And now let the sneering begin

I ran across a couple of articles today, here and here, which dismiss Rowling's books with sneering condescension. Some representative samples:

When it comes to gripping, unchallenging brain candy, the main difference with the boy wizard is that you can read about him in public, smug in the knowledge that you are part of an accepted cultural trend. In today's infantile culture, it's okay to aspire to be childlike.

The latest instalment of Potter-mania, however, has taken our cultural infantilism to a new low.

and this:

In attempting to account for Harry Potter's success, debate has raged over the content of the books. Some have hailed them as new classics, with their roots deep in the rich traditions of children's literature, and others condemned them as superficial and derivative. In my view they are reasonably enjoyable to read, pacy and humorous, with a few surprises; but the characters, especially the evil ones, tend to be caricatured and superficial, and the plots, despite a few twists and turns, are fairly predictable.

But whatever the quality of the literature, this certainly does not account for the appeal of the Potter books. Ultimately, they are pure escapism - and that's what has worked for adults. . . .the main characters in the Potter books are children, and the adults are mostly stupid or evil. In identifying with these child protagonists, you could see adults' enthusiasm for the Harry Potter books as reflecting a rejection of the grown-up world, where things are complicated and don't all turn out right in the end, where adults do bad things and get away with it, and where nothing seems certain.

It is not only in fiction that more and more adults seem to want to escape from this reality, rather than get to grips with it.

There's more of the same at the links I provided above, if you can stomach it.

( Since I've seen this attitude before, I've been thinking about this all day. )

Peg