| Fantasy by Sophie King |
For this reason, I have a tendency to grind my teeth when people start tossing the Rowling moniker around, claiming this tale or that to be the ‘new’ Potter. It was said of D. M. Cornish at the release of Foundling and has been said endlessly of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, but for fairly confused reasons. For many critics, Rowling has become the new Tolkien, which here means a fantasy author instantly recognisable as such to a broader audience. On that level, the comparison is a cop-out, a way of reminding non-fantasy readers that the genre contains at least one respectably good series. Simultaneously, it’s also become a shorthand indicator for probable mainstream success, a proposition to be wary of. Most people who prefer fiction do so for conceptual reasons, and while Rowling transcended this rule through sheer skill, the same cannot be said of most other fantasy writers, if only because no one has yet come close to replicating the Potter phenomenon. Which isn’t to say that no-one ever will: the point is, rather, that the comparison is used cheaply, for reasons of audience familiarity more than genuine similarity. It should be a big call to liken an author to Rowling, skilled or not, but the literary community remains overeager in finding candidate, more concerned with the beauty of the slipper than how well it fits.
At base, reviewers seem unable to get their heads around the idea of a bona fide modern classic: not just a book which speaks beautifully of and to a certain era, but which is accessible, enduring, layered. ‘Classic’ is how we refer to Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, to Dickens, Homer, Virginia Woolfe and Roald Dahl; but while the word has certainly been applied – justly – to Rowling, the reality of it hasn’t properly sunk in. We are incautious in our comparisons, flush with the not inconsiderable novelty of a writer who, according to some, may well have saved children’s literature. At the very least, young adult fantasy, while not exactly flagging beforehand, has been considerably revitalised by Rowling. Throughout the nineties, there was increasing concern on behalf of teachers, librarians, publishers and booklovers that films, television, video games and the internet were killing the written word, especially in the eyes of children – and then came the Boy Who Lived.
With the final Potter volume still a comparatively recent release, the knock-on effect of Rowling’s success remains in full flight, such that in 2004, award-winning young adult fantasy writer Tamora Pierce began the acknowledgements to her twenty-second novel, Trickster’s Queen, with “thanks to J. K. Rowling (I haven’t met her!), who taught us that American kids will read thicker books.” She’s not the only author to express such sentiments. Often, there’s a sense that Rowling is owed a debt of gratitude for her role in galvanising kids to read, and (of equal importance) proving to parents that they, too, can enjoy the process.
Ever since it became synonymous with modern geekish pastimes and subcultures, there’s been a sense that fantasy is juvenile, more escapist than profound, as though the two concepts are somehow inimical. We tell fairy tales to children, forgetting that the original versions of Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, the Little Mermaid and Snow White were decidedly darker: moral, sexual and social cautionary tales intended, before the advent of Victorian sensibilities, for adults. Mythology, too, was never meant as a bedtime story: braving the underworld, building wings and stealing fire are some of the most potent narratives on offer, despite being relegated to picture-book tales. Small wonder, then, that young adult fantasy can be such a powerful conduit, tapping in to the old, universal stories, straddling the divide between grown-up interpretation and childish wonder.
Which begs the question: what made the Potter books so successful? Rowling was not the first to channel that narrative potency, nor did she have any nepotistic edge over the competition. Describing the structural strengths of each book could fill a plethora of essays – as could character analysis, metaphoric underlines and favoured humerous minutiae – without getting any closer to pinning down how a struggling single parent on the pension ended up a multi-millionaire within five years. Skill alone, no matter how substantial, doesn’t account for it. In a sense, it’s almost as if the lack of confidence in young adult literature directly preceding Harry Potter left a kind of power vacuum, a moment in which, silently, we were all gearing up to give in – only to find that, as in the cartoons, comics and films of old, the timer had stopped at 00:01, the bomb miraculously unexploded. Fantasy lives again, it seems.
And the world is glad.
- Philippa Meadows (0 comments)