Who’s Not Wild about Harry?
It wasn’t until the day before coming home from a business trip to Dallas, Texas some six years ago that my older sister loaned me her copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Before the plane landed the next day I had become a wizard…again!
Just to be clear, I don’t go around wearing pointy hats or capes, or carrying a wand. Even when I was Harry’s age, those things were in my imagination. They still are. But how else do I explain how young I become each time I read one of Rowling’s books? I’m completely caught up in the fictional lives of the characters and the narrative that flows from their actions.
In true, grown-up geek fashion, I order my copies directly from the UK, preferring to read the stories in the original King's English.
The US and UK Harry Potter editions not only have different covers, they sometimes speak a different language.
Scholastic edition image copyright © Warner Bros;
Bloomsbury edition image copyright© Bloomsbury Publishing plc
I discovered that Harry’s spell hadn’t just been cast on my sister and me. Colleagues at work and friends at my local pub of all ages, whether they had children or not, had also fallen for his charms. Even my other half, who is not what you would call a reader, and his mother, who lives with us, have been taken in. Life can be downright unpleasant when the latest Harry Potter book arrives in the mail. Questions such as “Is it good?” and “Are you done yet?” can only be answered with, “Leave me alone, I’m reading!”
Only after the last person has finished the final page can we thoroughly enjoy the book together. Our excitement of finding out what each person thought becomes an overlapping merry-go-round of questions: “What did you think of…,” “Did you like it when…,” “What about…,” “Oh yeah, and the…,” and “Wasn’t Snape just downright….”Somewhere between that and the development of our own conspiracy theories comes the inevitable “When’s the next one coming out?”
Hallows Be Thy Name
I was delighted when the title of the next book was announced in December. And thrilled again at the beginning of February when its publication date was announced. I immediately placed my order. On or shortly after July 21, a box will arrive in the mail from the UK containing my ‘adult edition’ of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
The Harry Potter book covers for the U.K. children's (left) and adult (right) editions.
Image copyright© Bloomsbury Publishing plc
Click for larger image.
Not surprisingly, amazon.com released news the day after the publication date was announced that preorders for Deathly Hallows were 547 percent higher than they were for the previous tome, Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince. Since then, Deathly Hallows has remained at the top of Amazon’s best sellers list on their U. S. site; on the UK site, it's continuously commanded the top two positions. In early May, it was announced that preorders on the two sites had topped 1 million.
Many critics attribute the popularity of Rowling’s series on her strong, yet predictable narrative style. While the books may seem to follow a formulaic pattern, the stories themselves are hardly predictable beyond the tidbits Rowling releases to the press. The most pertinent among those now seems to be her comment that Harry may not survive to be a grown-up.
Indeed, Rowling has been adamant about ending the series with the seventh book. There is no need for a prequel, she states, since so much of the early story has already been given and that all loose ends will be tied up by the final chapter. As for another writer taking over Harry’s life, I’d as soon give his or her head as a gift to Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington (a.k.a. Nearly Headless Nick).
“…scar.” the Final Word?
I had hoped that the Death Eaters were only figments of Rowling's imagination. Unfortunately, there are those living among us who want to rob people of their enjoyment by spoiling, or publishing, the surprises in store for Harry's real fans. Fan sites, such as The Leaky Cauldron, have had to cope with those that would ruin (and have ruined) previous books for others. In April, The Leaky Cauldron reiterated its spoiler policy, telling its readers:
...we don't want to know about it before J. K. Rowling decides to tell us...We own pitchforks, hot wax and feathers. And we're not afraid to use them.
The perpetrator's name would also be sent to Bloomsbury, Scholastic, and “every JoLawyer we can think of.”
In support, Rowling released her own statement,
I want the readers who have, in many instances, grown up with Harry, to embark on the last adventure they will share with him without knowing where they are they going.
Some, perhaps, will read this and take the view that all publicity is good publicity, that spoilers are part of hype, and that I am trying to protect sales rather than my readership. However, spoilers won't stop people buying the book, they never have—all it will do is diminish their pleasure in the book.
However, when it comes to spoilers, Rowling may only have herself to blame. During a June 2006 interview on Britain’s Channel 4 chat fest, the Richard & Judy Show, Rowling once again confounded her readers, while at the same time seemingly laying down the gauntlet for would-be spoilers, when she said,
One character got a reprieve, but I have to say two die that I didn't intend to die...A price has to be paid. We are dealing with pure evil....They go for the main characters, or I do.
If that weren't enough, while fans have been speculating about the final word that ends the last book (will it be scar as many have speculated?), J. K. Rowling, in an interview Friday night with BBC’s Jonathan Ross, indicated it might not be the last word on the boy wizard after all.
“Never say never,” says the world’s richest author. A spokesperson clarified that it doesn’t mean another story is in the works, but that it doesn’t mean one isn’t, either.
J. K. Rowling
Still, I dread the final weeks before the Deathly Hallows is released to the public. If the past is any guide, the media-who-must-not-be-named (television) will fall over itself daily and nightly counting the hours to the release date. Everyone will know what bookstores will be open to sell the book in the wee hours of July 21st, and they’ll do their best to convince all of us of how excited we must be that the last book is almost here. They will speculate ad nauseam about key plot lines that may or may not be in the book and may even “leak” them to the public on the evening so-called news (forcing us to scramble to find the Mute button on our remotes while shouting “LA-LA-LA-LA” above their insipid comments).
In the end, a fictional world without “the boy who lived” seems as hard to imagine as the real world without a new Harry Potter story in the works. On February 6th, J. K. Rowling expressed her own feelings when she posted the following on her web site, jkrowling.com:
I always knew that Harry's story would end with the seventh book, but saying goodbye has been just as hard as I always knew it would be. Even while I'm mourning, though, I feel an incredible sense of achievement. I can hardly believe that I've finally written the ending I've been planning for so many years. I've never felt such a mixture of extreme emotions in my life, never dreamed I could feel simultaneously heartbroken and euphoric.
While I can empathize with Rowling on a personal level, I can only imagine that when the last word is read and the book is closed and resting in my hands on my lap, euphoria will not be one of my feelings. I am as certain I will grieve as I am that I will marvel at the writing/publishing phenomenon the Harry Potter series has become.
In the past 10 years, children all over the world have picked up the books—long books, in some cases—and read them from cover to cover. They’ve digested the details and nuances of the plot, and they’ve been forced to consider Harry’s motives and the motives of others as the story has progressed. They’ve matured as Harry has matured. And those of us already-matured beyond Harry’s years reflect with gratitude for the vitality of a story that bridges the gaps between innocence and experience, and reality and imagination, and then brings them together.
I expect I’ll feel a void, but I know it’s merely the sign of a reawakened imagination hungry for its next meal. This is the hallmark of any good story.
So let it be no surprise, when all has been read and I’m sitting in my chair with the book in my lap, that I ask, to no one in particular, “When’s the next one coming out?”
