If you want to make sure people realize that you’re a pretentious pseudo-intellectual who had a miserable childhood, be sure to mention how much you dislike the Harry Potter books. Readers who consider their tastes sophisticated consistently dismiss the books as cute, but of little literary value, when the novels are almost guaranteed to become the most influential and important fiction since Shakespeare. On top of that, they’re damn good books (even if the wizardry aspects are kind of fruity).
Rowling is truly an amazing author. She describes characters and plot so precisely that adapting her novels into movies was a relatively easy process, even with millions of fans itching to tear them apart for not remaining true to the books. She has a tremendous wit, and draws humor from the plot rather than resorting to contrived or obvious jokes. Most significantly, even though her books are about children, she covers the most difficult issues in literature. She addresses weighty topics such as death, jealousy, racism and fascism with a well-defined moral compass. She does not become preachy and generalize her characters as one-dimensional saints and villains, however. She develops them to be faceted and complex, making the reader empathize with their struggles to do the right thing when it is not always clear what that right thing is.
Detractors of the books hate them because they are written simply, without long words, convoluted sentence structure or difficult metaphors, which in their minds make the novels somehow less compelling. Those with this outlook on literature only read to fill their empty space where most people have a soul with some detached superiority that comes from reading books that most of the population will never read or be able to understand. It’s not surprising they would hate a book that makes millions of people experience a joy they will never know. Even with their postgraduate degrees and encyclopedic knowledge of the postmodern canon, these elitists could never create fiction that changed the world as Rowling did and they will never forgive her for it.
Shakespeare’s plays stood the test of time because they broke down all barriers. They come across as very literary today because the language sounds weird to us, but they were actually written in a style that was very straightforward for its time. Everyone in a town, from the ruling elite and nobles to illiterate peasants, attended his plays and could relate to the story and characters.
Rowling’s books are the closest thing since Shakespeare to achieving this. The Harry Potter series has transcended every social barrier and, in an era where people allegedly do not read books, become beloved around the world by everyone except the self-proclaimed literary elite. If you think this reflects poorly on society, you should go cry and wipe your tears with the pages of one of the desperately subversive and nihilist novels hailed as a classic in the past two decades, as you tell yourself how much more cultured you are than everybody else.
