Is TV Guide a Book?
My plan to learn everything about everything has been sidetracked yet again, this time by his Harryness Mr. Potter. With the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in – lessee – 40 days as I write this [an interesting number indeed, as I will allow in a moment] looming, I have decided to try to use my head before and while reading the book rather than merely going along for the ride (not that I dislike merely riding, only I'd like to see if I'm capable of anything more). I have realized that, sadly, I read almost exclusively with my gut or heart rather than my head, and have done since I cannot remember when. Perhaps I always have done.
I have a fine, fine book to thank for this realization, a book that I wish I had read 20 years ago: Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a Book: the Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, completely revised and updated with Charles Van Doren. I've not finished it – I'm reading roughly a chapter every other night to let the lessons soak in – but just the chapter titles and primary headings have been enough to hang my head in shame, calling out, as they do, intellectual sins of which I was guilty throughout graduate school: "Criticizing a Book Fairly," "The Importance of Suspending Judgment," "The Importance of Avoiding Contentiousness," "Prejudice and Judgment." I could go on about how this book has pointed out to me that, despite being philosophiæ doctoris, my cranial capabilities are sorely lacking; but my intentions for this post lie elsewhere.
This Harry–P-tour was initiated when I found The Great Snape Debate at my local bookery. It is an odd book, with two covers, two title pages, two subtitles, two tables of contents, and no end matter. It is very nearly two books in one, the result of my local bookery's chain's marketing department happening upon an excellently marketable coïncidence; they have been handing out two-sided bookmarks itemizing briefs for Professor Snape's good- and bad-guy-ness for months. Slightly more than half of the book comprises "The Case for Snape's Innocence," the rest "The Case for Snape's Guilt." One literally flips it over to read the 'other' half. Mainly, the book is a waste of money. The narrative evidence for Snape's innocence/guilt is equivocal, else there would be no debate. So there really is no help to be gained from reviewing that evidence again, and again, and again. Nor is there any use in hypothesizing, on the basis of very little indeed, about Snape's non-canonical life, about Alan Rickman's casting as Snape, or about ecological fallacies when considering Snape in the context of Slytherin House. However, the literary evidence is, to my mind, quite persuasive.
A search for more discussion of literary aspects of Pottermania turned up one John Granger's Unlocking Harry Potter: Five Keys for the Serious Reader. It's an astonishingly perspicacious book, and I'm fully one and one-half chapters into it. More than just explicating Harry Potter, though, he has revised my framework for understanding Anglo-American cultural history wholesale, along the lines of the shift I experienced when looking through a translation of Copernicus' De revolutionibus and saw that the whole damn' pre-Newtonian thing was accomplished with geometry (which I hope I would have realized had I thought about it, but I never did think about it). I feel, for the first time since long before finishing graduate school, an acute intellectual eagerness.
The man has written a number of exegetical Harry Potter books, to a section of one of which he referred in Unlocking Harry Potter: Five Keys such that I found myself, again, at my local bookery with the intention of reading said section and possibly purchasing it. Only I didn't look at my notes, found another of his books thinking it was the other, and read the first chapter. This 'nother, Looking for God in Harry Potter, is one that I had dismissed on principle; but, having mistakenly read his first chapter, it seems to be s a reasoned discussion with substantial literary (contra soteriological) utility. So it has joined my pile, and in fact will be usurping Unlocking: Five Keys's place in the queue, as Looking for God is the earlier volume.
I have a fine, fine book to thank for this realization, a book that I wish I had read 20 years ago: Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a Book: the Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, completely revised and updated with Charles Van Doren. I've not finished it – I'm reading roughly a chapter every other night to let the lessons soak in – but just the chapter titles and primary headings have been enough to hang my head in shame, calling out, as they do, intellectual sins of which I was guilty throughout graduate school: "Criticizing a Book Fairly," "The Importance of Suspending Judgment," "The Importance of Avoiding Contentiousness," "Prejudice and Judgment." I could go on about how this book has pointed out to me that, despite being philosophiæ doctoris, my cranial capabilities are sorely lacking; but my intentions for this post lie elsewhere.
This Harry–P-tour was initiated when I found The Great Snape Debate at my local bookery. It is an odd book, with two covers, two title pages, two subtitles, two tables of contents, and no end matter. It is very nearly two books in one, the result of my local bookery's chain's marketing department happening upon an excellently marketable coïncidence; they have been handing out two-sided bookmarks itemizing briefs for Professor Snape's good- and bad-guy-ness for months. Slightly more than half of the book comprises "The Case for Snape's Innocence," the rest "The Case for Snape's Guilt." One literally flips it over to read the 'other' half. Mainly, the book is a waste of money. The narrative evidence for Snape's innocence/guilt is equivocal, else there would be no debate. So there really is no help to be gained from reviewing that evidence again, and again, and again. Nor is there any use in hypothesizing, on the basis of very little indeed, about Snape's non-canonical life, about Alan Rickman's casting as Snape, or about ecological fallacies when considering Snape in the context of Slytherin House. However, the literary evidence is, to my mind, quite persuasive.
A search for more discussion of literary aspects of Pottermania turned up one John Granger's Unlocking Harry Potter: Five Keys for the Serious Reader. It's an astonishingly perspicacious book, and I'm fully one and one-half chapters into it. More than just explicating Harry Potter, though, he has revised my framework for understanding Anglo-American cultural history wholesale, along the lines of the shift I experienced when looking through a translation of Copernicus' De revolutionibus and saw that the whole damn' pre-Newtonian thing was accomplished with geometry (which I hope I would have realized had I thought about it, but I never did think about it). I feel, for the first time since long before finishing graduate school, an acute intellectual eagerness.
The man has written a number of exegetical Harry Potter books, to a section of one of which he referred in Unlocking Harry Potter: Five Keys such that I found myself, again, at my local bookery with the intention of reading said section and possibly purchasing it. Only I didn't look at my notes, found another of his books thinking it was the other, and read the first chapter. This 'nother, Looking for God in Harry Potter, is one that I had dismissed on principle; but, having mistakenly read his first chapter, it seems to be s a reasoned discussion with substantial literary (contra soteriological) utility. So it has joined my pile, and in fact will be usurping Unlocking: Five Keys's place in the queue, as Looking for God is the earlier volume.
Looking for God should also explain the 40 days allusion in the opening paragraph.
posted by Dr. Bubbles at 15:35
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home