Deconstructing Harry

By Cynthia Grenier

Today, Saturday, July 8, the publishing world is in a dither — a
dither the likes of which this particular world frankly has never
experienced before. Ever. Some three and a half million copies of the
fourth volume of the adventures of teen-age wizard-in-training Harry
Potter are hitting the bookstores of the land with a whoopla unknown to
the pretty staid world of publishing. And this just in the United States
— the rest of the world is bracing for comparable lift-offs.

First, a blanket of absolute total secrecy right down to the title
and dust jacket was maintained for months. Amazon.com racked up well
over 300,000 advance orders, undertaking to launch a super dispatching
by Fed-Ex of the 750-page — the length somehow was not kept secret —
volume by special Saturday morning delivery. Don’t ask the cost.

Bookstores rose up to protest this move as unfair, downright
unethical, breaking the ground rules of embargoing young Harry Potter’s
fourth set of adventures. Booksellers wishing to ship books by July 7
had to provide the American publisher Scholastic (a firm that has never
seen anything remotely like this sort of hit in its long career) with
proof of a “secure plan,” which included an agreement for
confidentiality to be upheld by retailers, distributors and shipping
companies.

Naturally someone let the cat out of the bag, or out of the
bookstore. And some little 8-year-old little Virginian is right this
moment working her way through “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.”
Don’t ask. Some clerk supposedly inadvertently put the book out on the
counter, and a quick-witted parent snatched up a copy. Where exactly in
Virginia, and from what store and who the little girl and her daddy are
remain cloaked in all due mystery.

At this point, amazon.com is promising delivery somewhere between
July 13 and 19. On the other hand, my local Dupont Circle bookstore
clerk said cool, as could be, “No problem. Sure I can hold a copy for
you on Saturday.” Which means, you’re going to have to wait until next
week for me to let you find out if all the fancy trappings have really
added anything to the Harry Potter legend.

500 Years in the Making

In the meantime, while waiting for Harry to materialize, let me put
you onto another hefty number — 877 pages — standing No. 8 on
amazon.com’s list of books that everyone seems to want with good reason
to be reading these days: “From Dawn to Decadence” by mightily
distinguished scholar and historian 93-year-old Jacques Barzun. He has
taken half a millennium — 1500 to the present — offering up his take
on 500 years of Western cultural life. Not exactly a book to take to the
beach, but what a read.

Ambitious, yes, it certainly is. And most definitely amazingly
readable, no question. Barzun, who has some 30 books to his credit in
his long life, creates a sense of being wondrously relaxed and
comfortable with all those centuries of history. He is at one with the
men and women and deeds of that half millennium, and has provocative,
interesting thoughts and considerations about them all. Dry as dust
history? No way. It’s like the makings of a thousand novels all in one
book.

Mind you, every once in a while Barzun gets a touch too comfy, and
kind of indulges in giving credit to a fictional view of the past. Case
in point: When talking of France’s great statesman-cleric of the 17th
century Cardinal Richelieu, Barzun suddenly cites Alexandre Dumas’
“Three Musketeers” as “giving a good idea of the Cardinal’s corps of
henchmen and spies and the hatred he and they incurred.” Now the Count
de Rochefort and Milady deWinter are certainly villainous souls as
created by Dumas, and most certainly plagued the three musketeers and
D’Artagnan no end, while nominally performing some singularly ignoble
deeds in the service of the Cardinal. But it seems unlikely and no
reputable historian would accept the idea that Richelieu ordered the
assassination of the English Duke of Buckingham as Dumas proposes, to
block the English fleet from coming to the aid of La Rochelle, a
Huguenot stronghold the Cardinal was blockading.

No matter, Barzun has produced a positively magical overview of 500
years of European and American history. Every few pages he places
boldface, often witty, always pertinent read-out of comment from sundry
people ranging from popes and monarchs of the past to actor Bill Murray.
It makes for a dazzling if dizzying account of so much history, which he
manages effortlessly to weave together and lay before us like some
master sage and storyteller combined. The past comes alive in his hands.
He not only makes you want to read more about some particular event or
individual, he even helpfully throws in reading suggestions throughout

Yet nearing almost a century of life himself, he is not exactly
optimistic about our future, but still pulls back from pessimism, even
if he feels we’re been steadily moving to the “decadence” of his title.
He sees the Western mind of today beset upon by a blight: Boredom. He
concludes, “A handful of men and women from the higher orders, demanded
Reform.” A foundation for “our nascent — or perhaps one should say,
renascent culture” has been formed. “It has resurrected enthusiasm in
the young and talented, who keep exclaiming what a joy it is to be
alive.” Surely a positive note to conclude such a long and weighty work
and a profoundly, basically joyous one to come from a man in the tenth
decade of his life.

In quest of more on Barzun and “From Dawn to Decadence”? Check out


amazon.com.

Cynthia Grenier

Cynthia Grenier, an international film and theater critic, is the former Life editor of the Washington Times and acted as senior editor at The World & I, a national monthly magazine, for six years. Read more of Cynthia Grenier's articles here.