The Adult Harry Potter Phenomenon

Maybe they should release a Stuck-Up Adult's Cover Edition. Which would be exactly like the adult cover, except it would have a second dust jacket which looked like the cover to War and Peace. Noone would ever have to know... :-)

Of course, the best children's fiction has always been intersting to adults as well! (And don't get me started on those old Warner Brothers cartoons...)

My favorite quote on "children's literature"

"A book worth reading only in childhood isn't worth reading even then.
- C.S. Lewis

Many of Robert Heinlein's books were written for young teens and I still enjoy (re-) reading them today. And why not get started on Warner Bros' cartoons? Bugs Bunny is still my favorite.

Pictured above is the "children's cover"... in that otherwise secure adults purchase it to cover up their inner child.

I was visiting a friend in NYC the summer HP4 came out, and went to visit the Guggenheim and the Met on the subway (she hates museums, so I was alone). I went back to her apartment during rush hour, and this guy sits down from me. He was wearing a dark grey, three-piece flannel suit (this was late August) and had a leather briefcase which matched his shoes, and a super-conservative haircut and tie. A stockbroker straight out of central casting. He bent down with a serious expression on his face to retrieve his copy of HP3 -- in hardback -- and settled in for the ride. It was great!

Adults who read Harry Potter have a lot less to be ashamed of than adults who don't read, period.

When will they release The Trial with a children's cover? I might read it then.

Bob

I think we all go through that strange period, adolescence, when we want to be all grown up.
Some of us grow out of it, some don't.

I actually like the adult covers even though the standard covers are more exciting. That's why I have both styles of HP sleeves.

I do like Ed Yong's idea of people using the wrong book cover :o) Rather like hiding the Beano inside your Maths book in class.

I was dragged to the opening night to the last harry potter movie at 12am. Personally I have had a hard time understanding the appeal of harry potter and have refused to read the books (as a general rule - I don't read things that are widely popular). As I watched the theatre fill up it became apparent how Rowling made her billions:

13 year girls.

The theatre was full of em - the only men in the theatre were gay (um - that would be us). You have never known true fear when you make a sarcastic comment that ticks off a room full of 13 year girls. My comment:

"What?!? There is a book?"

...You have never known true fear when you make a sarcastic comment that ticks off a room full of 13 year girls. My comment: "What?!? There is a book?"
Posted by: yoshi

Yoshi,
I'm sure that they just looked at you with pity in their eyes and that you misunderstood their emotion.

Normally I agree with you - buying the adult cover is for people who are embarrassed about buying a children's book and should just accept it for what it is, but the cover to book 7 is UGLY.

The US cover isn't very good but the UK edition is excellent :o)

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007140599,00.html

Much agreed.
Children, being less experienced, are less able to determine when they are being pushed toward inferior goods. Having less power, they are also less able to act when they find out. Unscrupulous adults leverage this situation to make millions. Thus, a great deal of children's books, toys, tv, etc, are indeed garbage - and I suggest, a higher proportion of it is garbage, than for otherwise similar products marketed to adults. As a final insult, it is considered normal - even laudable - to sneer at pursuits associated with children. (Example: 'Childish'.)
Despite the above, there are plenty of quality children's toys, books, games, etc, which are enjoyable by people of all ages.

I'm one of the adults who love "Harry Potter". My age is 62 and I want to tell you why I think this is one of the most beautiful stories ever written.

JK Rowling has the world fooled. "Harry Potter" is not fantasy! It's a powerful spiritual message hidden in symbolic form underneath all the excitement, mystery and suspense. She's written it to appeal to young people especially, because their minds are still open to the powerful symbols and archetypes in the story. These resonate very strongly in the collective unconscious, and this explains the books' popularty. CG Jung said that the unconscious has more influence on the person than the conscious mind! He also said that the hero archetype is the strongest one of all. Guess what? "Harry potter" conforms perfectly to the hero archetype! In this way JK Rowling is literally influencing millions of children all over the world, through their unconscious, with an extremely powerful spiritual message.

This is what she said in an interview in 1998: "I've never wanted to be a witch, but an alchemist, now that's a different matter. To invent this wizard world, I've learned a ridiculous amount about alchemy. Perhaps much of it I'll never use in the books, but I have to know in detail what magic can and cannot do in order to set the parameters and establish the stories' internal logic."

The spiritual message I'm talking about is alchemy. Not dry, academic, historic alchemy, but a living spiritual power which can change people's preception and aim in life radically. The symbolism is clear: alchemy changes the lead of the ordinary, mortal person to the gold of the enlightened, truly spiritual and immortal person. That's the incredible message which "Harry Potter" is subconsciously conveying. That's the hero's journey people in the past, like Gautama the Buddha and Jesus made. That's what alchemy is really about: enlightenment and eternal life.

If you would care to pursue the comment JK Rowling made about studying alchemy, then read "The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosycross", published in 1616. The full text can be read here: http://www.harrypotterforseekers.com/articles/wedding1.php

The number of similarities between the two stories is quite mind-blasting. There isn't room here to go into detail, but I've written an article on this which can be read here:
http://www.harrypotterforseekers.com/articles/liberatingalchemy.php

I hope you will have a look at the symbolism pages and the Book 7 Page while you're there, as they explain the symbolism JK Rowling uses to bring her message of spiritual liberation and enlightenment.

I know all this may sound far fetched to some people, but then no book has ever sold 325 million copies in 64 languages within 10 years. If you have an open mind, look at the symbolism and the similarities to "The (Al)chymical Wedding" and you'll see there's a great deal in what I'm saying.

Just to make all this seem a bit more credible, here are two more quotes by JK Rowling that prove there's something very deep and spiritual she doesn't want to talk about (yet):
"Rowling said she couldn't answer the questions about the book's religious content until the conclusion of book seven."

"If I talk too freely about [whether I believe in God] I think the intelligent reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what's coming in the books."

The sources of these quotes are on my website.

I hope people reading this have an open mind and will investigate my claim without prejudice.

Hans Andréa
Haarlem
Netherlans
http://harrypotterforseekers.com

...that adults who read it are perverts, and other stupid stuff, but I have proof that adults love the stories at least as much as kids do

But you don't have proof they're not perverts, do you?

Anyway, forget the cover form and consider the content--WTF does "the deathly hallows" mean? The syntax indicates that "hallows" must be a noun, but "deathly" is an adverb, so the phrase doesn't even parse.

That, along with Some people are too stuck on preserving their public and professional image to purchase the children's cover edition, nevermind that all their colleagues are also (stealthily) hiding in closets and on the subway, reading these very same books, forces me to conclude that most adult Potter fans are, in fact, illiterate perverts.

As the most recent (Memorial Day weekend 2007) convert (and thank you, Grrl Scientist for persuading me to embark upon the Potter novels) to reading the Harry Potter books, I find elements of THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS and other children's classics in Rowling's novels. Some of the issues Rowling treats include bigotry, bureaucratic ineptitude and malfeasance, and the value of loyalty. While these may resonate with adolescents and children, they also serve as metaphors for the rough and tumble of adult life. Rowling's sense of humor is not to be underestimated, either. A childlike sense of wonder such as motivates many scientists and naturalists would be a necessary precondition to an appreciation of the Harry Potter books as well. A grim, gray adult world is the very antithesis of Rowling's alternative reality. Poor old Bob: a humbug on you.

Bob: "deathly" is an adjective, just like "deadly" or "ugly."

I suspect that what's going on here is that most of the kids who got into the series 10 years ago when the first book came out are now going to be in their late teens and early twenties. People in that age range tend to be pretty self-conscious about anything that appears "childish."

OK, I should have have thought about that more carefully--"deathly" can be an adjective, so maybe you perverts aren't illiterate after all.

More seriously, I did read the first Potter book (coerced by an old girlfriend) and my problem with it is precisely that "a childlike sense of wonder such as motivates many scientists and naturalists" is fatal to enjoying Potter-type fantasy. For scientists wondering leads to thinking and questioning and analysis, which in turn hopefully lead to understanding and greater wonder, further questioning, etc. But Potter-world cannot be, and is not intended to be, understood in that way...just accepted. In Potter-world, wonder is sterile---things just are as they are because the author made them that way, and she could just as well have made them any other way. Characters can never ask "why?"-- a scientist couldn't exist in Potter-world. Now, I'm willing to engage in some suspension of disbelief for the sake of a good story--good science fiction and even some of Stephen King's books fall into this category. But just making up a complete fantasy world, where anything goes, is too easy to be interesting. There's also an off-putting quasi-religiosity to it--even though everyone knows it's not real, the fantasy has many of the features of primitive religion, and that's probably one of the main sources of its appeal for many people.

I suspect reading science fiction is more likely to make kids scientists, and reading Potter is more likely to make them religious fundamentalists or New Age wackos.

i understand what you are saying, bob, and i agree to a certain extent. however, i'd be remiss if i didn't point out that there are at least several scientists out there who have written books about the harry potter phenomenon from a scientist's point of view, explaining how these sorts of "magical" events might be explained scientifically.

for me, personally, the appeal of HP is the fact that science itself was (is?) often viewed as being a form of magic by those who are not educated in the intricacies of scientific theory and methodology. i like how the HP books make a magical education seem possible, and fun, similar to a scientific education (although the general public probably would not buy in to the fact that "science is fun").

i grew up reading sci-fi and was often very frustrated by it as my scientific knowledge grew because those books pretended to obey scientific laws but i found myself frustrated again and again by blatant rule-breaking somewhere in the plot -- often to the point where i would immediately put the book down and not even finish it. needless to say, my sci-fi reading career ended somewhere around the time i turned 15. even though i am not a fan of fantasy (with the exception of the HP books), at least fantasy does not even pretend to obey scientific laws, only to run afoul of them somewhere in the book.

... I suspect reading science fiction is more likely to make kids scientists, and reading Potter is more likely to make them religious fundamentalists or New Age wackos.
Posted by: Bob

And what about those of us who read Science Fiction and read Harry Potter & Lord of the Rings and happen to also enjoy Science & Mathematics?

The world create by Rawlings does appear to have rules & regulations, it isn't a case of anything goes.

Anything that gets people to read and enjoy reading is, in my opinion, a good thing. Once a person is hooked on reading they can start to learn & I suspect that the people reading the Potter books know that it is make believe. Not saying that everything they'll learn will be correct, just that they'll have a chance to become self learners.

The Harry Potter books have also managed to forge a community of like minded people around the world; so children in Europe chat online with children in Japan about a shared joy and so the books help foster amity.

I may be an aged pervert (sort of depends on what people think is perverted) but the Harry Potter books can hardly be blamed for that :o)

Potter haters? Try sendahole.com.

i understand what you are saying, bob, and i agree to a certain extent. however, i'd be remiss if i didn't point out that there are at least several scientists out there who have written books about the harry potter phenomenon from a scientist's point of view, explaining how these sorts of "magical" events might be explained scientifically.

God, that sounds dreadful, and I hope you're not reading them. I haven't seen those books, but I have seen books such as "The Physics of Star Trek," "The Physics of Superheroes," etc. They're pretty lame--I doubt they make kids more interested in physics, though they probably make them less interested in Star Trek.

for me, personally, the appeal of HP is the fact that science itself was (is?) often viewed as being a form of magic by those who are not educated in the intricacies of scientific theory and methodology. i like how the HP books make a magical education seem possible, and fun, similar to a scientific education (although the general public probably would not buy in to the fact that "science is fun").

But you ARE scientifically educated, and you know that science IS fun, so it puzzles me what you get out of Potter.

i grew up reading sci-fi and was often very frustrated by it as my scientific knowledge grew because those books pretended to obey scientific laws but i found myself frustrated again and again by blatant rule-breaking somewhere in the plot -- often to the point where i would immediately put the book down and not even finish it. needless to say, my sci-fi reading career ended somewhere around the time i turned 15.

I had much the same experience, though I believe it was that early sci-fi reading experience that put me on track to becoming a scientist, and at least until high school I learned far more science from sci-fi than from school. And I remember fans recognized a hierarchy in the genre, in order of diminishing respect: "hard" sci-fi (compatible with all known science), "soft" sci-fi (some rule-breaking such as faster-than-light travel allowed), and science fantasy (anything goes.) The latter, since it was "just made up," seemed a lot less interesting.

And Chris: I can see making an argument that anything that gets kids reading is good--provided they then move on to better reading material. Comic books can help kids get started reading...but if they just keep on reading comic books throughout adulthood, what's the point? Adults still reading Potter should really try some John Updike instead.

...And Chris: I can see making an argument that anything that gets kids reading is good--provided they then move on to better reading material. Comic books can help kids get started reading...but if they just keep on reading comic books throughout adulthood, what's the point? Adults still reading Potter should really try some John Updike instead.
Posted by: Bob

Well the first thing I read was "Mission of Gravity" a great book. My big brother taught me to read using this Science Fiction book. It's a wonderful book and I still have it. Now the science in it is (well was at the time) accurate
I then went on to read comics and fiction like every other child; as well as the classics (i.e Aristotle, Origin of Species, Newton, Alice in Wonderland, Sophocles, Winnie the Pooh etc) and now mix Harry Potter with Roger Penrose & Stephen J Gould with Tolkien as well as philosophy, art and other stuff.
Yes, I was lucky to come from a family that loved books and education for educations sake.

What I am trying to point out is that you have to get children interested in reading otherwise you've no chance to get them to read the "boring" stuff. Harry Potter has made children and adults interested in reading, the books are well written and we should be using the opportunity to get children reading other things.

Oh, about comics, at my beloved alma mater the shop sold more copies of the Beano than any other publication.
http://www.beanotown.com/

That happens to be a place that produces lots of scientists and engineers and mathematicians (also produces lawyers and arts graduates).

Escapism and imagination aren't bad things, unlike most of John Updike's writing.

Do you actually like John Updike's books!?

Bob -- I, as an adult, read and quite enjoy the Harry Potter books. I also read Mercedes Lackey, who writes pure bubble-gum fantasy escapism, and Tamora Pierce, who writes wonderful fantasy novels for young adults (especially girls!), and (I cringe to admit it) I read the occasional regency romance by Mary Balogh. I read Garth Nix and Phillip Pullman. I also read Lois McMaster Bujold, Greg Bear, Harry Turtledove, Elizabeth Moon, John Scalzi, Alastair Reynolds, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Terry Pratchett, just to name a few. I also read Simon Schama, Jared Diamond, Dava Sobel, Roger Penrose, Richard Lewontin, Carl Sagan, Matt Ridley, Carl Zimmer, Stephen J. Gould, Niles Eldredge, Richard Dawkins, and Richard Fortey, to name a few more. I read mysteries by Terri Holbrook and Stuart MacBride. I read poetry by all sorts of people, though I am especially fond of Sarah Lindsay. I read shedloads of history and biography (am currently working on the biography of Dorothea Bate, now there is an interesting woman, although the biography itself is rather scant). I read Aldous Huxley, Elie Wiesel, Ian Kershaw, Noam Chomsky, Kissinger, and Stephen Ambrose, to name a few more. I read the philosophy of science by Francis Bacon, Popper, and Kuhn, and exhaustive treatises on experimentalism by Deborah Mayo. I read programming books for work and geography textbooks for simple interest. I own and enjoy quite an extensive collection of Dark Horse and Vertigo comics, too. Hon -- some of us just read. And fun escapism has a place in that.

I cut my reading teeth, as so many others did, on Andre Norton. Didn't exactly stop me there.

And, oh yeah -- after I convinced him to try the first one, my husband devoured all the Harry Potter books in one go; certainly not all the men who like Harry Potter are gay. ;-)

I can't abide people who respond only to those cultural artifacts that they think are "appropriate" for them. What a bunch of cowards. Like the things you like. Stop eschewing a work's particularity in favor of a fucking press release.

I adore Harry Potter and am wholly obsessed with the His Dark Materials trilogy, which I think are three of the best books ever written.

Not much longer to wait, GrrrlScientist! :)

As a kid, my favorite author was Hal Clement--"Mission of Gravity" was great, and I liked "Needle" even more. And I read Andre Norton and of course Heinlein too. But those (especially Clement) are examples of "hard" sci-fi...Potter-type fantasy just bored me.

But that's just a matter of taste. More significantly, as a kid I read just for the story, while since then I've developed an appreciation for depiction, characterization, and prose style. I'm sure if I reread my childhood favorites I'd them lacking in those respects, as I do Potter.

And, yes, like many adults, I actually do like John Updike's books...that's why he wins all those awards, you know.

Ah, I liked Cycle of Fire best of Hal Clement's books.

...And, yes, like many adults, I actually do like John Updike's books...that's why he wins all those awards, you know.
Posted by: Bob

We could agree to disagree. I'm told that Rushdie is considered a good writer as well; never could understand that either.

I wouldn't say that Winnie the Pooh is lacking in characterisation and young Mr Potter does have a character.

I do appreciate prose style, just that some prose style I find forced and those I find hard to read with any enjoyment. Shakespeare had an excellent prose style, somewhat different from Mr Updikes.

Even though I'm aged I try not to be old.