Thread 24600659

>Harry Potter is not reading. There is nothing there, just an endless stream of clichés. I cannot think that that does anyone any good. People tell me: 'Well, at least the child is reading.' To which my answer is: 'No, the child isn't reading.'
was he right?

>>24600659 (OP)
In the pantheon of critics, Robert Ebert mogs this globulous cow

>>24600667
Robert Ebert was filtered by Kubrick's Clockwork Orange.

>>24600659 (OP)
To be fair Bloom compiled his own children's anthology titled rather pompously "Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages" so maybe he was just taking the piss

>>24600659 (OP)
>People tell me: 'Well, at least the child is reading.' To which my answer is: 'No, the child isn't reading.'
Isn't acculturation to literary tropes a part of any healthy child's growth?

>>24600659 (OP)
The way this man writes reveals his disorganized thinking. Reminds me of some /lit/ posts.

Is this the female Shakespeare fella?

>>24600682
I agree, dickhead

He's right. I feel everyone who praises Harry Potter is blinded by some degree of nostalgia or childlike wonder attached towards that IP. I have never seen anyone who's read or watched Harry Potter beyond the age 12 carry any emotional baggage (and if they do it's usually bad ones) from interacting with such works. Meanwhile even adults can usually recognise or connect with a well written children's book even if they didn't read it at prime age, take for example how many people write about Alice in Wonderland or how many tropes get copied from Tolkien's body of works every single day. Harry Potter is boring because it's completely impossible to take seriously if you already weren't in the small circle of kids who grew up liking Harry Potter. I struggle to name anything similar to this because it's not Disney adultism and other franchises people praise over nostalgia like Star Wars don't quite fit the criteria im going for...

>>24600659 (OP)
It’s a children’s book. What a dickhead.

If he wakes to criticize the infantalized adults that’s one thing but this just makes him look bitter

>>24600659 (OP)
yes, harry potter goes in the same slop bucket as video games, manga and film

>>24600659 (OP)
I think he's an overrated hack, that critics of any kind are useless and don't deserve any recognitiom, that transwomen are men and that Harry Potter sucks.

Harry potter was poison to potential lifelong readers. I have known so many people who don't read but are nostalgic for HP.

>>24600659 (OP)
Bloom dogging on Harry Potter is hilarious. It’s a children’s series. And at any rate, Bloom writes the way he walks: blundering and meandering, with occasional outbursts of literary flatulence. Students skip over his retarded forewords to get to the actual literature. A bloated footnote of a man who will be remembered for what he liked to read, rather than anything he ever wrote.

>>24600672
It's Kubrick's second worst film.

>>24600735
>It’s a children’s book.
Not an argument.
HP is a shitty a book, whether it's aimed at children or to 40yo millennials who cling to their childhood.

>>24600720
anyone who praises anime or capeshit or harry potter is obviously a manchild but people don't like being told so

>>24600763
No one serious is arguing the literary merits of Harry Potter. Bloom mentioning it at all is like a michelin critic writing up exposes on gas station tacos. Bloom only mentioned Rowling for the same reason he mentioned Stephen King: to rile up headlines and to stroke the fart-sniffing faggots such as yourself who think they’re sophisticated for reading above a child’s comprehension.

>>24600758
>It’s a children’s series
So what? There have been books for children that are actually good and miles above Harry Potter.

Can people who can’t create be true critics? Can they really know the craft if they’ve never done it?

>>24600786
Critics are just journalists with better PR agents

>>24600783
The question is why a serious literary critic would even mention a crappy children's series to begin with. No one was on the edge of their seat waiting for Bloom to give a scathing takedown of the Percy Jackson books. Engaging with the lower culture by criticizing implies you have something to gain from the association.

>>24600793
This, lmao. Bloom has officially written more about Harry Potter than he has about David Foster Wallace.

>>24600782
>>24600793
Because it has no literary merits to begin with, defending any kind of critcism against with the "but it's for le kids" is just retarded. People are free to critcize whatever they want and however they want, if you are butthurt about people pointing out that your favorite series is shit then that's on you.

>>24600802
>durrrr anyone who isn’t explicitly tearing down a retarded children’s series is a fan of it
If it has no literary merits, why is a literary critic even talking about it? This is like a firearms expert going out of his way to shit on nerf guns. Yes, I’m sure there are very sophisticated toy guns for the children to paralyze field mice with, but a serious critic wading in the kiddy pool is unbecoming. If this is difficult for you to parse out, I’m almost certain you haven’t even read anything adjacent to what Bloom would normally speak on anyways.

>>24600720
>oh my fucking science i effin' love alice in wonderland and tolkien!!!!
cringe manchild retard

Harry Potter is responsible for giving us the modern literary classic My Immortal so Bloom is wrong

>>24600816
I don't I grew up reading Jules Verne and detective stories by Agatha Christie. It's just both of them are great examples, Wizard of Oz too but few know this
>>24600777
Trips of trvke
It's way more pseudointellectual to pretend something shallow made for teens is deep than to try and go on about modernist literature's merits

>>24600762
It's one of his best movies.

>>24600758
well said. reading anything by this fat fuck is a juice that is never worth the squeeze

>>24600758
>A bloated footnote of a man who will be remembered for what he liked to read, rather than anything he ever wrote.
BRVTAL

>>24600785
lmao

>>24600659 (OP)
I'll always find it funny that Bloom had his great DFW slam because he was extremely butthurt that there was a throwaway endnote in Infinite Jest calling his writing "turgid"

>>24600763
>>24600802
>>24600988
How is it that you faggots still have such strong feelings about Harry Potter? Grow up you dysgenic retards. The whole point of this thread is about shitting on Harold.

ITT anon's critiquing a critic. anon's reaching an equivalence with the object of their hate.

>>24602166
Harold I know it’s you. Fuck you harold.

>>24600762
What's his worst?

>ctr+f
>stretches legs

>>24600659 (OP)
He didn't say this

>>24602240
Lolita. But FMJ was mogged hard by apocalypse now.

>>24602288
you are actually right, every single result on google for this quote is either this thread or one tweet made one day ago, whats going on?

>>24600659 (OP)
All art & it's reception is performative, either to pretend you're intellectually, socially, genetically superior or to trash others of their superiority. Thos who couldn't cut into STEM research indulge in this debauchery

>>24600659 (OP)
Shakespeare is not reading. There is nothing there, just an endless stream of clichés. I cannot think that that does anyone any good. People tell me: 'Well, at least the child is reading.' To which my answer is: 'No, the child isn't reading.'

>>24602338
>>24602288
I found this, he talks about it at around 8:30

https://youtu.be/EVWiwd0P0c0?t=509

>>24602148
I just don't get why people lose their minds over it is all, usually I can get the appeal of things I don't like but it never clicked for me.
Growing up my mother was very elitist and told me to never read Harry Potter because it was satanic. Years later she told me she didn't believe nor care if it was satanic she just thought it was garbage and wanted me to grow up with taste. I only read it at 14 out of curiosity and didn't get it because it was all like
>Today Harry went to class and turned a book into a worm he's such a bookworm
I don't get how grown adults get so worked up over it, been a mystery to me for quite a while, specially because I saw a university lecture on it due to having nothing better to do, it was a weird experience

>>24600659 (OP)
He's absolutely correct.

>>24600735
>>24600735

>but it's a children's book!
Childhood is nothing other than preparation for adulthood with adult characters and concepts. They should be reading The Iliad and Moby Dick and not having their infantile whims catered to. (Harry Potter takes place in High School. The protagonist and a group of children saves the world from a guy who is trying to take over a fucking high school.)

>>24600793
It's because a considerable group of unintelligent but influential people thought at the time that Harry Potter was the epitome of reading or a gateway to literature meant to be taken seriously. Critics simply had to rebuke such nonsense.

>>24600667
how could a movie critic possibly mock a critic of literature? Bloom like him or not was obviously an extremely well read person and had great knowledge of literature and the art form. Ebert was a dude who watched movies. No one gives a single fuck if a movie is good or bad, the greatest movie of all time has the exact same artistic value as the most bland Marvel schlock.

>>24602857
And the greatest book ever written pales in comparison to the simplest symphony. So?

>>24602857
Ebert was a slick and subtle writer. He knew how to write about his medium. He doesn't posture, attempting to eclipse a work, like Bloom the moon did. Some of Ebert's turns of phrases made my jaw drop. I suppose we had that in common.

>>24602857
Roger ebert has a pulitzer

>>24600720
I agree with most of your post, except for
>small circle of kids who grew up liking Harry Potter
That circle was massive, anon. Downplaying the popularity of the slop doesn't do your post any favors.

>>24600820
If only she was real...

>>24602874
Wow, impressive. What did he get it for? His insightful, sublime review of Shrek 2?

But what if you read Harry Potter in yiddish?

>>24600758
a fair assesment

>>24600758
>Bloom dogging on Harry Potter is hilarious. It’s a children’s series.
Yeah and Harold beat their brains out!

>>24600777
Anime isn't a genre and thus cannot be criticized as a genre, faggot.

I was in an honours seminar in an undergraduate literature program. Members of my cohort said that any and all reading is good, and perhaps especially Harry Potter for children.
I asked if they thought reading Mein Kampf or the Turner Diaries was good. The consensus was that, with a critical eye, it could be.
I asked then if it wasn’t reading itself they thought was good, but reading critically, and exercising powers of interpretation and judgement.
Most held to their original position that reading is good in and of itself.
I then asked if rereading an old issue of TV guide repeatedly was good. The prof changed the subject.
I dropped out, and most of them are in grad school now. Spiritually and financially one of the best decisions I’ve made.

>>24605633
>drinking water is good
>hmmm well what if I started drinking pool water or drank 200 litres nonstop
autistic socrates lol

>>24605633
Bro really thought he was speaking truth to power w this one.

>>24605633
you were just an edgy boy

>>24605737
>>24606426
>>24606446
A classroom of literature undergrads, in an honours program no less, should not be this confused about why and how one reads. Sue me! The academy is fucked.

>>24605633
One has escaped from the soi factory.

>>24602903
I don't particularly like Ebert, but
>judging someone for his worst piece, rather than his best

The Key to Harry Potter is Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

>>24600758
>It’s a children’s series
There's beautiful, soulful literature out there aimed at children. That's no excuse for writing garbage

>>24600659 (OP)
Harry Potter isn't that bad lol. There isn't a whole lot going on but it isn't that bad

Is the child not reading? As a child, I first learned to read feeling highly motivated to specifically read harry potter. They were my first books, and it put me on a path to being ahead of the class for the rest of my life. I loved reading. Eventually got a masters in philosophy. Who is this guy anyways

>>24600758

Harry Potter is the same as Capeshit.

>>24600659 (OP)
At the end of the day, Rowling will be remembered as an author of novels, while Bloom will be remembered as an author of whiny rants about novels.

>>24609968
yea

>>24600667
>glazing Robert Egerd to this extent
He was a no-jaw-having fag.

Coincidentally, I spent the weekend enjoying Based Harold's conversations with Charlie Rose.

>>24600667
>t. corpulent bovine

>>24600659 (OP)
Harry Potter is excellent, and its critics are insecure pseuds that need to make sure everyone knows they're "elite" by hating on everything popular. Meanwhile they can't even read properly.

>>24600755
I'm sure it'd just a fad to disagree with bloom. "Bloom? Bloom...well he takes up the room"

>>24600820
In today's age, you'd die quicker if you knew what life is

>>24600659 (OP)
Physiognomy is more real than literary theory. I can see human shit behind this guy's eyes, and see evil in the Judaic phrenology of his gay alien skull, so I'm actually going to take Rowling's side on this.

>>24612359
>Physiognomy is more real than literary theory
The absolute state of /lit/

>>24600762
Robert Ebert was wrong about everything all the time. He had an issue with Ghost in the Shell showing tits. That was an actual criticism of the hack. Bless the day I stopped caring for critics.

>>24602291
>Mogged hard
Thanks for clarifying you are a retarded zoomer

>>24600672
>Brainwashing a rapist is… le bad
I was filtered too

>>24605599
I never claimed to criticise anime as a genre. I just stated that people who praise anime are obviously manchildren, which is true

>>24605599
>>24614514
I enjoy light novels even though they're almost entirely targeted towards young adults. Konosuba is comfy japslop. Overlord was alright. Goblin slayer is pretty decent too. I've read plenty of classical literature and quite a few difficult works, but sometimes it's more appealing to turn my brain off and just enjoy an easygoing story with simple, likable characters

is being a critic a noble profession? what exactly are you contributing to the world that the work of art itself is incapable of bestowing?

>>24614582
You'll probably enjoy Harry Potter too

>>24614828
rude

>>24606467
You're an idiot.

>>24613497
No no he's right, I'm told that spooks aren't real.

Hitchens had a great review of HP in the NYT which is far more measured.

>Another well-tested appeal, that of the orphan hero, has also been given an intensive workout with the Copperfield-like privations of the eponymous hero. For Orwell, the English school story from Tom Brown to Kipling’s Stalky and Co. was intimately bound up with dreams of wealth and class and snobbery, yet Rowling has succeeded in unmooring it from these considerations and giving us a world of youthful democracy and diversity, in which the humble leading figure has a name that — though it was given to a Shakespearean martial hero and king — could as well belong to an English labor union official. Perhaps Anglophilia continues to play its part, but if I were one of the few surviving teachers of Anglo-Saxon I would rejoice at the way in which such terms as muggle and Wizengamot, and such names as Godric, Wulfric and Dumbledore, had become common currency. At this rate, the teaching of “Beowulf” could be revived. The many Latin incantations and imprecations could also help rekindle interest in the study of a “dead” language.

Bloom was a sourpuss who rarely bothered to form actual, cogent arguments.His argument simply doesn't hold water.

>>24600659 (OP)
what would he think of ""romantasy""

>>24600659 (OP)
People now have no argument against this and would just say "Hating popular thing isn't a personality, Chud"