One reporter reacts to JKR's revelations

[Katie]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Tonks" <tonks_op at ...> wrote:

<<<Ginormous Snip>>>

 Rowling has her opinion of the man and I have mine. And I am just 
stubborn enough to say that hers is wrong. So I will not read the 
books any differently than I have in the past.
> 
> Tonks_op


***Katie:
I agree. This is part of the reason I really wish she would stop with 
all the interviews. I don't *want* her to try and make me see the 
characters as she does. Personally, the gay thing doesn't bother me, 
but a lot of other things she has said do. And I'm stubborn, too!
I will also continue to see the characters the way I always did, and 
not in the mold she's trying to give us. 


She created books and characters that were highly interpretable - 
which to me is mark of really good storytelling. These things meant 
different things to different people and that was part of the beauty 
of the books. She made characters so real and so vivid that they stand 
on their own outside of the story...and now I feel like she's trying 
to mold and shape them after the fact. Too late! They are what they 
are!


To those of us who say, "But it's her character, they can't exist 
without her,", I say, what about Falstaff? What about Hamlet? What 
about King Arthur? Some of the greatest characters in literature burst 
the boundaries of the stories within which they were created and 
became living, breathing entities entirely independent of their 
original authors. I think Shakespeare would be impressed with the 
vivacity of Rowling's characters...and I think she should be, too, and 
let them alone. 


Katie