[Harmon]

Originally Posted by gmw

A personal/opinionated answer:

I believe the Harry Potter books are well written, that they contain all the essentials of what I consider to be good writing; they are "a good experience" if you will forgive such an expression...

This is one of the big problems with a thread like this - nobody bothers to define terms. But implicit in the opening post is the idea that "popular" does not equate to "well written." Nor the reverse, for that matter. A good reading experience is not necessarily the result of good writing. It's actually more a function of who the reader is, and what the reader enjoys. So a "good reading experience" does not strike me as a good definition of "good writing." But if that *is* one's definition, then I can understand your position.

I'm an elitist, myself. I believe that things can be done well or done poorly, and that these are things that can be identified by a person who is educated. I have no question whatsoever that Beethoven is better than the Beatles. Anyone who thinks differently is simply not educated, musically. It doesn't mean that they are stupid, just that they lack the knowledge to make a proper judgment. I think that the same thing is true of writing.

I think that your observation that someone can write a popular book based on what you call "adequate writing" is absolutely correct, though.

...I don't read much in the way of romance (some Jane Austen), ...

I suppose Jane Austen's books can be considered romance novels. But they are much more than that. For one thing, they are character studies. For another, they are social commentary. And yet again, they reflect moral judgments in the context of a particular social arrangement. And they are lessons in how to use words.

Like them or not, no one can deny just how popular Harry Potter has become (whether you attribute much of that to the movies is up to you). I also believe that the popularity is very widespread. Parents may have purchased just for their kids, but a great many enjoy the books just as much themselves. Young or old, male or female, fantasy or other, the people that have enjoyed this book seem to come from everywhere. The popularity of some of the author's mentioned by Harmon, even Edgar Rice Burroughs, I don't believe ever reached such a wide cross-section of the community (but I don't have factual data to support such a claim)...

Let's compare the Potter novels to those written by a different author who wrote for a similarly wide audience - Dickens. Dicken's novels were without question as popular as Rowlings' novels. Dickens has lasted. I doubt that Harry Potter will, and a comparison with Dickens will show one reason why. Dickens created real human characters. Not merely good or bad ones, but real ones. I know that people tend to think of Dickens' characters as caricatures, but if you step back a moment, and consider how Dickens would see your friends, or strangers on the street, I think it becomes immediately apparent that - as Chesterton observed - Dickens draws from life.

Rowling, OTOH, draws from stereotypes. Her characters are superficial, and draw their power mainly from the reader's adolescent identification with Harry, or I suspect in many instances, Hermione. But not because they are like anyone you actually know, just because they are like what you would like to be. Or to have been.

LotR: Lord of the Rings. It is now more than 50 years since publication. By no means do I want to denigrate the huge background that Tolkien developed behind that story, but I do want to use it here as a reference point. Harry Potter, is very different to LotR and HP is aimed at a much younger audience (at least to start with), but I do find elements in common. ... So despite there immense differences I see the two having a similar long term effect on literature, I can see Harry Potter being a standard by which much fiction is judged in the future....

LotR is a first class story, but it's second rate writing. Better than Potter, though, for the reasons you mention, and also because Tolkien was better educated than Rowling, with a vocabulary that dwarfs hers (and yours & mine, of course) and a deep knowledge of language. But still, he lacked command of a lot of the tools of a writer. Basically, both he & Rowling are not writers, but rather, storytellers who happen to tell their stories on paper.

I don't see Harry Potter surviving as a character, nor the stories surviving more than a generation. But I'm too old to take any bets on it, except on behalf of my grandchildren!