Harry Potter: Genius or garbage?

Last updated at 01:05 20 July 2007

Two writers debate the merits of the series ...

IT'S WIZARD! says Jill Parkin

When the last Harry Potter book comes out, I shall do what I've always done: nip out early and buy a copy for each of my three children.

Then a quiet weekend for the whole family is guaranteed, though I suppose some politically correct parents might reckon that's like putting opium in their cocoa.

When my children were younger I read them yards of Potter and now they love it as much as I do. Why? Because JK Rowling is funny, clever and can tell a terrific story. I always felt I was exposing my children to a rich world of dark and light, fantastic characters and wordplay.

The case against Potter goes like this: she steals ideas from others; Harry isn't a rounded character; she overwrites and repeats; she's obsessively dark. The Christian Right call her Satan with a word processor.

Let's consider the charges. First, plagiarism from fantasy books such as The Lord Of The Rings and myths. But writers are readers - even Shakespeare re-worked stuff.

Secondly, Harry isn't rounded. No! He represents virtue, with figures such as Voldemort lending spice in the form of vice.

She overwrites: well, maybe she could do with some editing, but the story is fast-paced.

And is she really that dark? Surely post delivered by owls and Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans add a touch of lightness to her world. Her inventions and wordplay are infectious and ingenious. Wouldn't you put up with some darkness if it cleared to reveal Platform Nine-and-threequarters, where the magical train berths at King's Cross?

Satan with a word processor? Ridiculous! Rowling is classic good and evil - think David and Goliath. The lesson of Harry Potter is that it's always right to fight the good fight. It's about being unselfish, a principle any parent would like to teach their child. Rowling is read by millions of boys and girls. She is able to drag a child from a computer screen and hold their attention for hours. Anything that engages children with words is good. We used to say that about Enid Blyton. Rowling does this even better.

Tomorrow, children everywhere will be engrossed in a book. Let's not be pompous about Potter. We should be throwing our wizard hats joyously in the air.

HOGWASH! says Tanya Gold

How I loathe Harry Potter. How I long to break his glasses and give him another lightning- shaped scar. His rise to fame exposes so many things I despise about human nature.

What bothers me most, I think, is our mass, mono-manic obsession with the nasty, self-pitying child. (Harry is so boring - if you don't believe me, read his dialogue). Because there are better books out there, and better writers, but JK Rowling's creation, as a critic recently wrote, 'blots out the sun'.

I am not opposed in theory to a children's book. But the Potter books aren't good; they are derivative and conventional with a nod to almost every famous children's book ever published; Enid Blyton, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien all take their bows within JK's covers.

We can't expect children to have literary criticism nailed down at seven, but we should know better.

Harry Potter is part of a trend towards the cultural infantilisation of adults. Last week I passed a group of people queuing to see the new film. They were all adults. It was creepy.

And it isn't just the seven novels any more. There are films, how-toplayquidditch guides and a load of other pointless rubbish such as Albus Dumbledore fright masks.

To prevent any leak of the ending of the latest book (Harry dies? Harry has sex? Harry gets a job at Kentucky Fried Chicken?) the publishers instigated a £10 million security operation that would have shamed the Waffen SS. There were

guards with dogs, satellite tracking systems and legal contracts.

And the lunacy goes on. According to Judith Rauhofer, a faculty member at the University of Central Lancashire, the Harry Potter books contain subtle critiques of the Government's handling of the war on terror. 'In The Order of the Phoenix [book five], Stanley Shunpike, a conductor on the wizard Knight bus, is detained without trial on suspicion of Death Eater activity,' Judith witters moronically.

Stan is, apparently, being treated like a terrorist at Guantanamo Bay. What next? A critique of the misery of love and the inevitability of death with reference to the Mr Men?

Have we become so intellectually destitute that we want to examine good and evil through the paradigm of a teenage boy? Potter has nothing to teach us about life or love or eternity that has not been said before and better.