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.