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Has Harry Potter cast a curse?

July 16, 2007 by Dave Knadler

Rebutting the conventional wisdom that the Harry Potter phenomenon is good for reading, writing and publishing in general, Washington Post book editor Ron Charles has written a provocative essay entitled “Harry Potter and the Death of Reading.” In it, he cites a few facts to buttress his case that millions of people reading the same book does not quite portend a renaissance for the written word:

  • More than half the adults in this country won’t pick up a novel this year, according to the National Endowment for the Arts.
  • The same data point to a dramatic and accelerating decline in the number of young people reading fiction.
  • In 1994, over 70 percent of total fiction sales were accounted for by a mere five authors.

There’s much more, and the essay is worth reading in its entirety. This line will get some attention: “Start carrying on like Moaning Myrtle about the repetitive plots, the static characters, the pedestrian prose, the wit-free tone, the derivative themes, and you’ll wish you had your invisibility cloak handy.”

Also: “Like the basilisk that terrorized students at Hogwarts in Book II, ‘Harry Potter’ and a few other much-hyped books devour everyone’s attention, leaving most readers paralyzed in praise, apparently incapable of reading much else.”

I don’t know. Valid points, I suppose. But if the problem is that not enough people are reading books, it seems churlish to bemoan those who still do — whatever the quality of the volume in question, or its mass-market appeal.

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