I’ll go with that, and just assume it’s not because someone’s found out about my secret collection of online erotic Hermione fanfiction. And before you judge me, fuck off. She’s a hot chick who can do magic, and I think that wizards come of age at like 17. So she’s totally doable.
But anyway, the answer to the question is yes; I’m about three quarters of the way through The Deathly Hallows. My roommate pre-ordered it from Amazon, which was good because this way I didn’t have to drop $25 on a hardcover, but bad because I was forced to endure two weeks of Ian reading it on the couch and gasping dramatically whenever something cool happened. Just when I was considering bludgeoning him to death with the book while he slept, he finished and passed it on, and I have to say, it’s taking me a while to get through. Not because it’s dense or hard to read or anything, but because I simply don’t want it to end. I read pretty much constantly, and if a book is especially good, I’ve been known to stay up all night to finish it before going to work looking like I’ve been on a 24 hour coke/hooker bender and then passed out under a bridge. Which is what I tell people, because honestly, that makes me sound a lot cooler than explaining how tired I am because I just had to see if Harry and Ron could escape Voldemort’s nefarious clutches. But I’ve been resisting the temptation and trying to savor the new story as much as possible, although with the stuff that’s happening in the current chapter I don’t how long my resolve will last.
What I find the most interesting about the Harry Potter phenomenon is all of the hype surrounding it. It’s easy to see why there’s so much scrutiny; I mean, the latest book broke every single publishing record in the history of the world, with 10% of the entire British population buying it on the first day and an initial print run of 12 million copies for the U.S. alone. That’s fucking insane. Especially considering the entire saga was conceived by some random lady who wrote her first novel in a coffeshop during her spare time. By “random lady” I’m not trying to disparage J.K. Rowling at all; I have enormous respect for someone who went from living on welfare to having more money than the Queen of the country she lives in. I just think that what she’s accomplished is absolutely incredible.
And the funny thing is, she’s not even that great of a writer. I say that not to be a dick (I mean, she’s the creator of a literary phenomenon; I write a shitty blog that only my mom and like four of my friends read), but because I’ve read lots of books, the majority of which are in the same genre as Harry Potter. And there are authors out there who can paint a picture much more vividly and with a greater scope of beauty and wordplay than she can. This isn’t to say that she’s bad; not by any stretch of the imagination. I remember reading the third book (I’d initially skipped the first two because I’d already seen the movies) and thoroughly enjoying it, but making a concerted effort to pay attention to how she wrote. I would love to write a novel someday, and thought to myself “Okay, this lady has somehow written a book about child wizards that sells more copies than the Bible (Ha ha! Fuck you, Christianity!). How does she do it?” And the answer (or what I think is the answer, anyway) is that her writing itself is, at its essence, just functional. It gets the job done clearly, concisely, and with enough description so that the reader can get a clear picture of what’s transpiring. But there are authors out there who have ways of describing, say, a particular character’s facial expression that are so unique and interesting that I’ll go back and reread the same passage over and over again, marveling that there’s an imagination out there that’s able to think that creatively. J. K. Rowling isn’t one of these authors, and really, that doesn’t matter.
What really makes me (and the millions of other people out there who love the books) keep reading is the fictional world that she’s created. It’s well thought out, makes sense, and all ties together in a neat little package. But that’s not all. The best part is that the whole storyline is contemporary. There actually could be this whole secret underground world of magic and wizardry going on right beneath our noses. Kids love it because they get to believe there’s a chance, however small, that a loveable giant will come along and whisk them away to an enchanted school so they can learn witchcraft instead of being beaten by mommy’s new boyfriend, and adults like it because there’s enough creativity and depth that they can justify why they’re reading a children’s book when their friends laugh at them.
Given the meteoric success of the franchise, though, it was inevitable that some of the hype surrounding the books would be negative. The most ridiculous complaint, of course, comes from idiot right-wing Christians about how the novels are subversively promoting witchcraft and occult practices to our youth. How fucking retarded do you have to be to actually believe that? I mean, if you want to go the route that anything fantastic or supernatural is bad, why wasn’t anybody picketing the Spider-Man movies? Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive arachnid that mutated his DNA and gave him incredible superhuman abilities. This is obviously blasphemous, because if God had wanted our non-monkey DNA to incorporate attributes of carnivorous bugs, He would have shoved a tarantula leg or something into the pile of clay and ribs we were all created from. Spider-Man, therefore, must have received his powers from Satan and needs to be beaten with rocks until he’s no longer an affront to the Lord. Or how about the Matrix trilogy? The Wachowski brothers tried their best to cram as much religious iconography and allusion as they possibly could into the movies so that people would think they were deep and meaningful, and the result was an implied allegory between Keanu Reeves in tight leather and Jesus Christ. Why weren’t Christians pissed about that? I’m not even particularly religious and I find that offensive, but mainly because I personally think that Keanu Reeves is a harbinger for the apocalypse. It just comes down to the fact that most hillbilly evangelicals are terrified of anything that might cause their children to actually use their imagination. If that happens, it’s only a matter of time before one kid asks why they’re supposed to believe in a bathrobe-wearing hippie who can transmute water into wine but not think that it’s cool when a fictional teenager flies around on a broom.
The other drama that’s surrounded Rowling’s work has been the charges of plagiarism. This was bound to happen; whenever something becomes a cultural sensation people are going to come crawling out of the woodwork saying that they’re entitled to bags of free money because they totally told their friend Mark about this sweet idea they had years ago that’s just like whatever happens to be popular at the moment. The best example of this lunacy comes from onetime American author Nancy Stouffer. She sued Rowling and her publishers because, in 1986, she wrote a book called The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, and then followed up with a children’s activity book called Larry Potter and his Best Friend Lilly. Her claims would be fairly credible, except for the fact that neither one of these works have anything to do with magic, wizards or anything else remotely similar to the Harry Potter world. Her “muggles” were tiny midgets who lived in shoes and rode around on bugs or something, and “Larry Potter” was just some kid who was sad because he had to wear glasses. Oh, and if the books weren’t just for sale in the Eastern United States for one year between 1986 and 1987. And if she had actually sold any copies of them. And for the fact that Rowling didn’t visit the U.S. for the first time until 1998. And if it wasn’t discovered that she’d retroactively gone back and added a trademark symbol to the word “muggle” in the supposedly original work she gave the judge. All of these revelations came out during the subsequent lawsuit, and instead of gleefully accepting a huge bag of wizard gold from Rowling’s defeated team of high-powered elf attorneys, Stouffer was forced to pay Time Warner $50,000 in addition to the cost of their legal fees for wasting everyone’s time with her idiocy. How stupid do you have to be to actually think that this would work? Did she honestly think that Rowling had secretly flown to America in the late eighties and broken into her house to rifle through piles of shitty unsold coloring books looking for literary inspiration to put in a novel she wouldn’t write for another ten years? I mean, I drew an awesome picture of a personalized flying hoverchair on my trapper-keeper back in seventh grade that I called the “I-Pod”, but I don’t think that I’m entitled to half of Apple’s yearly revenue. Stouffer’s claims were ridiculous, and now in addition to being a bad writer she’s also probably financially destitute. I'm imagining that her books were printed on pretty cheap paper, though, so maybe she can gnaw on them when she's no longer able to afford food. I think that she got off lightly; she’s lucky that Rowling didn’t use her dark magic to turn her face inside out and fill her vagina with poisonous scorpions.
Another accusation of plagiarism was leveled in early 2001 by British tabloid The Daily Mail, claiming that Rowling had copied characters and elements from the comic book series The Books of Magic. You’ve probably never heard of it; it was published in 1990 by DC Comics, and was written by one of the greatest authors who has ever lived, Neil Gaiman. You know those writers that I was talking about earlier, the ones that can use words with such eloquence and beauty that the reader literally feels like they’re a part of the story? He’s one of those, but better. If you haven’t read any of his work, go buy one of his books right now. Anything. Or call me, and I’ll lend you one of mine. Seriously, you’re life will be better for having experienced something he’s written. I realize that it kind of sounds like I want to make out with Neil Gaiman, but honestly, if I had to create a list called “People I’d Love to Meet, But Would Probably Just Stand There and Stammer Awkwardly at if Actually Given the Opportunity”, he’d be at the top. He’s the author of The Sandman, probably the single greatest comic book series ever written, and a number of prose novels that are equally awesome. His literary style is somehow simultaneously humorous, terrifying, and, above all, thoroughly engrossing. He’s great.
So yeah, I’m a fan.
Anyway, the article claimed that Neil had told the fine journalists at The Daily Mail that he was pissed at J.K. Rowling for stealing his ideas. I’d originally read The Books of Magic probably a year or so before the first Harry Potter book came out, and there are some definite similarities between the two. The comic tells the story of Timothy Hunter, a young English boy who’s plucked from his troubled family life and told by four mysterious strangers that he has the potential to become the greatest magician the world has ever seen. He embarks upon a journey through the past, present and future of magic in the DC universe, and along the way even acquires a pet owl to assist him in his adventures. That’s not that bad, right? I mean, comparing the two because they both have a young protagonist who doesn’t know he’s a wizard and likes to hang around with nocturnal birds is like saying the Transformers ripped off Knight Rider because they both have talking cars. But then you see what Timothy Hunter looks like:
Hmm. Or how about a more obvious comparison?
It's like looking into a mirror, kind of! They’re almost identical, in the sense that they're both male, wear glasses, and have Beatles haircuts, but so do most of the annoying hipster kids that stand in the back of shows and nod morosely along with the music. It's really not much to go on, but it’s still a mark of how unbelievably cool Neil Gaiman is that as soon as the article was printed, he immediately started bashing The Daily Mail who, it turns out, had never actually bothered to call him and make sure he’d said everything they’d already made up and printed. His opinion was that sometimes when an author writes, they have a specific idea of how a character is supposed to look in their mind, and seeing as how there are only about four different human hair colors to choose from, the staggering coincidence that two fictional people both have dark hair really isn’t that big of a deal. He went on to say that if Rowling had truly meant to copy his work, she probably would have been smart enough to at least make Harry a blonde kid with an eyepatch and pet howler monkey or something. He also pointed out that having a young boy unaware of his magical heritage being tutored by a wise old mentor and being accompanied by an owl wasn’t really something that he had come up with himself; rather, it was the work of T. H. White in The Once and Future King. How awesome is that? I mean, I’m no expert on the law, but I’ll bet that if he had wanted to, he could have gotten some kind of settlement out of her and her publishing company. But he’s been nothing but supportive of Rowling and her work, saying “I love the Harry Potter thing, I think it’s wonderful.” I’m right there with you, Neil, and your unequivocal support of your fellow authors has made me want to have your babies even more.
Harry Potter is great, and I’m looking forward too/dreading finishing up the last book. But I guess there’s still a couple of movies to anticipate, and after those are done I’m sure it’ll only be a matter of time before the chick who plays Hermione is desperate for money and gets naked in Playboy or something. So I'll have that to keep thinking about when I'm done with the book at least.
4 comments:
i hate to do this to you, but at the end you find out that harry is actually a woman. it gets really uncomfortable, and then it just ends when he shows everyone his vagina. awkward. and who saw that coming?
I sent this to my entire office and am now waiting for hysterical laughter to rise from the first floor. Also, when Harry reveals that he's a woman, he proclaims his undying passion for Ron and explains that the whole "Ginny Thing" was because they bore such a striking resemblance.
Also, Voldomort is his/her father. So now Lucas wants to sue too.
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