Wand Order Fix

[Penny & Bryce]

No: HPFGUIDX 25864

Hi everyone --

Thanks to Steve for responding so thoroughly to the question of why some 
of us are disgruntled about how the Wand Order goof was fixed!  I would 
add a few things to Steve's explanation though.  Someone suggested that 
of course JKR can't be expected to monitor fan lists such as this and 
know that we had possible explanations that could have worked.  True. 
But, I think the point is if *we,* with a little thought, could come up 
with several possible explanations for the wand order issue, why 
couldn't she or her editors have done the same thing?

It seemed to me anyway that (a) it was a rather rushed "Oh, yeah, that 
is wrong, fix it, would you?" decision on JKR's part, and (b) the 
publishers tried to sneak it by.  By (b) what I'm referring to is the 
fact that there was no press release, no interview, no discussion of the 
fix *at all* by any of the publishers until Salon.com did an expose of 
sorts on the whole issue.  Then, they owned up & sheepishly said, "Oh 
yeah.  That was an error & we fixed it."  Gee, were ya gonna tell us 
about it?  They were very well aware that the fans knew about this 
problem because CNN (and Salon) both ran articles in late July 2000 that 
spotlighted the problem.  Every response from the publishers on this 
issue was, well, a little defensive IMO. And, frankly, well it should 
be.  The editors missed a *major* error -- it was something any true fan 
spotted right away as we all know.  It all goes back to the rushed 
deadlines.  I'm willing to wait as long as it takes to avoid that sort 
of thing in OoP (although I sure wish they'd ask some of us fanatics to 
do some pre-publication editing!  I know *I'd* do it for free in a 
heartbeat and I'm sure Steve would too).

The other variable is that I don't *like* the fix.  There are some long 
explanations from me about why I don't like it in the message archives 
-- sometime in January as I recall because I know I was interviewed by 
the NY Daily News while I was in NY in January so it would be shortly 
after that article was published.  In short though, Harry was *NOT* 
thinking about his mother that night as far as we know.  He *HAD*, 
however, been thinking about his father.  The fix lacks the emotional 
impact that the original passage had for me.  I don't think they fixed 
enough of the language.  If it was wrong, then they should have fixed 
more than pronouns and proper names.  There wasn't enough context given 
for the changes made IMHO.  He has this growing connection to his father 
that starts in PoA, and I think that was what JKR might have been 
thinking about when she wrote it.

Penny