Idiot Rabble

I must confess that the shrillness of some recent attacks on detractors of Harry Potter and the attendant captialist feeding frenzy takes me somewhat aback. I also confess that the logic behind these attacks mostly eludes me.

Matthew Yglesias accuses Ron Charles of "whining."

Charles -- and through his role as a stand-in for the larger enterprise, all the literati -- look like sneering losers who've decided to elevate their idiosyncratic hobby above everyone else's in order to look [down] on the rest of us.

One day someone is going to have to explain to me who the "literati" are, exactly. Is this a term of abuse for identifying certain people in the New York area involved in the "book business"--writers, editors, agents, etc.? Is it a more all-encompassing term identifying those who simply profess an interest in literature? Does it specifically denote anyone who advances an opinion counter to your own, especially if that opinion can further be denounced as "elite"?

What precisely is the "idiosyncratic" hobby in question? Reviewing books? Reading them, at least if they are works of putatively serious fiction? Being part of the "literati"?

More to the point: What is it about Ron Charles suggesting that these Potter books aren't necessarily appealing to everyone, or that perhaps they aren't really the sort of thing adult readers should be bothering with, that makes him a "sneering loser" who only "look[s] down on the rest of us"? (And is it really possible to be both a "loser" and a snob? Is this an invocation of some English graduate student who once questioned Yglesias's taste in fiction?) What is it that Charles is resisting--the books, or the phenomenon of Pottermania? It seems to me that Yglesias is exulting in the herd mentality that valorizes his own preferences. Charles wonders whether encouraging the idea that reading is good if it connects you with all the other cool kids is actually doing the cause of reading much good at all. Does Yglesias really think that anyone who finds reading a more private and "idiosyncratic" activity is just a loser?

Charles Taylor's defense of the "masses" is even more illogical. Taylor dredges up an essay on the Potter phenomemon that Harold Bloom wrote seven years ago and tells us that Bloom "has, in his attacks on Rowling, provided us with fine examples of another reason for the Potter books' popularity: the insularity of a literary culture that willfully ignores what it is that makes people readers in the first place."

I suppose "literary culture" is composed of the "literati," but beyond that it's virtually impossible to determine what Taylor is talking about. In what way does the disdain of the literary culture account for the popularity of the Potter books? This strikes me as just a plain non sequitur. Are adolescent boys looking at the New York Review of Books and then deciding to read something that would really piss these people off? This is perhaps why someone like Taylor is defending Harry Potter, but I otherwise don't really understand his point unless it's just the usual "you elitist readers don't understand how to appeal to nonreaders."

Taylor follows this with another swipe at Bloom and his fellow cloistered comrades:

Bloom revealed a vision of literary culture in which only some people belong, where class is destiny and where the idiot rabble needs guidance by those elites who are better suited to making the decisions that will affect that rabble.

Someone is also going to have to explain to me what "class" has to do with any of this. Do readers of serious fiction constitute a "class"? Do we assume only the well-heeled read works of literature? I invite everyone who thinks so to come visit my apartment and discover how prosperous this reader is.

As if realizing the above statement perhaps undermines Taylor's own bona fides as a critic, he immediately reverses course and offers us this caveat:

To be fair to Bloom, criticism is of necessity an elitist enterprise, and insisting on a hierarchy of good work over bad work is essential to the job. I wouldn't trust any critic who didn't despair of the garbage that finds an audience while good work languishes.

I would really be interested in a crash course Taylor might give on walking that fine line between assuming "the idiot rabble need guidance" and despairing over the audience that consumes garbage.

But it turns out that where Bloom et al go wrong is continuing to harp about quality once a book has become really popular:

But when a work achieves a popularity that only a few books or movies ever do, it's an act of supreme arrogance and laziness on the part of the critic to chalk that up to the dumbness of the masses. "Can more than 35 million book buyers, and their offspring, be wrong?" Bloom asks. "Yes, they have been, and will continue to be for as long as they persevere with Potter."

The chutzpah of the man, to think a book is bad whether it sells 100 copies or 35 million copies! This takes critical standards just too far.

And although I'm repulsed at the idea of sticking up for Leon Wieseltier, in this case I'm going to have to. Taylor quotes his remarks about "chick lit":"these books do not seem particularly demanding in the manner of real novels. And when we're at war and the country is under threat, they seem a little insular. America's reading women could do a lot worse than to put down Will Francine Get Her Guy? and pick up The Red Badge of Courage." Taylor comments: "It's the same insufferable mixture of pompous instruction and baseless certainty. If people are reading a pop novel, it follows that they must be disengaged from the social and intellectual and political life around them."

Leon Wieseltier is an expert at pomposity, but here I just don't see it. Pop novels "do not seem particularly demanding"; they "seem a little insular" (I guess the insularity can go both ways); readers "could do a lot worse" than to read a classic novel. Far from being baselessly "certain," the tone is if anything rather timid, an effort to qualify rather than declare.

But in the world of the masses, at least according to Matthew Yglesias and Charles Taylor, even a gentle reminder there are other, better books to be reading is enough to warrant tossing the critic who would propose such a thing to the lions.

Comments

[richard]

My favourite line of Taylor's piece: "Why read, if our sense of vision is reduced to the apocalypse-in-a-spittoon grimness of Cormac McCarthy?"

Offhand, I'd say that if you're not reading both widely and deeply, you're not really reading. If I read nothing but McCarthy or Rowling, then my perspective on my culture is skewed. It doesn't matter which one I overdose on, to the exclusion of other literature.

Taylor has the habit of delivering a peppy soundbite, like this one about McCarthy, then a mealy caveat not even I can bother reading carefully. Very annoying.

[amcorrea]

To be fair, the pieces cited by Yglesias and Taylor were a bit stronger than "gentle reminders" (although I can't agree with the extreme statements made by either side). Colleen Mondor's reaction to Charles' piece is worth reading: http://www.chasingray.com/archives/2007/07/reading_is_not_dead_and_harry_1.html

[Steven Augustine]

The herd is called "The Herd" for a reason; Pottermania is nothing but a media-sparked stampede. I'm far from disappointed or mystified...truth is I'm amused! The apologists are merely embarrassed about their own Herd connections (or bovine DNA); impossible to explain to any of them that it's not a question of reading "light fare" to "relax" now and again if reading a "challenging" book is what one actually finds *pleasurable*.

And when did "Elitist" become a pejorative, anyway? (laugh)

[mr waggish]

AS Byatt had some reasonable commentary, so there's no need to quote Wieseltier...

And Fay Weldon's response: "Byatt does have a point in everything she says but at the same time she sounds like a bit of a spoilsport. She is being a party pooper but then the party pooper is often right."

Now I'm off to read Daniel Pinkwater, Ellen Raskin, Norton Juster, Jean Merrill, William Sleator, et al.

[amcorrea]

Mr. Augustine: My copy of Pynchon's latest is sitting right on top of "Deathly Hallows." The two are pleasurable in different ways and for different reasons, but I enjoy them both. (Those of us with "bovine DNA" love books too.) Yes, I made a special trip to Barranquilla on Friday for Rowling's latest, but I also paid high shipping fees to make sure Annie Dillard's last novel got here as soon as possible as well--and I'm not ashamed of either fact.

[Steven Augustine]

"Mr. Augustine: My copy of Pynchon's latest is sitting right on top of "Deathly Hallows..."

Amcorrea: There's not enough information in your comment for me to draw any conclusions, but if a "foodie" claimed to love both Le Big Mac *and* the Billi-bi at Maxim's of Paris, I'd doubt the sensitivity (and sanity) of his or her palate. Likewise, any patron of the visual arts who collects both Lucian Freud and Leroy Nieman is worthy of suspicion. Perhaps you keep a fiberboard armoire next to the inherited Chippendale in your TV room, too...it's not my concern, in the end. My opinion is merely that (an opinion) and I hope you haven't lost any sleep over it.

[amcorrea]

No lost sleep, no hard feelings. But I would like to point out that terms like "the herd" are just as meaningless as "the literati." A friend of mine works in the anthropology department of a well-known university on the east coast, and many members of the faculty have exchanged emails about HP7. Why can't one enjoy both children's literature *and* more complex works of art? Why make them mutually exclusive?

[Jonathan Mayhew]

It's just half-way decent, somewhat charming mid-level genre fiction, not particularly great as literature but not particularly better or worse than what most people would be reading anyway. Just criticize it or praise it on its merits, without attaching all these other values to its being read.

Neither detractors nor defenders seem to be able to see the Harry Potter books for what they are. I'd sooner kick someone out of the literati for reading Billy Collins than for JK Rowling, but fortunately I don't have that power.

[Steven Augustine]

amcorrea: In my opinion, we're talking about aesthetics, not divisions in intelligence. We're also talking about fine distinctions in the craft not only of writing but in the craft of reading, too, and the dichotomy I set up in my previous post...facetious as its examples were...makes my point for me.

Further: citing the fact that faculty members at a well-known University are fans of (the super-promoted children's adventure series of fair-to-middling quality) Harry Potter neither proves nor disproves a thing about the presence (or lack thereof) of literary nuance in the books...it *does*, however, say much about the relentless intellectual levelling at work (especially among those who watch television) in our hysterically egalitarian, post-hyper-capitalist world. Yes yes...I smiled as I wrote that last sentence. Still...

I'm doing my best to imagine a childhood wherein grownups were avidly reading the same stuff I was at the age of eight (by ten I was doing Clarke and Asimov, so that's another story) but it doesn't work: the grownups I knew back then were either literate or they weren't, but they were all *grownups*, and the literate ones were reading Mailer, Bellow, Roth, Baldwin, Pynchon, Miller and Michener (at worst), et al...even the schlocky "airport" novels back then (Jaws, The Exorcist, Fear of Flying, etc) were too full of adult content for any kiddie-crossover marketing. And the books for kids were *for kids* (though there were some damn fine ones..."A Wrinkle in Time" stays with me). With the notable exceptions of Le Petit Prince and Jonathan Livingston Seagull; neither of which demanded standing in mile-long queues to buy them (and both of which were fodder, primarily, for college students on philosophical quests).

This was before the marketeers realized it was more lucrative to aim *everything* down...at the kiddies and teens...with the insight that grownups, desperate not to be seen as boring old dinosaurs, would be forced to follow.

I'd have more respect for an avid adult reader of "Green Eggs and Ham", to be honest, because at least I'd be sure he or she had come by this eccentricity in innocence...as opposed to being a passive receptacle for the slickest hype (or sucker for zeitgeisty mass-experiences).

It's not just HP, of course...plenty of so-called "adult" fiction gets a sneer from me, these days, too...and while it's probably a valid point that there's no necessary mutual exclusion at work between fans of JK Rowling and those of JS Foer, say...I *defy* you to find me a true appreciator of a mercilessly fine book like Harold Brodkey's "Stories in an Almost Classical Mode"...who can tolerate reading this Potter tripe.

It's only the artists who can write rather *over* my head...providing that necessary challenge; those little epiphanies of admiration...who get my carefully-rationed time and attention.

[Steven Augustine]

Re: Billy Collins: ah, yes...

[Imani]

I read Harry Potter to upset fundamentalist Christians.

I can never get worked up about this topic, which pops up at every Harry Potter release. I'm too confident in my own intellectual capabilities and varied reading interests to worry about the judgement of assorted strangers. More concern about adults only reading Rowling as opposed to Gabriel Josipovici seems reasonable to me but such an opinion is rarely presented in a persuasive or constructive manner. (Although I think A.S. Byatt tried her best for the NYT at the previous book's release.) Oh lordy, bestsellers are monopolizing the public's short attention span? When was that never the case? Whither the golden era of diverse readings more or less evenly distributed throughout the population?

The real problem, it seems to me, lies in the educational system and not Harry Potter, so I find such pieces as distracting and irrelevant as the 100th Rowling press release about whether she cried after finishing the last book or not.

The only pleasure I gain from such articles is the daft books the writer usually offers as better alternatives. One had Terry Pratchett (good lord) and this one offers Susanna Clarke whose writing voice in "Jonathan Strange and the what have you" I found excruciatingly derivative.

[Steven Augustine]

Imani:

I agree with much of what you say, though I wonder what a "constructive" version of one's opinion that a particular publishing phenom is ephemeral tripe would look like? (laugh)

Is it possible that each commenter is responding to a measurably different implicit question here? The implicit question *I'm* responding to is probably closer to, "What do you think of this legion of adults who are such fanatics about an over-hyped kids' book?" than, "How can we make the world safe from such cultural abominations?"

Agree wholeheartedly with your final paragraph; disagree with the implication that I have a default problem with bestsellers, and can't help feeling that the gist of your overall argument can be wielded by any fans of any shite book (or cultural artifact) against all and any naysayers. Is it safe to say that *any* thing just truly sucks or are we damned by relativism to keep our thumbs-downs to ourselves?

I've knocked books from writers in a range spanning Murakami to Houellebecq (sp?) to Pessl to Auster, but it's only when I knock JK Rowling that I feel a culture-sized nerve flinching, and charges of "Elitism" flow, and I wonder if the "get(ting) worked up" of which you speak applies more to Potter's apologists than its critics?

In case I haven't put enough energy into expressing this, by the way: I think it's *great* when kids get excited about a book, any book...as long as it's the *book* (and not the movie star) the kids are actually excited about.

[Chris]

"Is it safe to say that *any* thing just truly sucks or are we damned by relativism to keep our thumbs-downs to ourselves?"

I guess some of us are waiting for you (or whomever) to elaborate upon what, exactly, is so truly sucky about the books. These extensive comments, despite your protests to the contrary, seem more a reaction to the perceived mentality of the Potter consumer ("bovine DNA," "passive receptacle," etc.) than a response to the books themselves. Whatever you may have had to say about Houellebecq, Auster, et al, I seriously doubt that you called fans of those authors zombie cows; it's not Rowling you're criticizing at all, but adult people who actually look forward to reading her books. You're right: that isn't elitism, it's puritanism, though I might add that the inadvertent hilarity of reading a finger-wagging lecture on the improper use of one's "carefully rationed time and attention" (Augustine? More like Increase Mather) at the tail end of a lengthy post on an apparently inconsequential subject is worth the price of admission.

[Steven Augustine]

Chris:

When I write a 600-page comment, you'll have a point (re: the supposed irony of me writing off HP as a time-waster).

Of course, I'm not sure how long it actually *took* you to read 15 or so paragraphs spread across 5 comments, but if it took you longer than an hour, I apologize...with the caveat that I'd do something, if I were you, about that feller holding that gun to your head, forcing you to read my opinions...who knows what he'll force you to read next? Some *kids'* book?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some very naughty heretics to torment...

[Chris]

Steve,

I take it that Rowling's flaws as a writer are so self-evident that you won't bother discussing them here. Of course not: there's that man with the gun to my head -- "Don't examine what I'm *saying* here, just agree, or shut up." The eternal credo of the intolerant everywhere.

I guess the gun feller is the same guy forcing you to participate far more fully, here, in the Potter circus than 99% of those robotic adult fan-dupes you're condemning. You don't need to go on for 600 pages to convince me that, really, you're doing the world an injustice by wantonly shoveling out dollops of that carefully rationed time and attention on something so insignificant as Potter (and little old me!) when you could be allowing the fine literature of Harold Brodkey, et al, to zip over your head at amazing speeds, or whatever it is you ordinarily do when you're not fire and brimstoning the Potter-droids.

[Imani]

Steven, I confess that parts of your response leaves me bemused. My last paragraph and the bestsellers points were a direct reference to the WP article. I have no idea if you typically hate on bestsellers. Please feel free to say that something sucks. I do it all the time.

I'm not interested in "defending" the series against naysayers. I am bored with the print criticism because it's the same tired lines published at every release, complete with hysterical headlines (the death of reading!) and end-of-the-world scenarios with an absence of critical thought. (For eg. I'm pretty darn sure that long tail book was about how lesser known books and publishing entities could thrive in the internet age, not about how the doughty small press David would defeat Goliath Random House, or whatever Charles concluded.) I'd say that both sides of the Potter argument get equally worked up from what I've read.

Charges of elitism bore me but then I am equally uninterested in accusations of carrying Bovine DNA. There's a worthwhile issue at the bottom of it all and I think it lies in schools that pump out graduates who view any prose written before 1950 as near archaic. All this "cultural infantilism" and "read Pullman instead!" is hot air. At least I got Harold Brodkey out of it.

[Steven Augustine]

Imani:

Of course, of course. So much of what you write is true; I wonder if the 20% or so I'm tending to disagree with, on average, is some contrarian default of mine? (laugh).

And my "bovine DNA" riff was both a deliberately colorful jab...and a comment on herd behaviour. You don't deny that herd behaviour drives "cultural" events like "Titanic" and "Harry Potter" and the i-phone through the demographic stratosphere, do you? Where would multi-national media conglomerates be without herd behaviour? Politicians *count* on it. I assure you I didn't invent the concept.

Re: Harold Brodkey: the book of short stories I referenced above is quite interesting: do you know it? There's a bit of Brodkey (and Joan Didion, I'd say, too) in DeLillo. I think it took Brodkey even longer to deliver his long-awaited meisterwerk than it did for Gass, and when he finally laid the egg the nest had moved, so to speak. But he's a beautiful writer.

(Disclaimer: I haven't seen "Titanic" yet, so it's very possible that I've ignorantly rejected, sight unseen, a masterpiece.)

[Imani]

No, I don't deny that the Potter phenomenon is carefully nurtured by over-the-top media orchestration. That doesn't negate the fact that the books amassed a significant fan base before the media caught on (at around book 4, I think). But it's not unreasonable to question whether it has much to do with *reading* anymore. It's sad that it has become just another mass experience but I can't deny the pleasure of actually having more than three or so people in "real life" with whom I can discuss a book.

I did not know of Brodkey but I Amazoned his books and they seemed interesting so I put a hold on the short stories collection at the library. I plan to tear apart the space time continuum by being the only human being in the world to enjoy tripe and transcendent literature. (This is very possible: I have been told that my tastes are a bewildering mix of the very high (by some standards) and the very low (by all).)

I would advise against seeing "Titanic". Better to kill the neurons with beer.