Inevitable Potter-blogging

It's strange to think that I'm one of the world's few literate English speakers who isn't spending the day reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. For the past ten years, I've been AWOL from the whole Harry Potter phenomenon. I couldn't get into Sorcerer's Stone back in 1997 (or whenever the craze began), and I've been missing out on the excitement ever since.

It's not that I'm one of that cranky little band of Potter-phobes (the people who really hate the series) nor even one of those people who are suffering from Potter overload. The books just didn't grab me. Just as I couldn't manage to force myself to read the books, I couldn't manage to get too fired up about all the criticisms of Rowling's opus.

Of course, it's been impossible not to absorb a fair amount of Potteriana over the last several years. It's everywhere. I think this must have been what it was like with Homer in Classical Greece or the Bible in Europe just after the Reformation. In the former example, even if you were an illiterate Aetolian goatherd, you still probably knew about Achilles and Hector (a fact which is, incidentally, still true today). And in the latter case, it's probably true that even illiterate rag-and-bone men knew something about Jonah's gourd, Naboth's vineyard, and Lazarus at Dives' gate.

Likewise, I feel as if I know, without even making an effort, all about Dumbledore and Hermione and Severus Snape, about hoarcruxes and Azkaban and exspecto patronum. This stuff forces its way into your skull whether you want it to or not.

So its not as if my Harry Potter indifference springs from sheer ignorance. And, in fact, its actually more ambivalence than apathy. Since I'm temperamentally inclined to opposition, I suppose I've generally sympathized with the Potter-phobes' arguments, if not with their intensity. They have some valid points. Despite Rowling's brilliant imagination, clever plotting and a Dickensian genius for names, the writing (in the fifty or sixty pages I've read) seemed pretty flat; I get the sense (though I'm much less competent to judge here) that this same flatness may extend to some of the major characters. And it also seems to be true (again, as far I can tell without having read the books!) that Rowling has, to some extent, pandered to her readers instead of challenging them (see the first link, above; but see also below). Of course, it's important to remember that this started out as a series for children: a lot of what bothers critics of Potter seems to be the fact that adults have latched onto the books so enthusiastically.

There's a huge debate over whether the Potter series will spark a renaissance in kids' reading, with arguments and evidence on both sides. My own suspicion is that it won't, for most kids. A lot of the Pottermania seems to be driven by its sheer ubiquity, by the fact that everyone is reading these books, or writing about them (as in my case), or otherwise making them a part of their lives. Until some author or publisher can engineer another avalanche of popularity around a single book, I think the slide in novel-reading by the young is doomed to continue as TV, video games, the pressures of schoolwork, and the dreaded internet continue their implacable advance.

So you can see, I'm not what'd you'd call a Potter enthusiast. And yet, and yet, and yet.... Rowling's achievement has been impressive: seven books totalling -- what? -- more than three thousand pages, lavish with colorful detail. The idea of having not only the main character but the level of books themselves "grow up" along with their readers was sheer brilliance -- and I gather this final installment may make some various serious emotional and spiritual demands on its audience, thus seriously mitigating one of the criticisms I mentioned above.

And finally -- and for me, most crucially -- Rowling seems to love language. Even if she isn't, herself, a master of English prose, her skill with nomenclature clearly indicate that she understands the beauty and power of the English tongue: a thing English-speaking readers will respond to as long as our common speech endures. And it's not only the power of English she admires. As a classicist, I have to give props to Rowling's allegiance to Latin and Greek. Latin and, to a lesser extent, the Romance languages seem to be as much of an influence as English in her inventions of names. I especially like the names of Draco Malfoy ("Snake Badfaith") and his father Lucius -- that most suspicious of Latin praenomina, attached to such ruthless figures as Sulla and Catiline.

And how can I thank Rowling enough for having her books translated into Latin and ancient Greek (though I gather there remains some faint mystery as to whether Rowling herself was behind the latter decision)?

Rowling's devotion to the Greeks appears to be no shallow thing. I suspect that she has even been inspired, to some small extent, by the modern Greeks. This morning, when my girlfriend's copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows arrived, she pointed out to me the epigraph, a choral passage from Aeschylus's Libation-bearers about the terrible cost involved in defeating the "evil within." (This is accompanied by a second epigraph from William Penn's Fruits of Solitude.) Trust me: Bobby Kennedy may have quoted the Agamemnon at Jack's funeral, but only someone who's pretty hardcore quotes the Choephoroi. By the way, this epigraph pretty much confirmed to my satisfaction all the speculation that this book will involve a lot of soul-searching, and a whole lot of blood.

I still doubt whether Deathly Hallows will turn young readers on to Greek tragedy, but if I start hearing that the seventh book lives up to the promise of its epigraph, then -- who knows? -- even I, someday, may have to try to read these books after all.