On Sunday, June 26, Writer's Almanac noted that it was the anniversary of the publication of the first Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997). Five years ago, in a speech at Western Reserve Academy, I recalled my experiences reading the Potter novels--so here's what I said (lightly edited) ... from May 4, 2012 ...
Potter
& Proust, Trollope & Powers
… I want to talk
about a phenomenon, one that in recent decades has compelled me to do some
strange things. A phenomenon, I’m
certain, that in ways has touched many of you, as well. I would guess that quite a few of you have
read all the Hunger Games books? All the Twilight
saga? The Hobbit and The Lord of
the Rings? And all of Harry Potter? A lot of us do that—read them all. How addictive
some books can be. Most of you
literally grew up with Harry Potter. So
let’s start with that little fella. And
let’s go back to 2007. Five years
ago. And here’s what I felt, back then,
about our bespectacled, cute little wizard boy …
Harry Potter? Harry Schmotter!
I was sick of
all the hype, sick of hearing people use words that aren’t words (Muggles? Dementor?), sick of hearing people talk about fantasy characters as
if they were actual (Dumbledore? Snape? the Weasleys?). And at
the movies (yes, I went to see them) I could no longer bear the laughter at
things I didn’t get. I was ready to sucker punch the next sorry
soul who dared utter Malfoy or Patronus in my presence. (And did some
friends really need to tell me they thought Hermione was hot! Emma Watson’s a child, you pervs!)
And then, late that
summer of 2007, while my wife, Joyce, was out of town for a week, I read all of
Harry Potter. All seven novels. One each day.
All 4162 freaking pages.
Not bad for an
old muggle, eh? But why did I do that? Well, as
Shakespeare said, thereby hangs a tale … at least
one …
*
Here’s one
problem: Crouching near the junction of my spinal cord and brain is a sort of cerebral
Cerberus, a mangy mutt that refuses to allow my arm to extend, my fingers even
to touch, say, The Da Vinci Code when I see copies stacked everywhere. Not,
that is, until everyone else on the planet
has moved on. (In April 2006, I finally
did read Dan Brown’s novel. By that time
it had been on the New York Times
best-seller list for more than three years;
on the internet, signed first printings were going for a lot.* I thought the novel
sucked, big-time.)
Another reason
I’d neglected The Potteriad: I’d
retired from public-school teaching in 1997, the year of Harry’s Advent. Had he arrived a few years earlier, I would
have read his adventures eagerly—and encouraged my eighth graders to do so, as
well. But no longer in a middle school
classroom, I wasn’t reading any books written for children or adolescents. (I
know: elitist!)
But mostly it
was just plain petulance that kept me at wand’s length from Harry and Hermione
and the others. The wildly
disproportionate popularity of Harry Potter seemed so … unfair. In the 1970s I’d urged
my students to read the fantasy series by Lloyd Alexander (the Chronicles of
Prydain) and Ursula K. Le Guin (the Earthsea novels)—both featuring sturdy nerdy
lads who discover their wizardly endowments and employ them in the service of
Good. Those books sold well—and remain
in print—but generated no mania to rival the global Harry-hysteria. So it just wasn’t fair, you know?
And anyway, I was
positive that the whole Potter phenomenon would just … evanesce. And quickly too. Like pet rocks and poodle skirts.
*
Don’t think I
was spooked by the staggering Potter page count—or by the mounting number of volumes. I fear no fat books, no long series. … And in
my youth, I read, oh, 1000 Hardy Boys novels and (without telling any of my guy
friends, who would not have
understood) some Nancy Drew books, mostly because I thought the movie actress
who played her, Bonita Granville, was hot.
Maybe if I read her books, she’d, you know, love me? (Is there anything more pathetic than a horny
seventh grader?)
 |
| Bonita Granville as Nancy Drew (I wanted to be that boy!) |
In my undergraduate
days at Hiram College I had fallen under the permanent sway of Professor Abe C.
Ravitz, who showed us the importance of reading an author’s complete works. So when we were reading Frank Norris’ McTeague, Dr. Ravitz told us about
Norris’ Moran of the Lady Letty and Blix and The Octopus and the others. I
even read the damn things myself. That
was the way, I’d discovered, to earn the respect of Dr. Ravitz, who, now in his
eighties, is a Facebook friend. Once, telling
us about Norris’ novel Vandover and the
Brute, Dr. Ravitz introduced the word lycanthropy—very
useful when the Underworld movies
came along.
But Dr. Ravitz has
also profoundly complicated my life. I
am now almost incapable of reading
any books by any writers without then reading everything else they ever wrote.
Popular fiction, serious fiction, classic fiction, trash fiction—doesn’t
matter. And so I’ve read scores of thrillers
by Michael Connelly and Dennis Lehane and K. C. Constantine. I’ve been sleuthing through the alphabet with
Sue Grafton. A single Chuck Palahniuk launched
me on a circumnavigation of his entire wacko world. I’ve kept up with Stephen King and stopped
reading John D. MacDonald and Ed McBain and Robert B. Parker only because,
well, they died. Some years ago, I consumed the complete
novels of Dickens, whose Great
Expectations I simply could not make
myself read in high school. (I’d despised
it, failed every daily reading quiz.)
Here at WRA, one
of our summer reading selections, My
Ántonia, sent me on a journey through all of Willa Cather—including her soporific
poems. Just [listen] …
From “Arcadian Winter”:
White
enchantment holds the spring,
Where
thou once wert wont to sing,
And
the cold hath cut to death
Reeds
melodious of thy breath.
The Red Badge of Courage meant some days
devoted to Stephen Crane’s somewhat less celebrated The O’Ruddy. When Tobias
Wolff visited here (to talk about his novel Old
School), I read all of his other books, including his first, Ugly Rumours (1975), a Vietnam War novel
published only in England and never reissued.
Back in my middle-school teaching years, I read all of Shakespeare
because I taught The Taming of the Shrew and
Much Ado about Nothing—and all fifty of Jack London’s books because The Call of the Wild was in our
literature anthology—among those fifty, two of the worst novels every written
by a human being, two dog stories: Jerry
of the Islands and its abysmal sequel, Michael,
Brother of Jerry.
For another of
my professions—book-reviewing—I’ve read all of Jonathan Franzen, Rick Moody, Patricia
Hampl, Tom Perrotta, Jim Harrison, Paul Auster, Suzanne Berne, William Styron, and
numerous others. I’ve failed only with
Joyce Carol Oates, who writes nearly as fast as I read. And I’ve just recently
finished the complete works of John O’Hara—more than thirty volumes.
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