Harry Potter Naysayers

I've seen some stories recently about how the Harry Potter craze is dying out, book sales dropping, and all that. It's left me scratching my head, because so much of the analysis makes little sense. Of course sales of the previous books have to level out if not outright drop. There are only so many people in the world who would be likely to read the series. To expect something else is more than wrong-headed; it's borderline stupid. How many other writers have had net worth estimated at north of a billion? That the series has been a financial success is undoubted, and I don't see that the last volume will do any worse.

I wonder, though, how much of the criticism is based on jealousy of author J.K. Rowling. There has been too much sniping over the years from the literati disdaining the work and shaking its collective head at how anyone could actually enjoy the books.

Does Rowling have weaknesses as a writer? Absolutely. All writers do. Personally I think that she could have profited from better and possibly stronger editing, but writing isn't just about the words. Writing is a way to tell stories, and at that, Rowling excels like few others. There is tension, interesting twists, characters that seem real - there's story. Those who are looking for the tumble and weakness are being driven by jealousy and spite. Better they - and we all, in our own ways - spend less time using language to attach and more time taking care of our own business and doing the best we can.

Critics and a Cannes-Do Attitude

I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR last night. The program's critic-at-large, John Powers, had just returned from the Cannes Film Festival and had a conversation with the show's TV critic David Bianculli. It was easy to tell that the pair were having a high time, critics getting to talk about being critics in the context of what was supposed to be a report on the festival. Here's something Powers said early on:

I spend every year probably like most people spend at the Oscars, like, I can't believe that thing won, that normally I just can't believe that a jury of nine people can be so wrong. This year, strangely enough, the jury chose almost everything that I liked, but not just that I liked, but almost everybody else liked. It's really an odd thing, because normally there are all these weird agendas going on, you know, where something might be the best film, but in fact the jury has a lot of people from Europe, and they want to make sure Europe wins, so that, in fact, the third or fourth best film wins because it's from Europe.

He went on to admit a story that he admitted showed something about film critics. He said that they were "faintly condescending" because there would four actresses on the jury panel, and the attitude of the critics was, "Actors and actresses, like, they can't be trusted; their judgment is terrible." Then, amazingly enough, their choices were astoundingly good. Not that you'd expect people who actually do something for a living might know more and have better taste than those who professionally pass judgment although they may know little to nothing about the actual process.

All this is the backdrop for what I found really amusing. These educated, somewhat condescending people were both pronouncing the name of the town as KAHN. But the French pronunciation is actually much closer to the English word CAN. So much for sophistication.