Wand Order Story for Salon.com

[Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer]

No: HPFGUIDX 6906

Hi --

I have an update on the Salon.com article.  I'm not sure if the reporter ever
did visit us formally, but I contacted her individually.  I've cut & pasted
below what I sent to her.  She wrote back and asked if she could quote me in her
article as she liked my articulation of the basic issues surrounding this
"correction."  I wrote back & gave her permission to quote me, and I asked her
to please mention this group as a whole.  I stressed, for example, that I
certainly can't take credit for coming up with the explanation/theory for the
wand order problem that I always liked the best (credit to Trina for that one):
that Harry wanted to see his father so badly that he managed to magically cause
the images to reverse themselves in the wand.

Joy Wotton wrote:

> Bad Borders. I went to their shop on Charing Cross Road in London this
> evening. They are selling the original version of GOBLET for 11.99 and the
> new version for 14.99 - with no indication at all why the prices are
> different.

Wow!  I haven't noticed a price difference in the US -- anyone else?

> Looking at the corrected Wand Order scene I see that the correction fits
> neatly within the spread and doesn't roll on to the following page. Find it
> hard to believe that JR rewrote this herself since the simple transposition of
> mother and father leads to the statement when Lily emerges that Harry
> sees the woman he has thought of more often than any other that night. But are
> there ANY other women in Harry's life who are of such overwhelming importance
> that he would think of them?

No, I don't think so Joy.  That's basically what I said to the reporter, but I
may forward your message to her anyway in case she wants to add your spin on
it.  I did not, for example, make mention of what you point out: the
"corrections" don't require page layout changes.  Surely they aren't trying to
be *cheap* are they???!!

> Perhaps because we have discussed this at length, I find that the first
> version of the scene (although wrong according to the facts as we know them)
> makes much more sense because it strengthens our picture of Harry's
> relationship with his father. The second version doesn't add to our picture
> of Lily and I find it lacks depth.

I agree.  I think Harry clearly is portrayed as having a more emotional
connection to his father-- or at least we (and Harry) learn so much more about
his father in PoA, that it *seems* as though he has a more emotional connection
with his father, which, of course, is validated by the original version of this
scene.  I'm with Joy: the corrected version not only makes no sense, it lacks
depth.

Penny (my message to Kera is below this)

Hi Kera --

Brian Dorband forwarded me your email address and your message regarding your
research into the change in the "wand order" passage from Goblet of Fire.  I'm
the "listmom" for the Harry Potter for Grownups group
(HPforGrownups at egroups.com).  Our members recognized this issue immediately, and
since July, we have developed a variety of theories about why James might have
emerged from the wand prior to Lily.

Needless to say, we were completely taken aback that (a) it was *just* a
mistake, (b) the "correction" was done silently and (c) the "corrected" passage
reads very strangely (in the opinion of most of us anyway).  I would say that
most of us believe that it was a colossal mistake to have
slipped by JK Rowling *and* the editorial staff at both Bloomsbury &
Scholastic.  It was a passage that gave virtually all of us pause on the first
read, so we can't help but wonder whether the editors were completely asleep at
the wheel to have missed it.  Many of us have speculated that the release
deadline for GoF contributed to several errors that should have been corrected
with adequate editorial supervision & reasonable deadlines (the "wand order"
passage being the most glaring example of course).

We also wonder about the corrected passage.  It doesn't really make sense
internally.  Whoever made the change did so without much thought it would
appear.  It's really not enough to simply change the pronouns and proper names
to make Lily appear before James.  There is a passage
in the original version where Harry thinks to himself that he knew whoit would
be coming out of the wand next, because it was the man he'd thought of more than
any other that night.  That was beautiful & emotionally evocative because Harry
*had* been thinking of his father.  It makes considerably less sense to say that
he'd been thinking of Lily more than any woman that night, when in fact, he
hadn't had any thoughts about Lily that are conveyed to the reader.

The theory that we originally came up with that *I* liked the best was that
Harry unconsciously *wanted* to see his father so desperately at that point that
he somehow magically caused the images inside the wand to reverse order.  Of
course, we had a number of other theories, ranging
from perfectly plausible to insane, and I'd be happy to share those with you in
more detail if you're interested.

Good luck with this article, and we would all certainly love to know when it is
released.  Please feel free to join our group if you're so inclined, even
temporarily for purposes of discussing this issue with
the members.  You'll find us a diverse and entertaining crowd I think!

Penny Linsenmayer
pennylin at swbell.net