May 2nd, 2005
My dad's first name is Harry. As in Harry Porter. Not Harry Potter, mind you, Harry Porter.
When the first movie came out, it was his first exposure to the stories and the name, and he found it quite amusing to see something very similar to his own name all over the newspapers, television screens, and movie marquees. But as time went on, and the great Harry Potter phenomenon abated somewhat, his amusement faded too. After all, he's one of those folks with more than one middle name, and he seldom went by "Harry" in favour of one of those, so once the chuckle was over there was no more interest.
My own exposure to Harry Potter started long before the movies, though. I had a young friend who started reading HP with Book One, and I followed in his footsteps, so that I was reading whatever the current HP was a couple of weeks after he was. (Then he would re-read and re-read, etc.) and the trend continued with Book Two, Book Three, and finally Book Four.
Except by Book Five he was a teenager and suddenly a lot less interested in HP and a lot more interested in the duplicity and stupidity of the American Republicans and various other Neo-Conservative conspiracies ... and, well, Harry Potter seemed suddenly quaint and too -er- fictitious to be of any practical interest to him.
Kind of a shame, that. Though I suppose that if I really wanted to read HP I could happily go out and buy the books myself. Nothing stopping me, really, except that the blush of newness and novelty is long gone from HP. And, besides, as my friend's mother quite rightly pointed out, "Harry Potter is good, not great. There are a lot of good children's books out there and Harry Potter measures up pretty well ... but it's not the best, just another decent series." And she went on to cite some: Narnia by CS Lewis was one of many that she introduced to him and books such as Elidor and Weirdstone by Alan Garner were some that I introduced to him. All good too, but out of vogue because of HP. Plus, of course, those other series' sales must have suffered loss on account of HP's great popularity.
I haven't got many serious complaints about HP myself, except to say that Harry himself seems to be something of a wet blanket. Hermione is the smart one, Ron is the ... well, actually, Ron isn't good for much either .... Come to think of it, my take on this is that Hermione could do it all by herself a lot easier than having to carry Harry and Ron on her back the whole time. And the only reason she doesn't is because Harry is entitled. Harry has a birthright to be the one. Hmm ... she does all the fucking work, but the boy born with the privilege of birth gets his name in lights ... and all the fame and fortune.
Bloody figurehead.
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