Thoughts for the Serious Reader of Harry Potter
Tyndale sent me a link this morning to a thoughtful and flattering online review of How Harry Cast His Spell that I recommend to you. The story of the woman’s experience with a Harry Hater and how both she and the woman came to fresh experiences of the novels after looking at them in a different light is a good one.
I’m curious, too, of what you think of this paragraph in the review: [Read more…]
Ms. Melissa Anelli has released a portion of her interviews with Ms. Rowling that were not included in Harry, A History at the Amazon Blog for her best-selling book. This “vault segment” is about Order of the Phoenix and Ms. Rowling’s thoughts about the fifth novel in the series. I found her comments about Harry being alone but comforted by a group in the battle at the Department of Mysteries interesting as well as her insistence that you have to write the story as it comes to you rather than the one you imagine people want to hear. [Read more…]
Mr. Prinzi, the webmaster and guru of The Hog’s Head, has written a book, Harry Potter and Imagination: The Way Between Two Worlds, which I could not be more excited about. It’s available now through Amazon.com or through Zossima.com (if you want it autographed).
As I said in my blurb for the book, “There is no more insightful commenter on the Harry Potter novels than Travis Prinzi.” I begged him to publish after first hearing him speak at Prophecy 2007 in Toronto. Why? His approach, his insights, and his verve were that exciting to me personally because they were so different from what I was doing and thinking and from what I had seen anyone else attempt. I know other serious readers who have heard him talk at conventions and pubCasts or read his comments at Hog’s Head feel the same way. There is nothing retread, stale, or ho-hum in what he writes; you’re going to be stretched and delighted when you read Travis Prinzi — and, if you’re like me, that’s exactly what you’re looking for in literary criticism.
There is already a reader review up at Amazon and I urge you to take a look. [Read more…]
I was asked by a friend at The Hog’s Head’s thread about ‘The Fountain of Fair Fortune’ to discuss its meaning in the light of the symbols on Ms. Rowling’s drawing of the Fountain. I started an answer there that grew to such a length that I have brought it here lest it hijack the Hog’s Head thread entirely.
I have already posted on Dumbledore’s Commentary on this Tale, and, though few agree with me about what Ms. Rowling is after in Dumbledore’s dispute with Lucius Malfoy, I think there is little doubt that the meaning of his commentary is Ms. Rowling’s veiled opinion about gay marriage. ‘The Tale of Fair Fortune’ itself, however, is less political than spiritual, and, with Dumbledore’s Commentary, it confirms her assertion that the Tales are a “distillation of the themes” in the Potter books. [Read more…]
Certainly it would take days to unpack all the upside-down and almost exactly backwards ideas in this Salon article, A Spy in the House of Narnia, an interview with the Salon founder and author of the new title, The Magician’s Book: A Skeptics Adventures in Narnia. Long story short: child loves the Chronicles of Narnia until she learns they are largely allegorical. She returns to them years later to demonstrate they really aren’t Christian books but works of remarkable imaginative artistry.
Two quick notes: [Read more…]
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