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November 24, 2003
Entry: "Harry Potter, Augustine, and War"

I promised myself that I wouldn't read or link to any more Harry Potter criticism & commentary, but this article sucked me in... Harry Potter, Augustine and War. Let's just squish big concepts together and see what comes out... not in a thorough fashion, but in a slapdash recap sort of way. I just can't resist this stuff. The article is a response to this event. And what really interested me was the idea that yes we should expose children to conceptions of evil, that it's important to allow some frightening images in to a child's inner world, in order to create contrast with other images. I liked the bit about how Harry Potter may be subversive to certain Christian "values" in it's support for the abnormal and villification of the mundane. I was even willing to entertain a connection to Augustine. I don't, however, think that we should let children read Harry Potter in order that they shall fear evil and support war. We should want better for our children than the ability to act out of fear. That fourth-to-last paragraph just makes me crazy.

And then of course, political/developmental concerns aside, Harry Potter is not exactly full of serious evil. Roald Dahl's villians beat Voldemort any day of the week. Don't believe me? Read the title story in Skin.

I promise, in future I'll try harder not to read these things.

Dead from the Waist Down is less a book and more an academic paper, not so much due to the fifty cent words and footnotes, but because of the over all contrived nature of the thing. The length of the title should have tipped me off.... Dead From the Waist Down: Scholars and Scholarship in Literature and the Popular Imagination... very senior essay-ish. But I couldn't resist a book about Casaubon. There are some good things in it, and it's making me miss Middlemarch terribly.