Letters to the Editor
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It does matter
...do some essential commentary on the dire situation in our Nation, where the Bush Crime Family is busy dismantling freedom of the press, along with most of our other former freedoms?
Rowling does just that. The Ministry of Magic is not a benevolent Government. None of those freedoms exist in the "magical" world that Harry Potter inhabits.
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Mariane Moore's 'imaginary gardens, with real toads in them'.
...she [Rowling] is the champion of the specific and the domestic, the often unsung pleasures and perils of a good lunch, a crush, a ball game with friends and a little gossip about machinations at the ministry...
Very wisely put. She is much more the daughter of Trollope and Austen than Tolkein and Lewis.
I've always thought of the HP books as being sort of an Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, with wizards in it, right down to the Widmerpool.
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NoJusticeNoPeace
Yes. It does matter. Art and literature and culture do, in fact, matter a lot.
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I've been spoiled before
Some idiot on my local news station gave away the ending of "The Sixth Sense" the day itwas released. He said something along the lines of "Bruce Willis' character dies in the first scene, but don't worry, he's still the main character...". So, I had no idea he had stolen the wonderful, startling denouement for me as I later sat in the theatre. I could have punched him. That stupid review profoundly changed my experience, and alienatd my from the community of viewers. I missed out on seeing things as the director meant me to experience them. (I mean, I got over it without therapy or medication, it's only a movie, but damn it!)
I'm sure that's what many Potter fans are feeling about these early reviews. But, it's easy to look away. It's easier to not read salon's article than it is to flip to the last page of the novel when you hold it in your hands. (How many of us will do just that? How many of us will fight with ourselves and do it anyway?)
I think because the act of reading is so intensely personal (instead of cummunal, ilke watching a play or a movie), that it's less of a crime to know the ending in advance. Since you're creating the world in your head as you read, you're invested even if you know the couple will get married, or the hero will die, or whatever. And though Rowling and Scholastic have created a marketing gold mine about hyping the mysteries of the ending, Harry Potter is not a mystery thriller. The joy in reading the series has been following Harry on his journey, though we've always known the destination.
So, I'm ok with the "spoiler" reviews. I can choose to look away when I want to, or not read them at all. No one's going to shout the ending to me unawares, like that (now hopefully former) movie reviewer.
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The last time I was really surprised
...was when I attended the very first show (a matinee) on the very first day of The Sixth Sense. I actually gasped aloud when the secret was revealed (as did the five other unemployed losers...umm, I mean, "freelancers", in the afternoon audience). That may explain, too, why nothing M.Knight Shymalan has done since has ever surprised - or interested - me again.
My favourite recent example was when I was discussing HBO's Rome and happened to mention Octavius's elevation to Augustus Caesar. The friend I was talking to - equally passionate, indeed fanatical about the series - almost had a cow! He - a sixty-year old university professor who hadn't yet had the opportunity to catch Season Two - started screaming: "Don't tell me. Don't tell me." Literally. Hands over ears. Shrieking.
By way of an apology, I responded weakly: "Well, it is in all the history books."
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Goodbye Harry and friends
I won't get into spoilers...they are everywhere and in every transaction...the score of the game, the plot on your favorite sitcom. I am 58 year old (Normal) maried man, A veteran,a parent, a professional social worker and now retired. i love the series. Call her writing 'sturdy', I call it pleasurable and a marvelous escape that we'd all just love to go to, even for a weekend. I am delighted that JK has made so much money for herself, and she seems like a nice sort. I would love to see her take a break, and come up with another implausable but memserizing plot line with more marvelous characters and interesting plot twists. Or, failing that, buy an island in The Bahamas and get away from the demented English elements.
Cheers to all, The Antichrist
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Pathetic
that "grown-ups" not only read books designed for children, they take them as seriously as they do. Then again, this follows the contemporary childishness in all matters cultural, from lines around the block to see the latest superhero movie to the nationwide obsession with twenty-year-old karaoke singers trying racking up millions of votes on "American Idol."
Enjoy your boy wizards, spidermen and bubble-gum songs, kiddies. And remember: none of that has anything at all to do with the sorry state of this country. Oh, no. There's no connection whatsoever.
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"Sorry, but I find this whole thing another big distraction from what is important for our survival."
"It is difficult/to get the news from poems/yet men die every day/for lack/of what is found there."
eom
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Rowling is a writer, not a saint
Good grief, you would think that it is the end of the world that Salon.com actually takes Rowling seriously as a writer instead of treating her as a saints - as some readers would obviously prefer. She is getting the kind of review that other serious novelists get. That is actually a compliment and not a given thing, considering the mass hysteria she and her publishers have whipped up very expertly.
If you just read the first page in Salon, there are no spoilers at all, you are warned, you can avoid them. It's a bit like people complaining of books with explicit pornographic details, who will avoid reading the book as such but will look desperately for those details so they can be rightfully disgusted. Come on, if you don't want spoilers, don't read them. And the book really should be able to stand on it's own without the hysteria about who does and who doesn't die.
In my book, any novel worth anything can be read and then re-read, preferably numerous times. There has to be more to it than just the suspense and the hype. There has to be layers, new details to discover, more depth to sink into on your second and perhaps Xth read. Judging from the review in Salon, the final Harry Potter book may just offer that.