Delicious evil

I never read the Dark is Rising books, so when I saw the preview for the movie I wasn't particularly enthusiastic. Young boy who feels like an outcast, sudden portents, he manifests special powers, he is invited to a world of adventures where they've been waiting and pining for him to show up, yeesh this rings a bell. Oh, wait, got it: Books of Magic. Defend the light, ya puir wee little preadolescent.

But then things look up a bit, because in this corner, your obligatory British Isles RSC-trained hottie representing the forces o' darkness: CHRISTOPHER ECCLESTON, snarling threats from the back of a rearing horse. Good heavens, y'all, moral relativism is suddenly so magnetic that I may have the vapors.

Speaking of the dark side, though, join me in a long slow eyeroll at the latest limp attempt at a pop culture critical backlash: the WaPo's Ron Charles whines that Harry Potter is symptomatic of the death of reading. Yes, whenever you see lines forming around the block for the release of a novel, or people waiting four hours to get an author's autograph, or an explosion of decent suburban bookstores (I can't be the only one with dire memories of Crown Books), it's a dead giveaway that everyone hates reading.

I have limited tolerance for the gadfly school of criticism at the best of times; I have even less patience when it comes from someone who works on the same paper as Michael Dirda, an erudite, humane, elegant writer and a sterling example of how a critic can be both enthusiastic and expressive enough to encourage other people to explore the field.* Charles, on the other hand, wails that no Harry Potter fans read Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell (news to me, Susannah Clarke, and Bloomsbury) or His Dark Materials (because small underappreciated novels are forever getting made into huge movies), then he sneers at adults who enjoy children's books, people who read mainly nonfiction (somewhere Jane Austen is clutching the manuscript of Northanger Abbey and dabbing away a genteel tear of laughter), and anybody who cracks a heavyweight like Anna Karenina after Oprah has the gall to suggest that suburban moms give it a try. He wraps up with a paragraph so magnificently prat-tastic that it qualifies for its own Threadless "I listen to bands that don't even exist yet" shirt. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker, this is not criticism to be tossed aside lightly; it should be hurled away with great force.

Most of us know that the Harry Potter books aren't great art. There's nothing wrong with not liking them or not finding them engaging or in rolling your eyes a bit at people who get really invested in them. But the problem with arguing that they're bad for cultural literacy as a whole is that the books are getting a reaction, generating sales of other genre books and spinoffs (as did Lord of the Rings, which many critics whined about at exactly the same pitch), and getting more people involved in Rowling's world. If you don't like the enthusiasm and bad dancing at the party, Mr. Charles, either invite people to a better one or keep your mouth shut; peeing in the lemonade and stomping off in a haze of critical acumen (mm, smells like Axe!) will never make you cool.


*Yes I have a litcrush on Dirda. Don't make me papercut anybody.