...but Is It Literature?

[blpurdom]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Tabouli" <tabouli at u...> wrote:
> Pippin:
> Now this reminds me of a plaguing question... What Is This Thing 
Called Literature??  What makes one book a trashy airport novel and 
another a respected classic, worthy of winning serious awards? 
Particularly interesting in the context of HP fandom, because HP has 
been classified into both (oooo, that glorious quote about "Is 
Britain a Harry Potter nation or a Beowulf nation?"!  Beautiful, 
just priceless).

[snip]

> Ahhhh, elitism.  Let me conclude this cynical musing with a 
question for ye OT types: maybe Harry Potter is children's fiction, 
maybe it isn't.  But the real question, ladies and gentlemen, is "Is 
It Literature?"  (and why or why not?)

I would have to say that the HP books remind me most of J.M. 
Barrie's "Peter Pan," which is without argument considered to be 
children's "literature."  Of course, Peter Pan is now around 85 
years old or so, I believe, and I do not know how people responded 
to it when it was first published.  However, in the magical world 
which it depicts, especially the way it comes into sometimes violent 
contact with the "real" world, and also in the puckish humor Barrie 
employs in the telling of his story, I am constantly reminded of 
JKR.  I did not actually read Peter Pan until I was an adult, and I 
was laughing out loud at it!  

I also recognized that some of the things that made me chuckle in 
Barrie's work would probably fly right over the heads of children, 
both in the time it was published and today.  In this way, both 
Barrie and Rowlings remind me of the best writers of children's 
animated entertainment, who include jokes for adults watching with 
the children that the children are unlikely to get.  This includes 
some classic Bugs Bunny shorts, Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs, The 
Power Puff Girls, anything from Pixar (Toy Story I and II, A Bug's 
Life, Monsters Inc.) the Simpsons, etc.  My husband and I are 
constantly chuckling over jokes in these animated works which the 
kids simply puzzle over or miss entirely, and sometimes the veiled 
jokes are somewhat racy, and we can't tell them why we're laughing!  

Barrie and Rowlings don't do that, precisely, but I can imagine that 
JKR probably enjoyed Peter Pan herself either as a child or when her 
daughter was the right age to have this read to her.  I know that 
I've enjoyed reading Peter Pan to both of my children, as well as 
the HP books.  In other words, some people may not consider it to be 
literature now because it's popular and too close to its time of 
origin, but with time and distance, I believe the books will hold 
their own, as Barrie's work has done.

--Barb