Though I’ve yet to read The Casual Vacancy, I’m surprised at how often reviewers talk of Rowling as if she was born to tell kiddie lit alone. Last time I checked, Harry Potter fell into her lap. She intended to write for adults. In other words, I think of her as a literary author who made her breakthrough writing kiddie lit, not the other way around.

Don’t believe me? Watch this old interview back when Chamber came out. She says so herself:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn7nlfoMcwQ]

Reviewers who scathe her for trying to write a literary novel hold a basic misunderstanding of genre, one I hope to deal with sooner or later, but for now, give the poor lady a chance before you spit vitriol. After all, many literary greats were also popular successes in their own lifetime:

1. Dickens
2. Steinbeck
3. Shakespeare
4. Bronte
5. Hemmingway
6. Austen
7. Fitzgerald

What makes “good literature” can only be decided four generations or more after a work is published. My great grandkids will be the only ones who decide if I or you or anyone else contributed to the language. Until then, we never can know what lasts: Rowling or Mailer, King or Wright.