August 19-25, 2007 Issue |
Posted 8/14/07 at 2:02 PM
I recently discovered that I am part of a select group of
people. We only comprise .04% of the population. Who are we? People with no
particular opinion about the Harry Potter books.
I’ve now become Carl the Contrarian, taking grumpy pleasure
in avoiding the Wiz Kid and related hoopla. But, hopefully to my credit, I’ve
tried to keep up with the strong opinions about the books and their author,
J.K. Rowling.
People either love Harry or hate him. There’s no middle
ground. I’ve noted that feelings seem especially focused among well-read,
articulate, serious and faithful Catholics.
Well, I’m here to tell you that I’m not convinced by the
strong rhetoric coming from the far ends of either camp. I doubt that reading
the Potter books is creating a generation of kids selling their souls to the
occult.
I also doubt that kids who read the Potter books are
encountering the greatest story of their time, or that they will develop a
lifetime love of reading because of it.
Instead, I tend to see kids (and many adults) going along
for a fun ride hyped by big marketing and facilitated by educationalists making
far too much out of the supposed benefits of reading the books.
I suppose that much of my reaction is based in my upbringing
in a fundamentalist home in which The Chronicles of Narnia stories were
criticized because they (gasp!) featured a witch. Somehow, despite opposition
and suspicion, I read much fiction. In fifth grade I made my way through some
literary classics, as well as several Hardy Boys adventures and Encyclopedia
Brown mysteries.
In high school I read even more widely while continuing to
toggle between great literature and popular, escapist fun. I also began to
develop a taste for contemporary nonfiction on all manner of subjects.
Strangely enough, while my parents wouldn’t have been happy
with everything I read, they always encouraged me to read. That was no small
concession, considering that my father readily admits he has never read one
work of fiction in his life. (“Why should I read fiction? It’s not true!”)
Yet I fully and happily concur that parents (me included),
who are the primary teachers of their children, shouldn’t shy away from keeping
track of their children’s reading habits. After all, they are the best judges
of how a child might respond to a certain book.
Which brings us back to the Harry Potter books. From where I
sit, it seems the strongest critics and the most ardent advocates of the Potter
books seem to share a common belief: that fiction is always a form of
proselytism (“Oh, no! They’ll become Wiccans!”) or instruction (“Oh, yes!
They’ll become great readers!”). But good storytelling neither proselytizes nor
inculcates. It transports.
C.S. Lewis, in An Experiment in Criticism, emphasized that,
by reading fiction, we are able to see the world through the eyes and mind of
another. It doesn’t mean that we agree with or embrace that perception but that
we have, in a sense, walked a ways in some else’s shoes. Doing so, he said,
broadens our vision.
“I become a thousand men and yet remain myself,” he wrote.
“Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with myriad eyes, but it is still
I who see.”
Lewis was a wise man, a joyful Christian and a brilliant man
of letters. He may have critiqued Rowling’s works but he wouldn’t have
denounced them.
We’d do well to take that approach, too. At least, that’s my
opinion. Unparticular though it may be.
Carl E. Olson is editor of
IgnatiusInsight.com.
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