When books become social necessity . . .

[sartorias]

Some thoughts about the Harry Potter phenomenon.

I did not get a chance to read LJ yesterday, and now my flist is too long to catch up on, so I hope everyone in the US has had a great Thanksgiving.

Comments

[wolfette]

when I was that age, our "Harry Potter" books were the James Herriot books (All Creatures Great and Small) and they flew around the group - each of us waiting eagerly for our chance to read the next one in the series - yet our English teacher ignored their existence.

Maybe not great literature, but loads of fun to read, even now.

[sartorias]

:-)

[beth_shulman]

I absolutely love your definition of "zing". Oddly enough, everyone I know who read them loved the Harry Potter books - aside from English professors, who were somewhat bemused by the phenomenon.

It's difficult to say how long anything will survive, but I think these will last past this generation if only because I can see everyone who read them growing up passing them on to their children/students/younger relatives.

(The reference to Connie Willis was awesome. She's an author who always had zing for me.)

[sartorias]

Thanks! :-)

[hfnuala]

My 5 year old is very good at faking things like Harry Potter for playground games. I doubt anyone in her year has had the books read to them, but they somehow know by osmosis the names of the characters so they can use the names as the labels for the running around shrieking games they like. I have vague memories of doing the same with The Famous Five before I actually read them. I think Blyton's death grip on early readers has finally been loosened, which is a relief as her writing has not stood up to adult rereading for me.

[sartorias]

Blyton's grip was strong for at least a half century--pretty impressive!

And yeah, kids learn by osmosis. I remember when I was a kid, I knew all the main characters and storylines in popular shows even though we had to go to be before most of those shows came on, a fact that was painfully embarrassing and I strove to hide.

[hfnuala]

I also faked my knowledge of popular TV shows and movies I wasn't allowed to watch for whatever reason, so I wouldn't be embarrassed on the playground as the kid whose mother insisted on watching dead boring German shows about Berlin sausage shop operators rather than the much cooler US fare that was a must-see. I figured out a lot by osmosis and also by reading through the episode descriptions in the TV guide. Interestingly, once I actually got to watch those shows and movies, I was often disappointed, because the film or show that I had made up in my head, based in the information gleaned from fellow kids and episode descriptions, was often so much cooler than what really happened on screen.

Cora

[jade_sabre_301]

My thesis professor in college talked about how her eight-year-old son loved Star Wars, but was too afraid to actually watch the movies--he just heard the stories from his classmates and then faked knowledge of how everything worked while playing with them. I hadn't thought about how This Is A Thing, but it's something we do our whole lives, isn't it?

(It's what I do whenever people hear I'm a philosophy major and start mentioning anyone who was published after 1888--"ah, yes, well, I didn't do as much twentieth century work, but isn't he a positivist?" Still not 100% sure what positivism is. But I hear it's a thing, and I can always bring people back to Kant. :-b)

[jodel_from_aol]

The HP phenomenon was also fueled by the timing of the way the books came out. Which is not to contradict the zing factor. Because I believe you are right. But it was more than zing that propelled HP to the top of the heap and kept it there for several years running. Indeed, the last book came out over 4 years ago, and while the fandom has indeed contracted, it's still going strong. I think the last thing with this kind of impact was Star Wars

[sartorias]

Yes, I think you are right.

[breathingbooks]

And now I'm wondering if I've ever had the reading zing you describe. I love reading and certainly have emotions while doing so, but for me that sense of almost... overinvestment?... happens sometimes with movies and TV shows. I think. (You describe things rather differently than I experience them *g*.)

Harry Potter was definitely the sort of story that invited you to read yourself and made-up characters into it. Several strong what-if's too, whereas with some stories it all feels rather more inevitable, like gears locking into place. The Star Trek 2009 fandom feels a lot like the Harry Potter one in both ways.

[sartorias]

Could be that our reactions are all idiosyncratic!