The occasional scrivener

Tolkien yesterday, Rowling today

Edmund Wilson’s review of the Lord of the Rings, published in 1956, could almost be about the Harry Potter series today. Especially this gem:

Now, how is it that these long-winded volumes of what looks to this reviewer like balderdash have elicited such tributes [from some people]? The answer is, I believe, that certain people - especially, perhaps, in Britain - have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash. They would not accept adult trash, but, confronted with the pre-teen-age article, they revert to the mental phase which delighted in Elsie Dinsmore and Little Lord Fauntleroy and which seems to have made of Billy Bunter, in England, almost a national figure. You can see it in the tone they fall into when they talk about Tolkien in print: they bubble, they squeal, they coo; they go on about Malory and Spenser - both of whom have a charm and a distinction that Tolkien has never touched.

Admittedly, Harry Potter is written for children/”young adults”. But the series still seems to attract a wide audience, just like Tolkien. In my not so humble opinion, I still find Tolkien better than HP, but that’s perhaps because I was younger when I read LOTR for the first time.

Which leads to another thought: how will my son be able to appreciate HP when he’s older? The whole series is being exploited in real time, with the movies more or less following on the heels of the books. How can he create an internal representation of the HP universe when Warner Bros have served it up like a McDonalds meal already?

Posted at 00:02, in the books category. Comments [0]
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