Category : Stories » Harry Potter
ment of the Harry Potter books is the po- sition they inhabit in book-buyers' demo . The fifth Harry Potter book is being read. aloud by parents in .
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Harry Potter
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The most obvious “postmodern” ele- ment of the Harry Potter books is the po-sition they inhabit in book-buyers’ demo-graphics: they are read by adults as well asby children. The divorce of children’s fromadult literature that began with the 20thcentury seems to have ended with it, andthe idea that some exceptional books (suchas Tom Sawyer, Hawthorne’s Twice-ToldTales, Dickens’ Christmas tales, andKipling’s Jungle Books) can be read with-out apology or embarrassment by grown-up and child alike has returned as the moredogmatic elements of high modernism—such as its insistence on a fundamental dis-tinction between serious art and popularculture—have faded. Postmodernistswhether we admit to it or not, we allowany blurring of boundaries if the work isgood enough. Cultural conservatives wel-come this, not as a blurring of boundariesbut as a bringing together—parents andchildren reading en famille, just as they usedto do over the family hearth with a nicevolume of Dickens.