Posted on 07/18/2005 9:57:30 PM PDT by Eurotwit
Hey, Spengler. Harry Potter is just an adventure story for kids.
No more and no less than that.
Get a life.
Reading Harry Potter and the names within, would be easier than trying to read that thing.
Summary: pretentious fart name-dropping to prove how widely read in high culture he is.
I think the guy has a point. Tapping your "inner feelings" for power is Hindu/New Age. Superman had genetic powers he used for an ideal.
Harry Potter has no ideals, only "feelings". He is the perfect liberal.
I've never tried to swim in quick sand, but it must be something like reading Spengler's prose.
Well, I am glad at least one person found the piece slightly interesting :-)
Cheers.
But he's right! I like Harry Potter, but you need to understand that it's the mental equivalent of a Snicker's bar.
Well put. I think that's what he was trying to say. Just took him a lot more words than it took you.
This Spengler (has it a family name to go with that, like Spengler MacMagonnary? Or is it missing its first name, like Rickey Spengler? Or is it merely an ego, like Prince or Madonna?) appears to be educated beyond its ability. Are we supposed to think it's the Teutonic sage who was wrong about nearly everything, Oswald Spengler? He's been pushing up daisies for something like seventy years, so under those conditions, he could perhaps have written this.
A lightweight that can fire a broadside of big words is still a lightweight. This is something I see a lot of -- people projecting their pre-existing framework onto someobody else's work, and then bitching that the work is no good because it doesn't fit the frame.
You know, "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish" was also a milepost on our society's road to perdition.
And the snide replay of Dorothy Parker's comment on AA Milne is perfectly apropos: in 2005, people still read Milne.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
How to tell if a person is both full of themselves and intellectually bankrupt: Over reliance on citations of other works or other people.
It's saying two things at the same time:
1. The ideas I come up with can't stand on their own. I have to cite what other people have said about it.
2. Be impressed by all the things I have cited. Look how well read I am.
Whenever I read a book where the author does the same thing, I end up ditching it for something better.
I think this guy is right on.
Rowling has nothing on Tolkien.
Interesting Harry Potter ping.
At least of the dust jacketrs
Austen's Elizabeth Bennet must give up her pride;Actually that would be Mr Darcy. Lizzie's problem is prejudice.
Cheese youse ignant.
"decline of the west" Spengler. "nom de plume" -- Google it.
"jejune Manichaeanism",...(I looked it up) I can hardly wait till I can work this into a coversation with friends. If I can also work in "schadenfreude" and "denouement" into the conversation or philosophical statement it will be a really fun day.
Sorry, I'm one of those people that despises Harry Potter, Steven Spielberg and StarWars.
Why in the world so called adults are standing in line at midnight to buy and read a Harry Potter book is beyond me.
Jeez Louise, this guy is a real crank.
The "chosen one", "guy with god on his side", "got superpowers because his cause is just" is as old a device as it gets.
On these grounds modern western readers are just as degenerate as their medieval ancestors.
Are we supposed to think it's the Teutonic sage who was wrong about nearly everything, Oswald Spengler? He's been pushing up daisies for something like seventy years, so under those conditions, he could perhaps have written this.
Rowling has little on C.S.Lewis if you ask me. Lewis wrote with a bigger vocabulary and I think better plots, and yet was as easy to get into for kids.
Even so, Tolkien is a little much for the Rowling audience. My girl is 8 and reads the Potter and Lewis books and their ilk; she had trouble starting T.H.White and definitely won't do well with Tolkien yet.
But she likes Terry Pratchett and Cards "Enders Game" - go figure.
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