Dead End?

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I spent my birthday weekend in the blesséd company of my daughter and her peers, aged 25-32. When we all got drunk down by the bonfire, they huddled in a long, spirited discussion about which House of Hogwarts School each would’ve been assigned to by the Sorting Hat. and at least one of them was in the process of re-reading JK Rowling’s entire ouevre.

Well, these are all great “kids” if we can still call them that: newly minted lawyers, brokers, a historian….but i cant help remembering that I used to think the Harry Potter books would be a gateway to , Y’know, classic novel reading.

i loved those books, too, it was tremendous fun when the next installment came out: parties! long lines at Barnes and Noble! A phenomenon!

But, um, it doesnt look like the Potter generation has moved on—to Dickens, Trollope, Fowles, Updike…are there others you would name?(as they say in church.)

No, they’re just reading Harry Potter over and over and over again!

Well… i reckon it could be worse.

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Published by Hypatia

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17 thoughts on “Dead End?”

  2. Very few people are as well read as you are, Hypatia, or have the passion for great literature that you do 🙂 Harry Potter is about the right speed for most people, and that’s ok. It has been decades since I have read any work of fiction, classic or otherwise 🙂

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  3. Well, yeah—and I reckon in their time, Dickens and the others were regarded as mere fashion.

    It’s too bad though. A few years ago I read Balzac (in translation) and I was amazed, there was almost no feeling or emotion I’ve ever had which he doesn’t describe.

    It was my apotheosis as a mother when my daughter said to me: mommy I love reading! And I want to thank you because, I always saw you reading a lot, and if I hadnt t I would never have known what fun reading is!

    And she does read a lot, just not the stuff I would have her read—but that’s just the song of the generations, I reckon.

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  4. It often makes me chuckle that Shakespeare wrote plays for the masses, not for the elite, but in this time period it is considered literature for the elite.

    My son writes peer reviewed work, he reads a lot. My daughter rarely picks up a book, but she works harder than any person I know, and she can tell you anything you want to know about how to use a cell phone. I read to both from “day one.” Both have their own approach to life.

    We’re given a little life that we hold in our arms for only a short time. After that, what they read, do, say, and think is out of our hands. Understanding that fact was the hardest lesson I have ever had to learn.

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    1. Yes it is very very hard, school of the HARDEST knocks.

      “Pilgrims from our loins”: we only launch them. It’s like female snapping turtles: their parental duty is done once they scratch a hole in the dirt and lay their eggs. (Most won’t survive.) Then they lumber back to the water. Whence any hatchlings that live will immediately also unerringly make their way. It is the mindless procession of “whatever is begotten, born, and dies” We try to give it meaning, culture provides the illusion of meaning for a while early in our lives. If only we could be certain of oblivion! As Shakespeare has Hamlet say in the most famous soliloquy ever: if we knew we have nothing to fear, that we would know nothing, after death, “who would fardels bear/When he himself might his quietus make/With a bare bodkin?”, it’s only the horrible thought of dreaming on, for eternity! which makes us hesitant to die.

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      1. There have been times when I’d wished that humans could do the same — lay eggs and go on with life without thought to what happen — especially between the ages of 13 and 21. I finally understood my mother’s frustration when she knew what an outcome was going to be and couldn’t spare me the pain.

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  5. Re: the reading portion of this heartfelt post: Maybe Reader’s Digest versions, Hyp? They originally put out a series called “Best-Loved Books (for Young Readers)” I encountered Dickens, Trollope, Clemens, Stevenson, and others, in manageable size with wonderful editing and pacing. Merely a suggestion….Godspeed!

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    1. I’m afraid, like Floridaborne said, my daughter is beyond the suggestible stage. But you opened a memory sluice gate! Readers Digest Condensed Books—what a project! My parents subscribed, as I recall they were marketed for busy adults who loved literature but had so little time to read. I still remember the titles even of the ones I didn’t read: what is a phalarope and why was he, she, or it “too late”? My sister and I devoured them. We discovered that even now, we both remember every single detail of the life of a little boy nicknamed Goggle, the eponymous hero of …idk, maybe 3 books? Really it’s hard to imagine what the “condensers” coulda left out!

      Who WERE those editors? How many of them were there? Cuz I agree with you, they were extremely skilled at their task.
      I kinda object to using condensed versions of classics for kids, though. My grandparents’ sets of Dickens and Shakespeare, Pocketsized volumes bound in maroon leather with the titles embossed in gold—we carried those off into the woods and read ‘em all, to the peril of the codices. The Dickens set has very thin vellum pages, you would never imagine how much prose the little books contained. In the Shakespeare set the pages are more like parchment, the leaves are stiff and slightly ragged at the edges. Anyway my sister and I are living (so far, knock wood..) proof that “young readers” CAN and IMHO should digest the classics for themselves!
      Thanks,Nanda,for the memories!

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  8. But seriously, I tried to raise my daughters with trying to keep in mind that they need to be kept in both balance and lack of chaos/ order to reach their full potential. For me the balance was (I am about to repeat an ancient L1 comment of mine) likened to a three-legged stool. If two legs are very long while the third is short, your stool is always going to be out of balance. A child’s education is the three-legged stool of education, religion, and family. The ‘family’ leg seems MIA (presumed dead) in America from my perspective.

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  10. Thanks dear Saint!
    And just a PSA to all here: once again I’m having trouble Liking comments, whether I get here from Safari or Chrome—worse, I can’t find out who Liked MY comments; when I press “person(s)” and when I press Like, I get transported to a blank WordPress page. [sigh]. Well, it could be and has been worse…

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      1. I’d be skeert to, Simon, lest I be cast into the outer darkness! Mebbe this will right itself in a few days, as other strange but ephemeral phenomena have done…🙏🤞

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