A Thought about Open and Closed Texts

Abstract

What sort of bearing the above definitions may have on a serious text-to-world reading of the Harry Potter books would naturally depend to some extent on the sort of presumptions that exist about the relationship of such books to readers before they are thinkingly read (an area that is connected to the book covers with which I began). This involves, in fact, the categorization of books vis-à-vis readers in a general sense: i.e. not in terms of descriptive (or broadly genre-based) categories according to form (fiction, drama, poetry), content (fantasy fiction, science fiction), authorship (women’s writing, black writing), or type of reader (children’s fiction); but categorization in terms of the quality of general reading experience that is offered (such as popular writing, pulp fiction, literary fiction, pot boiler, easy reading). I discuss the genre-based categorization or descriptive categorization at some length below; those can only be proffered, understood and accepted after some sort of thinking reading. Categories in terms of quality of general reading experience on offer do not lend themselves to discussion easily: they are somewhat arbitrary and off-the-cuff, and are usually designedly made unthinkingly for marketing purposes. If such categories are approached in a more analytical spirit, they can be dissected further only in descriptive terms or more analytically oriented generic terms — and then they lose their sense of being categories according to quality of general reading experience.