Hogwarts Professor

Friend of this blog Bruce Charlton has written a challenging post at his Miscellany weBlog, ‘Harry Potter and the need for a single volume Half Blood Prince/ Deathly Hallows.’ In it he argues that Ms Rowling is very much correct when she noted in an interview that the last two books “slide into one another” and work as a whole. Mr Charlton writes:

I am again re-reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – and as I began to break down in tears in a cafe (halfway through ‘The Missing Mirror’ chapter), and was forced to lay the book aside and stop reading or risk dissolving into a blubbering mass; I realized for the nth time that many adults are missing reading this wonderful book for the simple reason that they are either unable or unwilling to read children’s books.

The problem is that, according to conventional wisdom, the Deathly Hallows can only be approached via the preceding six Harry Potter stories; two of which are designed for intelligent (approx) eight year olds, the next for ten year olds, two more for 12-14 year olds, and only the last two volumes of being fully adult novels.

His solution?

In fact, in terms of both structure and style, the Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows make up a unit: therefore, the solution is that they should be published together in a single mega-volume marketed to adults – and with all the necessary back story provided in the form or a Foreword or Preface, plus a few explanatory notes (probably as footnotes).

I had a wonderful time catching up with old friends at MISTI Con in Laconia, New Hampshire this Spring. Keith Hawk from MuggleNet Academia was there, Janet Batchler flew in from LA to pull back the curtain on the making of the Potter movies in her keynote talk, and the whole Group that Shall Not Be Named was on hand, which made the conversational atmosphere fast, fun, and fabulously fascinating. Did I mention the CosPlay heroics and statuary among the art exhibits? For a ‘low key’ fan gathering with participants numbering in the hundreds rather than the thousands, MISTI Con was a meeting exceeding all of my expectations.

My favorite moment, though, has to have been sitting at a table in the Big Tent all by my lonesome an hour or so before the book signing event. I’d arrived early to set everything up and to read for a while in anticipation of whatever came next (and there was always a big ‘something next’). And in wheeled the woman known to her admirers as ‘the Luna Lovegood of Potter Pundits,’ Swythyv.

If you’ve read her LiveJournal posts or the chapter she contributed to Who Killed Albus Dumbledore?, you know Swythyv reads a text at a different angle than the normal reader and at a greater depth than even serious readers. I want to share what we talked about — really, what I sat spell bound listening to for what must have been ninety minutes bit seemed like an extended moment of diving into clear, blue water and discovering another world of sensation and sights — but I cannot, except to say she shared the magical back story of the Hogwarts Saga that ties together a host of loose ends from Albania to Albion and Albus Dumbledore.

God willing, she’ll soon be sharing at her LiveJournal that epic historical bracketing of the Harry Potter epic that is implicit to the tale but never discussed explicitly. I’ll provide the link when she does. Until then, though, I have Swythyv’s permission to share a link something she wrote last year about the death of Ariana, a post that, at first, as with much of what she writes, flabbergasts me, then makes me see things as possible that I never would have considered, and finally leaves me wondering if she hasn’t seen things much more clearly than everyone else.

Ariana’s Death. Read it and let me know what you think. Fan fiction? I have to think the lazy reader will dismiss it as such. I see it as entering into a text at such a level that, as in a Pensieve, the neglected aspects of a memory or scene include dimensions and perceptions not available to the original narrative. Swythyv is a Potter Pundit of the first order and meeting her at last was a life event for me. I hope soon to share her Dodona musings which are an order of magnitude more challenging than this short piece. Enjoy!