/lit/ - Literature

>>8850354
Who gives a shit

>sad old fucks, who spent their whole lives staring at letters and writing about letters, and deluding themselves into thinking that letters are more than just silly letters, and have some supervalue in modern society, cannot compretend the concept of people just reading to have fun
Colour me surprised

>>8850390

If you're just reading to "have fun" you might as well watch television or play video games. If you think there's nothing weird about grown women reading a children's book series religiously then I think I'm going to colour you retarded.

>>8850354
Yes and no.

Yes, in that it's poorly written and cliches abound. It shouldn't be considered a masterpiece, for sure.

But it's not particularly awful. The reason I love the Potter series is because it was my escape from the shitty life I had. I was desperately lonely as a child, and Harry and the others were like literal friends to me. As the books were published, I grew older, so we grew up together.

While it didn't deliver or accomplish much, it does have a lot to say about acceptance to death.

And as cliche as it may be, if not Harry Potter, I might either be dead or in jail.

>>8850423
Wrong. There's a reason the distinction between literary and pulp fiction exists. Reading for fun is fine, so long as you make no claim that pulp novels are >great<

>>8850354
Incorrect.
>But they don't! Their eyes simply scan the page. Then they turn to the next page. Their minds are deadened by cliches. Nothing is required of them, absolutely nothing. Nothing happens to them.

That's some grade A presumtion right there. How the fuck would he know that? yes the language in these books is extremly easy and accessible, but it's not devoid of content.

>I read the first in the series and it was shit!

An ancient old man Literary Critic read a book for children about magic and monsters and quips and wasnt impressed? Wow who'd thunk it!? I'm gonna start sneaking in copies of Logicus Tractatus around middle schools, maybe that way these disgusting pleb kids will learn! that'll show that Rowling!! haha!

>>8850453
You know kids used to read Dickens and Homer, right? He's not exactly wrong.

>>8850453

Bloom wrote a whole book on good children's literature. I'm not sure why you're so asshurt that he criticized harry potter, it sounds like he ran over your dog or something.

>>8850461
This. Kids used to actually study Greek and Latin and read the classics. Now schools teach muh oppression YA books. People think you're a nerd if you've read any canon Western literature. Of course they do this so people feel the need to supplement their education at university and waste four years and thousands of dollars to be "educated" on literature.

>>8850492
>you will never be an 18th century aristocratic child and have Virgil drummed into your head from the age of seven onward
Why even bother desu

>>8850443
b-but that is just backing what he's saying about it being pure escapism like those comics movies
i mean, there must have been "serious" books you could have read that would affected you more profoundly
i stopped reading HP when I was around 14, the.. third, fourth one? only pretended after to fit in
the guy is spot on about the characters being the same to be honest and the whole universe just does not make sense

>>Byatt - Ms. Rowling's magic world has no place for the numinous. It is written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip. Its values, and everything in it, are, as Gatsby said of his own world when the light had gone out of his dream, ''only personal.'' Nobody is trying to save or destroy anything beyond Harry Potter and his friends and family.

This is absolutely true and I think it's a fair critique of Rowling. Compare 'magic' in Harry Potter to 'magic' in The Lord of the Rings. The magic there is connected to a broader cosmology and an ordering of the universe, which we are given strong hints about over the course of the trilogy. In Harry Potter, magic is just this thing that people can use. It's like any other tool, like a hammer or a gun or a pencil. It doesn't feel 'special,' beyond the feeling of specialness that is culturally attached to magic.

>>8850423
The fuck? Do you not find reading literature fun?

Why are you even here?

>>8850453
He's comparing her to stuff like Alice though.
>>8850461
They still do you dongle. I did. I also read Harry Potter.

>>8850608
i feel that calling it "fun" and thinking of it as just that is counterproductive
try thinking

>>8850526
Reading how Michel de Montaigne was taught had me fuming in jealousy.

The motherfucker was woken up every day by a music tutor playing a violin, or a guitar. He spoke Latin as his mother tongue.
>>8850620
>counterproductive
S P O O K Y

>>8850586
I'm not saying escapism is healthy, but I am saying it's important to me personally.

I'll admit I can't possibly persuade anyone to think Harry Potter is good, because in this case it's purely subjective.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/jul/17/harrypottersbigconisthep

And for all that she is gifted enough in devising popular scenarios, the words on the page are flat. I think it was Verlaine who said that he could never write a novel because he would have to write, at some point, something like "the count walked into the drawing-room" - not a scruple that can have bothered JK Rowling, who is happy enough writing the most pedestrian descriptive prose.

Here, from page 324 of The Order of the Phoenix, to give you a typical example, are six consecutive descriptions of the way people speak. "...said Snape maliciously," "... said Harry furiously", " ... he said glumly", "... said Hermione severely", "... said Ron indignantly", " ... said Hermione loftily". Do I need to explain why that is such second-rate writing?

If I do, then that means you're one of the many adults who don't have a problem with the retreat into infantilism that your willing immersion in the Potter books represents. It doesn't make you a bad or silly person. But if you have the patience to read it without noticing how plodding it is, then you are self-evidently someone on whom the possibilities of the English language are largely lost.

This is the kind of prose that reasonably intelligent nine-year-olds consider pretty hot stuff, if they're producing it themselves; for a highly-educated woman like Rowling to knock out the same kind of material is, shall we say, somewhat disappointing.

>>8850647
I mean that's pretty much how Tolstoi writes.

of course they're right. the thing is, people think they're standing on a treestump screaming these things, trying to stop people from reading Harry Potter. no, reporters ask them their opinion and they give the obvious answer: Harry Potter isn't great literature. what do you want well-read people to say? I think McDonald's hamburgers taste great, but I would expect a food critic to be more discerning than I am.

the problem is that people think opinions are all equal, when really how much you know about a field gives your opinion more or less weight. if you've read only twelve books in your entire life, you may think your favorite one is extraordinarily powerful, innovative, thoughtful, until you read two hundred more and realize your old favorite is actually, in the grand scheme of things, mediocre. Bloom and Byatt are experts of literature. you don't have to agree with them, but make sure you're not overestimating your own expertise when you disagree.

>>8850679
Holy fuck that phrase is like screeching teeth deep down in my ears.

>if you've read only twelve books in your entire life, you may think your favorite one is extraordinarily powerful, innovative, thoughtful, until you read two hundred more and realize your old favorite is actually, in the grand scheme of things, mediocre.

Sadly this and never do I feel completed. This moment I want to finish my current list so I can get to know some chinese lit.

harry potter is utter shit

>>8850734
no it isn't

The art vs. escapism argument is a pretty universal thing. I don't know why it always seems to hinge on harry potter.

I don't know what good it does to have some old intellectual fuck tell you that your taste is shitty. Not like I have any idea how you convince people to read literature instead of escapism, but I don't think calling them plebs works.

>>8850736
dude, i don't care if you fap thinking of emma watson everyday, the books and the movies are terrible to anyone with more than 15 years old

>>8850760
My friend, you are on /lit/, that should be taken as obvious.

I am saying HP is not shit as a children's book. It's pretty good. Imaginative, certainly not soulless, with real themes. The prose is horrendous, of course, but -- you should never read for the prose. Or, not merely for the prose.

>>8850736
yes it is

>>8850826
no

>>8850760
>with more than 15 years old

Unrelated, but I'm curious: what's your native language. I'm thinking here about how in Spanish and German the direct translations into of a sentence expressing "I am 15 years old" are "I have 15 years". I say this because "with more than 15 years" seems very close semantically to "having more than 15 years" so I'd like to know if my guess is correct or if I'm just reaching here.

Idk why the fuck everyone is saying this isn't important. Books alter your mind and your perception of the world powerfully. What goes into your head has an effect. Same for all the other media you consume --- TV you watch, magazines and newspaper articles, music you listen to, etc.

Think Plato. A poet is the greatest threat to the harmony of the state.

Now, this is especially true for children. Children are extraordinarily influenced by what they read as well as by what they watch and what other they consume, because they've had far less time to develop and to absorb a lot of life so they could make reasoned judgments on how realistic or unrealistic, moral or immoral, good or bad a work of art is.

They take what they read as gospel about human nature. Children are being educated about what the world is like and how to think and feel when they read Harry Potter (and of course also when they consume other media). If you're getting these cliched views about human nature, with, moreover, something that reinforces your childish narcissism and escapism, it's not gonna be good.

The Harry Potter series is vapidly narcissistic. Everything is about Harry, how he starts off as an abused weakling and then is revealed to be the world's most powerful wizard by absolutely no doing of his own. It doesn't matter what Harry does, what matters is that he just IS great, IS amazing no matter what, and so are his friends, of course, to the degree that they love him, but of course none of them are so great as him.

It's psychologically injurious wish-fulfillment. The morals, the divisions between good and evil, are trite and simplistic. It's clear what camp everyone falls into.

Voldemort is evil, he must be killed. Yay, he's dead, everything's better now.

The greatest it tries to develop any ambiguity is the terribly cliched Snape, basically just a shitty Byronic hero who critics are amazed by because it seems great compared to the rest of the series.

>>8850748
>I don't know why it always seems to hinge on harry potter
Because it's extremely popular and almost universally loved. I doubt Bloom has much personal interested in Harry Potter nor do other critics of his caliber, yet he is asked to weigh in on it by reporters and other people because it's popular and that's what the general reading audience wants to hear about. I'm sure Bloom would much rather be talking about books he found more worthy of his attention, but what Bloom thinks is worthwhile and what the public adores are two very, very different things.

The lesson here is, don't go asking opinions from people who do not share public sentiments about popular media. You'll never get anything useful.

>>8850608

That's why I put it in scare quotes. I expected the people with more mental facility than you to be able parse out the meaning. I don't consider wallowing in mindless escapism and cheesy boarding school novels fun, but a lot of people do - which is how we get misunderstandings like this btw.

>>8850635

>It's purely subjective

"Well I liked it, so it must be good!" is not an argument.

>>8850847
(2/2)
What does Harry Potter teach you? It teaches you

>Just be passive, and everything will turn out right for you! Hagrid'll come on in and show you you're secretly the greatest person in the world!

It's revenge fantasy, it glorifies passivity. Harry's volition is abnegated. This is also a criticism that could be made about a lot of other children's stories: they teach passivity by having characters who are passive but virtuous triumph over characters who are evil but actually do something.

This creates a bubble of narcissism around the psyche of the child which must painfully be broken.

The child thinks that just because they don't hurt anyone and rather are the type of person to get hurt by others, they have some sort of value in life, they'll be rewarded. The actual and sad truth (as you all know) is that we all have to steer our own fates and work hard towards our happiness.

This isn't what you wanna hear if you're a kid who's been raised on Harry Potter.

>>8850647
>I think it was Verlaine who said that he could never write a novel because he would have to write, at some point, something like "the count walked into the drawing-room"
This is probably the most insufferably arrogant thing I've read in a while.

>>8850847
>>8850858
There's so much projection in this post its no wonder you can't enjoy Harry Potter.

>>8850860
It's pretty true, though.

>>8850872
If you get to a point where your ego is so massive that you believe you are above writing ordinary sentences you cannot produce anything worth reading.

>>8850858
Good post, anon. Thank you. Other than Bloom's stretch-their-legs "analysis", I've never seen someone give a specific critique of Harry Potter.

Could you pick an example of a good work of childrens literature and explain how/why your criticism doesn't apply to the work. (Perhaps Alice's Adventures in Wonderland since I read it recently and so am close enough to the work to be able to appreciate your analysis, but if you want to choose a different book that's fine.)

>>8850855
Oh my god, I just said that isn't necessarily good, but I liked it alone. I admitted I wouldn't recommend objrctively

Your comprehension is absolutely fucked.

>>8850837
close enough, it's actually portuguese

>>8850770
may as well read wikipedia articles for a kid if they shouldn't read for the prose

>>8850881
>you are above writing ordinary sentences
You're retarded if you think that's what he actually meant to say.
>you cannot produce anything worth reading.
Surely you've read Verlaine's poetry to confirm this, right?

>>8850492
Jesus christ /pol9k/ go home
There is no massive fucking conspiracy by colleges to make kids idiots and force them to pay for school
Kids just play a bit too much minecraft and watch a bit too much netflix

>>8851058
>Kids just play a bit too much minecraft and watch a bit too much netflix
Because their parents minds were rotted by HARRY POTTTER

>>8850858
You're in no position to be criticising Harry Potter as either you're monstrously stupid or you read below a 3rd-grade level. A child has a more thorough understanding of the basic themes of this series then you do. I honestly feel kind of sad for you. It's hard to imagine how wretched it must be to go through life as the type of person who can produce and believe such an uncharitable and cynical piece of shit 'analysis'.

>>8852404

He's mostly right though.

>>8852404

This is some Grade-A Triggering right here.

>>8850461

>Dickens

Literally the Rowling of his time, but with better prose.

>Homer

>comparing the private education of aristocrat kids to that of public education of today

wew lad

wew

>>8852710
Bloom again:

I teach a course on how to read a poem. And I teach Shakespeare. Fall term: comedies, histories and poetry. Spring term: romances and tragedies.

I've learned in the last 15 years not to assume anything. Unless students are religious, I can't take the Bible for granted. I can't say "this has some relation to the Book of Job" because they might not know what that is.

I can't assume they've read Chaucer, either. And it's very hard to get started on Shakespeare if you haven't read Chaucer.

It used to be that you could be pretty sure that either on their own or in a good secondary school they would have read "The Iliad" or "The Odyssey." Not anymore. Now you have to send them to read it, along with "The Canterbury Tales" and the Book of Job.

They'll go, of course, and they'll read it. And they'll grasp it immediately. They're just as bright as always. But shouldn't they know it already?

>>8852725

>They'll go, of course, and they'll read it. And they'll grasp it immediately. They're just as bright as always.

Wow, even Bloom can be overoptimistic.

>>8850855
>"Well I liked it, so it must be good!" is not an argument.

It's literally the only argument.

>>8852753
well, he does teach at yale

>>8852774

>Falling for the Ivy League meme

>>8850354
He makes a lot sense

That being said... Scifi/fantasy is a great way to explore "what if....." scenarios , parallel or fictional world's that can motivate people to try and change the real world to reflect the insights they gleamed from the stories from that fictional world

>>8852687
I'm just sick of all the bloody elitism on this board. Especially when they're so completely off the mark.
>>8852654
He's really not.There's criticism to be had for the series. However calling it a revenge fantasy that glorifies passivity is not it. Commentary like that shows that either he didn't read the series or he was unable to understand what is ultimately a children's book.

>>8852801

>I'm just sick of all the bloody elitism on this board.

That's because you're a plebeian, as opposed to a patrician.

>Especially when they're so completely off the mark.

Those critiques were on the mark though.

>>8852801
>I'm just sick of all the bloody elitism on this board.
muh hugbox
go to reddit and stay there, no one will stop you

>/lit/ once again demonstrates that anons read only for a sense of superiority

Just go and masturbate you idiots

>>8852842

>/lit/ once again demonstrates that anons read only for a sense of superiority

That's not why I read, but it *is* a happy a consequence. Not just a sense of superiority, but actual superiority.

>>8852687
As opposed to the masterful work of autism he's responding to.

I don't know, maybe you assholes should just concentrate on your own reading instead of being a nuisance around "plebs". Your opinions are completely unsolicited and more importantly, uninspired. Just regurgitating whatever your beloved Bloom says only makes you look pathetic. Not everyone reads for "muh aesthetics" like you pretend to

>>8852844
Yeah, go on trying to win the imaginary competition inside your head. Nobody cares. But what would I know, I'm just a redditor!

>>8852851

Walk away, brainlet.

>>8850354
Why do you care? You don't read anyway

Kek. /lit/ sure is fucking delusional. The only way you can validate your lack of success in life is by shitting on successful people.

>>8852855
Calm down, pseud

>>8850354
>Byatt

Ayy cyka blyad.

>>8852828
Your elitism is because /lit/ is a hugbox. Stop whining about popular literature being popular, you fucking contrarian

>>8852801
>He's really not.There's criticism to be had for the series. However calling it a revenge fantasy that glorifies passivity is not it.
>Potter knows from his first year that Voldemort still lives and is intent on murdering him
>doesn't sturdy or train with any rigor whatsoever
>wins in the end everytime anyway because he is the chosen one
The analysis is spot fucking on. Harry takes vastly more initiative to try and win the tri-wizard tournament than he EVER does to not be murdered. And funnily enough it's after Voldemort returns in full that he does the LEAST to prepare himself to face him (books 5/6).

>>8852876

>Stop whining about popular literature being popular, you fucking contrarian

It's not contrarian to point out that anything popular is, with rare exceptions, bad.

It has to be - how else will you appeal to the lowest common denominator, who also comprises the lion share of Human society?

Ironically, with the democratisation of education, fewer people now can read the Classics or other great works than was the case when education was much more exclusive.

>>8850423
>>8850620

Shitty opinions like this make me glad Dylan won the Nobel

>>8850847
This is actually impressive, it formalizes and articulates my own emoted misgivings with the books and I agree with all of it precisely because I've thought all these things in a less formal form myself.

>>8852884
If you have to criticise something, you need more than just buzzwords. This whole thread is a waste of time because nobody is criticising Harry Potter apart from the standard argument "it is too dumb and shallow"

Even if this sort of thing doesn't make you a contrarian, it doesn't improve the quality of discussion

>h-hey guys Harry Potter sucks so much, amirite?

>y-yeah I couldn't even imagine people enjoying it!

>r-reddit!

>b-bloom says it's horrible, and his opinion notwithstanding, I genuinely believed it was cringey!

>ha-ha! Too bad those idiots will never enjoy patrician literature like we do, r-right?

>yeah!

>totally!

>let's go to /lit/ to check out other books to hate, eh?


Fucking circlejerking idiots

>>8852906

>>8852906
nice counter clockwise jerk

>>8852894

>>8850602

>>8850354
>hey are invited to avoid reality, to avoid the world and they are not invited to look inward, into themselves.

Ok, so he doesn't like escapism? Fuck off.

>>8853077

Escapism is inherently immoral.

>>8850461
I'm pretty sure kids aren't required to read HP.
There's a big difference between reading Homer on your own, and being forced to read Homer as apart of your curriculum.

I highly doubt kids were reading anything above the level of HP because they actually wanted to.

The problem isn't that people read Harry Potter. It's that they never grow out of it and that's all they read (or the similar equivalent)

>>8853085
Why? & no one cares.

>>8851058
>how does capitalism work

>>8850858
>implying the Bible isn't the same thing

>>8853097

>Why is it a bad thing to refuse to confront the world as it is

>>8853105
go to bed martin

>>8850461
yeah they also used to read stuff like Billy Bunter and Edward Lear limericks

don't imagine that somehow the kids of the past were more highbrow than kids of today
lightweight stuff has always existed alongside "classics" and if it lasts long enough it gets called "classics" itself

>>8853112
Lear's patrish tho

>>8853112
>Just World
>everything was always the same

>>8850847
>>8850858
Some once cap this analysis pls

>>8853085

>Inherently

How can you use such meme words and still imagine being taken seriously?

>>8853145

>meme words
>existing

>>8850354
>Author of Flight to Lucifer shits on Rowling and Stephen King

Maybe Harold is just jelly?

Bloom made an ass of himself in that article, lied blatantly about the text, and is surprised people are calling him out for his bullshit (since he usually doesn't have enough readers who aren't acolytes). More importantly, I get that Bloom is 86, but why the fuck is he calling Ieva Lesinska (who is 58) "child" repeatedly? What a condescending assclown.

>>8850858
This is utter horseshit from beginning to end. Harry is passive? His cardinal defining trait is his refusal to let adults handle shit, right from the first books, where his interference actually causes almost all the problems. The kid's abusive upbringing has made him almost incapable of trusting authority figures to be honest, reliable, or even competent, and as the series progresses, he's usually right in that ethic. There has never been a children's lit series that teaches mistrust of all authority to its readers. And of course, Harry is far from "the most powerful wizard of his age." Hell, he's not even the most powerful wizard in his trio. And his virtue is often flawed, and he does cause others to be hurt and die. You either haven't read the series, or you can't see past your own theory.

>>8853257

>There are people who unironically take Harry Potter and other YA fiction this seriously

>>8852875
Gotta love those Russian names.

>>8853300
Frog boy, if it's a text, it can be discussed and analyzed. All this posturing, baiting and claims of irony doesn't change anything. If it's one of the most popular series in history, it needs to be looked at, whether you think the writing is shit or not. Asking Bloom for his opinion is as idiotic as asking his opinion on a top rap album: he's too far from the target audience to endure listening to it, let alone have anything insightful to say sociologically. Besides, analyzing Rowling is no worse than analyzing Radcliffe, and a lot more timely.

>>8853366
Is this bait? What, should we only let Harry Potter scholars analyze the series? Better yet, we'll let youtubers do it and people like Bloom, who have devoted their careers to the study of the English language, can just stay out of it. You sound like a liberal desu.

>>8853366
It should be analyzed as a symptom of cultural decay, which Bloom is perfectly good at doing.

>>8853107
>Why won't you be miserable with everyone else?

This is what you're asking.

>>8850602

This is great, I've never thought of it that way.

Explains why I couldn't understand as a kid why Gandalf didn't just go around shooting fireballs at people.

>>8853382
Not being a fucking idiot, of course I'm liberal. So is Bloom, though since his politics are framed by academia, he may not see it that way. I'm also a published scholar and professor, and like Bloom, I have devoted my life to the study of English literature (not the language itself, and neither is Bloom primarily a philologist--that would be Tolkien). Unlike Bloom, however, I actually read the whole series, thought about it, and bothered to remember the details. Bloom's not qualified to analyze it in any way until he's willing to make the slightest effort or even do a basic fact-check before rambling about it. Being old and famous doesn't make one's ill-considered rantings more precious.

When Bloom claims that readers are "invited to avoid reality, to avoid the world and they are not invited to look inward," this is self-evident bullshit, and if he'd bothered to read the books, he wouldn't try to make such a fucking stupid claim. There are many children's and YA books that don't go anywhere near topics like fascism, abuse of power, political duplicity, propaganda, racism, classicism, trauma, schools as indoctrination machines controlled by the state, control of the media, and the many other unpleasant things Rowling has her characters grapple with. Let him bitch about them: Rowling's series is a nasty exploration of the human tendencies that allow bigotry, systemic injustice and dictatorships to rise, and how easily institutions are exploited. Bloom simply hasn't read the series, and discusses it only as a symbol of what he hates. I'm not claiming he'd like them if he read them--I don't care, and I don't fully disagree with his lamenting the humanities' retreat from literature to politics. But it's a moot point for now. He has not read them, and he has nothing accurate or useful to say on them.

>>8854610
>Not being a fucking idiot, of course I'm liberal
>when it's so pure the pureometer starts showing values higher than 100%

>>8854619
Anything of substance to add, Žižek, or are your ad hominem shit-posts and tired memes all you have to draw on? I'm refuting Bloom's foolishness, and you're doing nothing. The Byatt quote also contains gross inaccuracies and projections, but it's much closer to being a valid critique than Bloom's grumbling.

>>8854653
oh right, because "everyone who disagrees with me is an idiot" is a paradigm of fecal matter less posting

>>8854610
kek you sound like a female English teacher

get fucked pleb

>>8850354
They're correct, but I'd say they even went a little too easy on the books. The Harry Potter books are far worse than either of them suggest in these reviews.

>>8854669
No, but I said nothing of the sort. I said Bloom's statements on Rowling were idiotic because he hadn't read the series. I'm sorry if you're having trouble understanding.

>>8854672
Pathetic. None of you have any interest in thinking about the topic at all, do you? I'm glad you're not my students.

>>8854694
>she's actually an English teacher
fucking kek

>>8854698
No, I have a doctorate and teach literature at two universities. And I'm male, if that matters so much to you. Professors who teach humanities at a college or university and call themselves conservative are essentially allying themselves with people who consider their field worthless and want to put them out of work: idiotic.

>>8854688
>I said nothing of the sort
>Not being a fucking idiot, of course I'm liberal.
oh, so (~p -> q) -> (~q -> p) isn't a theorem. sorry for assuming classical logic like a pleb!

>>8854741
I connected the dots for you, since you missed it. "everyone who disagrees with me is an idiot" ≠ "I'd have to be an idiot to teach liberal arts at a university and not be basically liberal." The fact that so many people here debate philosophy and literature and yet think "liberal" is an insult is a sign of how warped their definitions of the term has become. If you're here and have anything to discuss, you're hopelessly liberal by the standards of most people.

>>8854767
>I'd have to be an idiot to teach liberal arts at a university and not be basically liberal
also ≠
>Not being a fucking idiot, of course I'm liberal
but nice unicode. Makes my ascii arrows look lowly.

>>8854728
cuck
>>8854767
reddit

>>8854801
shitposting is against the rules, friendo

>>8854837
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

>>8850354

Of course. What else could you expect from the dullest franchise in the history of movie franchises. Seriously each episode following the boy wizard and his pals from Hogwarts Academy as they fight assorted villains has been indistinguishable from the others. Aside from the gloomy imagery, the series’ only consistency has been its lack of excitement and ineffective use of special effects, all to make magic unmagical, to make action seem inert.

Perhaps the die was cast when Rowling vetoed the idea of Spielberg directing the series; she made sure the series would never be mistaken for a work of art that meant anything to anybody?just ridiculously profitable cross-promotion for her books. The Harry Potter series might be anti-Christian (or not), but it’s certainly the anti-James Bond series in its refusal of wonder, beauty and excitement. No one wants to face that fact. Now, thankfully, they no longer have to.

>a-at least the books were good though
"No!"
The writing is dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs."

I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing. Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

>>8854915
>that pic
i'm cringing hard

>>8854915
So, in your reality, Gatsby is three "tiers" above Huckleberry Finn? Great. Bye bye.

>>8855035
>>8855110
It's obviously a meme... r-right, guys? The list belongs inverted, except shit tier, out of which Orwells book is salvageable.

>>8850449
Pulp novels can be great though. Pulp is a term used to describe stories that come out of a different kind of publishing industry which favoured sensationalism. None of that makes pulp inherently worse than other books. Pulp is also a product of mass media, which means that there is going to be more books published , and thus a lot more shlock to sift through.

>>8853257
He exists in a vacuum. The fact he breaks every rule and essentially is rewarded for it is not an example against this, he basically never tries to better himself and this is precisely why he refuses to listen to the adults around him, because he is a linear character who takes linear actions. He happily bums through 6 of his 7 years of schooling without seriously trying to learn anything, he has a casual schooling experience, despite the fact he very obviously shouldn't. This is bad writing.

>>8855204
He literally solves every problem the same way, that is to not say not at all, just do what you always do and the cards will align.

>>8850626
>grandfather was a fish merchant
>a usurper of style and title
>jewish

no wonder the man so arrogantly flaunted convention, and no wonder he was so skeptical!

There are some things parvenus will simply never understand. Rank can be usurped, but Royal blood cannot be purchased. Inferiority of birth will always be apparent.

>>8850860
this post is so salty
he's a poet my man, what else would you expect?

>>8852885

I know right? People who pretend not to enjoy Harry Potter and Bob Dylan are so pretentious!

It's just not possible that anyone could not like what I like.

>>8853238
if youve seen any of his interviews he calls everyone "my dear" or "my child."

it seems like a pretty gnostic thing to do

>>8850847
>>8850858
>It's wish-fulfillment
Yea
>It's revenge fantasy
Yea
>it glorifies passivity
Not really. Harry and his friends go do stuff of their own volition almost constantly throughout the series. They subvert authority and do adventurous shit all the time. They're definitely proactive characters, at least from what I remember of it. It sounds like you only read the first chapter of the first book. Note that I am not arguing that the Harry Potter series is good or that it's literature, just that your argument is not supported by textual evidence.

>>8855370
>Not really. Harry and his friends go do stuff of their own volition almost constantly throughout the series
They do the same sort of stuff constantly. There is no inward reflection, no change, no development. This constancy is itself passivity.

>>8855379
Passivity is the wrong word for what you're describing. Maybe stagnant would be better. Passivity implies that other characters drive the plot or make decisions for the protagonist. You are right in that the characters never question their own values though.

>>8855457
>other characters drive the plot or make decisions for the protagonist
This is literally what happens for every single book.

>>8850847

>then is revealed to be the world's most powerful wizard by absolutely no doing of his own

I don't think you read the books. It is repeatedly made clear that Hermione is the superior student. Harry is seen making up bullshit predictions for a divination class and copying off someone's potion notes. In the fifth book, Harry's fellow students think he's some kind of great hero because of all the adventures he went on in the previous books, but Harry outright tells them he's really just a dumbass who got lucky a bunch of times. The last book has Harry and his friends bumbling about and spending the majority of the book having no fucking clue what they're doing. The Harry Potter books still have a lot of flaws, but I don't think hero worship of Harry is the most significant one.

>>8855479
He constantly does things that exceed what his peers can do. He's arguably much more naturally talented than Hermione, who studies to the point of absurdity. In fact, it's Harry's success despite him taking school as a joke that further proves this. And really, shouldn't it be the other way around? He KNOWS Voldemort is out to get him, does he try to improve his wizarding skills commensurate to that threat? No, he takes school at the exact same pace as his peers, it's fucking weird and extremely passive and suggests he will succeed not because of hard work or personal effort, but simply because that's how his world works. This. Is. Passivity.

>>8855528
No, this.is. bullshit. Factually incorrect. Not what happens in the books. Go read the damn books, or stop airing your opinions on them. You and Bloom both.

>>8855772
This is what happens in the books, I've read them, your denial is completely empty and erroneous, and makes me think while you've read the books...you didn't do attentively. Maybe YOU need to go back and read them?

Harry fucks around and doesn't try to learn anything the VAST majority of the time. The only exception is the tri-wizard tournament (he does 100x more with the motivation win a stupid tournament than to not be murdered by Voldemort) and when he wanted to learn a Patronus so Draco would stop making fun of him for pissing his pants everytime. He almost NEVER applies himself, you're fucking wrong and probably blinded by bias.

He basically takes no initiative himself and doesn't take the threat of Voldemort seriously for the exact same reason the audience doesn't, because the story is so poorly written and generically fueled by tropes you KNOW Harry will win, I mean he literally just fucks off from occlumency lessons because he doesn't like them and then completely stops them because he won't have an awkward conversation with Snape...and this is weighed against....Voldemort literally having entry into his mind with massive potential for abuse endangering him and everyone around him. There's no gravity to the danger, there's nothing proactive about him, he is a passive, unrealistic, gary sue garbage character.

>>8855772
This is what happens in the books, I've read them, your denial is completely empty and erroneous, and makes me think while you've read the books...you didn't do so attentively. Maybe YOU need to go back and read them?

Harry fucks around and doesn't try to learn anything the VAST majority of the time. The only exception is the tri-wizard tournament (he does 100x more with the motivation to win a stupid tournament than to not be murdered by Voldemort) and when he wanted to learn a Patronus basically so Draco would stop making fun of him for pissing his pants everytime. He almost NEVER applies himself, you're fucking wrong and probably blinded by bias.

He nearly never takes ANY initiative himself and won't take the threat of Voldemort seriously for the exact same reason the audience doesn't, because the story is so poorly written and generically fueled by tropes you KNOW Harry will win, I mean he literally just fucks off from occlumency lessons because he doesn't like them and then completely stops them because he won't have an awkward conversation with Snape...and this is weighed against....Voldemort literally having entry into his mind with massive potential for endangering him and everyone he loves. But whatever, fuck that says Harry. There's no gravity to the danger, there's nothing proactive about him, he is a passive, unrealistic, gary sue garbage character who only ever reacts to the world -- which guides him to succeed everytime regardless of all the aforementioned.

>>8852878
lol you're the bloody pleb. Go back to /fit/ what sort of retard wants 6 books of Harry doing the magic equivalent of getting big.

>>8855902
That would be massively more interesting and believable, actually. Sorry Rowling apologists, you lose.

>>8855479
This is kind of funny b/c you're playing into the guy's point, namely, Harry is passive and not rewarded through his own volition. Just sayin...

>>8855918
It's not only that he is rewarded and succeeds regardless of what he does, it's that the things he does...do not logically follow. We're talking about a teenage kid who was basically emotionally abused all his life...until one day he finds out he is a magical special person, who is secretly rich, famous, etc... He goes on to be not just well adjusted, but some kind of paragon of morality, Harry is completely uncorruptable and normal in unbelivable defiance of his situation. On top of all this he is never rejected once in the whole series, everyone wants him, even Draco wants to be his friend, but Harry turns him down, because being the good guy, he doesn't make friends with the bad guys, right? And does he ever abuse his position? Not once. It's the most vacuous and idlest of wish fulfillment fantasies.

It's not only that he is rewarded and succeeds regardless of what he does, it's that the things he does...do not logically follow. We're talking about a teenage kid who was basically emotionally abused all his life...until one day he finds out he is a magical special person, who is secretly rich, famous, etc... He goes on to be not just well adjusted, but some kind of paragon of morality, Harry is completely uncorruptable and normal in unbelivable defiance of his situation. On top of all this he is never rejected once in the whole series, everyone wants him, even Draco wants to be his friend, but Harry turns him down, because being the good guy, he doesn't make friends with the bad guys, right? And does he ever abuse his position? Not once. It's the most vacuous and idlest of wish fulfillment fantasies. Nothing is earned, causality is flaunted left and right, and aside from an acceptable quota of loss to give a tinge of stakes (but never anyone too essential), everyone lives happily ever after. The 3 main characters repeatedly face off against enemies so utterly beyond their scope of ability in 7 books and come out in the end totally unscathed happily ever after.

>>8855910
Maybe if you have autism. One of the central themes of this series is that you're not a great wizard (person) because of how powerful, and clever you are. It's your capacity to be kind, brave, and make the right instead of the easy choice. Harry dicking around with mates, and solving mysteries isn't a waste of time because he's developing and nurturing the very characteristics of a great wizard.

>>8851058
>There is no massive fucking conspiracy by colleges to make kids idiots and force them to pay for school
Yes there is. That's literally the point of formalized education, and the only people who think it isn't are themselves usually brainwashed and thoroughly domesticated

t. homeschooled

>>8855965
>>8855965
>One of the central themes of this series is that you're not a great wizard (person) because of how powerful, and clever you are. It's your capacity to be kind, brave, and make the right instead of the easy choice. Harry dicking around with mates, and solving
Too bad Harry Potter is literally THE CHOSEN ONE. Lmao. His constant and unyielding success in the face of reason or reality completely undermines this garbage yo're spewing.

>>8855969
>t. homeschooled
I wonder how you ended up here.

>>8855965
>One of the central themes of this series is that you're not a great wizard (person) because of how powerful, and clever you are. It's your capacity to be kind, brave, and make the right instead of the easy choice
see
>>8850858

>>8855965
Harry's claim to fame is he is the boy who lived. Was he particularly courageous as an infant? He thwarted the single greatest dark wizard to ever live then. And he went on to do it again 7 times, and we later learn this is all because he was destined to. He's a child of prophecy, how the fuck does this suggest the power of common virtue? No-one else lived against Voldemort until him, no-one but he could have killed him, regardless of how kind brave or 'right' they were. The total lack of self awareness here is staggering...have you even read the books?

>>8856018
Those aren't passive virtues. Nor does Harry act passively. You could argue the case that he is guilty of acting reactively.

>>8850736
btfo

>>8856068
Have you read the books? Because your interpretation of the prophecy is the same as Voldemorts and the magic daily mail.

Harry didn't defeat Voldemort as an infant he was an infant, you're extolling another idea that was mocked in the actual books. Voldemorts first defeat is the result of Harry's mother's display of the key virtues of this series. As well as Voldemorts complete inability to understand those attributes.

Through the course of the series, those are the attributes that Harry must embody in order to defeat Voldemort. They are 'the power he knows not'.

>>8856073
>implying there's a meaningful difference
And the passivity truly comes in when you consider WHY he reacts the way he does. How is Harry so completely normal when he is in such an abnormal situation? He went from 11 years of domestic abuse to being unthinkably rich and famous, literally everyone in the wizard world knows his name and wants to suck him off and it doesn't phase him one bit, he responds to every situation in exactly the way he 'should' if none of these things were true, his past doesn't matter, his future doesn't matter, he is already 'good' and nothing can change it. What is this but passivity? There's almost nothing for him to learn, he doesn't undergo any meaningful personal growth, where on earth does he get his moral compass from in these situations? Straight out of Rowling's fine milfy ass is where.

>no-one elses's mother loved their children but Harry's
>he isn't the chosen one guys, he's not SPECIAL
>literally called the boy who lived because he's the only one to ever live against Voldemort
>NQT SPECIAL
lol

>>8856110
>no-one elses's mother loved their children but Harry's
>he isn't the chosen one guys, he's not SPECIAL
>literally called the boy who lived because he's the only one to ever live against Voldemort
>NQT SPECIAL
lol

>>8856112
Harry's transition to fame troubles him quite a bit. Troubles him enough that he shuns anyone that doesn't treat him as just Harry.

Rowling seems to subscribe to the idea that a moral compass is innate, therein lies the horror of Voldemort for he lacks one either via his own actions or from birth. But I digress. In Rowling's universe what separates good from bad is one's choice to do what they know to be right. Choosing something is not a passive act no matter how you quibble. If Harry had made no choices and simply been carried by the winds of fate to the conclusion then your passivity argument would hold. However, it's Harry's choices that lead to where he ends up.

>>8856159
pure sophistry divorced from the content

it troubles him by...not troubling him? lmao, the fuck does that mean

any other kid in his shoes ANY other would have abused his position, would have been fucking witches left and right, etc

Rowling says a moral compass is innate but it's Harry's choices that matter? Lmao, can you HEAR yourself?

People are talking about how "passive" isn't the exact word, Harry gets into adventures and yells at Dumbledore like a little bitch etc etc. But reactivity = passivity. It's the same fucking thing, it doesn't matter how frantically hyperactive you are, at bottom you're still covering up your essential inner passivity, your capability to only REact, not act.

>>8850443
>And as cliche as it may be, if not Harry Potter, I might either be dead or in jail.
I find that very unlikely.

HP is single handedly responsible for the state of millennial "culture". The fantasy of a magical system where the operator just points and says a word and immense powers are focused for your benefit, without any real effort or risk or expenditure of effort or energy, is the primary seed of the entitlement and hidebound autistry of this generation.

>>8856169

>any other kid in his shoes ANY other would have abused his position, would have been fucking witches left and right, etc.

Have you ever read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its sequel, The Great Glass Elevator?

>>8852780
meme or no, yale is not representative of the greater student body

>>8856169
>>any other kid in his shoes ANY other would have abused his position, would have been fucking witches left and right, etc.

harry is portrayed as the biggest beta though, Chosen one or not

>>8856274
Yeah I read them but I forgot most of it. Are there sex scenes? I don't remember any.

>>8856328
precisely anyone else given a massive inheritance, prodigious abilities and fame, coming from a background of neglect and abuse wouldn't be a regular cuck like he, there's just no way

>>8856234
That's fine. Only try to realize it was a kind of savior in the points of my life where things could have gone a lot worse. I think I'm not depending on the work itself so much as my response to it, and so I'll go to say, just in case some contrarian will argue annoyingly, I am not saying because my personal emotional involvement should entail its objective worth.

I am not trying to make an argument, only a statement. A worthless opinion, sure, but still going to voice it.

>>8850354
Bloom is to /lit/ what Orson Welles is to /tv/

Based, in every single one of his criticisms.

>>8856347

>Charlie's parents are dead
>lives in poverty with four grandparents, only one of which is in any condition to support the family
>Charlie gets a golden ticket because he wasted precious money on chocolate bars
>gets ownership of the Chocolate Factory because unlike the other kids he's just a really great person and Wonka likes him
>also because he avoided getting fucked up by one of Wonka's food experiments

this passivity you're talking about is hardly exclusive to Rowling or even remotely new, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is from the 60s

>>8855379
When you talk about 'constant passivity,' are you talking about the world's inability to act back?

>>8855528
>that's how his world works

May I ask for more examples of this in literature? I'm trying to figure out the angle on a particularly difficult character.

>>8856738
>the existence of one bad book validates another
If that's not your point I don't know what is.

Kek. This thread is filled with morons

>>8850586
Björk is cute! CUTE!

>>8854915
what a bait picture

>>8857110
It's a physical manifestation of why this board is going to shit

>>8855820
No, your confusion, oddly, is that you're thinking like one of Harry's teachers. Because he doesn't apply himself to his studies and work tirelessly to forge himself into a Voldemort-bane, you accuse him of doing nothing. But that's the realistic part of the story. He's a kid trying to pass school, survive puberty, and stay alive. His ambitions are pretty modest, especially in the early books. But in each book there's a big fucking problem, and he walks into life-threatening peril to try to stop it, when he could just say "Fuck it, that's Dumbledore's job." You're also thinking from the end of the series backwards: for most of it, Harry doesn't "know" he has to personally defeat Voldemort, and finds the idea insane. He wants to be a normal kid, but he also can't disentangle himself from his unique situation. There's a lot of confusion, compounded by adults refusing to tell him vital information until it's too late. Hindsight is great, but slamming Harry for acting like a normal stupid kid when he gets a chance isn't much of a critique. He's still the kid that refuses to be put into Slytherin, and makes his own mistakes from day one. He breaks school rules constantly, but he's hardly the only one, and his situation is unusual, to say the least. Do you think Dumbledore's highest priority is Harry's OWL levels or whether he does study hall? He's trying to unravel what the prophecy entails for Harry, and how to allow him to survive it. Which he does, posthumously. Rowling spends seven books telling the readers over and over that there are much more fucking important things going on than listening to your teachers and winning Quidditch matches, but that doesn't mean the characters just stop caring about their daily lives (until the last book, when they literally have none left).

>>8854222
You've never thought about The Lord of the Rings in the way that it is fundamentally structured and written? Lord save us.

>>8850602
i had this exact feeling when i read the first time harry potter, it seems that lots of magic were created just to be used one time, at one moment (as comic relieve, or to solve some problem, etc)

Harry Potter is shit and no amount of manchildren defending it will change that.

>>8857865
Calm down, pseud

>>8855820

>He nearly never takes ANY initiative himself and won't take the threat of Voldemort seriously

So in the fifth book when he creates Dumbledore's Army doesn't count?

>he literally just fucks off from occlumency lessons because he doesn't like them

Did you miss the part where Snape teaches him fuck-all and basically just tortures him? Can you imagine being taught boxing by a guy who keeps punching you but doesn't show you how to defend or punch back? That's what it was.

>>8857865
its good for children

>>8857920

It's not.

Anyone got any clips or interviews where Bloom talks about Japanese literature?

>>8850423
You just went full retard.

>>8855204

Proposition: Harry should work harder in school work because he is the one to defeat Voldemort.

If true: The long term benefit to this objective by studying should outweigh the opportunity cost, and there is no more cost effective way to achieve the benefit (of extensive wizarding knowledge).

The opportunity cost is defined in terms of human contact necessary to maintain proper psychological development, rule breaking and goofing off which often results in finding lost magical artifacts of Chekhovian significance.

The alternative is of course to simply ask Hermione whenever he has a technical question.


Conclusion: Harry is best served by self selecting his behavior according to the Law of Comparative Advantage, as his current actions provide the items necessary to defeat the enemy, and he has a suitable alternative in Hermione to preclude the need to become the human encyclopedia. To have two sets of the same information would be needlessly redundant. That and she is far more effective at this than he by virtue of time travel.

>>8858001
tell me whats good for children then

>>8858009
>tfw bloom will never review the anime canon
why even live

>>8858102

the greeks

>>8858102

Beowulf. The Hobbit.

>>8858102
dickens, looking glass

you dont read a Rowling book, you look at it.

you only read it in the sense you read a text message.

>>8858102
Anything else
even the very hungry caterpillar

>>8858496
I can't believe I had to look at this comment

I never thought I'd live to see /lit/ defend harry potter.

He's correct but HP still holds a place in my heart for being a thing my grandmother and I shared together, may she rest in peace.

>>8850354
Reminder that Harold Bloom is a lame and outdated old man.

>>8850423
The point is reading patrician literature should be fun and reading pleb literature should be boring. If you don't feel this way, then by definition you are a pleb and should leave.

>>8860229
>muh safe space

Suck it, grandpa

I knew Harry Potter was for plebs when I was 12

when i was little i thought harry potter was a dumb gay kiddy book, but then when i grew a little bit and got more mature i actually read the books and found out they were pretty fun. but then i grew a little more still and realized that i was actually right before, and those books are gay as shit

>>8860872
>gay as shit
Don't worry, you haven't hit maturity yet.

>>8858096
It doesn't matter Harry does or doesn't do, train or not train, embark on adventures or not, he will defeat Voldemort regardless. This is what makes him a bad character and the story insubstantial. Your analysis is wasted since his world adapts to Harry instead of the other way around, it's built for him to succeed.

>>8857908
>So in the fifth book when he creates Dumbledore's Army doesn't count?
>one small instance out of 7 years of schooling
And at the end of the day he basically did that to spite Umrbridge, he taught others, not himself. No, it doesn't fucking count.

>>8857908
>Did you miss the part where Snape teaches him fuck-all and basically just tortures him? Can you imagine being taught boxing by a guy who keeps punching you but doesn't show you how to defend or punch back? That's what it was.
>thinking Snape was just trying to torture him
The story is from the lens of a child, are you a child? Snape was obviously trying to help Harry, who didn't want to be helped, for all the reasons already listed in this thread.

>>8861170
For Christ's sake, piss off. I already answered your argument. Stop acting like you're grading Harry's exams. Your definition of "passive" is horseshit that could apply to most protagonists in most novels, and trying to refute Harry's actions by disregarding his perspective is mindless. He ignored Snape's teaching because it was coming from fucking Snape. Obviously it was an error, but that doesn't prove any of your points, it proves mine: Harry makes lots of mistakes, and so do the adults around him, but saying he doesn't do anything is idiocy. >>8857626

>>8861569
>gee I don't like Snape
>I need to learn what he is trying to teach me or anyone will die
>BUT I DON'T LIKE HIM FUCK THAT
You're wrong and stupid.

>>8861569
>gee I don't like Snape
>I need to learn what he is trying to teach me or everyone will die
>BUT I DON'T LIKE HIM FUCK THAT
You're wrong and stupid. You've answered nothing.

>>8861588
No, you're a hopeless moron and can't remember your own arguments. The discussion is not "does Harry do stupid shit at times," remember? What the fuck do you think you're doing here: proving you're smarter than the fictional teen protagonist? Do you yell "Don't go in there!" at horror films too?

>>8861610
>character's response is completely out of scope with the threat he faces
>constantly
>is rewarded for it, constantly
>not evidence of all the aforementioned
You seem to be the one who can't follow the argument. You should try arming yourself with reason rather than agenda.

2bh