What was going to be a quick trip to the Midwest to give a Keynote Talk at Searching for Platform 9 ¾: An Academic Harry Potter Conference, in DeKalb, Illinois (Northern Illinois University) has turned into a five day, five lecture mini-tour with my daughter Sarah (who will be visiting two or three schools to which she is applying for admissions). Searching for Platform 9 ¾ remains the ‘big show’ — Travis Prinzi will be there and David Gras, not to mention the Ball (the complete schedule to the conference is below) and that the ‘early bird’ price is still ‘the price’ — but, if you really cannot get out to DeKalb on Saturday, there are now downstate Illinois, eastern Iowa, and south and north side of Chicago options for you to hear me talk at the end of the month. [Read more…]
Tolkien and Rowling: A Case for “Text Only”
I was talking to a good friend last month about how seriously we should take Ms. Rowling’s comments about her work. He chuckled. As a University professor of several decades and a Faulkner scholar, he found it amusing that Potter Fandom hangs on Ms. Rowling’s every word as “canon.” Faulkner, it turns out, had plenty to say about his novels, especially in answer to questions and as he got older. The sad thing was it seems the 1949 Nobel Prize winner for Literature often had no idea of what he was talking about, confused his novels, stories, and screen plays, and made little sense when describing his themes. Transcripts made from the recordings of his talks, consequently, are consulted by serious interpreters of Faulkner’s work but not given anything like the weight given Ms. Rowling’s every comment.
Joanne Rowling is hardly the senescent Nobel laureate type, of course. I’d suggest, though, that, when tracking influences and discussing meaning, serious readers of her work are best set if they work almost exclusively from text. Almost. If you’ve listened to the podcast I did with Profs. Paul Spears and John Mark Reynolds at Biola/Torrey last month, you know I sympathize with Dr. Reynolds’ “text only” definition of canon. Today I want to look at a case in point — what we can learn about Tolkien’s influence on Harry’s adventures from the still invaluable if much diminished Accio Quote catalogue of interviews — to see if attention to Ms. Rowling’s extra-textual information clarifies this influence or muddies the waters. [Read more…]
Scriptorium Daily Podcast: On Potter Canon
Biola University’s John Mark Reynolds asked me to record a podcast with his Middlebrow crew when I was out there speaking last month. It was posted tonight at Scriptorium Daily and I recommend it to you, especially for Prof. Reynolds’ defense of his position on what constitutes canon, “text only.” He makes a compelling argument that “text and nothing but the text” is the best bet of the serious reader thinking about the free play of his or her imagination.
And, yes, I’d love to read what you think. Jump Right In.
No Romance in Mystery? What Sayers Wrote
I am writing the Dorothy Sayers & Charles Dickens chapter of Harry Meets Hamlet and Scrooge: The Literary Companion to Harry Potter (Penguin, 2009) and I thought I could share here something I found that some of you may find interesting. As you know, Ms. Rowling mentioned Dorothy Sayers in the Spartz/Annelli interview in 2005:
There’s a theory — this applies to detective novels, and then Harry, which is not really a detective novel, but it feels like one sometimes — that you should not have romantic intrigue in a detective book. Dorothy L. Sayers, who is queen of the genre, said — and then broke her own rule, but said — that there is no place for romance in a detective story except that it can be useful to camouflage other people’s motives. That’s true; it is a very useful trick. I’ve used that on Percy and I’ve used that to a degree on Tonks in this book, as a red herring. But having said that, I disagree inasmuch as mine are very character-driven books, and it’s so important, therefore, that we see these characters fall in love, which is a necessary part of life.
All well and good. I think I found the essay today in which Dorothy Sayers wrote this (or something very much like this) and share the relevant passage for your reflection and comment: [Read more…]
Harry Haters: Is the War Over?
Check out the 9-27-08 post at ‘The Wild Hunt Blog: A Modern Pagan Perspective’ called “Harry Potter Haters.” I think it is interesting both for the video clips of “We are Wizards,” the new wizard rock documentary being released in November, and the dated scare piece from 2001, and also because of its assessment that Harry Haters have become marginalized to the far periphery of even the Christian edge of the Public Square (as in ‘Chick Publications’).
Leaving aside the “pagan” aspects of the Wild Hunt Blog and its disdain for even the legitimate concerns any thinking person has about the occult, I suspect it is true that bashing Harry Potter as a means to identify oneself as a Culture Warrior and True Believer is an activity that has “jumped the shark.” I know there are enclaves of Harry Hating here and there and individuals in many (most?) parishes that still believe the Pope condemned Harry and that reading him is the Gateway Drug to Wicca and the Occult. Dare I say, though, that the war is over except for the soldiers deep in the jungle that refuse to surrender? Or would that be this the literary equivalent of the President landing on a carrier and declaring we have won the war in Iraq?
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