Critical Quidditch: Christopher Hitchens vs Stephen King

Christopher Hitchens on Harry Potter in The New York Times:

For all this apparently staunch secularism, it is ontology that ultimately slackens the tension that ought to have kept these tales vivid and alive. Theologians have never been able to answer the challenge that contrasts God’s claims to simultaneous omnipotence and benevolence: whence then cometh evil? The question is the same if inverted in a Manichean form: how can Voldemort and his wicked forces have such power and yet be unable to destroy a mild-mannered and rather disorganized schoolboy? In a short story this discrepancy might be handled and also swiftly resolved in favor of one outcome or another, but over the course of seven full-length books the mystery, at least for this reader, loses its ability to compel, and in this culminating episode the enterprise actually becomes tedious. Is there really no Death Eater or dementor who is able to grasp the simple advantage of surprise?

Stephen King on same in Entertainment Weekly:

One last thing: The bighead academics seem to think that Harry’s magic will not be strong enough to make a generation of non-readers (especially the male half) into bookworms … but they wouldn’t be the first to underestimate Harry’s magic; just look at what happened to Lord Voldemort. And, of course, the bigheads would never have credited Harry’s influence in the first place, if the evidence hadn’t come in the form of bestseller lists. A literary hero as big as the Beatles? ”Never happen!” the bigheads would have cried. ”The traditional novel is as dead as Jacob Marley! Ask anyone who knows! Ask us, in other words!”

Um, let’s call it a draw….

There should be a word for a book review that exists only as a venue for the reviewer’s own particular hobbyhorse – religion in Hitchens’ case, “bigheads” in King’s.

The me-view?

One Response to “Critical Quidditch: Christopher Hitchens vs Stephen King”

1. August 13, 2007 | 11:00 pm Bruce says:
   

   Thanks so much for the me-views (catchy), I hadn’t read either of them.