I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone...

>I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times.

I just did a search of the text and the phrase is only used once in the entire book, not "several dozen times"

geobestbooks.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/bookhp1.pdf

Why would a respected literary credit resort to such blatant lying

>Bloom
>respected
He's your average old angry white man. A teenage girl could've written a better review.

b-b-but he obviously just meant cliches in general, just not that specific one...

Bloom sounds a lot like Ignatius in his review.

>I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated

I used to think this was an honest mistake. Who doesn't resort to hyperbole to make their point every so often? And maybe he's just referring to the preponderance of cliches in it. His point still stands even if the actual phrase is only in there but once.

But the claim about the envelope and marking things down really makes him look like a fucking moron. When you get that specific about things and make reference to physical gestures that you couldn't possibly have made it sort of looks less like hyperbole to make a point and more like you've taken leave of your sense and are saying anything you can to signal you are above whatever you're criticizing. Which is not a good look when done so sloppily.

Bloom is a (((speed-reader))).

>He’ll be famous — a legend — I wouldn’t be surprised if today was known as Harry Potter Day in the future — there will be books written about Harry — every child in our world will know his name!
Rowling rekt Nostradamus.

>sorcerer's stone

americans even have to dumb down harry potter

What's Harold Bloom's problem?

Sorcerer’s Stone sounds way better than Philosopher’s Stone, though. This isn’t even about smartness. She should’ve named it that from the beginning.

>white
>Bloom
v nice bait

What about stretched their legs / stretched her legs?

but the philosopher's stone is a historical occult concept

but it is, they thought a child wouldn't want to read a book with the word philosopher in the title so they changed it. american kids confirmed to be too stupid to want to read a book called philosophers stone

>occult concept
It was probably changed for this reason as to not piss of Christian mothers.

It doesn't grab the reader. Like calling it Harry Potter and the Cartographer's Latrine.

naa philosophers stone is much more intriguing, don't fool yourself buddy
nope. literally just changed because they thought americans are too retarded to be interested in a book with the word philosopher in it

Nope. Philosopher's stone sounds inert. You probably think the Trainspotter's Ledger sounds compelling.

I saw "how to read and why" on my mom's shelf, so I took a look at what he had to say about Crying of Lot 49.

Holy shit this guy is an empty-headed windbag. It was nothing more than reference spotting, and making references based on his references. He had absolutely nothing to say.

Does this prove that basically everyone in high academia is a dilettante? I know most of my classmates fake having read a lot of stuff they never have, even end up sparknoting a lot of the works we get assigned in class.

I had the same suspicious feeling when I heard about Bloom’s supposed ridiculous pace that he reads at. It was something like 10-15 seconds per page. Also he claimed to have read Blood Meridian like 40 times. No one needs to read a book that short 50 times. I bet I’d practically have it memorized in five or six, and I’m a fucking idiot. How to Read and Why also really disappoints need me unless he dumbed it way down to try to appeal to a wider audience, but I guess that is possible. A lot of it came down to him summarizing great works or short stories and just saying, “it’s good!” In his bourgeois language.

it made great sales so i don't know what you're on about. she has said why she changed the name for american audiences and it's not because she thinks philosophers stone is a shit name

Philosopher's Stone is a shit name. It's just that Harry Potter was a catchier name.

>Cartographer's Latrine
I'm sure there's must be some fanfic out there with that title.

I expect such a reaction, someone who've read as much as he does would definitely lost it when exposed to lower class writings.
I don't see any big issues.

No it doesn't, philosophers stone makes me think of alchemy and shit. It's way better than the other one.

>OP stretched his legs

I can imagine Bloom, speed reading Harry Potter in his study like the true academic he is, when he comes up to the passage in question. "Stretched his legs" hit Bloom like a falling fucking anvil. He is so utterly stunned that he loses his place. He almost drops the book as he buckles in his chair. He doesn't think he has the strength to look at the page again. But he has to. He braces himself.
"Stretched his legs"
Again, Bloom is struck; this time his head is knocked back in disgust. He has to continue, to tackle the beast; he has never let a book, no matter how juvenile, escape his brainy mandibles. Shaking, he reaches out for any type of coping device, his hand grabs an envelope and desperately darts across the desk for a pen as he searches the page for his place. The pools of sweat forming on his shirt make their way down his fatty arms in thick, greasy droplets.
"Stretched his legs". Veins appear on the surface of Bloom's misshapen cantaloupe head as he strains to keep his eyes from retreat. Tick on the envelope.
"Stretched his legs"
Two buttons on Bloom's already straining shirt shoot off. Tick.
"Stretched his legs"
Tick. Tick. Tick.

>Why would a respected literary credit resort to such blatant lying
I think you meant "a respected literary cretin".

It doesn't matter if Sorcerer's Stone "sounds better", because the philosopher's stone is a actual historic concept. Kind of the whole point in alchemy really is to create a philosopher's stone. Nicolas Flamel was also a real person, who was subject to rumors after his death about having made one and become immortal.

Rowling has stated that she used alchemy to form the basic rules of her magic system. The Harry Potter series is littered with ties to alchemy, but it's all in the background, and alchemy is such an esoteric subject, that most readers have no idea about it.

What did you expect really?

>masa , can I have a break?
>No shenequa , and you better make sure Tyrone keeps watching

>10-15 seconds per page
60*60/1000 = 3.6

i want to have sexual relations with these women

This is my review of the book, you can find it on Goodreads:

>I liked it at the beginning, but then I found it quite boring, whatever, it's just a child book.
I really don't care what's going to happen in the next books and it would be for the best if Harry dies, yes, he's got a bad childhood and no upbringing because he was an orphan, but in the end he turns out to be a genius at this game called Quidditch and a brave mage, everything goes well for him. Eleven years of continuous suffering with his muggle relatives and then on his eleventh birthday a giant pays him a visit to tell him a beautiful truth: you're a wizard, Harry, and you're famous in the magic world, and even rich thanks to your inheritance.
Life solved, not even you-know-who seems like a menace when you're a rich genius famous mage talented great athlete boy. I wanted him to suffer more, what is this crap? Fuck him, he’s even got friends from the beginning of his journey. This book is boring because you know that nothing bad would happen to him, the other characters are pretty simple, basically, Harry and his friends are the muggles of the magic world, because they’re the same pathetic pieces of shit that you find in the real world, with no personality at all, simple minded humans, like everyone in this fuckin book, a caricature of friendship and hardship, that’s Harry Potter and the philosophers stone: characters with fakes personalities.

Huh. So she actually did do some research, not just ripping off older children's books

/never made it that far in the series. Still can't stand her writing but hate her slightly less now....

Sounds like the same reason I hated Anne of Green Gables. I thought the conflict driving the story would be how they thought they were getting a boy and a girl was pawned off on them, so she had to spend most of it trying to prove herself.

Nope! By the third page in they were happy and loved her to pieces. Everyone else likes her too, including the cute rich guy.
BOOOORRRINNNGG!!!!

Bloom claimed to read 600 pages an hour. I don't think that he was much of a truther.

Jealous?

Of?

yeah if you look at the cover the pillars are actually supposed to be boaz and jachin, the books have quite a few little occult easter eggs in them

Harry Potter. "rich genius, famous talented, athlete"

Nah, those are the reasons why he sucked, that makes him a bad and uninteresting character.

harold bloom is good sometimes ...
i mean he's not wrong that rowlings writing is often terrible. she's a bad writer that happened to write a great story... death of the author and all that.

Does this mean American philosophy lectures are really magic classes?

I think the real problem is that "nothing bad happens to me" a strong character needs equally strong opposition, something to really make him need to use all his talents to overcome them, Batman is a good example of this.

The problem with Harry Potter is he has a vast network of supporting characters, in the form of the adults, that help him far too much. The most interesting parts are when he's cut off from the protection of all them, which are always short moments.

I think being upset at the character, rather than the opposing forces is a sign of meekness.

When I was a kid I kinda liked it but rereading it now feels plain disgusting. And I don't even mention the bland writing OP told us about.

You have mentioned the main point: A guy who lives in shit and is basically nobody (althought the abuse from his "step" parents is not really necessary for the writing).
And then voilá, he is rich, mighty wizard, a chosen one, breaks rules but instead of getting punished he gets even better and cooler, instantly gets friends and his rival (not Voldemort, I mean Malfoy) feels more like a comic villain rather than a successful douche.

So basically we know from the beginning that Harry is a good guy, he gets everything and everyone shall like him while all bad guys are 100% bad and they gonna loose because they are bad and Harry is good.

If the whole story shall take 7 books and 7 class years it should be about how he rises up the ranks and becomes the strongest wizard from nobody he was in the beginning. Not chosen one, friends don't really like him, Malfoy is somehow charismatic and no 10 points to Gryffindor. Slytherin should have won and beating his rival would take more than 1 book.

What else has he lied to us about?

Would you say that making a love-hate romance between Harry and Malfo would improve the plot?

I certainly think so. It would blurr the line between good and evil and some much needed tension.

that's why neville was the real chosen one

So I'm aggressively pocrastinating and made some interesting results. Overall, the word "stretch" in some variant is used a total of 11 times. Their specific uses are listed below and can be grouped into four categories, one being an outlier.

>stretched legs 1
>stretched out (whole body) 4
>stretched out hand 5
>nerves were "stretched to the breaking point"(metaphorical) 1

Although Bloom is completely wrong in the particulars there is some fairly repetitions sentence structure. For instance, here are all sentences where it is used in the form "stretched out":

>Harry sighed and stretched out on the bed.
>Hagrid yawned loudly, sat up, and stretched.
>Ron sighed happily, stretching out on the grass.
>"Better get the cloak," Ron muttered, as Lee Jordan finally left, stretching and yawning.

As is clearly seen, in all four examples yawn/sigh is combined with stretching. So from this we can conclude that Bloom was wrong about the use in the sense "stretched legs" but right in so far as the language was formulaic and repetitious.

wtf i love harry potter now

>mfw French translation is "Harry Potter at sorcerer's school"

don't forget the whole
>let's make a house system so we can have easy characterization and then play on that to blur the lines between good and evil and underline character's psychological evolution
>no actually fuck that let's put all the good guys together, the evil ones together, and let's forget about the other 2 houses.

Harry should at least have had a slytherin friend that had to choose between his house and friendship with harry.
Anyway those books are only good for 8-10year olds that dont care about any of that shit.

Hermione should have been ravenclaw and ron hufflepuff. They both perfectly exemplify each house's credo, and it would have been the perfect occasion for rowling to show how children should go beyond simple categorization and looks to find true friends, instead of just staying with their griffindor posse and have a gang war with the slytherin niggers.

But I guess Rowling sucks too much to recognize such an easy, efficient storytelling tool.

Also no Jinny but some girl from Slytherin who starts as enemy and absolute hater but later falls at some point for Harry for that forbidden love thingy.

To spice it even more up she could've been the sister of Malfoy.

Or his mother for some milf action.