Ignore Potter, and Be Doomed to Irrelevance?

Lord Voldemort is the Darth Vader of the 21st century—if you don’t know what that means, you could be at a massive cultural disadvantage in a decade or two. Esquire's Chuck Klosterman claims he hasn’t read a page of the Harry Potter series—hearing Harry didn’t die at series’ end, he “wasn’t even aware he was sick”—and he doesn't want to. But he worries out loud that he'll be punished for opting out when readers grow up.

Since creative types tend to “traffic in their own nostalgia,” Klosterman pictures his future self not knowing when to laugh, oblivious to the “lingua franca of the 2025 hipster.” So is he obligated to bone up on Quidditch? For now, Klosterman is inclined to hold to his outlier position, figuring eventually he’ll age out of culture anyway—so there’s no use fighting it. (More Harry Potter stories.)