The Bell Curve
JOSEPH N. BELL
I finally capitulated to the Harry Potter madness this week -- sort
of. I didn’t wait in line at any bookstores, just walked to my mailbox
and found that the current issue of Newsweek carries the first chapter of
the new Potter book. So I read it.
I was only vaguely familiar with the wizard terminology that permeates
the text, but I found it to be literate, imaginative and often gripping
storytelling. It gave me some understanding of the groupie dedication
that has surrounded the adventures of Harry Potter since the first book
in this series a half-dozen years ago.
It also set me thinking about the reading habits of Tom Brokaw’s
“Greatest Generation” and wondering if we ever went bananas over a
literary character as the whole world seemingly has over Harry Potter.
I don’t think so -- but the cultural options and atmosphere then were
so different. We read routinely for pleasure, a habit that seemed almost
archaic among most kids today until Harry Potter came along.
Our language included characters in the books we were reading just as
today’s young people talk about television characters. This implies no
particular virtue on our part, but simply reflects a time when reading
was fun -- not just a chore assigned by malevolent school teachers.
There were other differences, too.
Much of our reading was straight arrow fiction -- as strongly
suggested by the names of the title characters. Tom Swift conquered all
sorts of odds to create an endless liturgy of machines. Don Sturdy
prevailed throughout a long series of perilous adventures.
Likewise, the Rover Boys -- with fun-loving Tom, serious Dick, and
eager-to-learn Harry. And I’m told that a pushy young detective named
Nancy Drew filled the same role for girls. Good was good and evil was
evil and there was no smudging of the line.
Efforts to revive these books for later generations have never taken
hold. Whether this is due to the increased sophistication of young people
today, the pernicious destruction of reading for pleasure by television
and computers, or the decreasing exposure to reading in the home, I don’t
know.
But even the books to which we graduated when we tired of Tom Swift’s
machines have no waiting lists at today’s libraries. We read “Tom Sawyer”
and “Huckleberry Finn” not as classroom assignments, but because they
reached us in deep places. Same way with Booth Tarkington’s “Penrod”
stories. And the lengthy adventures of Tarzan and his alter ego as an
English Lord.
The only books I can remember from my boyhood that touched on the dark
side of the Potter stories were Dorothy’s adventures in the land of Oz,
where the villain was also a wizard. But he wasn’t a real wizard like
Harry Potter, but rather a snake-oil salesman wielding power through
deceit.
The Oz books -- like the Potter books -- attracted flak from Christian
fundamentalists who complain that the authors are shilling for witchcraft
and thereby confusing and disturbing our young people. (This isn’t unique
in Orange County. The books have been challenged in 25 school districts
in 17 states and banned in schools in Kansas and Colorado.)
The Oz books were also challenged as subliminal tracts on socialism by
the followers of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. The political right hasn’t yet
discovered that message in the Potter books, but it’s still early in the
game.
The broader picture was offered up by author Sidney Sheldon in an
interview last Sunday with the Los Angeles Times when he said: “Harry
Potter is one of the best things that has ever happened to literature
because it is getting children excited to read instead of playing
computer games. (And) when they are done with Harry Potter, they will
start reading other books ... It’s so important for them to be able to
read. These are the people who in 30, 40, 50 years will be running our
country, and they are so ill-equipped.”
Whatever other legacy I will leave, the one that might well make me
the proudest is that the children I helped raise all grew up in an
enthusiastic, open-ended home reading environment -- and all of them are
avid readers now.
The most recent, my stepson Erik, is now reading heavyweights I’ve
never laid a glove on, in spite of the fact that he resisted for 15 years
my insistence that he read “Penrod.” Instead, he left a whole closet full
of comic books in our back bedroom. He insists they will be quite
valuable some day and has thus far successfully resisted suggestions that
he move them into his own space.
They do, however, illustrate a premise that I strongly believe: that
reading is reading, and that kids who cut their teeth on comic books are
quite likely to wallow in Proust and Camus in later years.
When the lines dwindle down, I plan to buy the Harry Potter book I
sampled in Newsweek and read it clear through -- maybe even ahead of the
14 other unread books on my night table.
But I must confess to an ulterior motive. I’m hoping to find some clue
as to how wizardry might get the Anaheim Angels into the World Series.
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