Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Do note the thread title.
Ponder why the NYT cares enough to make a debate of it in the first place.
As I said, I think they're pushing the "high culture" button with their target audience. (The old sneering at the genres. They just chose YA instead of SF or romance.) There's money to be made from making their people feel superior to the "masses". 
As for Harry Potter, the books are well written and enjoyable. And they get progressively more sophisticated and mature as the series moves on, *by design*. The original intent being to map each book's accessibility level to Harry's age. The last two volumes are thoroughly adult-grade fantasy by any yardstick.
In this case, accessibility is a floor, not a ceiling: a ten year old can read the first volume but adults will find plenty of nuances to enjoy beyond a "merely" fun story. There are dickensian touches, finely honed prose, and above all an engaging well-conceived milieau. Nothing simplistic or watered down in any of them.
Hunger Games is a different creature but of comparable worth. The movie is a fair translation of the first book but it unavoidably glosses over a lot of the darker details of the novel. The trilogy is very dark, dystopic, and dead serious commentary on human nature under stress. Very apropos for the stressful times.
That teenagers willingly seek out such a story and appreciate it is a welcome sign of hope that the younger generation will turn out fine. It is an affordable series; all three volumes cost less than a typical brainless celebrity "bestseller".
Both are examples of ways pop culture transcends annointed "high culture". |
I just think y'all are being too defensive and reading too much into it, imo. As you said yourself, they balanced it out with other viewpoints. This has turned into a bash the "über lefty NY Times" thread which is just as silly as a bash "all YA literature" op-ed.
Progressives think the NY Times is too centrist, conservatives think it is the anti-christ, the truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between. I happen to like the NYT, living overseas and having lived in the NY/NJ area for decades, it is a valuable site for me to find out whats going on back "home".
PS - I appreciate the mini-reviews, honestly. I was in a book store here just the other day and they had the Hunger Games trilogy on sale, in Dutch. The store clerk saw me checking it out and recommended it. When I told her I was interested in them because I thought it might be an easy way to improve my Dutch she looked at me like I was crazy. She said they were just as complex as most "mature" novels, which peaked my interest. She then recommended the comix section for me...
