Perhaps operating from the assumption that anything positive written about J.K. The problem is that her argument has nothing to do with the experience that anyone I know has had reading the Harry Potter books. Rowling is a master of narrative?), Byatt decides that the books represent 'comfort' for their readers, embodying Freud's notion of 'family romance' (finding the surrogate family where we are appreciated for ourselves) and the chance to regress to a safe world where good and evil are readily identifiable and we feel that we are given control over the unpredictable.īyatt may have a valid cultural point - a teeny one - about the impulses that drive us to reassuring pop trash and away from the troubling complexities of art. To show that she's not a total killjoy, Byatt allows that Rowling's books are entertaining and reveal 'a sure instinct for childish psychology.' To answer the bigger question of what explains the series' huge success with adults as well as children (uh, because J.K. Rowling's books in a New York Times Op-Ed.īyatt's argument is just what you'd expect from someone shouldering the mantle of high culture. Byatt, apparently having made peace with Martin Amis' dental work, who steps into the ring against J.K. Right on schedule, just a mere two weeks after the new Harry Potter release, it's A.S. That esteemed gasbag Harold Bloom, in his guise as self-appointed keeper of the canon, did the honors after the fourth Potter book, 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,' telling us that reading should enrich us (without ever getting around to declaring whether it should entertain us) and shortly thereafter launching his own compendium of children's lit that, in his view, did just that. When a book sells 5 million hardcover copies in its first day, it's inevitable that there's going to be someone who slams it and tells us that what we're seeing is merely a pop phenomenon that bears no relation to literature.

Possession antonia byatt