From Dumbing down American readers By Harold Bloom, 9/24/2003: What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Rowling. I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times.As has since been noted use use of the phrase "stretched his legs." to refer to going for a walk does not occur "several dozen times" in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone , but just one (1) time (on page 4 - which is probably as far as thst old fraud Bloom actually read).
Harold Bloom doesn't only look like a decayed Michael Moore.
Once, four hundred times, I don't care. I wish I'd written Harry Potter. However, my imagination was stultified during my early years in the book biz when fantasy for children was considered totally rotten by the school and library muggles in power. Had I not been so prejudiced, I would have recognized the opportunity presented to take over children's books at the publishing house that owned the rights to the entire Wizard of Oz series and had them in mothballs. I turned them down, and a few years later, copyrights expired and the Wiz went large. Live and learn, but does it have to be so expensive?
Potter is fun. Doesn't need to be great literature. Obviously.
"Oz didn't give nothing to the tin man
that he didn't already have..."
In the same way, Potter isn't conjuring up anything for kids that their magical little minds hadn't already considered.