JKR interviews (was Three Cauldrons was Re: Rowling says Dumbledore is gay

[Carol]

Carol earlier: 
> > And I'm wondering what others think of her latest remark
concerning the revelation about DD's sexual orientation:
> > 
> > "He is what he is and I have the right to say what I say about him."
> > 
> > Who said that she didn't have that right? <snip>
> > 
> > Her position now is that DD's relationship with GG was an
"infatuation," whether reciprocal or one-sided, she didn't say. Not
quite the same as being "in love." Is it? Or should we even worry
about what she says outside the books.
> 
> Potioncat:
> Is this later part from another interview, or from a different 
transcript? It's hard to keep up! <snip>

Carol responds:

My post was based on the articles and very incomplete response posted
at the Leaky Cauldron, which includes links to equally incomplete and
out-of-contest remarks in other articles:

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/10/23/j-k-rowling-on-dumbledore-revelation-i-m-not-kidding

The article now includes a link to the video, which can be found at
http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/video/arts/web_exclusive_jk_rowling.html

After an introduction during which she's presented an award for
printing HBP on "ancient-forest-friendly" paper and a lot of flashing
from cameras, JKR answers reporters' questions (which are hard to hear
even with the volume turned up). The last question is essentially the
same question many readers had, why JKR didn't reveal DD's gayness
earlier. She appears to be surprised and flustered by the question,
which she seems to confuse with DD's infatuation with Grindelwald, and
her answer is essentially that it would have spoiled the plot to
reveal it earlier. She does also say that children are likely to read
the DD/GG relationship as a friendship while adult readers may suspect
an infatuation.

The "he is what he is and I have the right to say what I say about
him" remark doesn't sound as defensive in the video as it does in
print (tone is always difficult to convey in written words) and the
context seems to be something related to the reaction to the books by
readers in other countries with less tolerant cultures (which is not
clear from the article I originally quoted) rather than the readers'
right to interpret the books without her help (which is partially
addressed in the friendship vs. infatuation comment above), but I
can't tell for sure because, as I said, it's hard to hear the questions.

At any rate, I still think she has an unrealistic sense of ownership
over the book, an inadequate understanding of how differently it's
interpreted by different readers and a failure to realize that her
intentions (like any author's) aren't always successfully carried into
the books for a variety of reasons, ranging from her own assumptions
about the characters being taken for granted rather than put on the
page to the different experiences of her readers to the nature of
language itself.

She did say (and I hope this remark will placate the epilogue haters)
that her original epilogue "crow-barred in" most of the surviving
characters so that it (apparently) included almost everyone's fate,
and she also "tweaked" it to include an off-page Teddy after she
decided to kill off Lupin so that everyone would know that Teddy is
all right.

Maybe she should just publish that version of the epilogue, with
comments about where she's changed her mind. But, then, it still
wouldn't be true canon any more than discarded characters like
Hermione's little sister, Mafalda Weasley (the Slytherin Weasley), and
Pyrites (among others) are canonical, unless she announced that it was
definitive (which would means that she could no longer change her mind
about details like Neville's future wife or Ron's occupation).

Anyway, she did seem courteous and accomodating to the reporters in
the interview, just rather naive (IMO) regarding the way some people
might conceivably react to her books and her revelations.

Carol, who thinks that JKR's own idea of a vacation from the
Potterverse before starting that encyclopedia is probably a good one