Stephen King On The End of Potter
We went to Stephen King for his thoughts on the final Harry Potter book before. Now that he’s read it, have his thoughts changed? You can see for your self in his fantastic write up of the book for Entertainment Weekly.
But reading was never dead with the kids. Au contraire, right now it’s probably healthier than the adult version, which has to cope with what seems like at least 400 boring and pretentious ”literary novels” each year. While the bigheads have been predicting (and bemoaning) the postliterate society, the kids have been supplementing their Potter with the narratives of Lemony Snicket, the adventures of teenage mastermind Artemis Fowl, Philip Pullman’s challenging His Dark Materials trilogy, the Alex Rider adventures, Peter Abrahams’ superb Ingrid Levin-Hill mysteries, the stories of those amazing traveling blue jeans. And of course we must not forget the unsinkable (if sometimes smelly) Captain Underpants. Also, how about a tip of the old tiara to R.L. Stine, Jo Rowling’s jovial John the Baptist?
I began by quoting Shakespeare; I’ll close with the Who: The kids are alright. Just how long they stay that way sort of depends on writers like J.K. Rowling, who know how to tell a good story (important) and do it without talking down (more important) or resorting to a lot of high-flown gibberish (vital). Because if the field is left to a bunch of intellectual Muggles who believe the traditional novel is dead, they’ll kill the damn thing.
It’s good make-believe I’m talking about. Known in more formal circles as the Ministry of Magic. J.K. Rowling has set the standard: It’s a high one, and God bless her for it.
I love what he had to say over all. He had some of the same criticisms of the book I did, with the extended camping scene being an issue, and the occasional odd sense of time. He left the ending alone, which disappointed me, because I’d love to know what he thought. However, he mentioned in his other write up before the book came out that he knows you can’t please everyone with an ending to a series, using his own Dark Tower series as an example. He gives Rowling high marks for reaching both children and adults, and I agree. Above all else, Harry Potter brought the magic of reading back for me.
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August 12th, 2007 at 4:03 am
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