First off, my Brooklyn Rail review on The Apocalypse Reader is finally up here. The print edition has one of the best covers for the Rail I've ever seen. I'm sending it home -- I hope my mother takes that Jesus-crucified-on-a-fighter-plane with her to church services at First Baptist, Memphis. I'd love to see their faces.
(Actually they probably wouldn't mind -- they're pretty liberal for a Southern Baptist church.)
And thus we come to the Week of Potter. People are freaking out, ya'll. And yes, I pre-ordered. Didn't you? Oh c'mon, don't act like you're above it.
Having said that, this article in the Washington Post makes some very good points. I don't think the marketing and popularity of the Potter books is as much to blame as this reviewer seems to think -- personally, I think the failure of our public education system is behind this. We're not creating a well-educated, thoughtful, literate citizenry, and thus, we have airport-novel readers who just want something easy or who want the latest, most buzzed-about thing. The Potter phenomenon is just the mirror reflecting this back to us -- and some of us don't like what we see.
One of the "pet projects" I've always dreamed about involves getting great novelists into public schools -- to teach, do readings, talk about writing and books. Mostly at the elementary or junior high school level. They don't have to read their own work -- I think it would be extremely cool for someone like, say, Jonathan Lethem to read from the young adult novels that he loved at that age. One of the strong influences I had as a child was the presence of strong, passionate readers -- my parents, a few teachers, etc. I have a very fond memory of my fifth grade teacher doing a wonderful reading of "James and the Giant Peach" -- that's the kind of thing that cultivates a desire to read, I think.
Get 'em while they're young -- that's how you do it, folks.
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