grumble grumble JEWS! grumble JEWISHNESS! grumble grumble Sigmund

i love the rowling copypasta

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. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.
But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now read only J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?
It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."
Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.
Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.

>>7783818
The most fascinating thing about the whole story: Yale University bookstore is selling Harry Potter!?
Isn't it a children's book?

I agree with him, though, that it is silly to say children should just read any book, doesn't matter _what_ they read, as long as they just do.

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>>7783818

Who is this based man?

>>7783947
Skedaddle on out of here, pardner

>>7783957

Oi, that's not very nice lad.

>>7783940
> isn't a children's book
Its by no doubt the most common favorite book among university students by far. I know people doing literature programs who reread the series every summer.

>>7783961

*Oy

>>7783590
pretty much

>tfw I got to attend one of his lectures
>it was just him rambling about how he's an old gnostic for over 2hrs

>>7784226
I want this to be true.

>>7784226
When Pynchon posted here he made fun of how Harold Bloom likes to pretend in lectures that he's friends with Thomas Pynchon.

It was implied they never fucking met.

>>7783818
the best thing about this is that he's actually lying. i checked myself - there are no more than 2 uses of "stretched his legs" (or any variant of this) in the entire book.

>>7785632
>When Pynchon posted here
didn't happen
>>7784226
>he's an old gnostic
well he is
>>7785640
it's still a collection of clichés.

>>7785632
Pynchon has never posted here, you've been snared by one of /lit/'s older memes.

>>7784226
How did you stand listening to his voice for that long? His voice is really grating.

He doesn't grumble though; he sighs. And his voice is rather high pitch.

>>7785664

That wasn't him but he has.

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>>7785640
I just ctrl-f'd a copy, the word "stretched" is used 7 times total, almost always "stretched out" or "out stretched". "Stretched his legs" is in there zero times. I'll check the others.

Chamber of Secrets: 10 times.
PoA: 18 times
GoF: 25 times roughly I wasn't paying attention. The Sphinx "stretched out her legs" in this.
OotP: 2

I feel like there were a lot of "arms out stretched" or "stretched his/her arm out", maybe he confused it with that? Then again I was looking for that word specifically.

>>7785675
Next you're going to tell me that it really is him editing THAT.

>>7785685

I can't confirm or deny it.