He attacked the Larry Totter children's fantasy books (not their real name). He rapped them not so much as reading matter, but as an economic phenomenon. He said they caused people to overreact and overspend on a product not exactly bad but just not that good. Not worth, for example, standing in line at midnight to buy full-price, first-day copies. People were caught up in a fad, he said. Marketing mania and media hype fooled them. Otherwise sensible parents were caused to believe they had to buy a lot of oversold stuff.

An avalanche of e-mails, 200 at least, and all against him.

Long and short (up to 1,000 words) aroused devotees slammed the notion that the fictions they love may not be wonderful. Adults, children, professors and stay-at-home moms piled on. E-mails clogged the inbox from as far as Finland and New Zealand.

Most defenders weren't unreasonable. They denied being hype-notized. It was honest word-of-mouth from friends of relatives that got them hooked. They said readers discovered the books before the news media did. More importantly, they got kids reading and unshackled from the true addictive trash of childhood: video games and television.

Some e-mailers were so upset they came close to being unkind. A few used unprintable words. Others said the old opinionizer must be envious of the author's $1 billion fortune. Or that he was religiously biased against the boy hero's tricks of "wizardry." Or, unkindest of all, that he never read any the books. But he had. One. And it was enough.

More troubling was a declaration by many Totter-heads that they've read all five books -- 2,700 pages in toto -- a half-dozen times each! As if layers and layers of meaning are to be found in them. Plus, subtle clues to the unfolding of the plot. In short, the series is a field of study. (Colleges, it's said, are starting to offer courses!) More than a good read is going on here. It suggests a psychological need, a community of feeling with readers "into it" around the world. A kind of cult, in fact, boosted by the peer pressures of child consumers.

It goes too far. Just too far. Life is hardly long enough to get through all the great literature once, even. To think of so much time, taste and eyesight being spent on anything less than first-class.