called ‘Harry Potter and the Death of Reading” all my niggling dislike of Harry Potter became crystallized. To me, reading is slinking around a library or book store looking for an interesting book. Reading is curling up under the bed covers with a book propped on my stomach. Reading is a temporary escape to a private world that I like to pretend that I discovered.
