Joel Stein, you're lame, lame, lame, lame!
- Here's what I think: Joel Stein is a ninny.
- --*Rob
He says Judy Blume is a good author, but adults don't read Freckle Juice. Well, my daughter read Freckle Juice. It's, like, 48 pp., so yeah, he's right, adults don't go for books like that. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is 309 pp. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is 672 pp. A little different don't you think?
He also points to the equivalent books of our youth. (His point: we had those books to fill our adolescent needs, leave it at that.) He includes Tolkein's books in there. So he's saying Tolkein is only good for thirteen-year-olds?
Oh yeah, he needs to point out how simplistic the plot is. It's just your basic good/evil story. Surprise, a fantasy story that has a battle between good and evil. How about that. And the story is by no means that simplistic. There are plenty of shades of grey. Take Delores Umbridge. What she does, and why, is more complex than simple a good vs. evil plot. And what about Snape? Talk about an ambiguous character.
Etc., etc., etc. Joel might figure this out a little more, but, as I mentioned, he didn't read the books.
2 comments:
Very good point about LOTR. Of course this is the same man who dissed LOTR and Dungeons and Dragons in his Entertainment Weekly column. Obviously he now considers himself "adult" because he likes only sophisticated stuff. What a snob.
--*Rob
Good point Rob. It seems that, in his opinion, fantasy = kid's fiction. I think that's what bothers me. It implies that there isn't serious literature to be found in that genre.
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