Saturday, July 28, 2007

Feeling Caulfieldesque today...

If you are but a semi-illiterate biped dwelling in a place called the USA presently, you can saunter out your front door and not be smacked in the face by Harry Potter. Harry Potter this, Harry Potter that; Copernicus had it all wrong: the sun of our solar system personally revolves around what that Brit, RK Rowling, has burning -off on her printer.
Witness the lines at bookstores last weekend: it put me in mind of the cattle waiting at the trough for grandpa to fill on the old farm. One may protest - "well, at least they're reading." Looked into a Harry Potter book once and it's just another ersatz Tolkien/Fantasy genre written primarily for children. A goddamn kid's book. It's the adults that are getting all gaga on it. Harry Potter is a classic example on books that shouldn't be read. Just another recycled empty, pseudo-medieval magical stuff one can get just as easily by reading the one before it. I thought CS Lewis and Tolkien had already done this; just as it has been stated that Western Philosophy is mere footnotes to Plato, same can be said without much debate for the Fantasy genre about those two guys above. The Great Consumer American, following the herd buying- practices of the Joneses, of course couldn't wait for someone else to buy the book then borrow the text after they got finished with the tripe to see if it is worth a dollar, couldn't have patience to wait for it to appear on the shelves of a used book store, let alone wait for the paperback. Devotion to the Mall God required that they stand in line wherever and get Harry Potter for some $34, I think. It is sad that Americans won't stand in lines to purchase any books that are useful, that extends self-education. And Yanks wonder why some other people on the Blue Dot think that they are shallow, uncultivated and dumber than shit as a collective whole. But I bet they stood in line for Harry Potter in Copenhagen too, or whenever it is printed in Danish....

....and how much does anyone want to wager that this Rowling dame will bring Harry Potter out of retirement in a few years when her royalty checks start decreasing in amount?? I'd like to see the Vegas odds on that.

No comments: