Why is Harry Potter so Popular?

[Desdichado]

To address one of the minor points of the first post; I actually didn't much like Richard Harris as Dumbledore at all. Oh, he looked right, but he didn't act at all like Dumbledore, nor did he sound like Dumbledore, nor did he have the personality of Dumbledore. The Dumbledore I had read in the books was not this somnambulent whisperer. Gambon (his first name escapes me at the moment) seems to have actually read the books and understood Dumebledore, which makes him a step above Richard Harris's portrayal, IMO. Although I will admit that he didn't much look like Dumbledore to me.

Rupert Grint doesn't convince me as Ron either. He needs to be a lot taller and lankier. And do fewer Jackie Chan "scare takes." Hermione and Draco are probably the best cast of the bunch. Although Hagrid and McGonagal are up there too. Harry I'm still not 100% convinced on. I still don't understand why they didn't give him green contacts either.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I'm not convinced that escapism is a significant part of the book's appeal - for very long. Being a wizard is cool and all, but reading the whole series makes it clear a) How much the world would suck to live in and b) How dull school really was.

 

[Numion]

I'm not convinced that escapism is a significant part of the book's appeal - for very long. Being a wizard is cool and all, but reading the whole series makes it clear a) How much the world would suck to live in and b) How dull school really was.

Yeah, they said at some point that Muggle stuff, like electricity and machines, don't work on the school premises. No computers, no playstations, no MP3 players .. what a bore

Oh, for there it isn't difficult. In essence - the fad caused it to become popular. The fact that it is reasonably decent YA fiction, and isn't static, caused it to keep the popularity.

Fad = A fashion that is taken up with great enthusiasm for a brief period of time; a craze.

That just doesn't compute with how the Potter popularity progressed. The series has been picking up steam steadily from the first book. And IIRC the first book wasn't a fad - it gained steam slowly at first. There was no fad at all. (because fad implies a short time span popularity) I understand that Rowlings stocks are on the low here because she isn't a fantasy fan, but give credit where credit is due.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I think that Rowlings not writing "fantasy" or being a "fantasy fan" was probably a benefit to the success of the books. I'd imagine she was writing from the standpoint of creating a new "Hobbit" or "Chronicles of Narnia." Or possibly "The Dark is Rising." Her lack of familiarity with the oodles of fantasy fiction out there probably helped her not get stuck with a sense of having to make things TOO different in order to stand out. Targeting the YA market was probably also better than targeting the fantasy market.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Because they are fun to read. They have some interesting characters, a pretty neat plot, and a wonderful world built around it all. I just find the books keep getting better with each new release as well, well I'd put Half-Blood Prince just a bit below Order of the Phoenix & Goblet of Fire. It's still a fun and engaging read.

The first two movies were excellent adaptions as well, the third less so since they seemed to skip important story elements.

 

[Desdichado]

The first two movies were excellent adaptions as well, the third less so since they seemed to skip important story elements.

Excellent adaptations, yes, but at the expense of being excellent movies. I think the third movie is a better movie, despite the fact that it isn't as good of an adaptation of the book. Presumably the fourth will be even more towards this same trend; GoF will have to be considerably trimmed to fit into a movie time frame, for one thing.

 

[Ibram]

With all the talk about harry potter as of late I've been feeling the urge to read the books (which i resisted earlier on). Many people I know have read them, and have all seemed to enjoy them (and this comes from mostly the 20-60 crowd).

So far the books seem to fall in the Chronicles of Narnia / Dark is Rising type of book, which I always enjoyed in my youth.

 

[takyris]

Side note: I love it when people bring up "great literature" in attack form, even when describing a book they enjoy. "It's not great literature, but it's a good read for an evening." "Great literature" was created roughly around the time that James Joyce wrote Ulysses, the ultimate "I'm smarter than you are, and I'm going to write a book to prove how smart I am, instead of writing a book to entertain you" experience. Before that period, there was no big distinguishing point between a book being well-crafted and a book being a popular success. (Well, not "no" distinguishing point whatsoever, but much less of one -- people still cried that you were appealing to the peanut gallery if you wrote something popular but not high-concept, but those people were usually considered the Sour Grapes contingent.)

Shakespeare was not considered "Shakespeare" in his time. He was the blockbuster summer-movie director of his time. He was the guy who wrote the popcorn flicks with kickass fights and sweet love stories and thrilling suspense and a little Falstaff kidding around for comic relief.

So I'm setting aside the question of "Is Harry Potter great literature" as wildly irrelevant, since I'm not going back to take more Comp Lit anytime real soon. One hundred years from now, it might be taught, or it might not. It's certainly as good as some stuff that I had to read in grad-level courses, but whether it gets taught is more a function of what the universities want to focus on at that point than the merits of the books themselves.

 

[Wombat]

I think the phenomenon of Harry Potter needs to be compared to its closest counterpart: The Wizard of Oz. When Baum wrote that first book it took off like a house on fire. No one in the book industry anticipated what a huge success it would be. From 1900 until sometime in the 1940s every year at Christmas time there was another Oz book, first by Baum, later by other authors. Toys, games, and eventually even movies were created based on those books. And every year people waited anxiously for those Oz books.

Why did Oz take off? Well, it was a children's book that parents could actually enjoy reading. They gave both hope and delight, while being utterly amazing adventures. Above all, they were very well written, much more so than the other books meant for the same age range. And once they had caught on with an audience, it was easy for the appeal to magnify. Oz, in its day, was a craze equal to, if not exceeding, Harry Potter.

I have seen a number of reviews of the Harry Potter books of late that slam the book because they are not written either as an adult book or a simpler children's book. The odd trick to the HP series is that the books are growing up, just like the kids themselves are, but they will never actually be fully adult, either as characters or as literary material. Conversely, the books are not static, remaing as something written for an average 10 or 11 year old. This is not a bad thing in the slightest. Still, it makes the books a bit difficult to place. Some people expect them to be psychologically deeper than they actually are, while others demand that they remain splendid, but rather simplistic, fantasies. Since the books do neither, they are open to a fair amount of criticism.

I like Jo Rowling's books. I hope that when Harry Potter is done (one more book and that is all) that she will try her hand at writing something else. It may not be as magical as Harry and Ron and Hermione, but it could still be interesting. I know a lot of people who do not like Harry Potter; many of them dislike all fantasy literature, while others expect much more (or much less) out of these books than is actually there. Still others simply do not like the writing style. Hey, no book is going to please everyone, and no book should. Much like with Firefly, X-Men, War & Peace, The Lord of the Rings and hundreds of other books, comics, movies, et alia, there will be some people who like it and some people who don't.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Excellent adaptations, yes, but at the expense of being excellent movies. I think the third movie is a better movie, despite the fact that it isn't as good of an adaptation of the book. Presumably the fourth will be even more towards this same trend; GoF will have to be considerably trimmed to fit into a movie time frame, for one thing.

I preferred the first two myself. They got me into the books and I had read the first four before I saw movie #3 and didn't care for it as much. It was good, but there were a few massive omissions that I think really hurt the story compared to the book.