Jennie Renton’s 1998 Rowling Interview

The Rowling Library’s September issue, perhaps its best ever, included the story of J. K. Rowling’s 1998 interview with Jennie Renton for a fairly obscure magazine aimed at rare book sellers in Scotland. The TRL story of the original story’s surfacing and the various versions of it that had appeared in other much more widely read periodicals and online is very much worth your time; it can be downloaded here.

Rowling’s ‘early year’ interviews, those done before the creation of Rowling, Inc., the break with her Christopher Little, and the establishment of the Franchise Fortress round her every public appearance and statement, are relatively wide-open in terms of the questions being asked and the answers offered in return. I thought it worthwhile, then, to go through the unguarded Jo Rowling’s answers to a thoughtful interviewer’s questions soon after the publication of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Join me after the jump for a line by line review.

Is there any chance Rowling would throw off the self-imposed restrictions on her interviews and take questions from those who have been studying her work for decades? As I wrote in ‘Is Rowling a Coward?’, this is extremely unlikely for a variety of reasons, all along the spectrum defined by the poles of ‘Admirable Prudence’ and ‘Open Cowardice.’ Should she reconsider, I have a list of twenty-five questions from HogwartsProfessor staff and contributors I will gladly forward to her barristers and PR handlers for their vetting.

Until then, let’s go back to the 90’s for a talk with the Freewheelin’ New Hit Author, Jo Rowling! If you’d like a video image of what she looked like 25 years ago, here is a YouTube clip of her speaking with 60 Minutes in 1999. “Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now” (Bob Dylan, ‘My Back Pages’).

Jennie Renton’s questions are in black and bold, Rowling’s responses are black and bland, and my notes are in red italics.

Although the Harry Potter books are children’s books, like a lot of other adults I loved reading them. I got really excited by the stories. For me, they work well as mysteries but they’re also very funny. You make Harry Potter’s world so convincing. Somehow, it has a lot of depth.

It’s nice to hear you say that because I spent so long constructing this world – five years of writing about Harry before anyone read a word. It’s embarrassing how many trees have died for me. I write everything down … and lose it promptly. It’s all stuffed into boxes.

Whence the legend of Rowling’s “boxes,” her unofficial archives of planning notes and book drafts, 1990-1997.

I loathe books that have inconsistencies and leave questions unanswered. Loopholse bug the hell out of me. I hate getting to the end of a book and thinking, “but if so and so had told Mr. Y back in chapter three, it need never have happened.” And so I try to be meticulous and make sure that everything operates according to laws, however odd, so that everyone understands exactly how and why.

This is a bit funny coming from the author of Goblet of Fire and Lethal White, both of which books would have been resolved in the first chapters if, say, Faux Moody had used a teacup Portkey to move Harry to Little Hangleton graveyard soon after his arrival at Hogwarts instead of waiting until the end of the Tri-Wizard Tournament or if the Minister’s family in White had shared the news about the gallows, not to mention the horse painting being easy to steal…

I have a visual imagination. I know this isn’t the case with all writers – some hear words as opposed to seeing pictures. But I see things, and then try to describe as faithfully as I can what I’m seeing. I have to imagine something clearly first, and then I write.

Now that is a keeper observation and very much akin to C. S. Lewis’ observation about the inspiration he had for The Chronicles of Narnia being the imagined picture of a Faun wearing a scarf.

The Harry books are supposed to be full of surprises, but I tried to make sure that they unfold in a realistic way. The characters are allowed to act out of character and show hidden facets because that’s what people do from time to time.

I challenge you to cite three instances from the two books in print at this time of “characters acting out of character.” I cannot think of one. Is she just blowing smoke here out of nerves? Or has my memory failed me entirely?

How did the idea for the books come to you?

In a flash. “Boy, doesn’t know he’s a wizard, sent to wizard school.” That was the nutshell. I started thinking what wizard school would be like and I got so excited about it.

That really is the “nutshell” version, right? Rowling was commuting by train back and forth, London to Manchester where boyfriend Michael lived, in the summer of 1990 (she moved to Manchester at last in November). The train was delayed by four hours one day, the afternoon that the lightning strike of inspiration hit her. She stewed in her creative juices until she was able to exit the train and find pen and paper.

I have two questions about this inspiration that Rowling has never been asked to my knowledge and almost certainly would refuse to answer if asked.

First, per her ‘Lake and Shed’ revelations about the sources of he story-inspiration, what life crisis had Rowling experienced with which her unconscious mind was struggling to resolve that would cough up “Boy, doesn’t know he’s a wizard, sent to wizard school”? That’s a coming-of-age premise with a decidedly spiritual bent. 

Second, along the same lines of the first, what exactly were the points of conflict Rowling was experiencing with boyfriend Michael at that time? Were there issues of commitment, of differences in faith, about sex and children?

This is the decisive moment in Rowling’s life as an author, she has told us how her writing process works with respect to inspiration, and she has never been asked why the Lake creature gave her this story. It’s about time that happens, no?

For Hogwarts school you’ve put ingenious twists to features that are standard in conventional boarding school stories. What do you think is the appeal of boarding school stories?

 In fiction, boarding school comes over as a surrogate family. The pupils are with their contemporaries and free of their parents and guilt attached to upsetting them. I’m comprehensive educated – I’ve never even been inside a boarding school. I was asked recently whether I would have liked to have gone to one. No, definitely not! But if it had been Hogwarts – yes, like a shot.

Rowling is all over the map in her answer here and, though she begins to answer the question in her reply about the absence of parents, she then veers into her past, her “never even having been inside a boarding school” but being “comprehensive educated” and “definitely not!” interested in being posh seems to reflect her lower middle class defensiveness and insecurities as well as some family drama (her Rowling cousins went to ‘public schools’ rather than the comprehensives). 

When new pupils arrive at Hogwarts they try on a magic hat to determine which school house they should join, Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw. Slytherin is associated with warped wizards. When people put the hat on they hear the hat’s voice. Harry doesn’t like what he hears about himself, he finds it disturbing.

What I’m working towards here is the fact that our choices rather than our abilities show us what we truly are. That’s brought out in the difference between Harry and his arch enemy, Tom Riddle. In Chamber of Secrets, Harry is told by the hat that if he goes into Slytherin he will become a powerful wizard. He chooses not to do that. But Tom Riddle, who has been twisted by ambition and lack of love, succumbs to the desire for power. Though he’s supposed to have died years before, his malign spirit manipulates events through an enchanted diary.

This is a wonderful answer, if, again, Rowling trips up (Harry isn’t told this in Chamber but at his sorting in Philosopher’s Stone). Regardless, she clearly states the theme of Chamber, all but quoting Dumbledore’s most famous line from that book about choices versus abilities, and explains it explicitly in terms of Potter and Riddle’s different choices. What she doesn’t say is what Harry chose instead of power, namely, friendship and courage, both aspects of selflessness and a love of truth.

Where did you get the idea for that diary?

My sister used to commit her innermost thoughts to her diary. Her great fear was that someone would read it. That’s how the idea came to me of a diary that is itself against you. You would be confiding everything to pages that aren’t inanimate.

I do not remember reading this in the later Renton packagings of this interview material and it is helpful in understanding Rowling, a writer consumed by the power of writing and reading in transformation. As I wrote yesterday in my response to the ‘For Your Reflection’ prompt after the ‘Flourish and Blotts’ Chamber of Secrets quiz, the book-inside-the-book is explicitly named here, a magical tool of self-reflection placed within a Transfiguration textbook for wicked purposes and it points to the importance of grasping the intention of the author of that subliminal work within every text. [Think Silkworm and Bombyx Mori.] Harry and Ginny are both flummoxed by the young Tom Riddle inside his diary and only a remarkably selfless choice to sacrifice himself to find Ginny “miles beneath Hogwarts” saves them both, a choice that transforms Harry once again, literally enabling him to rise from the dead post Basilisk through the powers of the weeping phoenix, a symbol of Christ. Choices, indeed!

Where did you live when you were a child?

In the Forest of Dean. We moved there when I was nine. Unless you had a local accent and grandparents buried in the graveyard you were an outsider.

Isn’t it good for a writer to be an outsider?

I wouldn’t like to lay down rules about it. I’ve travelled around a lot and lived abroad – through circumstances I’ve been a bit of an outsider.

I struggle to imagine Rowling saying anything like this today. She may have been feeling embarrassed about her answer to the boarding school question and decided to polish up her standing a little. Where exactly had she travelled in 1998 outside of London, Exeter, and Manchester? And “lived abroad”? A semester in France for her degree and disastrous years in Porto where she taught English. She hadn’t made a ‘Grand Tour’ of Europe or even visited North America. How about the push-back, too, to the question of a writer as “outsider”? “I wouldn’t like to lay down rules about it,” depending on her tone of voice could be a winning humility or something of a put-down.

Did you have any inkling that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone would be so successful?

I remember one day … I’d been writing for hours and when I stopped I was buzzing with caffeine … I was walking down the Bridges thinking, “the difficulty will be in getting this published, but if it’s published there will be a handful of people who really love it.” And then I thought, “Oh, come on”. As it turned out, far more than a handful of people liked it. It has sold so well that I can now write full time, and that’s always been my life’s ambition.

She has offered a variant of this answer in which she admitted she hoped that the series would become a favorite of “obsessive” readers and be a great success thereby. The “life’s ambition” note and her excitement about it have been forever constants; this was the aim of her life, her calling or vocation, and Harry Potter freed her from a life of wage slavery. Her gratitude here is authentic and winning.

The Harry books have already been translated into eleven languages. I find it fascinating to see the different covers they’ve used in various countries. The American cover is almost like a film poster, a collage of scenes including Harry playing Quidditch, and an owl speeding by with a letter in its beak. The Italian cover shows Harry playing chess, but he hasn’t got his glasses on – maybe they don’t like speccy bows. The Dutch one is very striking, just a foot on a broomstick trailing across the sky. The German cover is angular and scary, the giant chess board. The British one highlight transport, the train that first takes Harry to Hogwarts, then the flying Ford Anglia for Chamber of Secrets.

Her excitement about the international appeal of the books is a delight, I think. I imagine her describing these Philosopher’s Stone covers from memory rather than pointing to copies on the table, a recall that reflects how much time she had spent in privacy looking at them. There is an innocence and wonder here about the new direction of her life that we have not seen in an age. The Potter Panic had not begun in earnest and the Transgender Twister was impossible to have imagined.

That’s based on a real car that was driven by Sean Harris, the first of my friends to learn to drive – we were at school together. At the time I lived in the middle of nowhere and had to rely on my parents for transport. Sometimes Sean would come for me in his car. The sight of that car meant freedom to me … my heart still leaps whenever I see a Ford Anglia. When I thought of Ron’s flying car I immediately pictured a Ford Anglia.

This may be the first appearance of Sean Harris in print, if there wasn’t another Chamber interview before this one. Rowling’s relationship with Sean Harris, childhood friend, savior in her time of great trial post Porto, and loyal companion ever since (sOBE, etc.) wilkl be the subject, I’m sure, of a full chapter in the critical biography that will only be written post mortem auctoris. 

You mentioned Harry playing Quidditch, a game which involves swooping around on a broomstick after an airborne semi-intelligent ‘snitch’. Are you good at games yourself?

 No. I’m so bad at sport it’s an irony that I’ve made up a game, even an impenetrable, magical game that you have to be an initiate to understand. I would be an appalling Quidditch player, though I’d love to fly on a broomstick. But I’d be a very enthusiastic spectator.

Do you have flying dreams?

 I’ve only ever had a couple – in one, I couldn’t get higher than about twelve fee above the ground and everyone else was zooming up in the clouds.

I don’t think you need to be Freud or Jung to interpret that dream. I doubt that Rowling has had the dreams reflecting Longbottom-esque insecurities and inadequacies for many years.

Do you put images from dreams into your books?

Ideas come from all sorts of places and sometimes I don’t realise where I got them from. A friend from London recently asked me if I remembered when we first saw Hogwarts. I had no idea what she was talking about till she said, “the day we went to Kew gardens and saw those lilies that were called ‘Hogwarts’.” I’d seen them seven years before and they’d bubbled round in my memory. When Hogwarts occurred to me as a name for the school I had no idea where it came from.

This is hogswash, pure and simple. ‘Hogwarts’ came from the Molesworth boarding school stories and this nonsense tale of “Kew Gardens” is a ridiculous and senseless cover (even if she believes it). See Whence ‘Hogwarts’? Rowling, Molesworth, Influence and Intertextuality for that whole story.

Imaginary books with great titles like Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit are always cropping up in the stories. I wish they were real so that I could get my hands on them. And there’s an amazing bookshop in Diagon Alley, the street where wizards to to get their wands and what have you.

I liked that bookshop best of all the shops I made up, with the possible exception of Olivanders (because I really liked doing his wands). If I had a choice, I wouldn’t want to be let loose in the wizarding sweet shop, I’d want to be let loose in the bookshop. When Harry goes to Diagon Alley for the first ever time, he sees a book on curses, Tongue Tying, Jellylegs and Much Much More – all this sort of stuff really amuses me.

Again, Rowling is a writer consumed by the transformative magic of story. Her answer here is entirely credible and I think she’d have the same answer today — to include the aside about Olivander’s being perhaps her real favorite shop “(because I really liked doing his wands).” Her wand lore is wrapped layer upon layer both with images of Christ — all three of Olivander’s preferred wand cores are symbols of Christ — and traditional iconography of trees. She loves writing and reading, whence her longing for a trip to Flourish and Blotts, but she really enjoys writing allegorically and anagogically about the spiritual depths within us, the magic in our hearts.

I found myself thinking about the ‘wardrobe route’ to Narnia when Harry is told he has to hurl himself at a station barrier in Kings Cross Station – it dissolves and he’s on platform Nine and Three-Quarters, and there’s the train for Hogwarts.

 Narnia is literally a different world, whereas in the Harry books you go into a world within a world that you can see if you happen to belong. A lot of the humour comes from collisions between the magic and the everyday worlds. Generally there isn’t much humour in the Narnia books, although I adored them when I was a child. I got so caught up I didn’t think C.S. Lewis was especially preachy. Reading them now I find that his subliminal message isn’t very subliminal at all. My favourite Narnia book was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and despite what I said a minute ago, Eustace turning into a dragon is fantastically well done, sad and funny at the same time. Really, C.S. Lewis had very different objectives to mine. When I write,  don’t intend to make a point or teach philosophy of life.

These last sentences are rubbish and she admits as much two questions later. Rowling’s efforts to distance herself from Lewis begin here but her two minds on the subject are evident. Her comment just previous about Olivander’s shop being her favorite and that this is only credible in light of her inserting subliminal Christian content into her books makes these shots at Lewis borderline pathetic, more of the insecure woman and artist we heard speaking back in the Boarding Schools question.

A problem you run into with a series is how the characters grow up … whether they’re allowed to grow up. The characters in Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books act in a prepubescent way right through the series. In the Narnia books the children are never allowed to grow up, even though they are growing older. I want Harry Potter and his friends to grow up as well as older, though I’ll keep it all humorous, well within the tone of the books. I want them eventually to be truly seventeen and discover girlfriends and boyfriends and have sexual feelings – nothing too gritty. Why not allow them to have these feelings?

Rowling’s recall of the Narniad is pretty weak or she is just parroting contemporary feminist critics about Lewis’ portrayal of women. The Kings and Queens of Narnia grow up before the end of the first book and mature rather dramatically if not sexually in subsequent series entries. “Why not allow them to have such feelings?” It’s a rhetorical question in Rowling-world but it is readily answered; CSL was writing books for children and that genre in his day did not allow for open romance (though it is evident in Rowling’s supposed favorite, Voyage of the Dawn Treader). Unfortunately, I find it too easy to imagine Rowling repeating this drivel today, though her borrowings from Til We Have Faces and The Great Divorce color her Strike series and Christmas Pig.

I never really envied Peter Pan.

I think there’s a difference between men and women here. I’ve met more than one man who thinks it would be wonderful to be young forever. Far fewer women hanker after childhood. Girls look to the future earlier than boys do. Peter Pan, although it’s a marvelous and magical story, strikes me as being about being trapped in youth, and I don’t think of childhood as a particularly happy time. For me there were moments of joy but I can also remember terrific fear such as I’ve not felt since becoming an adult. Feelings of insecurity. Feelings of inadequacy. Every child feels powerless at times.

Okay, this may be the most important part of an interview that has quite a few “keepers.”

I don’t think of childhood as a particularly happy time. For me there were moments of joy but I can also remember terrific fear such as I’ve not felt since becoming an adult. Feelings of insecurity. Feelings of inadequacy. Every child feels powerless at times.

A childhood of “terrific fear,” feelings of “insecurity,” “inadequacy,” and “powerlessness”? And she offers these most revealing thoughts to a near stranger in answer to a question about Peter Pan, anything but a serious probing and prying to get at her Freudian ‘family romance.’ Rowling has been through Cognitive Behavior Therapy and has done significant reflection about her life and situation by this point — and these are her recollections of her childhood and psychological foundation. She’s not claiming that she suffered extraordinarily; she even suggests this is the experience of “every child.” But there is a wounded child inside these remarkably open confessions that call up another child who lived beneath the stairs.

What were your favourite books when you were a child?

Noel Streatfield’s Ballet Shoes. Elizabeth Goudge’s The Little White Horse. That was my favourite childhood book. I adored that book. Last year I reread it. I was almost nervous to, because I hadn’t read it since I was fourteen and I had loved it so much. Luckily, I think it’s even better than I did then. Now I can see how well-constructed it is. That book taught me how much giving details about food contributes to the sense of actually being there.

I also loved Paul Gallico, especially Manx Mouse…have you read it?

No.

I’ve yet to meet someone who has. That’s a great book. The story’s about a pottery mouse who comes to life and goes off and has adventures. I sounds twee. In fact it’s quite dark and thought-provoking. Paul Gallico manages the fine line between magic and realty so skillfully, to the point where the most fantastic events feel plausible.

See Harry Potter’s Bookshelf for my thoughts on these titles.

Who are your favorite writers now?

 Jane Austen, Nabokov, Colette. They would be my big three. Of contemporary writers, I think Roddy Doyle is an absolute genius.

Rowling had mentioned all of these writers in previous interviews. I think Colette’s influence still needs the most work of the Big Three and Doyle’s writing deserves a close reading given this kind of praise.

People sometimes compare you to Roald Dahl.

I’ve been compared to him more than any one else. I take it as a compliment. There are similarities in our humour sometimes. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Gian Peach are brilliant, but he’s not one of my favourite children’s writers. Our writing is really quite dissimilar. My books are ultimately more moral. An unfashionable word, but there you go. They’re not moralistic, but there is often a good versus evil sub text. They’re not absolutely black and white, though. Harry breaks a lot of rules. He’s not ’good’ in the Enid Blyton sense.

Rowling said above that she didn’t have a point to put over or “a philosophy of life” to teach as she believes C. S. Lewis did but here she admits that she is “more moral” a writer than Roald Dahl, though claiming she is not “moralistic,” a distinction without meaning beyond suggesting she isn’t really, y’know, moral. I’ve read some Roald Dahl and I confess to scratching my head about Rowling’s implicit assertion that Dahl wasn’t a “moral writer.” Every one of his stories has a fairly straight forward set of heroes and villains with a conflict that highlights their respective virtues and vices. Another worthless, posturing answer, alas.

The Guardian described your sense of humour as ruthless.

That’s probably true. Both in the books and in private my sense of humour can be fairly black. I don’t have a cruel sense of humour. I have been accused of that, but I don’t think it’s cruel.

There is a real difference between “ruthless” and “cruel,” the one meaning “unrestrained by normal bonds and limits of decorum” and the other “intentionally hurtful.” I’m assuming that the Guardian was speaking about the humor of her books, Rowling herself not being a public figure of note in 1998. She turns the conversation though to having been accused of being “cruel.” What’s your best guess? Michael? The first husband? College friends? Diane? It’s right up at the surface like her experience of childhood.

I enjoy your slow-fuse jokes and word play.

My ambition is to write books that the reader won’t necessarily get completely at the first reading. I read my own favourite books over and over until they fall apart, literally. I’ve gone through three copies of Emma – they get dropped in the bath and the covers fall off, and I’ve had to replace them. Nothing makes me happier than when a child brings me a copy of Harry that looks appalling – it proves they’ve read and read and read it.

She writes for re-readers and her books demand multiple readings to understand. That first sentence is another “keeper” from this Renton interview.

Do you read serious books about magic as part of your research?

I’m not a New Age type – not really into crystals. But through reading I know a ridiculous amount about magic. Some of the spells in my books are ones people have genuinely believed in. I find books about magic fascinating, but sometimes it’s absolutely hysterical the things people believe.

Have you read anything by Aleister Crowley?

No I never have.

A film of his life is being made.

I’ve read something of his life because he overlaps with some writers I enjoy. Anthony Powell mentions him. I don’t have a deep interest in his work. He sounds like a rampant egomaniac, dangerous in that sense, not because he was ‘The Beast’.

The Rowling Library writer thought this was worthy of note because of the place Rowling-Galbraith gives Crowley in Troubled Blood. I think it’s credible that she hadn’t read Crowley in 1998 but knew of him so when she wanted to write a book including occult-astrology she did a deep dive into his work.

Talking of films about wizards, are there any plans to make Harry Potter films?

 Yes! There’s one in the pipeline. It’s very exciting.

It’s wonderful to see a person of such talent and accomplishment see her dreams come true.

Now that you’re based in Edinburgh, is Harry Potter going to visit Scotland?

Hogwarts is actually in Scotland! I deliberately don’t spell it out because I want people to be able to place it in any landscape that suits them. But to my mind it’s in Scotland.

It’s a delight that she doesn’t think readers will ever see this interview so she can talk about it and think that her decision not to write about Hogwarts’ location in the stories will keep it a secret.

What do you feel about having such quick success as a writer and being able to work at it full-time?

I’m still slightly stunned to be living the life I’ve always dreamed about. At least once a week I get a funny shiver down my spine.

Ditto on the sentiment above. What exciting and charmed times these years must have been for the young Rowling, still a single mother, still with many Potter books to write.