Harold Bloom on Harry Potter

[Russell Grinker <grinker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Wall Street Journal - July 11, 2000
Can 35 Million Book Buyers Be Wrong? Yes.
By Harold Bloom, a professor at Yale. His most recent book is "How to Read and
Why" (Scribner, 2000).
Taking arms against Harry Potter, at this moment, is to emulate Hamlet taking
arms against a sea of troubles. By opposing the sea, you won't end it. The Harry
Potter epiphenomenon will go on, doubtless for some time, as J.R.R. Tolkien did,
and then wane.
The official newspaper of our dominant counter-culture, The New York Times, has
been startled by the Potter books into establishing a new policy for its not
very literate book review. Rather than crowd out the Grishams, Clancys,
Crichtons, Kings and other vastly popular prose fictions on its fiction
bestseller list, the Potter volumes will now lead a separate children's list. J.
K. Rowling, the chronicler of Harry Potter, thus has an unusual distinction: She
has changed the policy of the policy-maker.
Imaginative Vision
I read new children's literature, when I can find some of any value, but had not
tried Rowling until now. I have just concluded the 300 pages of the first book
in the series, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," purportedly the best of
the lot. Though the book is not well written, that is not in itself a crucial
liability. It is much better to see the movie, "The Wizard of Oz," than to read
the book upon which it was based, but even the book possessed an authentic
imaginative vision. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" does not, so that
one needs to look elsewhere for the book's (and its sequels') remarkable
success. Such speculation should follow an account of how and why Harry Potter
asks to be read.
The ultimate model for Harry Potter is "Tom Brown's School Days" by Thomas
Hughes, published in 1857. The book depicts the Rugby School presided over by
the formidable Thomas Arnold, remembered now primarily as the father of Matthew
Arnold, the Victorian critic-poet. But Hughes's book, still quite readable, was
realism, not fantasy. Rowling has taken "Tom Brown's School Days" and re-seen it
in the magical mirror of Tolkien. The resultant blend of a schoolboy ethos with
a liberation from the constraints of reality-testing may read oddly to me, but
is exactly what millions of children and their parents desire and welcome at
this time.
In what follows, I may at times indicate some of the inadequacies of "Harry
Potter." But I will keep in mind that a host are reading it who simply will not
read superior fare, such as Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows" or the 
"Alice"
books of Lewis Carroll. Is it better that they read Rowling than not read at
all? Will they advance from Rowling to more difficult pleasures?
Rowling presents two Englands, mundane and magical, divided not by social
classes, but by the distinction between the "perfectly normal" (mean and
selfish) and the adherents of sorcery. The sorcerers indeed seem as middle-class
as the Muggles, the name the witches and wizards give to the common sort, since
those addicted to magic send their sons and daughters off to Hogwarts, a Rugby
School where only witchcraft and wizardry are taught. Hogwarts is presided over
by Albus Dumbledore as Headmaster, he being Rowling's version of Tolkien's
Gandalf. The young future sorcerers are just like any other budding Britons,
only more so, sports and food being primary preoccupations. (Sex barely enters
into Rowling's cosmos, at least in the first volume.)
Harry Potter, now the hero of so many millions of children and adults, is raised
by dreadful Muggle relatives after his sorcerer parents are murdered by the
wicked Voldemort, a wizard gone trollish and, finally, post-human. Precisely why
poor Harry is handed over by the sorcerer elders to his piggish aunt and uncle
is never clarified by Rowling, but it is a nice touch, suggesting again how
conventional the alternative Britain truly is. They consign their potential
hero-wizard to his nasty blood-kin, rather than let him be reared by amiable
warlocks and witches, who would know him for one of their own.
The child Harry thus suffers the hateful ill treatment of the Dursleys, Muggles
of the most Muggleworthy sort, and of their sadistic son, his cousin Dudley. For
some early pages we might be in Ken Russell's film of "Tommy," the rock-opera by
The Who, except that the prematurely wise Harry is much healthier than Tommy. A
born survivor, Harry holds on until the sorcerers rescue him and send him off to
Hogwarts, to enter upon the glory of his schooldays.
Hogwarts enchants many of Harry's fans, perhaps because it is much livelier than
the schools they attend, but it seems to me an academy more tiresome than
grotesque. When the future witches and wizards of Great Britain are not studying
how to cast a spell, they preoccupy themselves with bizarre intramural sports.
It is rather a relief when Harry heroically suffers the ordeal of a
confrontation with Voldemort, which the youth handles admirably.
One can reasonably doubt that "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" is going
to prove a classic of children's literature, but Rowling, whatever the aesthetic
weakness of her work, is at least a millennial index to our popular culture. So
huge an audience gives her importance akin to rock stars, movie idols, TV
anchors, and successful politicians. Her prose style, heavy on cliche, makes no
demands upon her readers. In an arbitrarily chosen single page -- page 4 -- of
the first Harry Potter book, I count seven cliches, all of the "stretch his 
legs"
variety.
How to read "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"? Why, very quickly, to begin
with, perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be
persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do. Is there any
redeeming educational use to Rowling? Is there any to Stephen King? Why read, if
what you read will not enrich mind or spirit or personality? For all I know, the
actual wizards and witches of Britain, or of America, may provide an alternative
culture for more people than is commonly realized.
Perhaps Rowling appeals to millions of reader non-readers because they sense her
wistful sincerity, and want to join her world, imaginary or not. She feeds a
vast hunger for unreality; can that be bad? At least her fans are momentarily
emancipated from their screens, and so may not forget wholly the sensation of
turning the pages of a book, any book.
Intelligent Children
And yet I feel a discomfort with the Harry Potter mania, and I hope that my
discontent is not merely a highbrow snobbery, or a nostalgia for a more literate
fantasy to beguile (shall we say) intelligent children of all ages. Can more
than 35 million book buyers, and their offspring, be wrong? Yes, they have been,
and will continue to be so for as long as they persevere with Potter.
A vast concourse of inadequate works, for adults and for children, crams the
dustbins of the ages. At a time when public judgement is no better and no worse
than what is proclaimed by the ideological cheerleaders who have so destroyed
humanistic study, anything goes. The cultural critics will, soon enough,
introduce Harry Potter into their college curriculum, and The New York Times
will go on celebrating another confirmation of the dumbing-down it leads and
exemplifies.