Critical performance and Harry Potter
July 29, 2007
There’s a lot I can say about Harry Potter in the antipathy he generates in people, but I’d rather talk about Washington Post critic Ron Charles. Here’s Ron:
It happened on a dark night, somewhere in the middle of Book IV. For three years, I had dutifully read the “Harry Potter” series to my daughter, my voice growing raspy with the effort, page after page. But lately, whole paragraphs of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” had started to slip by without my hearing a word. I’d snap back to attention and realize the action had moved from Harry’s room to Hagrid’s house, and I had no idea what was happening.
And that’s when my daughter broke the spell: “Do we have to keep reading this?”
O, the shame of it: a 10-year-old girl and a book critic who had had enough of “Harry Potter.” [ Harry Potter and the Death of Reading ]
Go back and read that last passage. This time, try to put that scene firmly in your mind. Imagine what it must be like to be that poor child, late at night, listening to her dad read a book that obviously bores him. When you’re 10 years old, I am sure there is plenty of tragedy in your life. But this has to rank close to the top.
Novels are novels, but once you start reading them they also become performance. Speaking as a long-time customer of Audible, a poor reader can destroy even the best of books. Given his own description having Ron Charles read a book to me sounds positively dreary. He could probably even make me hate Douglas Adams.
There is one other thing that’s worth pointing out. Not all of the Harry Potter novels are on the same reading level. While the first book might appeal to a 10-year-old in theme and story in scope, the later books might be too involved are complicated for the same child. So, Ron’s reading aside, Ron’s daughter might not have been ready to read the Goblet of Fire to begin with. Anyway, why is Ron reading to her? She’s 10. Isn’t she old enough to read on her own? Isn’t Ron concerned with the Death of Reading?
Posted in Art and Writing
content rss
July 29th, 2007 at 9:12 am
“Anyway, why is Ron reading to her? She’s 10. Isn’t she old enough to read on her own?”
I certainly plan to read to L long after she can read to herself, just as my father read to me until I was 11 or so. Far from make me lazy about my own reading, it made me more interesting in reading in general.
July 29th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Hopefully you can manage not to sound bored to tears while you’re reading.
July 29th, 2007 at 10:14 am
How could I be? I’ll be performing, right? :)
July 29th, 2007 at 11:03 am
And you know, even if it’s true that *both* he and his daughter were bored with the books for the same reasons…that seems to suggest, only, that *he and his daughter were bored with the books*. I don’t know that it speaks to anything larger, or anything bad about the books and the Death of Reading.
And haven’t we seen this same exact article at the release of *every* book in the series? I’m really hoping that this final book will, if nothing else, stop giving fuel to that particular fire.
July 29th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
First, I always felt that the Harry Potter books were written precisely for the age the characters were in the books. I honestly feel that book 4 was very dark and dealt with very intense themes, possibly too much for a 10 year old.
Second, I had professors in college who spoke in monotone and put me to sleep every class. I agree that I can only imagine how dull the story might seem to any one, not just a 10 year old, if the reader isn’t even interested or involved in it. How does he even know if he was reading it clearly enough to make sense if even he wasn’t paying attention. It sounds like he wasn’t even interested enough in her enjoyment.
July 29th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Our family has a long history or reading to each other. Leonard and I had “reading dates” before we married (hey…it was highly affordable!) and we read still together as a family, although not as much as we used to do. It’s something we do that is a benign, safe activity to do with them that doesn’t usually involve arguments or trying to get them to do something like the dishes or clean their rooms.
There’s something very addictive about reading something aloud…I didn’t want to stop it just become my kids became readers themselves so to up ante, we upped the material…moving from pretty much picture books to the literature we read now. In fact, we’re just starting Roughing It by Mark Twain which is proving difficult because it makes me laugh so much. If a book doesn’t work, we move to another…it seems a shame to stop reading to kids just because one book doesn’t do it for the kid or you. And…it’s a good way to introduce your kids to books that the schools either ban or overlook.
Rather than hinder their own skills, I’m sure that our reading aloud effort has made our kids into better, more interested readers. Through it, we’ve modeled a love of reading to them and they will certainly be lifelong readers. Do it, you won’t be sorry.
July 29th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Karan, I think that’s good advice. I certainly don’t want anyone to think I’m opposed to reading to a child — or another adult for that matter. After all, I have books read to me all the time. It’s performance.
I do think it a little odd that someone who is concerned that Harry Potter is destroying reading (a deep thought because it runs contradictory to all available evidence!) leads with a story about him performing a book, not his kid reading it.
Kids and adults are having a great deal of fun with Harry Potter, and I suspect it’s school reading exercises and the imposition of literary studies on students lacking enough context and understanding to appreciate the works that causes kids to not want to read. Then something like Harry Potter comes along and sparks a publishing Renaissance, and book critics are all, “ooo, it’s the death of literature!”
July 30th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
I didn’t mean to sound preachy…it just annoys me that there have been these stories in the news about Harry Potter causing reading drop off….that’s ridiculous. I doubt very much that there are millions of copies of the last book that were purchased just to complete the set and/or to fill in a gap in the bookshelves. If a kid is a good reader, s/he becomes a good critical thinker and I think that developing good critical thinking skills is the number one skill a person can take into adulthood. Not that I feel strongly about this or anything.