Taking arms against Harry Potter, at this moment, is to emulate Hamlet taking arms against a sea of troubles. By opposing the sea, you won’t end it. The Harry Potter epiphenomenon will go on, doubtless for some time, as JRR Tolkien did, and then wane. The official newspaper of our dominant counterculture, The New York Times, has been startled by the Potter books into establishing a new policy for its not very literate book review. Rather than crowd out the Grishams, Clancys, Crichtons, Kings and other vastly popular prose fictions on its fiction bestseller list, the Potter volumes will now lead a separate children’s list. JK Rowling, the chronicler of Harry Potter, thus has an unusual distinction: She has changed the policy of the policy-maker.